Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Two Toronto jazzmen and a Brooklyn DJ walk into a bar. And when they all walk out, they’ve written the slap of the summer.

Okay, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. But it’s still a good thumbnail for how we got Papaya,” the intoxicating first collaboration between Canadian national treasures of jazz Alex Bird and Ewen Farncombe and Venezuelan-born, New York-based Latin-dance giant Cheo. And boy, is their story a case of being in the right place at the right time.

While American Thanksgiving gets a ton of attention and fanfare, Canadian Thanksgiving is arguably the superior holiday.

Alex Bird, the Toronto-based singer, thinks Thanksgiving is so special, in 2022 he wrote Canada’s first official Thanksgiving tune called “The Sweetest Moments”.

Give it a listen here:

Would you be interested in an interview with Alex Bird? Bird can speak to the inspiration behind The Sweetest Moments and what makes Canadian Thanksgiving unique enough to deserve a song of its very own. 

JUNO Award-nominated, jazz singer and songwriter Alex Bird is gifting Canadians a song dedicated to Thanksgiving - a holiday that, until now hasn’t had a dedicated tune in Canada.

Titled “The Sweetest Moments” and written and performed by Bird, Ewen Farncombe and the Jazz Mavericks, the track captures that fall, Thanksgiving feeling, where the air is crisp, and you can almost hear the laughter of your favourite people around the table and smell the turkey roasting.

Check it out on YouTube here:

“Thanksgiving is one of the sweetest holidays, which is why we couldn’t believe it didn’t have a song,” said Bird. “When we set out to write a Thanksgiving song, we thought about the sounds, the sights, the smells, the faces, the turkey and really tried to encapsulate that in a tune.”