Short.

So when, when did we meet?

We met about a month, we'll say about within the last two months, I think.

I was at Shangri La coming in as you were exiting.

That's right.

And we had a really quick conversation and introduction.

And in that, let's say, five minute conversation, I was like, huh, what an interesting gentleman.

And from there I just asked you, hey, I think we should do a podcast.

I don't know if anyone's ever approached you that way and just said, hey, man, you seem interesting, let's do a podcast.

But yeah, here we are.

Well, I do appreciate that.

And yes, it has happened.

I generally don't agree to it.

I've done radio interviews and TV things and they've done special sort of documentaries on me for radio and TV Canada and the States.

Yeah, I guess, I guess it's happened.

And very, I guess all the main newspapers have written stories.

It seems to recycle the idea that I'm a dual personality, apparently.

It's interesting to people, they discover that every few years and I'm a new commodity.

Here I am again.

So you are again.

You know, I, but, you know, I don't, I don't like being totally in the spotlight, but I appreciate, you know, there was something that struck me about you in that few minutes also.

I thought, these guys are smart.

I want to do this.

Interesting.

Well, hashtag, he said yes.

Tricked him again.

Got him.

We got nothing to say here.

Yeah, well, you don't know that.

I actually stuck around.

I didn't really leave.

I listened to you play.

Oh, he tricked me.

Yeah, well, I was there for about an hour after that.

A full hour.

Wow.

I did, I didn't, I wasn't honestly hearing every note.

Yeah, and you guys are great.

You know, I was, I ended up having a meeting unexpectedly with management there, and I just, as I was staying, I was listening to, so, you know, it was good music.

Gotcha.

Well, that's, I appreciate that.

That's, that's a compliment coming from a, a guy with your experience.

So, yeah, thank you.

You fooled me.

You really did.

I thought I saw you leave.

I thought I saw you exit the building.

I, I, I did.

And then I decided I remembered something.

I never left anyway, so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, there's the story of our, our relationship thus far.

That's it.

Nice.

Nice knowing you guys.

I met.

Right, right.

Mic drop.

So you heard me play.

I didn't have, I haven't had a chance to hear you play in person yet, so I look forward to that.

I don't know.

I'm at a piano here.

Yeah, right on cue.

I am on a piano.

Yeah.

Because I figure you can ask me.

I love that.

Okay.

Anyway.

That's amazing.

Well, we'll get back to that.

Screw talking.

Let's do this.

Let's play Name that Tune or something.

Go ahead, stump the band.

Right.

Right in our, I guess Google deep diving.

Thank you, Google, for all the information that you provide to us.

We've come up with some really cool things.

I don't even know where to start, but dricky.

What's your favorite jingle?

If you're just like sing one right now.

Oh, James, when I looked at the list of jingles and we should probably break down some of the like iconic jingles that you've done, there was pizza.

Pizza.

Correct.

9, 6, 7, 7, 11, 11.

I guess I'm allowed to do it.

That one might be the, the most iconic.

Maybe not so much actually now that I think about it.

Everyone loves Marine Land to me was probably the biggest one as a child.

Yeah, I made that one up.

And you did Safari for that.

That was the version I did.

Oh, that's the one that's.

That's the one that stuck.

Wow.

You said what?

African lines.

African Lion Safari.

That's also you.

Well, yeah.

You.

You do want me to play these, I guess, since I'm already here.

I just want the world to know your greatness.

African Lion Safari.

And then this one, I think most middle aged people like myself know the most now is Sleep Country Canada.

I. I have to say they're.

They're doing a turbo botch version of it with some operetta kind of thing on the radio.

No, I hate that.

But if you listen very closely, there's this little thing underneath the hook at the end that they're still using.

So the, the thing, the one I did, which is.

Don't come back to it.

Why buy your mattress anywhere else.

Yep.

Yeah.

And there's always that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you know what's funny?

I put in a key of C. Let's see.

But they'll, they'll just, they'll do something like sharp or E flat.

Not related at all.

And all of a sudden though, I had that tag on at the end.

No.

You know, and it sounds weird.

Anyway.

Sunwing ca.

I did that and I do a lot of updates and that kind of bothers me too because there's.

They're sticking some other song in the middle of it now just as a.

What happens with jingles and advertising in General is seasons.

Right.

So they.

They come out every couple of months with a whole new ad campaign.

Yeah, right.

But it doesn't always.

There may be somebody in an office somewhere doesn't understand phrasing, notation, theory, and how to correlate music to words.

