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! 🇨🇦🚞🎸🏒✨