Album / Title
The Right Time
By: Tia Hofgraff (Tia McGraff)
Origin: Simcoe → Port Dover, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Insight
Tia Hofgraff, later known professionally as Tia McGraff, is a Canadian singer-songwriter born in Simcoe, Ontario, and raised in Port Dover, Ontario. She first emerged in the mid-1980s as a nationally promoted recording artist working across country, adult contemporary, pop, and crossover radio formats, before later establishing a long-running international career under her married name.
She gained early national attention after winning the Canadian Open Country Singing Contest twice before the age of twenty. This success led directly to professional recording opportunities and high-profile exposure, including appearances on The Tommy Hunter Show alongside Johnny Cash and June Carter, The Family Brown Show, Global Television programming, and Ontario’s Country Roads. During this period, she also performed the Canadian and American national anthems at several Toronto Blue Jays games.
By 1986, Hofgraff was active within Ontario’s independent recording network, releasing a series of professionally serviced singles. Her recordings from this era were written either by Hofgraff alone or in collaboration with Doug Cameron (Mona and the Children), and were produced and arranged by Mike Francis, with sessions taking place at McClear Place in Toronto. Singles such as “The Right Time,” “Forget Me Not,” and later “Woman (He’s Mine)” received national airplay and placed her firmly within Canada’s mid-1980s adult contemporary and pop-rock radio landscape. Later releases involved producer Bob Doidge and Grant Avenue Sound, reflecting a continued evolution toward polished pop-rock production.
In the 1990s, Hofgraff shifted toward songwriter-driven folk and country material, resurfacing with the CD Small Town Life (1997). Around this period, she began recording and performing under the name Tia McGraff, marking a new phase of her career while maintaining continuity with her earlier work.
As Tia McGraff, she relocated part-time to Nashville, Tennessee, where she met and married songwriter Tommy Parham. The two established a long-term creative partnership, writing, recording, and touring together internationally. Under the McGraff name, she released a substantial body of work on CD, issuing at least seven full-length albums between the late 1990s and the late 2010s, primarily through Bandana Records and related independent labels. This period reflects her sustained focus on folk, Americana, and roots-based songwriting.
Alongside her music career, McGraff has also worked as an author, releasing the children’s book Jake the Road Dawg, which has formed the basis for related songs, live events, and outreach projects connected to literacy and animal-welfare initiatives.
-Robert Williston
Gallery
Images
4 images
McGraff, Tia - The Right Time (3)
McGraff, Tia - The Right Time (1)
McGraff, Tia - The Right Time (2)
The Right Time
Media
Videos
0 videos
No videos available for this title.
Credits
Musicians
Mike Francis: guitar
Barry Keane: electronic drum programming
Steve McKinnon: synthesizers
Eric Robertson: acoustic piano
Kim Brandt: electric bass
John Johnson: saxophone
Robert Armes: backing vocals
Sheree Jeacocke: backing vocals
John Rutledge: backing vocals
Judy Tate: backing vocals
Songwriting
‘The Right Time’ written by Tia Hofgraff and Doug Cameron
Publishing
Published by Baby Fawn Music and Fawnti Music
Rights: PROC/CAPAC
Production
Produced and arranged by Mike Francis
Technical
Recorded at McClear Place, Toronto
Companies
Manufactured in Canada by Ti-Tam Records, 16 Cherry Street, Simcoe, Ontario N3Y 1B4
Distributed by The Moss Music Group (Canada) Inc., 510 Coronation Drive, Unit #17, West Hill, Ontario M1E 4X6
Notes
℗ © 1986
Released with a two-sided promotional page
Management and booking: Mary Lynn, MLM Promotions, Toronto, Ontario
Audio and Artwork Restoration
Audio Transfer/Restoration by Scott Edward
spinningmywheelsinternational@gmail.com
226-235-6005
Liner notes
For Immediate Release — July 1986
“The Right Time”
An outstanding new song
from an outstanding new artist
Tia Hofgraff
At 21 years of age, tremendous talent, powerful vocals and a great new single — these and many more attributes belong to a delightful singer/songwriter, new to the pop music scene — Tia Hofgraff.
“The Right Time,” co-written by Doug Cameron (Mona and the Children), was arranged and produced by award-winning producer, Mike Francis. It is being released on Tia’s own label, Ti-Tam, and is suitable for play on most radio stations, including those with soft-rock, pop, adult-contemporary and M.O.R. formats as well as contemporary-country crossover stations.
True talent is not easily overlooked — and so it was with Tia when, at the age of 19, she won her second consecutive “Canadian Country Open” championship. At this point, she decided to begin singing professionally. One of her prizes was a recording session, from which came her first single, “Mister.” Response was excellent! From that first, self-penned single, Tia guested on the “The Tommy Hunter Show” with Johnny Cash and June Carter, as well as “The Family Brown Show” on Global T.V. “Live” and London, Ontario’s “Country Roads Show”, plus many radio shows and a special highlight, singing the Canadian and American National Anthems at several Toronto Blue Jays baseball games.
On stage, Tia has had lead roles in several musicals, most recently portraying “Eliza Doolittle” in the Simcoe Little Theatre production of “My Fair Lady”. Whether performing on stage or on record, Tia portrays an honesty and warmth that captures any audience immediately and holds them with a voice described by critics as haunting and powerful, yet tender and consistent.
Tia’s talent and determination, along with her dynamic new single, will, no doubt, establish this talented young artist in the forefront of the Canadian — and international — entertainment scene!
It’s the right time for programmers to add this great new single...
“The Right Time”
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