I don't mean lyrics and music.

I mean the copy that an announcer is saying and things don't always work.

But that, that one is the original.

You want to hear the original Sunwing?

Of course.

Yeah.

I've done more in jingles, by the way.

I think.

You know, start with.

We'll start with jingle.

Yeah, let's do that.

Well, okay.

I. I seldom sing on these things except backup stuff.

I hire real singers, but I'll come up with.

I'll come up with the singing.

This went.

Relax, have some holiday fun.

And sun wing with.

We know that you're number one.

So get away with sunwing today.

Sunwing ca.

Sun.

You know.

So now they're doing it in the key of A.

Now Sunwing C Now while we changed it.

Sunwing ca.

That's how we're doing it now.

But, but.

Would you like to hear why I did that one?

Yeah, I want to hear why you did all of them.

But, yeah, that one.

I was on a vacation with my lady.

They were called Red Seal vacations.

It was 2004.

Okay.

They were just a small little company.

Yeah.

I didn't know anything about what's Red Seal.

What's.

Suddenly.

I never heard of it.

Actually, I just got it out of a brochure and booked it through a travel agent.

There were some problems on the.

The trip, which they try to fix up right there at the place in Mexico, this resort.

But it was four days of complaining until they finally.

So.

So half of the week was ruined.

Right.

Yeah.

I. I contacted the company and they sent me one of those, you know, vouchers for a hundred dollars.

Yeah.

Here's a credit on a future trip that you never really want to do because you don't want to deal with them anymore.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know why they think that they give you something graffiti, you're going to want it at all.

But anyway, I. I put it in a box along with a bunch of stuff because I was moving houses.

Six months later, I'm unpacking the box, I find that.

I find that voucher, and it got my backup.

So I called them again.

I said, oh, well, Mr.

So and so deals with this vice president of marketing.

And I, I said, no, he's the guy who signed the Voucher.

I don't want to talk with him.

I want to talk with the president of the airline.

Wow.

Oh, he never deals.

He doesn't do that.

Certain.

Well, he does now.

Yeah, so.

So a man calls me up like an hour later and he's the president of Sunwing Airlines.

And we just got to talking for a couple of minutes and I said, you know, I really appreciate you calling.

You're in, you're in a similar business the other side of what I guess you call a luxury type of business to.

It's a service business because travel and food and beverage and playing parties and all that.

Yeah.

A lot of the music, you know, that I do on a live with my own band is corporate and private parties.

It can be club stuff too, but you know, so I said we do something similar.

We're just kind of catering to people and trying to make them all feel special, important.

It says, well, what do you do?

And I told him.

And I said, and I write jingles too.

Says what?

Really?

Well, we just fired Co set advertising this morning.

After two years.

They, they can't come up with something and we're on the air in three weeks.

We, we bought all this ad time worth of airtime.

Wow.

Can you make up something for me?

And I said, sure.

Says, but we need it in 48 hours.

Can you present it at our office?

This is a Wednesday afternoon.

Can you be here at noon in our office at Burnham Thorpe and you know, somewhere 4:27 at noon and present this.

So, so I put this thing together.

Wow.

And presented it and, and they bought it.

It came out of it.

Oh.

But I left out a little point on the phone, that first phone.

Well, I really like it to be something like Marineland or Sleep Country Canada.

And I laugh and he says, why are you laughing?

He said, because I wrote both of those.

That's hilarious.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

So I did that and he sent me a fifteen hundred dollar voucher by register mail for my girlfriend and I to go anywhere they fly.

And we went to London, England and I got all their Sunwing commercials and signature commercials and Rio palace and Vacations except Express in the States.

So I've done a lot of business with them because of my complaining, you know.

Yeah.

I was going to say, look where complaining gets folks.

All you got to do is complain and you might be able to network at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Some, you know, the old saying goes.

I guess my mother would say if you don't ask, you don't Get Right, right.

It's such a good point.

I guess I better ask my question then so I can get the answer.

What made you start?

I wrote linens and things when I was buying towels, by the way.

So.

And the owner of linens and things chain was in the store and I, I let him know I wrote jingles too.

So you know, I guess just by networking, as you just said.

Sorry to cut you off.

No, it's okay.

What made you want to start the Toy House Media Creations company in the first place?

Well, I don't know.

That happened when I was 17 years old and I was doing a lot of session work already.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I approached.

So that was way before Toy House.

Toy House Media Creations kind of came around 2003.

Okay.

But many years before that I was knocking on doors of people in the ad business who were writing jingles saying, can you give me their.

