Corin Raymond is a Toronto based singer/songwriter. He gigs in bars, festivals, and house concerts. He's released two solo albums, and three more as part of the acoustic duo The Undesirables. You can find them on CD Baby. 

I did a Totem Figures interview with him. You can listen to him talk about some of the faces on his Mt. Rushmore: Sam Cooke, Tom Waits, The Rolling Stones, Howlin' Wolf and The Band.

Corin is a champion of the Small Time. What is the Small Time? Here's a song of his defining it, the title track to his album There Will Always Be a Small Time. 

I went down to the record store, the record store weren't there no more

and though I know I hate to see it go

I guess that don't really bother me

I pay my bills and drink for free

I'm selling records of my own

The music's gone back home again

Nowadays we're playing in the parlours like the way they used to do

The big times they are a changing fast

The only thing that's gonna last 

Is that folks like us sing songs for folks like you

Cuz there will always be a small time, keeping a roof over my head

There will always be a good time, when the 9 to 5'ers go to bed

There will always be a grapevine, where everybody brings a friend

There will always be a small time, just come and see us now and then

Corin recorded a live album at The Tranzac Club in Toronto on January 24th and 25th. He needs to raise $3000, and James Paul of the Rogue Studios, who'll be engineering and mixing the album, accepts Canadian Tire money at par. You can buy advance tickets for the show with Canadian Tire money. And you can get Corin's merch with it. 

As Corin says on his Facebook fan page: "Got a stash of that stuff kickin' round a sock drawer somewhere? Put it in an envelope and send it to me, and I'll turn it all into beauty, I promise. Bring it to The Cameron on a Thursday between now and then. Bring it to The Tranzac on Jan. 24/25. By post: portraits of the cute little Scotsman can be mailed to 39 Oxford St., Toronto, ON. M5T 1N8 (My 5 Tortillas I Never 8)." 

Corin plays every Thursday evening at the Cameron House on Queen West in Toronto every Thursday, 6 to 8. And he tours a lot. Check out his stuff. He's the strange lovechild of Ray Bradbury, John Prine and Spiderman. He's soon to be a Beams and Struts contributor, presenting various small time artists in our Saturday Night Jukebox feature. And he'll be touring his one man show Bookworm (which I worked on with him) to fringe festivals in Orlando, London (Ontario), Winnipeg and Edmonton in the summer of 2012 (watch an excerpt of it here).

To anyone outside of Canada reading this, Canadian Tire is a chain of Canadian hardware stores. With every purchase they give you Canadian Tire Dollars - coupons, with a cash value on them, redeemable only at their store. Or, now, with Corin.