Hofgraff, Tia (Tia McGraff)

Websites:  https://tiamcgraff.com/
Origin: Simcoe → Port Dover, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:

Tia Hofgraff, later known professionally as Tia McGraff, is a Canadian singer-songwriter born in Simcoe, Ontario, and raised in Port Dover, Ontario. She first emerged in the mid-1980s as a nationally promoted recording artist working across country, adult contemporary, pop, and crossover radio formats, before later establishing a long-running international career under her married name.

She gained early national attention after winning the Canadian Open Country Singing Contest twice before the age of twenty. This success led directly to professional recording opportunities and high-profile exposure, including appearances on The Tommy Hunter Show alongside Johnny Cash and June Carter, The Family Brown Show, Global Television programming, and Ontario’s Country Roads. During this period, she also performed the Canadian and American national anthems at several Toronto Blue Jays games.

By 1986, Hofgraff was active within Ontario’s independent recording network, releasing a series of professionally serviced singles. Her recordings from this era were written either by Hofgraff alone or in collaboration with Doug Cameron (Mona and the Children), and were produced and arranged by Mike Francis, with sessions taking place at McClear Place in Toronto. Singles such as “The Right Time,” “Forget Me Not,” and later “Woman (He’s Mine)” received national airplay and placed her firmly within Canada’s mid-1980s adult contemporary and pop-rock radio landscape. Later releases involved producer Bob Doldge and Grant Avenue Sound, reflecting a continued evolution toward polished pop-rock production.

In the 1990s, Hofgraff shifted toward songwriter-driven folk and country material, resurfacing with the CD Small Town Life (1997). Around this period, she began recording and performing under the name Tia McGraff, marking a new phase of her career while maintaining continuity with her earlier work.

As Tia McGraff, she relocated part-time to Nashville, Tennessee, where she met and married songwriter Tommy Parham. The two established a long-term creative partnership, writing, recording, and touring together internationally. Under the McGraff name, she released a substantial body of work on CD, issuing at least seven full-length albums between the late 1990s and the late 2010s, primarily through Bandana Records and related independent labels. This period reflects her sustained focus on folk, Americana, and roots-based songwriting.

Alongside her music career, McGraff has also worked as an author, releasing the children’s book Jake the Road Dawg, which has formed the basis for related songs, live events, and outreach projects connected to literacy and animal-welfare initiatives.
-Robert Williston