New video and single – Heart of Gold – celebrating Neil Young’s Birthday today!

We are celebrating Neil Young’s birthday today with our new single release of Heart of Gold (Live)!

It is available on all iTunes, Amazon, you name it…  https://orcd.co/heartofgoldlive

And the video is public at https://youtu.be/l119zOWLYh0

This song has a lot of meaning to me personally. I grew up in a classical-music loving house. My mother was a piano teacher and all the kids from the neighbourhood would come to our living room for lesson. My first instrument was classical violin, which was amazing for ear training. I was even in a youth string orchestra called the National Capital String Academy, and I loved it. But by the time I was a teenager, violin was kind of a square instrument, and when I got to high school I had learned enough about music already that I could teach myself how to play guitar. I bought my first steel string guitar from Steve’s Music in Ottawa where I grew up. A plywood model by Yamaha. Heart of Gold by Neil Young was the very first song I learned on it.

At that time I was working as a short-order cook at a place on Holland Avenue called TJ’s Speakeasy Café, and it had a great open stage night. I saw some great Ottawa folk performers there. One night during my shift at TJ’s I came out from the back and played Heart of Gold. I didn’t have enough money for a guitar strap so I was just kind of clutching the guitar under my arm as I strummed away. I was so nervous in my first public singing/playing appearance that my arms were trembling a little bit and halfway through the song I literally dropped the guitar. The crowd went wild with applause!  So I decided that was a good place to leave it. They all knew me and loved me at TJ’s, it was a very supportive place. I slinked away back to the kitchen and practiced a lot more before I tried that again.

Now I play violin in this band, but I still own that old Yamaha guitar and love singing this song!  I hope Neil gets a chance to hear this – a birthday present from me, Kevin Laliberté, Eddie Paton, Drew Birston and Rosendo ‘Chendy’ Leon from Sultans of String!