Derek Virgo Music

Derek Virgo is an acoustic folk musician from Brock, Ontario, Canada  with a stripped-down style and a passion for emotional storytelling through song. He officially released his first full-length album “Left in the Dark” on March 26, 2025.

The release date was important.

It marked three years to the day that his pathway to songwriting, performing, and recording was born- from an unexpected, and traumatic experience.

While riding a bicycle in March of 2022, he was struck from behind by a vehicle that fled the scene, leaving him for dead. He sustained life changing injuries, including a spinal chord injury, several fractured vertebrae, a traumatic brain injury and many other fractures.

After being treated at a Toronto-area trauma centre, he began to embrace the healing forces of music- and immediately recognized the power it held as a visualization aide, motivator for rehabilitation, and as an outlet for creative expression.

Having played a bit of guitar when he was younger, he decided that as soon as he was able to, he would re-explore the hobby.

Not long after starting to play regularly again, he recognized the catharsis that could come from  songwriting and combining his own emotional storytelling experiences with music. Over the course of the next two and a half years, he expanded his musical arsenal by learning to play the piano and the banjo along with some basic music theory and mixing principles. In addition to recording songs, he started performing locally in response to encouragement from family and friends.

The presence of vulnerability while sharing his music from the stage added another therapeutic layer to his musical journey.

Left in the Dark is essentially a three-year “storytelling through song” memoir that moves along a journey of grief. It highlights some of the shock and disbelief, anger, frustration, depression and sadness and are typically involved in a grieving journey- and then moves toward what Derek constantly refers to as "the beautiful parts that can also come from this kind of story", including new discoveries, new strengths, and new relationships.

Each track on the album relates to emotions associated with grief and their role in his  story. The ideas behind each song have been crafted into a collection of short stories and essays in a book that accompanies the record.

A limited run of hard-copy editions of the book are sold out, but an e-book publication will be available soon!

Left in the Dark is available to stream everywhere and a limited number of vinyl records are still available in the online store.