Tenille Townes signs with Columbia Nashville in the U.S.

Story by Howard Druckman | Tuesday April 17th, 2018

Sony Music Nashville has signed SOCAN member and emerging singer-songwriter Tenille Townes with the release of her major label debut, the four-song Living Room Worktapes EP.

Produced by co-writer Daniel Tashian (who worked on Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour album), the recording showcases the lyrical strength and soulful vocals that Townes has been cultivating since she first began singing at age five, in her hometown of Grande Prairie, Alberta.

She learned to read by studying album liner notes, and penned her first song by age 14. As a teenager, Townes toured throughout Canada and made frequent visits to Nashville to write and co-write songs. She moved there in 2013, and immersed herself in the heart of the city’s songwriting community. She’s since emerged as a dynamic, genre-defying artist, and signed a publishing deal with Big Yellow Dog Music.

Townes recently made her Sundance Film Festival and SXSW debuts, and will join Maren Morris and others for select tour dates this Spring. She’s also been tapped by Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town for their co-headlining Bandwagon Tour, which starts in July of 2018.

SOCAN congratulates Tenille Townes on this great achievement!

Karl Wolf releases single created at SOCAN-sponsored song camp

Story by Howard Druckman | Thursday May 3rd, 2018

SOCAN is pleased and proud that Karl Wolf has released a single of “Way Low,” a song created at Jenson Vaughan’s SOCAN-sponsored Canada 150 Song Camp, held in 2017 in Toronto. The song, co-written by Wolf, Vaughan, Jayson DeZuzio, and Yannis Constantinou, features three-time Grammy Award winning hip-hop artist Nelly. Its SOCAN publishers are Red Riding Hood Music, Ultra Music, and BMG Rights Management Canada.

The camp re-united several of the co-writers that Vaughan had encountered – and bonded with – at the SOCAN Kenekt 2017 Song Camp in Nicaragua earlier in 2017: Laurell Barker, Jayson DeZuzio, Aaron Fontwell, and Lantz. The familiarity created a warm, familial vibe over the course of the week.

“Way Low” was released worldwide on April 20, 2018, and is the lead single for Wolf’s American debut album this year. Wolf has released seven albums, claims 20 either Gold or Platinum records, and has earned an MTV Europe Music Award, five SOCAN awards, a Canadian Radio Music Award, and three JUNO nominations. His hit song “Africa” went Top Five at radio in Japan, the Middle East, Europe, and Canada.

Movie scored by Andrew Lockington hits No. 1 at box office

Story by Howard Druckman | Monday April 16th, 2018

SOCAN congratulates our Andrew Lockington, one of our most successful #ComposersWhoScore, for his work on the movie Rampage, which reached No. 1 in the North American box office on April 13-15, 2018, grossing $34.5 million in its opening weekend.

The film, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and directed by Lockington’s fellow Canadian Brad Peyton, is the second top-grossing North American movie for Lockington; the first was San Andreas – also starring Johnson and directed by Peyton – which achieved the feat in May 2015, and for which we presented him with a No. 1 Award during a SOCAN Session and interview.

In Rampage, a giant ape runs amok, so Lockington recorded howler monkeys in Costa Rica and ran their howls through some modular synthesizers to achieve unique simian sounds. To create the sound for the opening space station sequence, he recorded The African Children’s Choir – an organization started in Uganda to benefit young children, some of whom have lost their parents – then sonically manipulated their singing to get a space-like sound.

Lockington has previously won 10 SOCAN Film Awards – in the categories of Achievement in Feature Film, Domestic Film Music, and International Film Music – for his scores to Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D; the sequel, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island; Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters; and San Andreas.