Author David McPherson chronicles Canadian music in his latest book

There is a story behind every hit song that you've ever heard, and there's an anecdote behind the musician who performed it. Some are just plain interesting, while others are fascinating facts that you may have never heard.

David McPherson is the author of 101 Fascinating Canadian Music Facts,a book focusing on Canadian music and musicians.

He recently spoke with CBC K-W's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris about the book.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Audio of the interview can be found at the bottom of this article.

Craig Norris: Your two previous books, both great books that were music focused anyway, one was on the legendary Massey Hall in Toronto, the other was the legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, but this book now is about facts around people in Canada's music industry. Why did you decide to write this one like this?

David McPherson: I have to give credit to my publisher, Dundurn Press. They've been very supportive of my writing journey and after I finished the Massey Hall book and was thinking about another project I approached them with a few ideas and they came back and said, how would you like to do this? They'd already done 101 Hockey Facts with Brian McFarlane and they wanted to make a series out of it. And so I said sure, yeah, why not? And actually, a little teaser, my next book I've signed on to do another one, I'm just in the editing phase now, 101 Fascinating Golf Facts that will be out in February next year.

Craig Norris: What fascinating Canadian music facts did you discover when you were writing your books?

David McPherson: Quite a few. Curating these 101, at first I thought that's going to be pretty difficult, but then the more you got into it and thought about it, I probably could have 1,001. But one kind of fascinating one that was new to me, I did enjoy their body humour I guess,when I was a teenager, MacLean and MacLean, the old toilet rock kind of humour.

But the fascinating fact that I dug up about them is there was a time in the late 70s, early 80s when they were kind of being looked at playing at these pubs and bars. And apparently you couldn't use the F word during your performance in pubs and bars. There were some undercover cops and people going to their shows to try and catch them. MacLean and MacLean took this all the way to the Supreme Court and won. So, it was a victory for free speech, if you will.

Craig Norris: Where did you find this information? Was it mostly word of mouth interviews or had you heard this in the ether, in the wind where did you get this stuff?

David McPherson: A bit of both, a bit of everything. First I dug back into my own kind of archives of 25 years of covering music and saw if there's any things I might have left on the cutting room floor, little anecdotes or stories I hadn't told before. And then I reached out to a lot of Canadian musicians, people I knew, asking them for some new, fun stories they might have not shared before, and then like a typical journalist, I kind of dug into archives and just did research online as well and kind of dug in to find stuff like that MacLean and MacLean story.

Craig Norris: I don't want you to give a lot of the book away at all, but what is the story behind Stompin' Tom's stomping board?

David McPherson: It's pretty fascinating. Most people who are aware of Stompin' Tom know that he had a board. The story I learned to kind of start it out one of his earliest gigs at a hotel, he always had that stomping to the rhythm with his big cowboy boots and he was starting to mark this floor and damage the floor because he was stomping so hard. So, he came up with this idea of a way to kind of protect it with the stomping board. It's pretty incredible, it became part of his act and a neat thing.

If you've been to the new Massey Hall since all the renovations, they've done a great job making it a bit like a living museum, with the various bars and nooks and places and in one of those shadow boxes they do have Stompin' Tom's stomping board there on display.

Craig Norris: Where did your love of music come from?

David McPherson: For me, music is the elixir of life. I've always just loved it. As a musician and hearing live music, there's nothing like it and I I think that's probably where it really began. My dad enjoyed music and growing up I kind of went through his record collection and so there's a bit of that, but I think really, going to The Who and The [Rolling] Stones when I was in Grade 10, I think that was it. After I saw those two concerts I was kind of hooked on live music.

When it comes back to writing about it, I've always loved history and it was just kind of a natural combination of my love of history with music and the books I've written.

Craig Norris: You're taking part in a workshop at the TD Kitchener Blues Fest with one of the best guitarists anywhere, Colin Linden. What's the workshop about?

David McPherson: I feel pretty humbled to be in Colin's company. As you mentioned, he is one of the best guitarists in this country and also an incredible producer. Basically, this workshop, the idea is he's got a rich history with a couple of the venues I've written about the Horseshoe and Massey Hall and I'm going to have him share a few stories about his time playing there and I'll maybe share a few stories from my books and hopefully get called to play a couple songs as well.

The Morning Edition - K-W6:32David McPherson is the author of 101 Fascinating Canadian Music Facts

There's a story behind every hit song you've ever heard, and there's an anecdote behind the musician who performed it. David McPherson is the author of 101 Fascinating Canadian Music Facts. He spoke to CBC Radio's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris about his book.