Tony Hightower |
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At the end of 1999, Tony Hightower packed up his few belongings and left Toronto, the only city he had really ever called home, and moved to New York City to begin the next phase of his songwriting career. With him he brought his just-finished LP, A Single Angry Word, a 12-song collection of insanely catchy and energetic guitar pop that doubled as a love letter to the city he was leaving behind, and the people with whom he grew up. |
Messiahs galore |
1. The i in iconoclast 2. Dead awile 3. Bowling with stevie wonder 4. Last night 5. I loved annie first 6. Infomaniac 7. Not about ani difranco 8. Bar b q 9. What i did on my summer vacation 10. Cuts 1 through 6 |
11. What i did not do on my summer vacation 12. White guy in lee's palace 13. It |
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1. Sides of my shoes 2. The waves 3. A single angry word 4. Somebody turns on a radio 5. Annex in february 6. A toast for leyna 7. Low fire 8. So the hell what 9. I'll have fun if it kills me 10. Picaresco 11. Dina doesn't talk to the boys 12. Christie pits story |
A single angry word |
Tony's music really is of a time and place, although his themes are universal. You don't have to have personally visited Bloor Street to understand the melancholy of Annex In February, and A Toast For Leyna will touch you even if you've never been to the haunts the song leads you through, or never met the (very real) Leyna for whom it was written. Tony wanted to be a novelist from the time he first read Orwell's 1984 at fourteen. After going to journalism school (which put him off taking it up as a profession), he began writing songs for his first band, The Toes, a trashy garage combo. That band broke up, and Tony put together another band, The Murder of Bryan Adams (which changed their name to the Trapped Tigers after an angry phone call one early Sunday morning from Bryan's manager), which put out a CD of zydeco-influenced punk songs, Messiahs Galore, in 1997. He spent the next two years touring across Canada both solo and with the band, polishing his skills and learning at the feet of the best songwriters in the country. The band he put together to record A Single Angry Word was anchored by Duncan McBain on drums and Terence "Bone" Gowan on bass, both Canadian music royalty, and the sheer propulsive fun of that record reflects that pedigree. Tony delivers the songs like they're his last joyous words on Earth, and the record itself made more than one critic's year-end top tem list for 2000. Now living in New York City, with a new band (Sanjay Kaul and Alan Brock of Washington, DC's Lunchin, and Aashish Pathak on drums) and an interactive live show that must be seen to be believed, Tony continues to spread his special stylish happy jumpy rock and roll gospel across the North American landscape. |
