Excerpt from Medicine Hat News - January 2007 -
"The folk club’s monthly singer-songwriter nights have dredged up amazing talent over the past year. Few are more talented — fewer yet, more entertaining — than University of Lethbridge Fine Arts student Derek Hintz.

This performer has the “whole package.” Far Side calendars are a Christmas tradition at home. Gary Larson’s anthropomorphic cartoon animals make a weirdly hilarious start to each new month. Wry and quirky lyrics, akin to Larson’s humour, are Hintz’s emerging hallmark. That and exceptional guitar and harmonica licks.

Hintz’s music training started with private guitar lessons in grade three. Later, he enrolled with the United Conservatory of Music. But in Grade 10, he dropped it all. It was not until college that he renewed a friendship with his acoustic guitar. “Instantly,” he began writing songs. Some things are about readiness.

Consider Hintz’s songwriting style. He says, “It’s kind of right there. Or I sit down for an hour or two and write it out. And if I stop, it’s usually hard to get back into it and it (the song) gets scrapped.” The exception was Remember When, a song that recaps the stages of his life to date. That took a solid week. One stage per day.”

Hintz describes his songs as “country blues-rooted folk music” but he was laughing at the time. In fact, laughter is a personal pleasure in songwriting. He says, “I like making people laugh. I like making myself laugh. I like capturing what’s happening in my mind.”