Just over a year after The Canadian Canoe Museum opened at its new waterfront location on the shores of Peterborough’s Little Lake, the sound of live music will soon fill the beautiful atrium.

The museum has announced the launch of its new “Music in the Museum” concert series featuring Canadian musicians, which will kick off on Saturday, May 24 with a performance by Juno award-winning roots musician Old Man Luedecke.

The ongoing concert series will be held in the museum’s atrium, where the Silver Bean Cafe is located, with the mass timber and wood panelling providing rich acoustics for the performers and the audience.

The museum’s executive director Carolyn Hyslop noted in a media release that events like these showcase the museum in a different way to an entirely new audience.

“We see ourselves as a community hub, an energetic space where people can connect, learn, share stories, and make memories, and the Music in the Museum series is an extension of this vision,” Hyslop said.

Proceeds from the concert series will will help subsidize the museum’s youth backcountry canoeing program, supporting the next generation of paddlers in connecting with Canada’s waterways.

VIDEO: “Year of the Dragon” – Old Man Luedecke

As for Old Man Luedecke, the Nova Scotia singer-songwriter and banjo player and guitarist is looking forward to being the inaugural performer of the new concert series.

“I’m excited to come to the museum again, play in this great venue, and be a part of this exciting event series,” he says.

Chris Luedecke — who adopted the stage and recording name Old Man Luedecke when he was 22 years old — has released 10 albums since 2003, with his latest being 2024’s She Told Me Where To Go.

Old Man Luedecke has twice won the Juno award for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year – Solo, first in 2009 for Proof of Love and again in 2011 for My Hands are on Fire and Other Love Songs.

He has also won multiple East Coast Music Awards, and has been nominated for the Polaris prize.

Tickets for Old Man Luedecke at The Canadian Canoe Museum are $45 and are available at canoemuseum.ca/music-in-the-museum.

VIDEO: “She Told Me Where To Go” – Old Man Luedecke

Doors for the May 24th show open at 6 p.m., when the bar will also open for drink purchases. All ticket holders are welcome to explore the museum’s Exhibition Hall before the music begins at 7 p.m.

“Our space is a celebration of masters of their craft, and Music in the Museum is a celebration of some of the best Canadian musicians,” said the museum’s program manager Peter Vooys. “Like the watercraft featured in the museum, music has a way of connecting us, and we’re excited to bring a truly special experience to the community.”

The Canadian Canoe Museum will be announcing additional concerts in the Music in the Museum series later in the year.

Canadian rocker Kim Mitchell will be making his fifth appearance at Peterborough Musicfest, performing at Del Crary Park on Saturday, August 16 to close out the festival’s 38th season.

Festival organizers made the announcement on Thursday (March 27), one month to the day after they announced Juno award-winning Serena Ryder will be opening the season on June 28.

“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Kim Mitchell back to Musicfest for our closing night,” says Peterborough Musicfest executive director Tracey Randall in a media release. “He’s a Canadian rock legend, and we know this will be an incredible show.”

“In times when the news is often heavy, it’s great to have something like Musicfest to look forward to,” Randall added. “Being able to offer world-class live music to our community — completely free of charge thanks to our sponsors — is something we are incredibly proud of.”

Mitchell, who will be 73 when he takes to the Fred Anderson Stage, was born and raised in Sarnia in southwestern Ontario. In his early twenties, he began playing with local bands in Sarnia before forming the progressive hard rock band Max Webster in Toronto in 1972 with his childhood friend Pye Dubois.

With Mitchell and lyricist Dubois writing most of the band’s material, Max Webster released six studio albums from 1976 to 1981, recording hit singles such “Waterline”, “Paradise Skies”, “Let Go the Line”, “A Million Vacations”, “Diamonds Diamonds”, “High Class in Borrowed Shoes”, “Hangover”, and “Check”.

VIDEO: “Lager & Ale” – Max Webster

VIDEO: “Paradise Skies” – Max Webster

Max Webster also toured heavily during this time, usually playing 200 to 250 shows each year in venues of all sizes, from bars and high school auditoriums to theatres and arenas.

They opened for big-name artists including Bachman–Turner Overdrive, Blondie, The Cars, Cheap Trick, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, The Guess Who, Kansas, Ted Nugent, REO Speedwagon, Styx, Rush, and more — with one notable exception being KISS.

Many years later, when Mitchell was a host on Toronto classic rock radio station Q107, he interviewed KISS frontman Gene Simmons and asked him why KISS never took Max Webster out as support. “That’s easy — you were too good,” Simmons said.

By 1978, Max Webster were headliners in most major Canadian markets, although they continued to tour extensively with Rush outside of Canada, supporting the band over 200 times.

However, in the space of a few years, a lack of support from their American record label stalled Max Webster’s career. That lack of support, combined with the departure of key band members, led Mitchell to dissolve Max Webster in 1981.

The following year, Mitchell began his solo career, developing a new sound and releasing a self-titled mini-album. In 1984, he released his debut full-length solo album Akimbo Alogo, which produced the songs “All We Are”, “Feel it Burn”, “Lager & Ale”, and the lead single “Go for Soda” — his only charting single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

VIDEO: “Go for A Soda” – Kim Mitchell

VIDEO: “Patio Lanterns” – Kim Mitchell

With lyrics by his Max Webster bandmate Dubois, “Go for Soda” remains Mitchell’s best-known song outside of his Canada. It served as the campaign theme for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in the U.S., was featured in the opening scene of a 1985 Miami Vice episode, and was used in a series of television commercials for the U.S. soft drink Mr. Pibb.

Mitchell’s seven subsequent albums saw a string of hit singles including “All We Are”, “Patio Lanterns”, “Easy To Tame”, “Rock And Roll Duty”, “Rockland Wonderland”, and “America”.

He has won three Juno Awards, including Most Promising Male Vocalist in 1983, Album of the Year in 1988 for his second solo album Shakin’ Like A Human Being, and Male Vocalist of the Year in 1990.

Although Mitchell has only released two albums in the last 25 years (2007’s Ain’t Life Amazing and 2020’s The Big Fantasize), he continues to tour and perform songs from Max Webster and his solo records.

“I don’t stress out about all the stuff around being a touring musician any more,” Mitchell said in a May 2016 interview with Jim Barber of MusicLifeMagazine.net. “I am where I am in my life and my career, so I am just going up there and relax and do my thing.”

“I am all about customer service. People are coming out to hear certain songs and hear me playing them. But they have been morphing and going through some changes. So Go For A Soda sounds a little different the way we play it on a given night. And we will start to jam out on some of the songs and be a little freer with the arrangements. I like to give people what they want.”

Mitchell last appeared at Musicfest in 2017, opening the season with a Canada Day concert as part of the country’s 150th birthday celebrations in Peterborough. In 2012, his August 4th appearance was cut short by bad weather, but he returned on August 21st to play a full show before thousands of classic rock fans. He also performed at Del Crary Park in 1997 and 2002.

With files from Paul Rellinger.