BARBADIAN singer/songwriter David Kirton continues to make strides in the music industry.

His Bird's Eye Music label has secured a distribution and promotion deal in Canada with Universal Music for Time For Change, Kirton's fourth album. The promotional campaign is being led by Soul Kiss Music's Brian La Roche.

Kirton's three music videos including Barbados Music Awards Video Of The Year 2008, Green Camouflage, and Time For Change directed by two-time Pulitzer winner Tom Krueger, are part of Universal's promotional video compilations and soon will be in rotation at Foot Locker stores and other plasma screens in malls throughout Canada.

Canadian airways

The lead single Time For Change has been added to rotation on Canada's top radio stations, including Mix FM, CIFX-FM, CHUM, CFBT, Z103 and very recently Flow 93.5 for their Barbados Day celebration.

The Time For Change album release date is July 22. Kirton will be in Canada for more than a week conducting a support tour for the album release, including interviews on numerous radio stations, Clip Trips, Sun TV, WE Magazine and That Radio. Live performances will include the City Youth Fest in Toronto on July 26, among others.

Accompanying Kirton will be his lead guitarist/music director from northern California, André Jonson, who also performed with Kirton at his resent RHS Chelsea Flower Show performance and BBC interviews in London.

One of the interesting things about Kirton is that he is signed to his own Barbadian record label, Bird's Eye Music Inc., which he started with his manager in 1998 with a loan from Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce to record his first album, Stranger.

At a time when banks or any agency in Barbados were notoriously not lending money to artistes, William Swammy, loan manager at the time, saw potential and took a chance with Kirton.

That critically acclaimed album produced by Chris Allman took Kirton to Midem, Cannes, where he was called "Best new act" by Rolling Stone Magazine and was picked up by RAS Records.

Time For Change was produced in Barbados by Chris Allman with touches from De Red Boyz and Van Gibbs and yielded the hits Green Camouflage, Time For Change, Free To Fly and Sugar, a slave story featuring poetry rap by TV star Gary Dourdan from CSI.

With his catalogue and publishing still firmly in the hands of a Barbadian label it bodes well as an example for future singer/songwriters out of our island and the development of the cultural export industry.

This distribution deal with Universal is the first of many territorial partnerships for Bird's Eye Music and Kirton. After the Canadian launch, Kirton is off to Los Angeles for a short tour including a show on August 10 at the world-famous Malibu Inn on Pacific Coast Highway, sponsored by Los Angeles' No.1 underground music radio station Indie 103.1 FM.

Kirton's next performance in Barbados is November 8 at The Virgin Atlantic Music Festival with his Barbadian band. (PA)