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Four guys in a R/V tour Canada and search for the nation's next young music stars

MONTREAL - This summer, a group of four cultural aficionados from Québec are about to give 11 budding young musicians their first big break.

Youth Music Movement (YMM) and members of Montréal pop punk band Simple Plan announced the launch of a cross-country tour designed to discover Canada's brightest up-and-coming musical stars.

From May 1 to July 31, the Youth Music Movement Powered by Pepsi tour will make 11 stops across the nation, where the YMM team - armed with a mobile recording and film studio - will produce a sound recording and a video for free, featuring young Canadian musicians on the cusp of making it big.

One song from each band will be featured on a CD that will be released at the end of the tour highlighting the diversity of musical talent across Canada. A portion of the proceeds from the compilation will go to the Simple Plan Foundation, an organization that encourages the practice of music to help young kids find a passion in life.

Canadians can follow the movement on Twitter (using the #YMMove hashtag and the @youth_music handle) and on Facebook (Facebook.com/pepsicanada). While on the road, Youth Music Movement will also produce 12Tracks.tv, 12 weekly webisodes that document their adventure across the country and feature the music videos and songs of each act they record.

While most bands have been preselected to participate, Youth Music Movement has four open spots in the following provinces: Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Yukon. Musicians looking to participate in the Youth Music Movement Powered by Pepsi tour can contact the YMM team on their Facebook page (Facebook.com/youthmusicmovement).

The Youth Music Movement team includes François Del Fante, sound engineer and musician; Frederic Bastien Forrest, cultural journalist; Pierre-Etienne Bordeleau, cinematographer; and Bruno Mercure, producer.

The idea for a tour started in Montréal in May 2010 when the group applied for a $25,000 grant from the Pepsi Refresh Project, a program that funds ideas that promote social good. Youth Music Movement campaigned for two-months and won the hearts of Canadians coast-to-coast who believed in their project and helped them win a grant. The Youth Music Movement team has been busy since, researching hundreds of bands from every corner of the country, looking for up-and-coming Canadian musical talent to feature on the tour.

Leaving from Montréal on May 1, the Youth Music Movement Powered by Pepsi tour will make the following stops over the spring and summer months:

May 4 - 8: St. John's, NF
May 11 - 15: Halifax, NS
May 18 - 22: Charlottetown, PE
May 25 - 29: Edmundston, NB
June 1 - 5: TBD, QC
June 15 - 19: Toronto, ON
June 22 - 26: TBD, MB
June 29 - July 3: TBD, SK
July 6 - 10: Edmonton, AB
July 13 - 17: TBD, YK
July 20 - 24: Vancouver, BC

TOP PHOTO: Youth Music Movement's (YMM) François Del Fante, Simple Plan's Pierre Bouvier and Chuck Comeau, YMM's Bruno Mercure, Frédéric Bastien Forrest, Pierre-Étienne Bordeleau and PepsiCo Beverages Canada's Daniel Lalonde and Dan Campanella. (photo courtesy of PepsiCo Canada; photographer Maxime Juneau)