By now, I’ve been listening to Corb’s
records, seeing him in concert and writing about him for nearly 15 years. The
most recent articles on the Folk
Roots/Folk Branches blog have been a review of his joint concert with Ian Tyson at the National Arts Centre a
little over two years ago, and a review of his album, Losin’ Lately Gambler in 2009.
Here are some earlier articles I wrote over the years for
the Montreal Gazette:
CD
review of Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier from
December 6, 2007
Corb Lund’s attention is on war stories on
his most ambitious, and most powerful, album yet. He leads with "I Wanna Be in
the Cavalry," a snappy rhythmic piece propelled by military snare drum and
rousing banjo that suggests a young, eager Civil War-era recruit anxious to
serve his country while riding the horses he loves. Later, as the CD ends, Lund
reprises the song, this time singing it slowly and mournfully as if his
narrator’s been to hell and back. Perhaps the most interesting and insightful song
is "Student Visas," the tale of a mercenary who fought Reagan’s covert war
against the Sandinistas. Lund occasionally steps back from the intense war
stories with horse songs and clever tunes about tools and family parties.
Concert
review from September 16, 2006
Packed to standing-room capacity on
Thursday night, Petit Campus felt like an Alberta dance hall as Corb Lund led
his crackerjack quartet – rooted in classic country, rockabilly and western
swing – through a two-hour set that had the crowd still screaming for more
after three encores.
Lund, looking resplendent in western
wedding wear, grabbed the audience from the get-go with Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer, the title track from his
recent Juno and CCMA award-winning CD, and never let go.
Despite the high energy party atmosphere,
it was obvious to anyone paying attention that Lund has become one of this
country’s best songwriters and that his descriptions of ranch life and rodeos,
oil riggers, truck drivers and musicians, all rang with authenticity.
Interview
from September 12, 2006
Corb Lund’s latest
CD, Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer,
was released in Canada a year ago. This summer, that album and Five Dollar Bill, Lund’s 2002 release,
were certified as Canadian gold records, signifying sales of more than 50,000
copies each.
Yesterday, just
days before Lund’s Montreal show at Petit Campus Thursday night, he took home
awards for album of the year and roots artist of the year from the Canadian
Country Music Association. Hair in My
Eyes Like a Highland Steer already got Lund the Juno for best roots and traditional
album by a solo artist. “We’ve been tracking the sales, so the gold records
weren’t a total surprise,” Lund said when reached this week on his cellphone. “But
I wouldn’t have predicted them a couple of years ago.”
Although Lund does
get airplay on country radio (particularly small-town country radio in Western
Canada) and has had videos on rotation on CMT, most of his following has been
built one show at a time via the relentless touring that Lund and his band, the
Hurtin’ Albertans, have been doing in the four years since Five Dollar Bill was released. They spend much of the year
criss-crossing the country: playing clubs, festivals and, increasingly, concert
halls. They’ve also made regular forays into the U.S. and have recently toured
Europe and Australia.
Lund considers
himself somewhat of a “black sheep” on the country music scene. “When you hear
us in comparison to what’s currently out there in country music, we sound a
little strange. But if you actually listen to us, our stuff has more elements
of traditional country music in it and our lyrics have much more rural content
than the modern stuff you hear on the radio. We’re kind of a throwback to what
country music was at one time.”
It’s to the rural
orientation of his lyrics that Lund attributes his popularity with “people who
live their lives agriculturally, the kind of people who listen to country
music.” When asked how big-city people who come to 9 p.m. (or later) shows in
places like Montreal or Toronto respond to the rural nature of his songs, Lund
said the songs are playing well there, too. “I think to the urban people we’re
raw enough and hip enough that the same kind of people who are digging Johnny
Cash are picking up on us.”
Two of the songs
on Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer
feature Lund, 37, in duets with country and folk legends Ian Tyson and Ramblin’
Jack Elliott, both of whom have close to four decades on him. One reviewer
likened their participation on the CD to the passing of a torch.
“I’ll leave that
to the music writers of the world to determine, but it was pretty cool getting
to work with those guys,” Lund said. “I’ve known Ian (Tyson) for quite a while
now.”
“He was a hero of
mine when I was younger and he’s become a real mentor and friend,” Lund said.
