David Bradford turns life changes into new music

By Rachel Woodward, February 28 2017 —

For the past 10 years, musician David Bradford has called Calgary home. The indie-pop singer-songwriter released the three-track EP, Cry in Your Sleep, earlier this year after collaborating with guitarist Russell Broom. Bradford says that working with Broom was an important milestone in his music career.

“He’s amazing. For about 15 years, he was Jann Arden’s guitarist and co-songwriter. But now he [is] kind of a jack of all trades. He’s a bit of a powerhouse, to be honest,” Bradford says. “The guy’s definitely got a lot of accolades under his belt.”

Bradford says the EP reflects his time making music in Calgary. When he moved here from the United States, he was unable to work. He says that gave him the opportunity to get back into songwriting.

“[Calgary’s] not really on the map obviously as far as the music scene and the industry [go], but there’s actually still quite a bit of life in Calgary and I think the cool thing about it is that it’s not inundated with a lot of musicians,” he says. “Once I left [my] relationship, music blossomed again for me and I started writing like crazy — I started playing a lot and I started getting more gigs. Eventually I got to the point where last year I was like ‘Okay, let’s go for this full time’.”

Bradford set up a GoFundMe account to raise funds to produce a full-length album. He hopes to raise $20,000 to put towards a new release. He also hopes to branch out into different creative productions in the future.

“I want to dip my hand into pretty much everything — the bare bones, though, will always be songwriting. I’d love to get to the point where I’m writing for a lot of artists as well as myself,” he says. “I’d [also] like to expand into things like voiceover work — so acting — [and] basically everything to do with the entertainment industry. I also do a bunch of comedic songs too, so I would love to get into doing some writing for that stuff too which is a lot of fun. I write everything.”

Bradford’s EP is available on iTunes and Spotify. Information about his upcoming gigs can be found on his Facebook page.

For more information, visit dgrahambradford.wixsite.com/website