By Nick Warburton
His songs have been covered by the likes of The Cowboy Junkies, The Black Crows, The Jayhawks, Roger McGuinn, Harry Belafonte, Tom Rush, Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Jerry Jeff Walker, and The Mother Hips to name a few. Yet despite such a wide-appreciation and respect for his song-writing, English-born Canadian singer and guitarist David Wiffen is not the household name that he deserves to be.
Over the past few years, a series of CD/LP reissues and collections of previously unreleased material have added to the mystic surrounding this elusive musician who rarely gives interviews, with a further release in the pipeline.In 2014, US collector’s label Water whetted fans’ appetite by releasing an expanded version of David Wiffen’s eponymous solo LP on CD, complete with four previously unreleased tracks. A year later, Bernie Finkelstein’s True North label in Canada released Songs from the Lost and Found, 17-track compilation of never-before-heard recordings dating back to the mid-1970s. In 2021, fans were treated to Mousehole Music NLC’s CD release of his hopelessly obscure debut LP, Live at the Bunkhouse, which was recorded in 1965 and today fetches astronomical sums of money for an original copy. There are also plans for extensive 3’s a Crowd CD compilation, a popular Canadian folk-rock band from the 1960s that featured David as a member.
With this exciting CD release on the horizon, now is an opportune time to reassess his career and highlight the excellent recordings by this tragically overlooked singer/songwriter: thestrangebrew.co.uk/interviews/david-wiffen
