Echoes Across the Border: Laurel Canyon and the Northern Connection

In collaboration with the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music (BSACAM), the National Music Centre (NMC) brings notable speakers to Calgary to explore the cultural synergies between Canadian and American music.

Echoes Across the Border: Laurel Canyon and the Northern Connection brings together industry leaders to discuss how cross-border Canadian-U.S. influences have shaped generations of artists, with a special focus on the '60s and '70s Laurel Canyon era, where songwriting visionaries like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young made their mark at home and beyond.

This summit includes a carefully curated lineup of speakers from Canada and the U.S., including Rob Bowman, a Canadian GRAMMY Award-winning musicologist, known as York University's "rock 'n' roll professor"; Nicholas Jennings, one of Canada’s most respected music journalists and finest music historians; Eileen Chapman, Director of the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music at Monmouth University in New Jersey, who was responsible for bringing the collection to the University; Robert Santelli, a GRAMMY Award-winning music historian, producer, and educator, who is the Executive Director of the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music; and more speakers to be announced soon.

Summit Schedule — Saturday, October 4

More Events

Echoes Across the Border: Evening Concert

Saturday, October 4 | 8:00 pm

To be announced! Tickets on sale soon.

Echoes Across the Border: Laurel Canyon Film Screening

Sunday, October 5 | 1:00 pm

Join us for a matinee screening of Laurel Canyon. The 2020 documentary paints an intimate portrait of the artists who created a music revolution that would change popular culture. Learn more and register.

About the Panelists

Rob Bowman

Rob Bowman is a GRAMMY Award winning musicologist and professor of Music, based in Toronto. Formerly the director of York University's Graduate Program in Ethnomusicology and Musicology, he pioneered popular music studies at the university. He lectures, publishes and broadcasts in many areas of popular music, from country, R&B and gospel to reggae, rap and funk. He has written liner notes for dozens of recordings and regularly authors, produces and advises on major documentary and international CD reissue projects.

Nicholas Jennings

Nicholas Jennings is one of Canada’s most respected music journalists and finest music historians. From 1980 to 2000, he was the music critic and feature writer for Maclean’s magazine. He has also written for Saturday Night, Billboard, Words & Music, TV Guide, Inside Entertainment and Hello! magazines, reviewing literally thousands of recordings and interviewing and profiling many of the world’s leading artists, from Oscar Peterson, Paul Simon, Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney to Joni Mitchell, Sarah McLachlan, Diana Krall and Shania Twain. Nicholas’ third book, Lightfoot, became a national bestseller.

Eileen Chapman

Eileen Chapman is the Director of the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music at Monmouth University and was responsible for bringing the collection to the University. In addition to her position at the BSACAM, she is also a councilwoman in Asbury Park. Prior to her directorship, she was the Associate Director of the Center for the Arts also at Monmouth University. Chapman was a founding member of the Jersey Shore Jazz & Blues Foundation, Riverfest Jazz & Blues Festival, Clearwater Festival’s Entertainment Director, the Asbury Park Jazz Festival, director of the award-winning New Jersey Seafood Festival in Belmar, consultant and entertainment coordinator of the Guinness Oyster Festival, a consultant to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum and is the liaison to Monmouth University’s GRAMMY Museum affiliation. Chapman opened and operated the state’s first CD music store, Almost Live CD Center, in Belmar from 1986 to 2000. She was the General Manager of several well-known Jersey Shore entertainment venues which include the iconic Stone Pony, Fast Lane and McLoone’s Rum Runner in Sea Bright.

Robert Santelli

Bob Santelli is the Founding Executive Director of the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. He is a noted blues and rock historian, curator, music journalist, and a GRAMMY Award winner. He has authored more than a dozen books on American music and is the winner of the 2022 Deems Taylor/ Virgil Thomson Award for Woody Guthrie: Songs and Art * Words and Wisdom, which he co-authored with Nora Guthrie. Santelli was one of the original curators of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, becoming the museum’s first Director of Education and Vice President of Public Programs in 1995. In 2000, he became the CEO of the Experience Music Project in Seattle, the first-ever interactive music museum. Santelli became the Founding Executive Director of the GRAMMY Museum in 2006, where he curated more than 65 exhibitions and produced centennial celebrations for Frank Sinatra, John Lee Hooker, Ella Fitzgerald, Leonard Bernstein, Woody Guthrie, and others over his sixteen years at the museum.  Santelli serves as the Director of Popular Music and Performing Arts at Oregon State University and teaches courses on popular culture.