By Steve McLean, MSN Music- Nov 26 2009

Tom Cochrane was one of Canada's biggest music stars in the '80s with Red Rider and in the next decade as a solo artist. While the hits have slowed down since then, the accolades haven't.

Cochrane is a member of the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame, an officer of the Order of Canada, and this year received a star on Canada's Walk Of Fame. His star is located around the corner from Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall, where I spoke to him before the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) held its 20th annual awards show on Monday night.

Cochrane's "Big League," "Boy Inside The Man," "I Wish You Well," "No Regrets" and "Lunatic Fringe" all earned SOCAN Classics honours for achieving 100,000 plays on Canadian radio over the years, and you can see him with his commemorative plaque in the above Grant Martin photo.

"'Lunatic Fringe' was a song that a lot of people tried to discourage me from recording because the subject matter was too heavy and they said that I should just get down to the business of writing simple pop songs," Cochrane said of the 1981 Red Rider hit. "But I stood by my ideals, thinking the song would never see the light of day, and it became one of the biggest songs of my career. That really tells you that you have to write from the heart."

Cochrane frequently travels to developing nations as a representative of the World Vision charitable organization, and he recently returned from Indonesia. He also spends colder months in the music hotbed of Austin, Texas, but his main residence is in Toronto and he has a cottage in northern Ontario. Maintaining Canadian roots is important to the 56-year-old, and he thinks it's a belief also held by other Canadian singer/songwriters — even by those that no longer live there.

I asked Cochrane to tell me about his favourite Canuck songwriters, and this is what he came up with:

• "Neil Young was a big inspiration — not just from a songwriting point of view, even though his songwriting is so diverse — because he'd do the acoustic thing that stayed true to Canadian roots. From the east coast right on through to the west coast of Canada, there's always been a real strong undertone of folk music in what we do. I think that's where we've made some of our biggest contributions as a culture. Neil was true to that, but he could also rock out. I've been able to do the same thing in my career and not get pigeonholed into doing the one thing, which is important."

• "Gordon Lightfoot is the pinnacle, as far as I'm concerned. He stayed really true to Canada and is a very proud Canadian, and that's reflected in his work. He wrote from the heart and his music was always an important kind of touchstone for who we were. He taught me that music could be like The Group Of Seven (Canadian painters) and that songs could be like a painting. It's good to see him back on his feet and healthy."

• "Leonard Cohen was a very important influence."

• "Bruce Cockburn was a big influence during my coffeehouse era."

• "Ron Hynes was overlooked for so many years, but he's an incredible talent from the east coast."

• "The Band were a pretty important influence as a group when I moved into the rock and roll thing in my teenage years."

• "Stompin' Tom Connors is a Canadian icon who never shied away from speaking about where he's from in P.E.I. I think it's important as an artist to always reflect where you're from and be true to that."