What: Jay Semko (of The Northern Pikes) with Apollo Effect and Vacuity

When: Tomorrow, door at 8 p.m.

Where: The Casbah, 306 King W.

Cost: $10, presented as part of the Rogers Spring Music Festival

The title track off Jay Semko's new album International Superstar is about a fallen rock god playing to empty barrooms and viewing reality through an alcoholic haze.

Semko admits the song is a bit autobiographical.

As bass player and front man for the successful Canadian band The Northern Pikes, Semko has seen his share of stardom. He's also spent some time viewing life through the lens of a bottle.

"I always loved that term, 'international superstar,'" the 47-year-old Saskatoon native says. "When you're stoned and drunk a lot of time you get into a real unrealistic frame of mind. You get self-delusional. You get to that stage when you're in total denial of everything. Yeah, you feel like you're an international superstar. And here I am."

During the '80s and early '90s, the Northern Pikes produced four popular albums of new wave rock, selling about a half-million records in all. After the band broke up, Semko found continued success writing TV and film scores, most notably for the popular show Due South. He also kept his love of recording alive with a modest career as a solo singer-songwriter.

Drinking, however, sometimes got the better of him and a year and a half ago, he booked himself into a treatment centre in Quebec for 30 days of rehab.

After that, he needed a change of scene, so he joined some friends down in Nashville and started writing songs again. He initially thought the songs would come out dark, but they came out surprisingly optimistic.

The result was a dozen songs, three of them written by Semko alone and the rest cowritten with craftsmen he met in Nashville. The songs have an traditional country feeling and hark back to his Saskatchewan roots.

Semko is 14 months sober now and is releasing International Superstar on Kitchener's Busted Flat Records, with national distribution through Hamilton's Sonic Unyon and Universal Canada. He's picked up a bass player and drummer from New Brunswick and is in the midst of a cross-country tour as a trio. Semko stops at the Casbah tomorrow as part of the Rogers Spring Music Festival.

Rogers Spring Music Festival Highlights

Tonight: Redpipe/Y108 Breakout Band, Dean Lickyer, is set to kick off the festival at the Legendary Red Rooster in Burlington. Also, White Cowbell Oklahoma at Club Absinthe and the Mastermind Stage at the Westside Concert Theatre.

Friday: Grady (featuring Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar) at the Corktown; Jay Semko at The Casbah; Urban Hamilton Showcase at the Westside Concert Theatre; urban reggae artists,The Salads are at the Legendary Red Rooster

Saturday: Ireland's Vesta Varro, an alternative rock band with roots in U2, at The Casbah with Drowning Girl and the original Canadian Idol, Ryan Malcolm, fronting his band, Low Level Flight, and the Casbah hosts Syrum. Edmonton pop/punk group Social Code performs at the Westside.

For complete festival details, visit springmusicfestival.com.

Hear Graham Rockingham's What's Happening In The Hammer Thursdays at 4:40 p.m. on the Scott Thompson Show, AM900 CHML.

grockingham@thespec.com

905-526-3331