For decades now, Les Stroud has been using his platform as an award-winning filmmaker, composer, singer-songwriter, author and world-famous adventurer to lobby passionately for the preservation of the natural world. With the release of his new song “One Giant Farm,” he’s inviting us all along to make a deeply emotional reckoning with a particularly devastating reality: the sacrifice of marine life on the altar of human greed and whim.
A track from the newly remastered and expanded vinyl edition of Stroud’s 2019 album, Mother Earth, “One Giant Farm” decries the harrowing destruction of our oceans in the service of nothing of value. It’s a protest only Stroud could make so convincingly and poetically. And with guitar god and fellow committed conservationist Slash in tow to lend a fret-burning “ditto,” the track becomes a stirring rallying cry against the exploitation of marine creatures.
“The ocean is a bucket we just keep dipping a net into until it’s cleaned out,” Stroud laments. “The wildlife are nothing more than commodities to be consumed and farmed, and we are indifferent to their suffering. So I began with a call to action—a challenge to the masses: ‘Stop living blindly/ Hear what I say/ Stand up/ Don’t walk away.’ In other words, ‘Where do you think you’re going? You’re going to stand still and listen to this.’”
Our attention duly held, the song makes its point in no uncertain terms:
I know this world is smaller now
Don’t ignore this simple truth
The Earth is not one giant farm
It’s a philosophy of Stroud’s that’s only been strengthened by the images he’s witnessed and the experiences he’s had while traveling the globe to shoot his acclaimed environmentalist travelogues, like his hit TV docuseries, Survivorman. In particular, he was honored to have made the final cut that saved a baby humpback whale from its entanglement in a discarded, free-floating “ghost net.” (The Coast Guard said “Let it be”; Stroud politely declined to listen.) What’s rewarding to live, though, can be painful to revisit.
“The video we produced for ‘One Giant Farm’ is hard to watch,” Stroud admits. “It brought my editor to tears, and I have friends who still can’t watch it.” But there were others—like a certain guitarist—who felt just as strongly that the clip was essential viewing:
“Slash told me during the recording of his solo that the whole reason he was there was based on me going through with showing this video to the world,” Stroud says. “If I didn’t show the video, he wouldn’t contribute his solo.”
The six-string great certainly upheld his end of the bargain. The finished track runs through several moods and tempos, beginning with some guitar keening that’s appropriately whale-like. When the rhythm kicks in, Slash follows suit in an almost Spanish style, tracing curlicues on his neck pickup on the way to one of those overdriven crescendos we all know and love.
For Stroud, the rerelease of Mother Earth is a watershed moment in the 35 years of songwriting and music-making that’s accompanied his ongoing mission to celebrate and protect nature. Expanded from its original seven tracks to 10, the record was produced by the legendary Mike Clink, whose history with Slash goes all the way back to Guns N’ Roses’ groundbreaking 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction. Seven-string virtuoso Steve Vai and saxophonist/vocalist Mindi Abair are just two more of the immensely pedigreed musos who join Stroud on the album to help him preach respect and protection of the world’s precious resources.
And there’s waay more where that came from. Over the coming years, Stroud plans to release literally hundreds of songs he’s recorded in the course of his adventures, making a hefty addition to his already mighty repertoire of rock, world, prog, folk, blues and balladry. Proceeds from those projects will go toward (naturally) wildlife and wilderness protection and preservation. Sales of “One Giant Farm” in particular have been earmarked to support organizations like WWF, IFAW and The Dolphin Project, ensuring that the fight for marine conservation continues on the front lines.
While he does his best for the planet, Stroud is being honored in kind. Most recently, his “Gypsy Soul” was nominated for Best Country/Bluegrass Song in the 2024 International Acoustic Music Awards. That followed his strong showing in the 2023 competition, in which another Mother Earth cut, “Arctic Mistress,” had been a finalist for Best Song, and
Les Stroud and the Pikes (his collaborative project with Potvin’s Northern Pikes) had reached the finals for Best Group/Duo. The same year, the Canadian Screen Awards nominated Stroud in the categories of Best Direction, Lifestyle or Information and Best Original Music, Factual, Lifestyle, Reality or Entertainment (with partners Kevin Kossowan and David Bateman).
For Stroud, all of it—awards, music, activism—is in service of a future that’s not so much idyllic as it is simply workable. “Yes, we are forced to live lives of conflict; we can’t escape that,” he says. “I drive cars and live in a house. But we can turn a corner. We can fix this mess. We can ‘free the dolphins and save the whales.’ We can ‘love the land and love the sea.’ But I beg the world to open its eyes. To not live ignorantly. To protect and preserve and fix and clean and restore once again our great places in nature.”
Yes, there are wonders all around us. And they deserve to be cherished. Mother Earth gives us 10 more.
