Norm Hacking - Musical Career

Musical Career

After attending Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute, Hacking started performing while a student at Scarborough College (a campus of the University of Toronto), where he graduated as an English major. His career as a musician began when a representative from the student council, who had heard him play, asked him to perform at a concert. "I said, 'You're crazy, are you out of your mind.' And he said '50 bucks, six songs...' You got me. I got up and nobody threw anything. In fact, several women who wouldn't normally speak to me came up after the gig and were cluttering about how they liked the music. And I said, 'Wow, this is good.'"

He then accepted an invitation to play the pub two weeks later, which he did with a lead guitar accompanist. "By the end of the night you couldn't hear yourself playing, it was so loud. And the table in front of the stage, they had been playing euchre all night and screaming and yelling, and they all got up in unison and mooned the stage. I said, 'OK, so that's how it is'."

Hacking would eventually become a regular at various establishments in Toronto. The recordings of early performances in 1976 and 1977 became his first solo album, Norm Hacking Live (1977).

Critically acclaimed albums Cut Roses (1980) and Stubborn Ghost (1988) followed, and led to many festival and concert appearances. A video of the song "Sammy", from the album Cut Roses, aired on The Nashville Network. Upon becoming the single caregiving parent to his young son Ben, however, he cut back on touring.

In 1996, with his son now a teen, Hacking released a greatest hits album with four new songs, Skysongs... A Writer's Collection, and returned to more active performing. In 1996, and again in 1997, he was artistic director of the Caledon Folk Festival.

A group of Canadian and American songwriters recorded 18 of his songs for a tribute album, One Voice: A Tribute to Norm Hacking, Vol. 1, in 2001. Wayne Marshall of Three Flamingos Music initiated the project. The performers on the album included Michael Peter Smith, Alan Rhody, Mikel Miller, Roger James, Nancy White, Chris Whiteley, Ron Nigrini, Jory Nash, Slowpoke, Jason Fowler and many others.

Hacking released I Am The Night, a collection of 33 original spoken word selections - poetry, prose, and lyrics - in 2005. Richard Christy, of the Kingston Whig-Standard, described each piece as "a very real slice of life. They are easy to relate to yet are neither simple nor boring... Hacking, like John Steinbeck, understands the depths of very simple situations and the simplicity of very complicated events."

On October 4, 2006, Hacking's mother Kathy died, with Norm at her side. He had spent most of his time since July with her at Scarborough Grace Hospital. Her death came as a profound emotional blow to Hacking, whose health deteriorated noticeably in the last few months, friends said.

Along with performing, in 1992 Hacking started writing a column, Racetrack Hack, for Taxinews, a monthly publication for and about Toronto's taxi industry.