Dan Hill will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame this spring, as the Toronto-based singer-songwriter with a strong connection to Newmarket celebrates a career of nearly six decades.
For his contributions and support of Canadian music as a performer, producer and director, Hill will be enshrined in the hall of the country’s musical greats at an award ceremony May 15 at Studio Bell in Calgary.
Despite being a Toronto boy through and through, Hill holds a special connection to Newmarket, having lived there with his family as a young child from 1955 to 1961.
Hill, now 70, still fondly remembers growing up in Newmarket, a town that he says looked entirely different many years ago.
“I was (living in Newmarket) until I was about seven and I spent a lot of days getting lost in the woods, pretending to be a pirate and searching for buried treasure,” he said.
“The great thing about the woods is we didn't have cellphones, we didn't have a TV, we didn't have internet, and so you were left to your own imagination to pass the time. I always thought that it was a beautiful thing to wander through these great little wooded areas of Newmarket that seemed as a kid to be unexplored.”
It was the underdeveloped, pre-construction and somewhat desolate landscape of Newmarket in the late ‘50s that opened up Hill’s creativity and imagination, something he credits heavily to his musical awakening as he approached the industry professionally years later.
Newmarket was also where he first became hooked on music as a listener, something that Hill said captured him immediately, and for life.
“My parents had this hi-fi speaker and I would stand against it and sing to my father's jazz collection be it Ella Fitzgerald or Ray Charles. It totally consumed me and I literally had to be pulled away from the speakers if it was dinner time,” Hill recalls.
“My whole concept of love and life came from the lyrics in these songs and so I knew, even when I was three, that I was going to be a singer. I knew when I started singing and playing classical guitar at age seven that this was going to be my job for the rest of my life.”
Hill’s long-standing musical career came with high levels of output as he recorded and released six albums in six years from 1975 to 198 while playing anywhere from 150 to 200 live shows a year across the globe. He is also well known for his hit singles Sometimes When We Touch and Can't We Try, a duet with Vonda Shepard.
While he’s spent countless hours recording and performing around the world in places such as New York City, Los Angeles, Stockholm and Nashville, Hill says he never forgets where he comes from.
"I have always lived in Toronto and Canada on a global scale phenomenal tradition of housing supremely gifted singer-songwriters, whether that be Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot or Leonard Cohen. I'm very proud to be Canadian and to be from a place that has already established that it's absolutely peerless when it comes to singer-songwriters in the music scene.”
Pure shock and awe were the primary emotions that flooded Hill upon hearing the news of his impending induction this spring, followed only by a sense of humbleness when he reflected that his life’s work would reach the same echelon as so many of his heroes.
“It's what I felt that I was born to do, but in the midst of it, you’re just too busy to sit back and appreciate that you just had a hit. You're not thinking about that, you're just trying to take advantage of all the open doors. Now, I just feel extremely blessed and fortunate.”
Hill says he will continue to play alongside his friend and fellow musician Andy Kim at shows across the country — “once the weather gets a little warmer.”
More information about Hill and his lifelong career can be found on his website.
READ MORE: Newmarket's Glass Tiger is also being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame this spring.