For this year’s Juno awards celebrations, City of Hamilton’s music office commissioned a mural from the artist and Juno-winning musician Tom Wilson.
For this year's Juno celebrations in Hamilton, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and the City of Hamilton's music office commissioned a mural from the artist and Juno-winning musician Tom Wilson. He speaks about inspiration and meaning of his resulting painting, The Mystic Highway, now hanging on the side of downtown Hamilton's CBC building.
"I grew up in this place, Hamilton, Ontario. Highway 6 runs through it, down to Port Dover, past Lake Erie. There's something that goes on down there: The tobacco fields and the Six Nations – there are voices that sing to you off the lake. Robbie Robertson spent summers there. It's where Ronnie Hawkins fired his drunk bass player and hired a kid from Turkey Point named Rick Danko. There's an energy there that stirs up something in the artists of a small city like Hamilton ... In Canada, we don't lift up our local heroes and put them on our shoulders. I tried to get a statue of Teenage Head's late singer Frankie Venom put up in Hamilton, but others didn't see the importance of it. But I did get this painting up that talks about him and King Biscuit Boy and Jackie Washington and others. It's not the end of the road, but it's a message that we can be proud of what goes on around our city."
The 2015 Juno Awards will be presented in Hamilton on March 15 and broadcast live on CTV at 7 p.m. ET.
Brad Wheeler