The duet with Tyson, “The Rodeo’s Over,” is a nostalgic piece that Lund says “takes
on a generational feel.” And like all of Lund’s cowboy-themed material, the
song rings with authenticity.
Lund comes from a
ranching family with generations of rodeo experience. His grandparents and
parents were rodeo champions and he rode and wrestled steers in rodeos until he
was about 15 and got sidetracked into music.
Lund said he has
had a good time at his previous Montreal shows. He’s promising “some pretty
good beer-drinking country music, with some dirt on it.”
CD review of Hair
in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer from September 29, 2005
Three years after Five Dollar Bill put Alberta’s
Corb Lund on the country music map, he’s back with an even better set of songs documenting
the cowboy culture the one-time boy steer riding champion was born to. While
Lund’s songs vividly describe timeless themes like broken down rodeo cowboys
and trucks getting stuck in the mud, he also brings the genre into contemporary
times with references to closed borders in the wake of mad cow disease, the
effects of global warming on ranch country, and the toll of drug abuse on rodeo
riders. There’s fun to be had in tunes about playing cards and playing big bass
fiddles and cowboy music legends Ian Tyson and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott each show up
for a duet.
Interview
from November 18, 2002
Corb Lund’s parents were both rodeo champions. “My mom was the first
barrel racing champion at the Calgary Stampede in 1959 and 1960.” As a boy,
Lund was on track to follow in their footsteps. In 1981, when his father won
the Stampede’s steer wrestling title, 12-year-old Corby was the boys steer
riding champion.
The teenaged Lund switched his attention from rodoeoing to music. He
played bass through the 1990s in the Smalls, an Edmonton-based alternative rock
band. In the past couple of years, though, he’s found his voice as a singer and
songwriter documenting cowboy culture in an economic country and rockabilly
style. “I still ride for fun when I go home but I don’t rodeo anymore,” he said
in an interview when the Corb Lund Band passed through Montreal for a couple of
club dates in mid-October. The band returns to town Tuesday night for a final
local stand at Petit Café Campus.
Lund’s family history, with more than a century of ranching and
rodeo riding in southern Alberta, and an earlier history as Mormon settlers in
Utah, provides fodder for some of his songs. “Both sides of my family came from
Denmark in the 1830s, were converted to Mormonism and moved to Utah in the
1840s,” he explained.
After the Mormon Church outlawed polygamy in 1890, the Lunds, on his
father’s side, and the Ivins family, on his mother’s side, were part of a
Mormon migration to southern Alberta around the turn of the 20th century. “I’ve
looked into it and apparently my family weren’t polygamists, but that’s when
they homesteaded in Alberta.” However, when he gives a capsule account of his
family’s migration, from Denmark to Utah to Alberta in “No Roads Here,” a song
on Five Dollar Bill (Stony Plain),
his latest CD, Lund does make a veiled reference to “hidden family history.”
Other highlights on Five
Dollar Bill include “Buckin’ Horse Rider,” a tribute to Lund’s uncle Lynn “and
all the other bronc riders I’m related to,” the title track, a tale of cross
border booze smuggling between Alberta and Montana in the American Prohibition
era, and the very pretty “Short Native Grasses.” Lund recorded part of the
album in Edmonton with his working band and part of it in Nashville where they
were augmented by producer-drummer Harry Stinson and fiddler Tammy Rogers of
the Dead Reckoners.
Along with Ian Tyson, another former rodeo rider who he credits as a
big influence, Lund is using his songs to document a dying Western culture. “Cowboying
and ranching is based on cheap land,” he said, “and the land is worth too much
for other purposes now. Ranching becomes less and less viable every year. It’s
such a colorful culture, it’s sad that it’s dying.”
The songs, and Lund’s intense touring schedule, have been building
him a solid fan base. After conquering Western Canada with three months of
touring after the release of Five Dollar
Bill, the Corb Lund Band has spent the fall doing one nighters back and
forth across Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and the Northeastern United States.
Before the end of the year, they’ll tour England and be back home for dates in
Alberta. Texas and Nashville are on the agenda for early in the New Year.
“We get a pretty interesting mixed audience,” he said. “About half
are post-rock’n’roll, alt-country punk people, and about half are sort of Fred
Eaglesmith, folk festival, Wrangler-wearing cowboy hat people. It’s a lot of
fun.”
-30-
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--Mike
Regenstreif
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