Business Features
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany said it. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it. Responsible leaders of nations around the world receptive to medical facts are saying it: to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus a.k.a. Convid 19, it’s going to take a concerted...
Press/Collaterals
By David DeRocco “When I see someone who is just going out to a comedy club for the first time I think, ‘wow, what rock have you been under,’” laughs versatile American funnyman and Saturday Night Live alumni Kevin Nealon. “There’s really kind of been a resurgence...
Press/Collaterals
Jay Leno: Still A Stand Up Guy By: David DeRocco By David DeRocco“I’m always happy to talk to the enemy, Canada,” laughs legendary late night host and comedian, Jay Leno, acknowledging the fact he’s being interviewed by a citizen from a rogue nation at war with his...
Entertainment
By David DeRocco Do you remember where you were when you first heard “That Song.” Not just any song, “That Song” – the one that after 20 years of airplay has now become “that song” for millions of broken-hearted lovers whose memories get triggered every time they...
Entertainment
By David DeRocco As an insightful young songwriter, Moe Berg managed – in one perfectly crafted song – to capture the inherent frustrations and stark realities involved in accepting the responsibilities of adulthood. Now, as he sits halfway through his life as a...
Featured Articles
By David DeRocco The late 80s and early 90s were a breeding ground for big, mega-selling, larger than life female recording artists who ruled the charts in multiple genres. Madonna, Janet, Whitney, Celine, Mariah, Britney, Alanis and Shania are all names quickly...
Featured Articles, Portfolio, Press/Collaterals
BY David DeRocco Greg Fraser and Stevie Skreebs aren’t as young as they were when their band, Brighton Rock, was ruling the Canadian metal charts during their ‘80s heyday. But they’re still wild and free, a mutual state of mind that comes with being at peace with...
Entertainment, Press/Collaterals
By David DeRocco Ian Thornely’s got a new solo album, a packed tour schedule, a sore throat and something he hasn’t had in a long time: performance jitters. Chatting with GoBe Weekly the day after the tour’s first show in Montreal, one where monitor issues required...
Business Features, Press/Collaterals
CLIENT: Canadian Wildlife Federation WRITTEN BY: David DeRocco PSA: GREAT CANADIAN...
Entertainment, Featured Articles, Portfolio, SEO Writing
By David DeRocco If you had to speculate on the type of blood Boz Scaggs has running through his veins, Type O might be a good guess. It would only make sense that the fluids flowing through a musician so versatile would be classified as “universal.” Scaggs has...
Entertainment, Featured Articles, Portfolio, Press/Collaterals
By David DeRocco Passionate fans of jazz music will tell you listening to jazz music is good for the soul. As it turns out, it’s also good for your brain. A study conducted at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine determined that the brains of jazz...
Entertainment, Featured Articles, Portfolio
By David DeRocco No one paid a cover charge to get in. But there, in a dimly lit nightclub, in front of a weathered velvet stage curtain and an even more-weathered crowd of Sunday afternoon lunch special types, stood an artist clearly paying her dues. Standing tall...
Business Features, Featured Articles, Portfolio
If you need any more proof of the concept of evolution, look no further than at these two seemingly disparate examples: the mobile food truck, and the Niagara winery. As two species often pegged for extinction in the 20th century, both the food truck and the Niagara...
Business Features, Featured Articles
There was a time when wanting to have fun in Ridgeway, Ontario, meant getting in your car and leaving town. These days, however, there’s a “sanctuary” drawing people back to Ridgeway that could make this tiny hamlet one of the most happening live event hubs in...
Entertainment, Featured Articles, Portfolio, Press/Collaterals, SEO Writing
By David DeRocco In a musical universe ruled by over-digitalized, over-processed, Auto-Tune filtered pop stars who take years to manufacture their quickly disposable products, it’s good to know an internationally respected singer/songwriter can step into a studio with...
Entertainment, Featured Articles, Portfolio, Press/Collaterals, SEO Writing
By David DeRocco The members of Hollerado are on the verge – of releasing a new album, of embarking on a summer tour, of finally achieving the level of success that’s so-far evaded them, and maybe, on the verge of a massive breakdown from exhaustion. Who really knows...
