Burton Cummings brings the other kind of rock to the Tim Horton's bonspiel.

He may not be much of a curling fan, but local legend Burton Cummings -- who's back in town tomorrow to play a show in conjunction with the 2008 Tim Horton's Brier -- still knows a thing or two about rinks and rocks.

OK, make that rock -- as in rock 'n' roll . The homegrown hero's musical credentials are by now a matter of public record: He fronted The Guess Who for more than 10 years before embarking on a solo career, then reunited with the band -- and later, his on-again, off-again buddy Randy Bachman -- for a series of wildly successful nostalgia tours.

As for the rinks, Cummings himself admits he's not much of a curler -- "My mother has curled for years ... she's a fanatic about it," he offers helpfully -- though like any good Prairie boy, he's logged his fair share of hours on the ice.

"Me, I played hockey, as every kid in Canada did during the '50s," says Cummings from his home in Los Angeles. "I was a goalie, and I was good enough to make a couple of all-star teams as a kid.

"I really enjoyed it. We played every Saturday at the Olympic Rink ... which used to be at the corner of Church and Charles Street. That was the place to be for kids in minor hockey, because it felt like you were in the big leagues."

Cummings' athletic career may not have amounted to much, but he quickly found his spot in the music world's equivalent of the majors, thanks largely to the city's thriving music community in the early '60s. It's those halcyon days of community club dances and high school sock hops that Cummings is looking to recreate at the Convention Centre tomorrow night.

"At that time Winnipeg was definitely the rock 'n' roll capital of Canada," says Cummings, who took over as The Guess Who's frontman after serving a short stint with R&B act The Deverons. "There were easily between 150 and 200 bands working in Winnipeg. And bear in mind the drinking age was still 21, so none of these kids were playing in bars yet."

These days, of course, community club dances are pretty much a thing of the past, though Cummings says a similar kind of community can be found on the Internet, albeit on a much more global scale.

"Right now, we have like a cyberclubhouse, with members from all over the world," says Cummings, after plugging his MySpace page (www.myspace.com/officialburtoncummings). "The feeling of family is just remarkable. It's like calling someone down the block, except you're actually talking to someone in Sao Paul, Brazil."

Though he's wistful for the days when fans congregated at record stores, instrument shops and concert venues, Cummings says the Internet has proven invaluable in making music accessible to even the most casual of listeners. He certainly wouldn't count himself in that category, however. At last count, his own music library included four hard drives, 11 iPods, and 79,000 tracks (all collected legally), and he admits he's sometimes spent upwards of 16 hours on the computer, pausing only for bathroom breaks.

The collection must have come in useful when Cummings and Bachman worked on their most recent joint project, the all-covers album Jukebox, which found them re-visiting classics from The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Sam Cooke.

Cummings says the disc was enthusiastically received, and promises another one is on the way, but he's even more excited about a pending solo album -- Above the Ground, due out in May.

"It's a gumbo -- a real mixture of all different styles, which is really attributable to how much music I listen to, all the way back to Fats Domino and Little Richard, up to new bands like Spoon," says Cummings. "I just turned 60, so I'm still glad to be above the ground, both in terms of still being alive and still having a career. So it's about life, and aging, and being reflective when it comes to all the experiences I've had."

For proof of Cummings' cultural impact, one need look no further than the steady stream of Guess Who references that keep popping up in American movies, from Lenny Kravitz's American Woman cover in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me to Michael Cera's impromptu rendition of These Eyes in last year's hit Superbad.

"The one that thrilled me most was American Beauty, that scene where Kevin Spacey gets in the car, lights up a big joint, puts the tape in and starts singing along with my voice," says Cummings. "You never outgrow that excitement ... It really is a little bit of magic."