Your overflow just as extra money?

I was still in high school.

Yeah.

I guess, I guess it was just wanting to expand musically and make it.

Make some real ash k, you know?

Yeah.

And you thought, you saw, you saw that as an opportunity at 17 years old.

That's pretty incredible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What led to that?

Yeah.

Would have the foresight to go, let me bug music.

I guess I, I guess through association.

I was already working in some shows and got you on record things.

And people were talking about the fact that they were doing session work who were much older than me.

And the pizza, pizza being the first thing, just came from a guy called Ben McPeek who I'd say was the king of jingles back then.

I think he's long passed away.

And I just kept bugging him saying you have something that you can't have time for.

And they had about three stores at that time.

Okay.

And I made that up in about 15 minutes.

It's really a kids line and they, they kept it for about two years as the company grew.

They didn't put it on the radio right away, but I think they're still using it on and off for many years.

So.

Yeah, yeah, we're all familiar with that one.

Yeah, I think, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a test one that they used in.

At the border service.

I don't know if you know that it's in law books.

So people coming from other countries often morass coming into Ontario per se, but I think it played beyond Ontario.

Hum the pizza.

They say, yeah, I'm a Canadian citizen.

Oh, hum the pizza pizza commercial.

If they didn't know it.

They say, sorry, you can't come in.

It's.

There are cases actually written in law books about that, but I found that out a couple years ago.

I saw the actual cases from a friend that's a lawyer.

Wow.

But anyway, I'm.

I'm dominating this.

Why don't you go back to your question?

Fascinating us.

That's what's happening.

We love every nugget you've given us.

That's impressive.

I was.

I was trying to explain to.

Sorry.

Drakey Dick.

What year was the first jingle you did?

If I tell you that, you're going to realize how old I am.

Aren't we doing some quick math here?

Yeah, in the early 1970s.

Okay, okay, okay.

And before that, were you just performing with the Nova Sounds?

Started the Nova Sounds as.

Yeah, I guess.

I guess that was the first band I was performing with.

I created my own band with Bren walking to school one day.

We felt sorry for ourselves because he played the flute.

Rock bands didn't have a lot of flute, except for maybe Jethro Tall.

That's true.

Yeah, yeah.

And I play piano.

And there were only a couple of bands like, you know, the Doors, the Animals with keyboards in them occasionally.

Yeah, right, Sure.

I mean, yeah, there were some amazing keyboard players like yes.

And all those groups, but.

So we just said, let's make our own band.

And we started a talent show in high school and won that show.

But wait, let me see.

What was your question again?

I don't know if I actually answered it.

When.

After you got your first jingle, were you doing jingles while, like, you got your first jingle while you were playing for the note with the Nova sounds or creating that band?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I was also.

I auditioned for Billy Preston as band.

I was doing other things.

I. Rca or Studios, which is downtown in Toronto, around College and Young on Mutual Street.

It's not there anymore.

Okay.

The old CBC studios were around there too.

Right.

They were holding auditions all around North America.

He toured with other.

Three other keyboard players.

I actually made the cut when I was like 19.

And they wanted me to tour, but I was just going into University of Toronto at that time.

Maybe I was already in for a year.

And so I was really just involved in playing as a session player on other people's records.

Wasn't just Nova Scot, Nova Sounds, just a live thing.

And we called ourselves Quasimodo when we did high school and university dances.

The same people, but like chameleons.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, we changed our name and how we dressed and played a whole different repertoire.

I like it, you know, for university dances and stuff.

And then when we played somebody's weddings, we were in tuxedos.

So, yeah, it was basically a whole mixture of things.

There were some very good people in the band who went on to quite big fame, and fortunate, if you will.

You know, I stayed here in Toronto, but most of the other people kind of took off and went on the road.

And my mother would not sign the consent form for Billy Preston's tour, by the way.

Wow.

They came over to.

At home in Toronto and they came over with the paperwork and she saw them and she took me in the kitchen and we had this little house.

You're not going.

Wow.

How bummed were you?

So it's not the first time she.

She did that.

I. I had been doing acting as a kid and wanted to get into television stuff, and I was in the drama class at the Royal Conservatory of Toronto.

Yeah.

And that class fed television productions.

And mostly it was girls in the class.

I was like, the only guy.

So they really wanted me.

And she would never agree to that because I had a first cousin who failed school who was an actor because of all the rehearsing and filming of shows.

So she said, you're not going to be like your cousin.

So.

So I really think I wanted to be an actor first.

Interesting.