Tiny Bill Cody is the stage name of visual artist and writer Tor Lukasik-Foss, who was born and raised and is still living in Hamilton, Ontario.   Tiny Bill Cody yodels, preaches, and sings earnestly on topics including electricity, small animals, nautical issues, and the human heart.   Tiny Bill Cody has been performing since the early 1990’s, and is much better now than when he began.  Tiny Bill Cody sometimes performs alone, sometimes in very odd and obscure circumstances of his choosing and design. 

Tiny Bill Cody also plays with the Liquormen,  (and has done so for at least five years) a small musical combo which tastefully presents his songs with whatever jazz, latin, country, or rock flourishes they require. Tiny Bill Cody sometimes refers to this music as “post cabaret”, although he is not entirely sure his use of the word is correct.  “Post-Cabaret’ seems much better than saying something like ‘theatrical and old-timey”.

Tiny Bill Cody and the Liquormen have just released an eponymous release, containing 13 original songs, each one of them very good.   This record features both live and studio tracks, was recorded in Hamilton and Toronto, and is the fourth independent Tiny Bill Cody release.  It is for sale now.

Many people and places in Canada have enjoyed the music of Tiny Bill Cody.  In 2008 and 2009, he contributed a number of strange original songs to CBC Radio’s GO!, including a mildly off-colour song about former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps.  He has performed at the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival, Eaglewood Festival, Festival of Friends; he has created performance works for Saskatoon’s SPASM II Contemporary Arts Festival, Alberta’s University of Lethbridge, the public galleries of Cambridge Ontario, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and many other public and mostly public places.  Tiny Bill Cody performs in lots and lots of very small, occasionally private places as well.  

He will perform for you, if you like.

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praise from the past:

"a kind, yodeling ogre.... a seven foot urbane urban folk troubadour"
(Ric Taylor, View Magazine)

"It's not often you stumble across a line like "The question is not 'who should steer this ship?', but rather 'how do we'?" Even less often when it's set to the implied lope of a traditional cowboy song."
(John Sakamoto's Anti-Hit List, Toronto Sun)

"from the opening number...to the closing..there is a feel of a fellow cosying up to a mirror and prying open an eye for a peek....engagingly verbose"
(Glen Nott, Hamiton Spectator)

"...drifts between draughtsmanlike precision and poetic impressionism. Crafty, catchy, often electrifying and sometimes epic, it stares down modern life over a tall cool one and lives to tell about it."
(Dave Young, View Magazine)

"...rides the hardscrabble ranges of the downtown Hamilton Malls and transforms the smudge of the city into the gold of experience. Think Carl Sandburg but fiercer and funnier"
(Doug MacArthur, director, Eaglewood Festival)