Craig Cardiff
| Craig Cardiff | |
|---|---|
 Blacksheep Inn Performance. 5 Dec 2008 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Craig Cardiff |
| Born |
9 July 1976 Waterloo, Ontario |
| Genres | Folk/roots |
| Website | craigcardiff.com |
Craig Cardiff (born 9 July 1976) is a Canadian folk singer from Waterloo, Ontario, who is known for his soft voice and digital vocal and guitar loops and for the connections he makes with his fans. He now lives in Arnprior, Ontario.
In 2012, Cardiff was nominated for a Juno Award for Roots and Traditional Album of the Year: Solo and for a Canadian Folk Music Award as Contemporary Singer of the Year.
Recording and Touring
Cardiff has offered at least one new release almost every year, and his catalogue includes live albums, studio albums, collaborations with other artists and tributes to songwriters he admires. Over the years, he has experimented with various recording styles and distribution platforms for his albums – one release, Mistletoe (Kissing Songs), was recorded entirely on an iPod Touch.
On 19 November 2013, Cardiff released his first double album, Love Is Louder (Than All This Noise) Part 1 & 2. One-part boisterous group sing-along, one-part gentle lullaby, Love Is Louder (Than All This Noise) features full live band recordings, as well as more subdued, acoustic recordings.
"When I first started working with producers Ben Leggett and Andre Wahl, they said, 'we don’t want to make another record like you’ve made before,'" says Cardiff. "And that’s why you hire producers; to push you creatively. I got a little nervous because I was like what do you mean, these are the albums that I like to make. So what came out of it was I brought them my basket of songs, and they helped sift through it and made recommendations, and, in the end, the three of us picked out songs that would be best delivered in a full live band setting. I’ve never played that loud or that hard, and it was very exciting. The second album is more focused on the acoustic of my different songs, with cello, clarinet and violin arrangements supporting it."[1]
Love Is Louder (Than All This Noise) offers 21 tracks in total, and a number of songs are given both loud and gentle treatments.
"The idea became not pigeonholing a song but giving it two faces," explains Cardiff. "It's almost like covering yourself in a way."[2]
While this new double album is quite different than anything Cardiff has released before, the team behind it is familiar.
Ben Leggett (Faraway Neighbours, Ben Hermann) and Andre Wahl (Hawksley Workman, Luke Doucet) also produced Floods and Fires, the album that earned Cardiff a nomination for a 2012 Juno Award for Roots and Traditional Album of the Year: Solo and a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination as 2012 Contemporary Singer of the Year.
A long-time advocate of alternate touring, Cardiff has played in camps, backyards, prisons, churches, basements, festivals, kitchens and anywhere people want to hear him. He has performed in more than 500 living rooms in the last 15 years.
Throughout his career, Cardiff has played with and opened for Glen Phillips, Lucy Kaplansky, Dan Bern, Natalia Zukerman, Andy Stochansky, Sarah Harmer, Kathleen Edwards, Blue Rodeo, Gordon Downie, Hawksley Workman, Sarah Slean, Skydiggers, 54-40 and more.
Awards
Cardiff was nominated for a 2012 Juno Award for Roots and Traditional Album of the Year: Solo for Floods and Fires in a category with eventual winner Bruce Cockburn, David Francey, Dave Gunning and Lindi Ortega.
Floods and Fires also garnered a nomination for Cardiff as Contemporary Singer of the Year at the 2012 Canadian Folk Music Awards. Rose Cousins won the award, while Keri Latimer, Geraldine Hollett for The Once, and Catherine MacLellan were also nominated.
2012 Juno Awards
In the lead-up to the 2012 Juno Awards ceremony in Ottawa, Cardiff had the opportunity to perform his song Safe Here (from his 2011 album Foods and Fires) with former Canadian governor general Michaëlle Jean and pianist Nick Roy at the University of Ottawa.
On 26 March 2012, the trio kicked off the Juno Pianos project – which encouraged Juno nominees and members of the public to celebrate Juno Week by playing pianos that had been placed in public spaces all around Ottawa - with this performance. Jean translated the chorus of Safe Here into French, and, after singing, she told the audience that this is a song she can relate to, as she would ask herself on several occasions "am I safe here?" when she arrived in Canada in 1968 after leaving her native country of Haiti.[3]
The Book of Truths
Whenever he performs, Cardiff passes around a notebook he calls the Book of Truths. He encourages audience members to share what’s in their heart in these books, and it becomes one more way to connect with audience members that he doesn’t always get a chance to talk to.
"I feel like I’ve had this one-way conversation for the past 15 years that I’ve been performing with so many audience members," he says. "Part of it is I just felt egotistical that I’d been having this longwinded one-way conversation for so long and to sort of invite people to share themselves a little bit, because that’s what I feel you do when you perform."[4]
Cardiff believes the Book of Truths reveals not only what matters to people, but also how much people have in common.