Entertainment, Featured Articles, Portfolio, Press/Collaterals
By David DeRocco Wild things are meant to stay wild, free to roam and wander until Father Time and Mother Earth conspire to turn them to dust. For a rock band that has made “Born to be Wild” their anthem for more than four decades, Steppenwolf is far from ready to be...
Business Features, Entertainment, Featured Articles, Press/Collaterals
By David DeRocco: It didn’t take a reduction in aerosol cans or lower carbon emissions to help repair the giant hole in the airwaves over Niagara. All it took was a really solid application to the CRTC, two years of legal and administrative finagling, a few months of...
Entertainment, Featured Articles, Portfolio, Press/Collaterals, Write Knight Blog
By David DeRocco There’s probably dozens of surreal moments that occur over a lifetime when you’re a kid from small-town Saskatchewan who winds up becoming an international comedy, television and movie star. For Tisdale-born Brent Butt, one of the strangest such...
Entertainment, Featured Articles, Press/Collaterals
By DAVID DeROCCO In the art community, there is never a valid reason to recreate a masterpiece; originals have no equal, and interpretations are at best mere forgeries that can never measure up to the artist’s initial creative vision. Bottom line – no one wants to see...
Business Features, SEO Writing
It’s a strange phenomenon exclusive to human relationships that two people who had trouble agreeing on things while married suddenly think they will agree on things as they head for divorce. After all, there’s a reason why civil wars are often the bloodiest battles:...
Entertainment, Write Knight Blog
I turn 53 today, and what have I learned having reached this lofty age? For starters, I recognize that 53 is just a number. People over 30 say that. People over 40 understand it. We people over 50 know that age isn’t defined by a number, it’s reflected in our...
Entertainment, Featured Articles, Portfolio, SEO Writing
By: David DeRocco Any writer will tell you how cathartic the process of expressing thoughts on paper can be. When a writer is also a musician, there’s always the potential to combine such emotional purging with the recording of some very powerful and...
Business Features, Portfolio
Teaching kids self-discipline and self-esteem is a reason parents often site for enrolling kids in martial arts classes. The Cambridge Conservatory of Music (http://www.ccomusic.net) can boast the same end results with an added bonus: rather than simply knowing how to...
Business Features, SEO Writing
Albert Einstein said “it is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” He could have been writing the musical mission statement for the Cambridge Conservatory of Music (http://www.ccomusic.net), the number one choice for music...
Business Features, SEO Writing
Music lessons can foster dreams of a musical career. One of the big hurdles facing young musicians striving to fulfill their dreams is overcoming the natural anxiety that occurs when performing live for an audience the very first time. Delivering that performance in a...
Portfolio
DeRocco Portfolio – print copywriting samples: Pyrex / Media
Business Features, SEO Writing
An oft-quoted African proverb suggests “it takes a village to raise a child.” The inference is that it takes more than one person and many different life experiences to help a child reach his or her full potential as an adult. You could apply that same principle when...
SEO Writing
Enroll in Toronto’s Yamaha Music School (http://www.yamahamusicschool.ca) and you get more than a program of music lessons. You get the experience of history and the wisdom of a musical philosophy designed by school founders to spread the joy of music around the...
Business Features, SEO Writing
Good parents want what’s best for their children; so do all good educators responsible for teaching them. When it comes to ensuring your child’s educational success there is no better partnership than the one you form with his or her teacher. No one understands that...
Featured Articles, SEO Writing, Write Knight Blog
Today we’re going back to basics! And nothing is more basically important to a site than properly written title tags. You know the ones that used to appear in the little blue bars in your browsers. Most modern browsers try to hide these, though that...
Write Knight Blog
I have always respected butchers. Maintaining your humanity on the job while slaughtering and processing animals must require an enormous balance of emotional strength and emotional detachment. Where I lose respect for butchers is when they earn their living not at...
Write Knight Blog
The biggest hockey shaft found at the Sochi Games isn’t the one carried by Slovakia captain Zdeno Chara. It’s the shaft perpetrated on nationalist hockey fans on both sides of the Atlantic who believe a gold medal confirms international hockey supremacy....
Business Features, SEO Writing
When you place an order with Bubba’s Poutine and Pizzeria you’re not just getting a meal: you’re getting a slice of Doulas family history. That’s the name behind one of Kingston’s favourite pizza restaurants, and their story is a typical immigrant tale of...