(Daniel) Champagne Flows: Australian Prodigy Practices Process of Rapture
Ron Wray
Posted On March 20, 2017
Australia’s many-talented Daniel Champagne is coming and going in Hampton Roads, VA, having performed recently in Virginia Beach in an intimate January 28 concert that will hopefully lead to greater area awareness and a hoped-for return visit in the fall. Both shows at the hosting of the ambitious, tasteful Tidewater Friends of Acoustic Music and the knowledgeable, energetic Brenda Barkley.
Daniel’s concert in the American Dream Theatre in Virginia Beach City Center showcased the breathtaking guitar work, beautiful lyricism, songwriting poetry, and rich voice of the young artist who has already crisscrossed the Western and Eastern hemispheres. He has also produced a number of albums, most recently the ambitious and lovely, two-part, Gypsy Moon.
One of his best known songs is one of his most lyrical, The Hummingbird, which goes:
The Nightingale/Sings each morning/Her sweet song weaved in midnight’s thread
Beneath her vale of kingdom calling/If I could leave this grassy bed
When I told you I was afraid to fall/Really I was afraid to fly at all
Did he try (deep in triumph)/Bounding burning/Restless charms (chance) have broken through
Between cheap denial/Reckless yearning/To run from home is all I knew
The nightingale’s gentle singing morphs into personal challenge and restless abandonment. It gets resolved for the singer in the song, merging more into the bird’s image. Daniel is much like a restless bird on stage, one with angelic bird songs issuing forth from rapid guitar notes and at once effervescent and deeply harmonious vocals.
One reviewer evokes Champagne’s ability to “whisk the heart up with grant romanticism.” Romanticism, grounded in the reality of a determined, devoted musician. He began playing guitar at five, opting for his dad’s life choices, writing songs by twelve, and out on the road on his own at 18.
One darker song he sings is about several great singer-songwriters (Hendrix, Robert Johnson, et al, I believe it was) who died at the same young age, which Daniel was about to turn. It’s a moving and disturbing song, but there does not seem anything of the negative in Daniel. He is walking optimism with a guitar that flies up and down in the air as he plays and includes a percussive number he does on the wood of the guitar itself. He even teaches workshops in this technique, available on CD.
And he sings,
All I could ever be,/Is flying by my front door and it’s the same enemy
Just trying to keep our hearts, from wanting,/M-o-ore, mm-mm
Trying to keep our hearts from wanting more/M-mm.
Daniel wants more. And, he spurs that wish in us. Swept up in song, flying, ever flying by our front doors. Over here, please, more Champagne!
Australia’s many-talented Daniel Champagne is coming and going in Hampton Roads, VA, having performed recently in Virginia Beach in an intimate January 29 concert that will hopefully lead to greater area awareness and a hoped-for return visit in the fall. Both shows at the hosting of the ambitious, tasteful Tidewater Friends of Acoustic Music and the knowledgeable, energetic Brenda Barkley.
Daniel’s concert in the American Dream Theatre in Virginia Beach City Center showcased the breathtaking guitar work, beautiful lyricism, songwriting poetry, and rich voice of the young artist who has already crisscrossed the Western and Eastern hemispheres. He has also produced a number of albums, most recently the ambitious and lovely, two-part, Gypsy Moon.
One of his best known songs is one of his most lyrical, The Hummingbird, which goes:
The Nightingale/Sings each morning/Her sweet song weaved in midnight’s thread
Beneath her vale of kingdom calling/If I could leave this grassy bed
When I told you I was afraid to fall/Really I was afraid to fly at all
Did he try (deep in triumph)/Bounding burning/Restless charms (chance) have broken through
Between cheap denial/Reckless yearning/To run from home is all I knew
The nightingale’s gentle singing morphs into personal challenge and restless abandonment. It gets resolved for the singer in the song, merging more into the bird’s image. Daniel is much like a restless bird on stage, one with angelic bird songs issuing forth from rapid guitar notes and at once effervescent and deeply harmonious vocals.
One reviewer evokes Champagne’s ability to “whisk the heart up with grant romanticism.” Romanticism, grounded in the reality of a determined, devoted musician. He began playing guitar at five, opting for his dad’s life choices, writing songs by twelve, and out on the road on his own at 18.
One darker song he sings is about several great singer-songwriters (Hendrix, Robert Johnson, et al, I believe it was) who died at the same young age, which Daniel was about to turn. It’s a moving and disturbing song, but there does not seem anything of the negative in Daniel. He is walking optimism with a guitar that flies up and down in the air as he plays and includes a percussive number he does on the wood of the guitar itself. He even teaches workshops in this technique, available on CD.
And he sings,
All I could ever be,/Is flying by my front door and it’s the same enemy
Just trying to keep our hearts, from wanting,/M-o-ore, mm-mm
Trying to keep our hearts from wanting more/M-mm.
Daniel wants more. And, he spurs that wish in us. Swept up in song, flying, ever flying by our front doors. Over here, please, more Champagne!
Australia’s many-talented Daniel Champagne is coming and going in Hampton Roads, VA, having performed recently in Virginia Beach in an intimate January 29 concert that will hopefully lead to greater area awareness and a hoped-for return visit in the fall. Both shows at the hosting of the ambitious, tasteful Tidewater Friends of Acoustic Music and the knowledgeable, energetic Brenda Barkley.
Daniel’s concert in the American Dream Theatre in Virginia Beach City Center showcased the breathtaking guitar work, beautiful lyricism, songwriting poetry, and rich voice of the young artist who has already crisscrossed the Western and Eastern hemispheres. He has also produced a number of albums, most recently the ambitious and lovely, two-part, Gypsy Moon.
One of his best known songs is one of his most lyrical, The Hummingbird, which goes:
The Nightingale/Sings each morning/Her sweet song weaved in midnight’s thread
Beneath her vale of kingdom calling/If I could leave this grassy bed
When I told you I was afraid to fall/Really I was afraid to fly at all
Did he try (deep in triumph)/Bounding burning/Restless charms (chance) have broken through
Between cheap denial/Reckless yearning/To run from home is all I knew
The nightingale’s gentle singing morphs into personal challenge and restless abandonment. It gets resolved for the singer in the song, merging more into the bird’s image. Daniel is much like a restless bird on stage, one with angelic bird songs issuing forth from rapid guitar notes and at once effervescent and deeply harmonious vocals.
One reviewer evokes Champagne’s ability to “whisk the heart up with grant romanticism.” Romanticism, grounded in the reality of a determined, devoted musician. He began playing guitar at five, opting for his dad’s life choices, writing songs by twelve, and out on the road on his own at 18.
One darker song he sings is about several great singer-songwriters (Hendrix, Robert Johnson, et al, I believe it was) who died at the same young age, which Daniel was about to turn. It’s a moving and disturbing song, but there does not seem anything of the negative in Daniel. He is walking optimism with a guitar that flies up and down in the air as he plays and includes a percussive number he does on the wood of the guitar itself. He even teaches workshops in this technique, available on CD.
And he sings,
All I could ever be,/Is flying by my front door and it’s the same enemy
Just trying to keep our hearts, from wanting,/M-o-ore, mm-mm
Trying to keep our hearts from wanting more/M-mm.
Daniel wants more. And, he spurs that wish in us. Swept up in song, flying, ever flying by our front doors. Over here, please, more Champagne!