"I feel like everybody’s a little bit broken, and everybody has the same capacity and range of terribleness and beautifulness and light," he says.[4]
Over the years, a number of Cardiff's songs have been inspired by entries in his Book of Truths. That is certainly the case with Love Is Louder (Than All This Noise), where one song in particular, Memo, was written as a direct response to a heartbreaking entry shared in the book by one woman.
"I wanted to find the person and make sure they were okay … that they knew this was all just noise and everything would be okay..." says Cardiff.[5]
In 2011, Cardiff printed his first edition of the Book of Truths, which he sells through his website and at shows.
Workshops and Camp Performances
For the past 12 years, Cardiff has made a point of taking the time to offer workshops at schools, camps, festivals and churches throughout North America.
In the fall of 2012, he did one day-long workshop with students at Churchill Alternative School in Ottawa that had a major impact on the entire school community. Inspired by Cardiff's song Safe Here, teachers Dana Campbell and Natalie Shorkey wanted to incorporate the messages they heard in the song about safety, community and contribution into their classrooms, and they invited Cardiff to come to their school. Leading up to Cardiff's visit, they brought their Grade 2/3 and Grade 4/5 classes together to talk about what the song meant to them and brainstorm ideas for a song of their own that would reflect many of the same ideas.[6]
Cardiff spent a full day at Churchill Alternative School, and the entire school community had a chance to learn about "Music as Magic" with him and to contribute ideas to a song they wrote together that day called Love Turns I Into We.
"I think what we saw in the students and in ourselves as well was inspiration," says Campbell. "A few teachers came up to me and said they had never seen some of their students so engaged ... It really transformed the kids in a positive way, especially those kids that don’t engage as much in what’s going on."[6]
In June 2011, Cardiff participated in TEDxUWO at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. The theme of this inaugural conference was Own Your Passion, and Cardiff gave a presentation called Fear is the Cheapest Room in the House in which he spoke about being open and passionate and choosing not to be afraid and also shared some of his songs that relate to those ideas.
Film Soundtracks
In 2010, Cardiff and Leggett re-recorded Cardiff’s song Barney and Miriam, a tribute to the Mordecai Richler novel Barney’s Version that had previously been released on Ginger’s on Barrington Street with Rose Cousins in 2003, during sessions for the album Floods and Fires. The song was featured in the Canadian comedy-drama Barney’s Version.
More recently, Cardiff’s work was featured in the soundtrack for an independent Canadian film that was named Audience Choice Best Feature at the Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival in September 2012. Cardiff teamed up with Leggett once again to compose the soundtrack for In Return, a dark romantic comedy written and directed by Chris Dymond. The film features original compositions by Cardiff and Leggett, Cardiff’s songs from Floods and Fires, and songs by Ontario bands The Famly and Faraway Neighbours.
Discography
- Love Is Louder (Than All This Noise) Part 1 & 2 (2013)
- Floods and Fires (2011)
- Songs for Lucy (2010 – Live)
- Mothers and Daughters (2010)
- Kissing Songs (Mistletoe) (2009)
- Easter Eggs (2007 – Live)
- Goodnight (Go Home) (2007)
- Auberge Blacksheep (2006)
- Bombshelter Livingroom w/ Les Cooper (2005 – Live)
- Fistful of Flowers (2005 - Live)
- Soda (2003)
- Ginger’s on Barrington Street w/ Rose Cousins (2003 – Live)
- Happy (2001)
- Live at the Boehmer Box Company (2000 – Live)
- Great American White Trash Novel (1997)
- Judy Garland (You’re Never Home....) (1997)
External links
Related videos
- Craig Cardiff performs Safe Here with former governor general Michaëlle Jean as part of the Juno Pianos project
- Craig Cardiff presents Fear is the Cheapest Room in the House at TEDxUWO
References
- ↑ Roberts, Sierra "The Cadre Chats With: Craig Cardiff" The Cadre 1 November 2013
- ↑ Schneider, Jason "Craig Cardiff Love Is Louder (Than All This Noise) Parts 1 & 2" Exclaim 18 November 2013
- ↑ Dempsey, Jessica "Special performance in Tabaret by Craig Cardiff, Michaëlle Jean and Nick Roy" University of Ottawa Gazette 28 March 2012
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chung, Lindsay "Craig Cardiff: Finding Hope in Floods and Fires" Roots Music Canada 28 May 2012
- ↑ Seewalt, Lindsay "Craig Cardiff brings 'Book of Truths' to Legacy" Cochrane Eagle 7 November 2013
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chung, Lindsay "Discovering the Magic of Music: Ottawa Elementary Students Write a Song about Safety, Community, and Social Justice" ETFO Voice 14 March 2013
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