Les Stroud has made a powerful name in the world of documentary film making, indeed starting an entirely new genre of TV, yet he comes by his music honestly. Since the age of fourteen Stroud has been writing songs and studying musically. By age 23 his music was being shopped to the likes of Bruce Springsteen and he was a published songwriter with RCA/BMG music. Taking a break from music to concentrate on outdoor adventure throughout the mid 80’s and early 90’s Stroud eventually returned to his first love when he found an old guitar in a house in Yellowknife, NWT in Canada, while he was dog sitting 30 Inuit sled dogs (go figure!). He re-ignited his passion for music creation and picking up where he left off began writing again. He continued to write and record all through the inception and eventual success of filming the Survivorman TV series, which included writing the theme music for any documentary work he produced and releasing 4 CDs as well as performing hundreds of concerts (in between the Survivorman location shoots).
Musically, Stroud has shared the stage with the top in the business, including Slash, Journey, Jonny Lang, James Cotton, Steve Stevens, Alice Cooper, Steven Stills, Tommy Shaw, Robbie Krieger, Blues Traveler, Tesla, Jakob Dylan, Randy Bachman, Chicago, Montgomery Gentry, Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Roots. Revered worldwide for his iconic harmonica playing, Les’s songwriting style runs an eclectic gambit, from art-folk-roots rock to contemporary art rock. He has written all the theme songs for his TV series and scored several independent films, and has won numerous regional music festivals. His third CD,
Wonderful Things, and fourth CD,
Off The Grid, include feature documentary films entitled
The Barn Sessions, produced by long-time collaborator Barry Farrell. He is currently recording his fifth and sixth albums.
Mother Earth is an art rock genre album and is being produced by none other than rock legend Mike Clink and includes a solo from Slash of Guns N’ Roses fame on the lead single “One Giant Farm” as well as a feature solo from Steve Vai on the song “Mother Earth”. In 2013, he performed at the prestigious Green Ball in Washington, DC where he met Vice President Joe Biden and was the MC for the inaugural Oceana Ball in New York with Susan Rockefeller.
Best known as the Canadian Screen Award winning producer, creator and star of the hit TV series
Survivorman, Les Stroud is the only producer in the history of television to produce an internationally broadcast series entirely written, videotaped and hosted alone. With Les known as the original genre creator of ‘Survival TV’,
Survivorman is one of the highest rated shows in the history of OLN Canada, the Science Channel US and Discovery Channel US and remains the highest rated repeat show on the Discovery Channel.
Survivorman is licensed for broadcast worldwide, with ratings in the US hitting 2 million on individual episodes. He has been nominated for 24 Canadian Screen Awards (formerly the Geminis) and has won for Best Writer (twice) and Best Photography.
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