independent music

Riding the Canadian: A Musical Journey Across Canada

July 1, 2026

For Canada Day 🍁, I’m excited to share my song “Riding the Canadian,” an epic adventure(!) about travelling across the country on VIA Rail’s legendary train, The Canadian. Available on all streaming platforms, including Apple Music and Spotify and YouTube Music.

Back in 2020, I was booked by VIA Rail Canada to do an Artist on Board tour from Toronto to Vancouver before everything was brought to a halt by the pandemic. While preparing for that tour, I wrote this song to serenade passengers on board — a kind of musical travelogue for a journey across the country.

The writing process started with the VIA Rail website of The Canadian route and then used a more detailed route guide. I worked my way through the stops along the line and tried to connect different places with interesting pieces of Canadian history and culture. It was an ambitious writing challenge: to create a song that could cover that kind of distance, geographically and culturally, while working within the constraints of a folk pop structure. In the end, I am really happy with how it turned out.

Listen for references to famous hockey players, musicians and bands, cultural and historical moments, and a little bit of history about The Canadian itself. It’s both a shout-out to the journey and a tribute to Canada, wrapped into one.

For those who are curious, the original demo is available on Bandcamp. This new release is part of my Selkirk Range Songbook series, featuring songs I wrote and demoed over the years, now newly produced as part of my Sunophonic Sessions.

And just for fun, there’s also an unreleased hip-hop version of the song you can listen to here.

Enjoy — and vive le Canada! 🇨🇦🚞🎸🏒✨

Duty Courage Truth — Out February 19, 2026 🎶

February 12, 2026

I’m excited to announce that Duty Courage Truth will be released on February 19, 2026.

This album brings together songs written over the past dozen years—lyrics that were demoed, set aside, or never fully realized at the time. Revisiting them gave me the chance to hear them differently and to finally bring a number of these pieces to completion.

Duty Courage Truth is the second release from my Sunophonic Sessions, and stylistically it leans more toward pop-folk than my previous album Hired Gun, mixing elements of country with folk pop. The collection is a bit eclectic by design, shaped by the lyrics and my vision for the songs rather than strict genre boundaries.

Several tracks stand out as highlights on the record: “The Needful Thing,” “Brave,” and “No More Secrets” each explore different facets of responsibility, resilience, and honesty—threads that quietly run through the album as a whole.

I know the creative approach behind this record will invite curiosity—and perhaps a little skepticism 🤔. All I ask is that you listen to the songs for what they are: performances carefully curated to honour the words written by my hand.

Thanks for listening—and for staying curious 🙏

🛣️ Queen E ⛰️

September 12, 2025

Ever been on a winter road trip where the landscape is the soundtrack? That’s ‘Queen E’ — written with that Alberta highway in mind. Heading south out of Calgary, the Rockies sit to the west in the distance, growing closer as you drive toward the U.S. border.

Fort Macleod is on the map, Ian Tyson and Corb Lund country, with four strong winds carrying the sounds of open prairie. It’s Canadiana: endless highway, where ‘the blacktop meets the blue’ horizon, and with mountains rising like a castle of stone.

Near De Winton, Highway 2A splits to the southwest, connecting Calgary to Okotoks.
Alberta Highway 2 – exit 222 by Marek Ślusarczyk 

🎧 Listen, like, and share Queen E on Spotify, Apple Music or your favourite streaming platform.

✨ This Might Be Love ✨

August 28, 2025

One of the songs closest to my heart from the Hired Gun album is ‘This Might Be Love‘. To give you a glimpse into the process, I’m sharing an image of the handwritten lyrics—the very first draft where the song took shape back in July 2017.

You’ll notice a little star sticker on the page—that’s my own reward system. Whenever I finish writing a song, I give myself a star. It’s a small ritual, but it makes the creative process feel like a celebration. 🌟

It’s a reminder that every track starts as words on a page before it grows into music.

