At a reception after the 2011 Juno Songwriters' Circle (left to right): Randy Bachman, SOCAN CEO Eric Baptiste, Royal Wood, Johnny Reid and Luke Doucet. (Circle participants not pictured: Sylvia Tyson, Lynn Miles and Dan Hill.) (Photo: Barry Roden)

SOCAN co-sponsored (with the Canadian Music Publishers Association) the ever-popular Juno Songwriters’ Circle – an intimate concert at Toronto's Massey Hall on March 23, 2011, featuring outstanding performances and enlightening stories from host Johnny Reid and performers Royal Wood, Lynn Miles and Dan Hill (in the first of two sets) as well as Luke Doucet, Sylvia Tyson and Randy Bachman (in the second set).

Reid, who sang passionately and powerfully throughout the night, defined the makings of a great song as what happens "when something that comes straight from my heart makes its way into someone else's."

For both Wood and Miles, the night marked their Massey Hall debuts. "I have to pinch myself, I'm at Massey Hall," said Wood, acknowledging its reputation as one of the best musical venues in Canada. Later, Miles said that her song "Three Chords and the Truth" created a spike in her SOCAN royalty cheques because it had the same title as an older hit song with the same title. "So I recently wrote a new song called 'Stairway to Heaven'," she joked.

Hill recalled his first meeting with Celine Dion, when she was a nervous, 18-year-old singer auditioning for him – and how she remembered him years later, after she became a huge worldwide success, by covering his co-written song "Seduces Me."

Tyson concentrated on songs about growing up in a small town, "Same Old Thing" and "The Night the Chinese Restaurant Burned Down." Doucet displayed his great skill as an electric guitarist, and brought his sweet-voiced 14-year-old daughter Chloe up onstage to sing a harmony on "Broken One." And Bachman proved an excellent storyteller, with lengthy, entertaining yarns about writing the Guess Who hits "No Sugar Tonight" and "Undun."