Hmmmm. Where to begin. I guess I started writing songs as a young teenager on my state-of-the-art Casio keyboard, which I still own (it's got drum pads!). Rap music was gaining popularity and I was all over it. I think my first two live performances were at John W. Gunn junior high school doing original rap songs. (Years later I was DJ Goldfinger in seminal rap group State Of Mind. We became the first Winnipeg rap group to release a recording and get it into stores). Jeff Derksen also attende...
Hmmmm. Where to begin. I guess I started writing songs as a young teenager on my state-of-the-art Casio keyboard, which I still own (it's got drum pads!). Rap music was gaining popularity and I was all over it. I think my first two live performances were at John W. Gunn junior high school doing original rap songs. (Years later I was DJ Goldfinger in seminal rap group State Of Mind. We became the first Winnipeg rap group to release a recording and get it into stores). Jeff Derksen also attended John W. Gunn but it wasn't until after we both graduated from Murdoch Mackay high school that we started making music together.
Jeff and I formed various bands and played several shows at popular Winnipeg venues like The Royal Albert Arms and The Pyramid. Our first "serious" band, Garden Party, even managed to release two cassette albums. By 1999, I was no longer in a band but had the itch to record some songs I wrote so I enlisted the services of studio musicians Murray Pulver (live guitar player with Crash Test Dummies and current member of Doc Walker), Ken "Spider" Sinnaeve (Streetheart and Tom Cochrane bassist, now playing with Loverboy), and drummer Steve Broadhurst (Rita Chiarelli, Redbone, Chantal Kreviazuk, Harlequin, Eagle and Hawk, etc.). The songs went well enough to inspire Jeff and I to form a new band, Todd Hunter and The Tourists (with my dad on bass!). We recorded more songs and released the album Cold Winter Days in 2000. "Jumping Off The Bridge", one of the album's songs, topped Tom Petty's "Free Girl Now" to claim the #1 position on MP3.COM's Rock Chart as the most downloaded song.
A few years later, after several line-up changes, our sound had changed. We started to record what would become 2004's "Remember" with Corey Smith on bass and Steve Broadhurst on drums. Unfortunately, the lure of Albertan money convinced Corey to move away but we were lucky enough to land bassist Larry Kowalski and drummer Brett Papineau as permanent band members. We became "Todd Hunter Band" and released our debut album: "Remember".
"Remember" received unanimously positive reviews and TOP 20 chart positions at several college campus radio stations, in addition to some regional commercial radioplay. "I Don't Want To Go Home", one of the album's songs, was later featured in the CTV/Lifetime movie Playing House. We proceeded to shoot a music video for the song "In My Way" then hit the road to do a bit of touring.
In 2006 we released our sophomore record: "Life Is Good", once again to positive reviews. Shortly thereafter we were the only Winnipeg band to perform on the PPTV/PBS television program Soundcheck. The album's title track was also featured in an episode of CBC's Heartland.
Also during 2006, I got very very sick and spent more than a year trying to get better. Occasionally, I felt well enough to write down pieces of the songs that came to me during this time. By 2008, I was back in good health and the songs were written so I started recording them sans-band with uber-producer Mike Petkau. Currently, I am promoting "Star", a solo effort, before the band completes its third full-length Todd Hunter Band album.
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