I’d love for you to check it out—listen, like, and share This Might Be Love on Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you stream your music. Every click and share helps bring these songs to more ears. 🎶

Sneak preview from the forthcoming album

December 21, 2022

The new album is coming soon. I’ve been working with Colin Noel at Electric Treehouse in Edmonton on a collection of 10 tracks that will be available on the streaming services in the new year.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak preview of a newly recorded version of “Wear Anything!”

This song was written several years ago for a songwriting workshop and has since become a favourite when I perform live. It’s all about different kinds of hats, which of course, are all about personality.

Coming up with a rhyming list of hats and making it work musically is the kind of creative challenge that I love taking on! For the longest time, I didn’t have a third verse for this song … but thank goodness for the Internet!

This version is now a duet featuring the incredible vocal talents of Taene Nomaowen, who joined me on a couple other tracks on the album.

I also added a new arrangement to it, while opening with a baritone ukulele made by Twisted Wood Guitars based in St. Albert near Edmonton (a very thoughtful gift from my wife).

What kind of hat are you gonna wear?

New single for December

December 1, 2016

The holidays can be a difficult time for those away from home.  Here’s a new single from the album that conveys the loneliness of Christmas amidst  the stark beauty of a northern Canadian winter.  Dedicated to all those who will be away from their families this year.

First single now available

October 29, 2016

We’re thrilled to release the first single off the album.  Yellowhead West — a song for that other great Canadian highway stretching across the prairies and into the mountains– was a finalist and received special mention in the Jameson Upstart category at the 2016 Ship & Anchor song contest in Calgary and I’m pleased to be able to share it with you.

Become a fan of Selkirk Range at Reverbnation before November 22 and help build the buzz.  I’ll send you a link to the pre-release digital download copy of the album.

Album artwork

October 24, 2016

 

Here’s a peek at the artwork for the forthcoming album.  The painting is titled “Rasht” by Ottawa-based artist Taymaz Valley.  He has  very kindly given me permission to use this piece for the record, and I would like to thank Renee La Roi for her assistance in pulling all the design elements together for the CD packaging and online graphics.

I was drawn to the organic feel of the painting and brilliant use of colour.  The river, tree, and house all speak to elements and themes within the songs on the album.  That combination was simply irresistible to me.  I hope you like it as much as I do!

Stay tuned for a special announcement later this week about the release date for the album and a special pre-release offer for fans of Selkirk Range.

Closing in on a release date

October 9, 2016

Final mixes are done and we are sending the tracks to be mastered at Golden Mastering in California in the coming week.

From there, we will send master tracks for replication on a small run of CDs, as well as uploading to CD Baby for distribution to various online retailers, including iTunes.

It will be a soft launch of the record in November, meaning that I will release some or all of the album but plan for a more formal release event in the coming months.

Everett’s been wonderful to work with throughout this process, and I’m very pleased with the results so far; and especially for the opportunity to work with some talented musicians who performed on the record.

Stay tuned for more soon.

 

Preproduction session 4: the sound of silence

November 30, 2015 — Leave a comment

This session we continued to run songs, discussing structure and arrangement.  One of the important considerations as we begin to imagine the songs in production is the balance between sound and silence.

Context, as they say, is everything, and learning how to use silence to frame a melody and lyric can really bring out the most in a song.  One proverb I came across sums it up well: words are silver but silence is golden.  We frame the words with silence.  Silence makes it sing.

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Everett and I running songs in his studio

In any case, working in the modern digital studio with hundreds of gorgeous sounds at your fingertips makes it very tempting to fill up the silence with a rich but unnecessary arrangement.

We know this and so we’ve been talking about how to strike a balance in the songs that will give them an interesting sonic texture that brings out the most of the melody and the lyrics.  A golden frame for silver words, as it were.  When does the lap steel come in?  At the beginning or in the second verse?  Does it play throughout, or only at one or two points in the song?  Should we have backup vocals in this part?  What about a tone wheel organ?  Or nothing.  Just a single note the guitar maybe.  So many possibilities.

From a production standpoint, one approach may be to try out lots of different ideas and explore options before making decisions and stripping it to the essentials.  But this still comes down to a subjective decision in the process, and one where experience and a sense of discipline will pay off in the end.