Born in Montreal in 1958 his weeks Tunesday artist set her sights on being a singer early; she not onlystudied voice, guitar, flute, and piano and spent her summers travelling across Canada to perform traditional Ukrainian folk songs at weddings and social gatherings. Eager to move mainstream she hired a back up band - drummer Peter Marunzak, guitarist Mark Lyman, bassist Mike Zwonok, guitarist John Nestorowich, and keyboardist Doug Short and hit the bar scene playing mostly covers while trying to find their "own sound"

Find it they did.

In 1980 she released the independant single "Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry" and took the Canadian Charts by STORM; Capitol Records Canada knew a good thing when they saw it and instantly signed her to her first record deal and 2 months later released her first EP. While the world may have been ready for them it was not the same the other way around; it took 4 years to their first album to drop.

SECRETS AND SINS hit the stores in 1984... produced by Daniel Lanois it not only stole the charts with the singles "Let it go", which reached #1 all across the GWN, and this weeks featured song, it also garnered this artist a Juno Award in 1985 for Best Female Vocalist.

Her second album dropped in the spring of 1986; BETWEEN THE EARTH AND SKY produced two top ten singles, "How Many" and "Innocent" and earned her her first Platinum album! The afterglow was short lived tho.. shortly after its release, the band was involved in a serious accident (she was not on board the bus at the time) that nearly killed several members, leading this artist to take some time off.


She returned to the music scene in 1988 with OVER 60 MINUTES,a compilation of her best hits of the day and followed that up in 1990 with ALL OR NOTHING; the singles "Giving Away A Miracle," "I'll Watch Over You," and on of MY favorites "Little Salvation" helped make it her second album to be certified Platinum achieving over 100,000 in sales in Canada.


Apparently she took the last album name to heart; due to the loss of several close family members and personal upheaval ALL OR NOTHING would be her last recording for ten full years.....

In 2000 she made a triumphant return with FROM THE BITTER TO THE SWEET - a CD FULL of her trials and tribulations over the last decade; altho it hit the charts with "Is She Alot Like Me" and the title tune and it won some critical acclaim, it did not produce as much sales and radio airplay as her earlier albums.

While she may have disappeared back into the shadows once again, this Canadian artist has made her mark..

Three Felix awards (ADISQ), numerous Catsby's and five Juno awards including the Juno for Best Female Vocalist three years in a row.... she has collaborated with such talents as Bryan Adams, Pierre Marchand and Naranda Walden, (Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin) who chose her to sing "The Best Is Yet To Come" for the 9 ½ Weeks soundtrack that also included her hit "Let It Go". Most notably she also won the Black Music Association Award for "Female Entertainer of the Year" ,one of the very few non-black persons to receive this honour!

[align=center]She is

Luba Kowalchyk

aka Luba

and her song

Storm Before the Calm

Click HERE to download this song.

Lift up your heads
To see an azure canvas
Splattered red
The tempest's eye
Has filled the sky
But if you believe
Zero hour is just
A new day's eve
You have been warned
It's just the storm
Before the calm

All in the name of liberty
In the end it shall deliver you
Deliver me from evil arms
It's just the storm
Before the calm

Lift up your hearts
We are subjects in life
Imitating art
The time has come
We wait as one
And if you believe
We can weather all upheavals
In unity
It's just the storm
One last storm
Before the calm

All in the name of liberty
In the end it shall deliver you
Deliver me from evil arms
It's just the storm
Before the calm


Hope you enjoyed this weeks edition of TUNESDAY and as always if you'd like a copy of ANY song mentioned here just let me know...

Wil


[/align]