Musician, author, raconteur, agent provocateur Nominated for a Gemini, Genie, and Juno Award
Author and musician Dave Bidini is the only person to have been nominated for a Gemini, Genie and Juno as well CBC′s Canada Reads. A founding member of Rheostatics, he has written 12 books, including On a Cold Road, Tropic of Hockey, Around the World in 57 ½ Gigs, and Home and Away. He has made two Gemini Award-nominated documentaries and his play, the Five Hole Stories, was staged by One Yellow Rabbit Performance Company, touring the country in 2008.
His third book, Baseballissimo, is being developed for the screen by Jay Baruchel, and, in 2010, he won his third National Magazine Award, for "Travels in Narnia." He writes a weekly column for the Saturday Post and, in 2011, he published the Toronto Book Award-nominated Writing Gordon Lightfoot. His latest book is ‘Keon and Me: My Search for the Lost Soul of the Leafs.’
Dave Bidini is also an award winning musician read more...
Bidini’s Books:
Keon and Me: My Search for the Lost Soul of the Leafs
Hockey is the lens through which we see our lives how we measure right and wrong, how we understand our hopes and fears. So it was for Dave Bidini in 1974, the last year Dave Keon played in Toronto. In a new grade in a new school, Bidini found himself the victim of a bully a depredation he could understand only by thinking about what the Leafs dauntless captain went through game after each game.
Part ode to a legendary hockey player, part memoir, Keon and Me captures what we all cherish in the game we love and the importance of the innocence we cling to long after the cheers have faded. Writing Gordon Lightfoot: The Man, the Music and the World in 1972
Gordon Lightfoot explores Canada’s political, psychological and musical transformation that accompanied the 1972 Mariposa Folkfest, which featured surprise performances from Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot, at the height of his career.
Around the World in 57½ gigs2007
Around the World in 57½ Gigs chronicles Bidini′s global journey after the decision of the Rheostatics, the much-loved Canadian rock outfit he co-founded, tohang it up. Feeling adrift from his moorings, Bidini decided to go on a very long road trip, playing solo and finding out about the state of rock ′n′ roll around the world. He first set out for London, England and from there ventured to Finland, Russia, China, Sierra Leone, and Ghana, punctuated by trips to Newfoundland, Gananoque, Quebec and New York City.
Bidini found that the rock 'n' roll machine has not yet flattened the globe; each place has taken what suits it from the West′s dominant music and ignored the rest. Metal may have had its heyday in North America, but it still suits the quiet Finns as a soundtrack for suicidal musings. In China, Bidini had to coach the quiet crowd, seated demurely in plastic chairs, how to clap rhythmically. In Russia, where live rock lurks in hard-to-find places, the obscure British band Smokie is far more popular than even the Rolling Stones, and the first Western band Mongolian audiences wanted to hear live was Boney M. In Africa, Bidini found out just how far rock has wandered from its roots and, in Newfoundland, just how true it has stayed.
For Those About to Write2007
Companion volume to For Those About to Rock (2004) brings similar insights in his inimitable style to young writers and writers-to-be. Includes anecdotes about becoming a writer, beginning with his first book, On a Cold Road. The Five Hole Stories 2006
This collection of six short stories blends Canada′s twin obsessions -- hockey and sex -- in unexpected and startling ways. CBC radio′s Talking Books named Five Hole one of Canada′s top 25 books for 2006.
The stories were also created into a short film that was named a top ten Canadian short film in 2009 at the Toronto Film Festival.
The Best Game You Can Name 2006
In 2004, Dave Bidini laced up his skates to play defence with the Morningstars in the E! Cup tourney. While thrashing around the ice, he got to thinking about how others see the game.
Dave Bidini talked to former professional players about their hockey experiences and the result is vintage Bidini, an exuberant, evocative, highly personal, and vividly coloured account of his and his team’s exploits, interwoven with the voices of such hockey heroes as Frank Mahovlich, Yvan Cournoyer, John Brophy, Steve Larmer, and Ryan Walter.
Baseballissimo 2005
In the spring of 2002, Dave followed and played with the Nettuno Peones in Italy′s Serie B baseball league to write Baseballissimo. Nettuno was his destination because this town, south of Rome, has been the baseball capital of Italy since 1944, when the game was introduced by the American GIs who liberated the region.
It was named a Notable Book of 2005 by USA Today.
For Those About to Rock 2004
Dave′s primer for young′uns thinking about a career in music, For Those About to Rock also offer insights into the early experiences of Rheostatics as they became a truly ′road-worthy′ rock band.
Though intended for teens, there is material here to appeal to jaded adults, too.
Hockey Nomad Part 1
Hockey Nomad goes to Russia Part 1
Tropic of Hockey2001
Disillusioned by the commercialization of the game he loved, Bidini set out to find the heart of hockey in unlikely places. Tropic of Hockey documents the search that took him to Romania, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. The book was also the basis for Dave′s Gemini Award-winning hockey documentary, Hockey Nomad.
On a Cold Road 1998
Dave′s first book, On a Cold Road intersperses tales of the Rheos on tour with interviews of Canadian rock′n′roll stalwarts who trekked the live music frontiers of this frozen country from the ′70s through the mid-80s.
Keon and Me: My Search for the Lost Soul of the Leafs 
Writing Gordon Lightfoot: The Man, the Music and the World in 1972
Around the World in 57½ gigs 2007
Tropic of Hockey 2001