Dave Hadfield is a member of the Song of the Paddle as well as a talented song writer and a musician. He has sent me a couple of CDs for me to review. These are clearly effected by his love of wilderness tripping.
First off I am no musician so my musical knowledge is nil so my opinion is based on what I like and that is it. I cannot comment on the technical aspects of the melody or the like.
The first CD is Northern Breeze
This was Dave's first CD and whilst the song writing is as strong Dave tells me that as it was the first CD he produced he was not as familiar with the production process as he was later on. Still in saying that it is not noticeable to me.
The song list is (with links to the lyrics)
Of these my favourites are Big Jim Bushy, Riley's Bait and
Tourist, probably in that order. The rest are still good but I really liked
these ones. In fact if I could sing, Riley's Bait would be my party piece round
the camp fire.
The next CD is Wilderness Waltz
The playlist for this one is (again with links to the
lyrics)
This is difficult to phrase. My clear favourites on this CD are
Victor's Cabin and Cry of the Wild. Now this may make it sound like the other
songs are sub standard but far from it. They are great but I really took to
these two. Cry of the Wild is almost on a constant loop in my car.
As it is so hard to adequately describe music so I have got
Dave's permission to give sample files. Making these up was hard as I wanted to
give enough to give a true flavour of the songs but not so much as to stop you
buying the CD. I was really tempted to ask Dave to let me publish the whole of
Cry of the Wild but that would have been very unfair to him. So here are the
samples
I was really concerned when Dave said he would send me these CDs for review. Almost anyone can make a CD now so there was every possibility that these CDs could be pants but thankfully they are not. I love these CDs. The style of music is Folk but the essence is wilderness. The CDs are full of the Song of the Paddle. In fact the Cry of the Wild may actually BE the Song of the Paddle. I have also found out that this song has been chosen to be included in the Canoesongs Volume II CD
http://www.canoesongs.ca/aboutVolumeII.php
(there is also a longer clip on that page too
)More information about the CDs can be found at Dave's web site
http://www.hadfield.ca Here
you can read all the lyrics of the songs but I would strongly recommend hearing
them rather than reading them. The CDs can be purchased from Dave's site at $15
for Northern Breeze and $20 for Wilderness Waltz. Dave tells me that if you buy
both CDs the postage is $5 so a total of $40 Canadian Dollars (about £20).
This review was first posted on our forum so if you have any comments or questions post them HERE