Vina Moses in front of the Hank Snow Home Town Museum in Liverpool. The museum is planning a summer country music festival beginning Friday. (Rick Conrad)

If you’re a fan of country music, Liverpool will be the place to be this weekend as the Hank Snow Home Town Museum kicks off Summerfest on Friday evening.

More than 25 acts are scheduled for the two-day event at the Hank Snow Gazebo Park, including the Saltwater Cowboys, Autumn Carver, and Dave Burbine.

Friends of Hank Snow Society administrator and longtime QCCR volunteer Vina Moses says fans from near and far will get a chance to listen to some great music.

“We’re going to have a lot of great acts, some that are new to Liverpool, some that … everybody has asked for and they’re coming back,” she said in an interview.

“And we’ve got a great lineup for the whole entire weekend.”

The summer festival took root during the pandemic when the museum couldn’t hold its traditional Hank Snow tribute.

“So this is a really key fundraiser for us,” Moses says.

“Every fundraiser that we have continues to support the continuation of this museum.”

The museum gets more than 3,000 visitors a season who pay tribute to Canada’s first major country music star. Hank Snow was born in Brooklyn, Queens Co., and recorded more than 140 albums and had more than 85 singles on the Billboard country music charts. He’s the only Canadian in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

The summer festival is also a good warmup for the main event, the Hank Snow Tribute from August 14 to 16.

“I am so excited for the tribute because it is youth-oriented,” Moses says.

“And I can tell you this, some of them have been coming here since they were five and six. And they are now teenagers. They’re touring all over the Maritimes. They’re going to Nashville. We have two of them just got back from Nashville. So we feel like we’re their parents because we have helped them become performers that everybody knows now.”

More than 40 acts will be coming to Liverpool for the tribute.

“We have young folks like Carson Fullerton, who’s like seven years old, has been to Nashville and back. Carson actually did a recording while he was there. We have folks like the Jovial Joes. They’re a young group of sisters from Halifax. We discovered them here. We asked them to come to our summer show. And boy, now they’re touring all over the Maritimes.”

Moses says organizers this year wanted to highlight young musicians while welcoming older favourites.

“You know, it’s interesting because you think of Hank Snow and you think, oh, old, nobody’s going to know Hank Snow. If you see the people who come here to visit, you would not believe it. They come from all over the world. And they all love music. They love country music. And they know that for a lot of these folks, Hank Snow started it for them. He’s the reason that people in Canada can go down to Nashville.”

As for this weekend’s festival, Moses says organizers tried to keep ticket prices as low as possible.

A weekend pass for one person is $55 or two for $100. And if you can make it for only part of the festival, ticket prices range from $15 for Saturday afternoon to $20 for Friday or Saturday evening.

“This weekend, we just want you to come and have fun. And we’ll have lots of food and we’ll have lots of fellowship and we’ll have lots of great music.”

More information about the Hank Snow Hometown Museum Summer Fest 2025 can be found on their Facebook page.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Joe Wood of Liverpool has been inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. (Photo courtesy of Joe Wood)

Joe Wood serves up a little music history every week from a Tim Horton’s in Liverpool.

The veteran of the Canadian country music scene is now part of history himself. He is this year’s inductee in the Stan Klees builder category in the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame.

For the past 35 years, Wood’s RDR Music Group, which he co-founded with his ex-wife Trudy Wood, has been helping independent country artists and others in Canada and elsewhere get their music onto radio stations.

“At this point, we’ve sent over 10,000 songs and albums and videos to radio stations across Canada and the United States.”

Wood’s wife Lauren Tutty is also involved in the music business. Lauren Tutty Promotions tracks the music for artists once it gets to radio.

QCCR spoke to Wood recently on the phone from Toronto, where he was visiting family.

Originally a singer-songwriter in the late 1970s and ’80s, he started out in Toronto pressing vinyl, cassettes and CDs for other artists. 

And when things got less physical, he pioneered digital delivery for independent artists. His was the first company in Canada to send music to radio stations over the internet. His office is anywhere he can get a connection.

“Sometimes I’ll go to MacDonald’s or Tim Horton’s or sometimes, I’ll tether my computer to my phone and I’ll go out and sit in Western Head or I’ll go out and sit in Milton and work in the car for an hour especially if it’s a beautiful day. And that’s the wonderful thing about this job. I can work anywhere that there’s internet.”

Wood says music lovers likely wouldn’t have heard of Yangaroo/DMDS, the service he uses to push music to radio, but they’d be familiar with the artists.

“They’ll hear Lennie Gallant, Jimmy Rankin, they’ll hear Valdy, they’ll hear Gord Bamford, they’ll hear Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, all those clients have come through my hands and actually, the majority of those clients came through Liverpool.”

He was among the first to create a compilation CD of independent artists for radio, called Country Pak. And he launched one of the first toll-free services for artists to market their music.

About five years ago, from his home in Liverpool, Wood helped a Garth Brooks song debut at No. 1 on the Billboard country charts.

“So I was part of the team in Canada and there were three others in the United States. … We all got on the phone at the same time. Literally from Mersey Avenue, we counted down the time and it was like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, click, we all pushed go at the same time, said goodbye to everybody, hung the phone up, and the next day, Garth Brooks debuted at No. 1 on Billboard.”

Wood’s involvement with the Canadian Country Music Association goes back to 1991. He served on its board of directors from 1992-96 and helped establish the CCMA Independent Awards in 1997.

As part of the induction, Wood’s name will be displayed on a wall at the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame at the National Music Centre in Calgary. And he says he’ll likely donate an original copy of that first compilation CD as his piece of memorabilia.

Wood isn’t the first Queens County resident to be named to the hall. He’ll join Brooklyn’s Hank Snow and Port Medway’s Carroll Baker.

He said being honoured by his peers with an award named for his friend, Canadian music pioneer Stan Klees, is pretty special.

“When you work in the sector of the industry I do, the independent sector which is massive now, it just means that they acknowledge it, they understand that that sector, that the people that are the up-and-coming artists have a voice. And for me to be recognized in that area means everything.”

After almost five decades in the music business, the 71-year-old says he’s still passionate about it. 

“I love the music. It’s not work. It’s certainly not work. I get to sit down every day and there’s fresh stuff on my laptop that I get to hear. And you get to help people too. That’s the great fun. I help people go to radio. And I make sure people don’t make mistakes, the mistakes I made.”

Wood says someone asked him recently when he plans to retire. 

“You know what, I’m getting the kids of the parents I put out many, many years ago, 20 years ago. And now I get to work with them. And they’ll tell me at the end, “Oh, you worked with my Dad or you worked with my Mom.’ And I’ll say, ‘Oh my you tell them I said hi.’

“It’s fun. I think I’m gonna hang in there till I get the grandkids, then I’ll retire.”

Wood will be formally inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame with artist Lisa Brokop in a ceremony during Country Music Week from Sept. 10 to 13 in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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