musician

Motley Crue is gearing up for their biggest Canadian tour in their 33 year history, but before they do singer Vince Neil is literally gearing up for something else that is close to his heart, the Smokin’ Tires Skylar Neil Memorial Car Show on April 6.

As a musician, jazz-pop chanteuse Jill Barber always found ‘girls with guitars’ night or other female-only music events ghettoizing, but that is far different from mentoring other females.  That’s why she said yes to Girls Action Foundation’s Light A Spark initiative.

“Essentially, I’ve been invited on as a 'spark' and as a mentor to young women,” Barber tells Samaritanmag.com. “The idea is to inspire younger women to follow their dreams or have confidence and pursue whatever it is that they want. It’s helping them enter it as a women in an industry and not as a woman amongst solely women doing something.”

Barber, who is currently on tour across Canada in support of her latest album, Mischievous Moon, will attend a networking event on May 12 in Vancouver, where she lives.  “That will be my first opportunity to have face time with the young people,” she says.

Girls Action Foundation is a national non-profit supporting more than 240 partnering organizations and projects, which reaches more than 60,000 girls and young women, including those in remote, marginalized and urban communities in Canada.

Musician Tom Waits and photographer Michael O’Brien have teamed up for a hard cover book called Hard Ground, hoping to bring to light the hardships and realities facing the homeless, and Waits is releasing a limited-edition chap-book based on a lengthy poem he wrote inspired by O'Brien's photos.

“Seeds on Hard Ground, ” written in the voices of those who were pushed to the margins of society, has just been posted in its entirety on Waits' web site.  "I am a seed that fell upon a hard ground," the piece begins. The chap-book, designed by Johnny Brewton, will be available Feb. 22 for $25 (U.S.), exclusively on www.tomwaits.com and record label, www.anti.com, with all proceeds going to help homeless services in the San Francisco region.  North America and Europe each got a run of a thousand copies. The advance orders sold out in hours and a second edition of a thousand is now for sale with a different coloured cover.

The 184-page Hard Ground, however, published by University of Texas Press, will be sold in March (S.L.P. $40 U.S.) at most traditional and online book retailers, including Amazon. The 184-page hard cover contains 88 black and white photographs and 74 black and white thumbnails, according to information on University of Texas Press’ web site. A press release for Waits' chap-book states that an abridged, rearranged version of “Seeds on Hard Ground” will also appear in it.

Kirk Pengilly, the bespectacled guitarist/saxophonist of Australian rock group INXS, has been involved with numerous charities over the decades from Greepeace to Amnesty International. None, however, is more dear to him than The Eye Foundation for which he's an ambassador.

“I almost lost my sight to glaucoma back in the 80s,” Pengilly tells Samaritanmag. “I came that close to losing my sight and had pioneering laser surgery back then which fixed my eyes."

Glaucoma involves damage to the optic nerve, leading to progressive, irreversible vision loss. 

 “I’ve worn glasses all my life," says the 52-year-old Pengilly, "so I’m a very instrumental ambassador for The Eye Foundation for eye health, eye awareness and eye research. Everyone should get their eyes checked like you do your teeth. I do a lot of work for them from TVCs [television commercials], attending functions, talking.”