Let Me Know b/w A Song for You

Lisa Garber was the singer in Tundra, a Toronto five-piece formed in 1970 with Scott Cushnie on piano, Al Manning on guitar, Bruce Manning on bass and Glen LeCompte on drums. In late 1970 A&M Records of Canada signed the band through a production deal with Harry Hinde Productions, and the trade press reported Tundra as the first act the Canadian company had signed. Their debut single, 'Band Bandit', went to No. 5 on CKXL in Calgary early in 1971, No. 6 in Edmonton and Chilliwack and No. 10 in Vancouver.

Within months Garber had stepped out on her own. In May 1971 A&M issued AMX-314, pairing 'Let Me Know', written by her brother Victor Garber of the Sugar Shoppe, with Leon Russell's 'Song for You'. Harry Hinde produced. The A-side label reads Lisa Garber with Tundra and the B-side Lisa Garber alone, and A&M advertised it as her first solo single.

A&M's Ontario promotion man Joe Woodhouse took her on the road through Kitchener, Waterloo, London, St. Thomas and Hamilton, where CHAM premiered the record at the start of July. That September A&M ran a Billboard ad presenting five of its Canadian acts to the international trade, with Lisa Garber listed alongside Tundra, Terry McManus, Judy Lander and Chilliwack. Tundra carried on without her. Cushnie left later in 1971, the band continued as a trio, and Al Manning and Glen LeCompte went on to form Coyote.

Garber sang backing vocals for Aaron Space, whose album thanks her as an A&M artist. In December 1973 she played Egerton's in Toronto as a solo folk singer. RPM's reviewer found her nervous at first but witty and warm between songs, with a voice that at times recalled Linda Ronstadt, working through a set of covers that included 'Here Comes the Sun', 'Sixty Years On' and 'Danny's Song'. His one complaint was that she sang none of her own songs.

She was soon writing them. Her composition 'Over and Over Again' appeared on CBC Radio's Touch the Earth, the folk program hosted by Sylvia Tyson, and by the end of the decade she was signed as a writer to Colgems-EMI, which registered her song 'One Good Reason' in 1980. By 1981 she was also working as a session vocalist, singing background vocals on Art Garfunkel's recording of Jimmy Webb's 'That's All I've Got to Say', the theme from The Last Unicorn, on his album Scissors Cut.

Garber later left the music business, earned a master's degree in counselling psychology and practised as a psychotherapist before moving into coaching in 1997. One of the first certified coaches in Canada, she co-founded a life coaching certification program and has coached for more than 25 years.

-Robert Williston