Dirt Roads to Diverging Diamonds

Seven songs from the heart of an Outlaw, and the mind of a Poet. Songs from Dirt Roads is a "put the car in gear, press play and drive" type of musical ride. Best listened to alone, and without distraction. Richard (RG) Schaller is a world class songwriter from the Eastern side of Canada. A country boy making his way. Writing from the blue-collar point of view about the hard times, the one that got away, life and death…and the illusion of freedom.

Fifteen-year-old Murdo and his father, Tom, journey from Scotland to north Alabama to visit their America/Scots relatives after the death of his mother. Murdo is an accordion player but has not played since his mother passed. When he meets fellow accordionist Queen Monzee-ay she rekindles his interest in music and invites him to play a gig with her. The music becomes a wedge which drives itself between him and his father.

This is the story of an assassin, James Earl Ray, his target, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the seething, turbulent forces in American society that led these two men to their violent and tragic collision in Memphis in April 1968. The film will explore the wildly disparate, yet fatefully entwined stories of Ray and King to create a complex, engaging and thought-provoking portrait of America in the crisis-laden year of 1968.

Roads to Prosperity: Economic Development Lessons from Midsize Canadian Cities explores the relative prosperity of midsize Canadian urban areas (population 50,000 to 400,000) over the past two decades.