Cowpunk and cowpoke
Alberta’s Corb Lund lives in two different worlds with his kind of music
John Kendle

Corb Lund has a wonderfully refreshing take on the mainstream music business.

“People really aren’t being given credit for the tastes that they could be allowed to develop,” he says.

The Alberta roots/country singer is talking about how he selects his opening acts when he says this — acknowledging that he likes to bring acts such as Old Reliable or Alana Levandoski into places such as the Calgary Stampede or rural country fairs, where his audiences aren’t necessarily indie music fans.

But he’s also making a bigger statement — one based on the fact that he and his band, the newly christened Hurtin’ Albertans, have opened up the eyes and ears of the Canadian country music establishment in the past three years.
“I think we’re good proof of the fact, as are people like Neko Case or The Sadies. People just have to hear it,” he says.

Now 36, Lund has been plying his trade as an independent musician for the past 16 years. He began as songwriter/bassist with Edmonton punk/rock act the smalls, then went out on his own as an old-school country singer/songwriter in what was known as The Corb Lund Band until this year.

Lund knows that urban fans of indie Canadian music have open minds and ears. He’s forthcoming in his praise of the community that spawned and nurtured him through his first two records, Modern Pain and Unforgiving Mistress (both released while the smalls were still a going concern), and which helped him to sell 30,000 copies of 2002’s Five Dollar Bill.

“I really will forever respect independent music and the independent press and college and community radio,” Lund says.

A funny thing happened on the way to indie acclaim and post-punk roots cred, though. Country Music Television picked up the video for Roughest Neck Around, a rompin’ tune from Five Dollar Bill, and the CLB was accepted by traditional country audiences — to the point that Lund and his band have won roots act of the year and best independent group at the Canadian Country Music Awards two years in a row.

They also spent what amounted to an extra year on the road.

“The cycle of touring was spent playing to college audiences and indie music fans, as we normally would, and then we went back out to introduce ourselves to a whole new group of people. We also went to the States three times and to Australia twice, as well as touring in Canada a lot,” he explains.

Thus it is that Lund’s new album, Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer, arrives three years on the heels of its predecessor. When you’re a working musician, you work when there’s work. Besides, Lund says, all the travel and performing helped the new material percolate.

“I built up a lot of ideas on the road, but it’s not until I get home and relaxed that I can look it all over.”

Hair in My Eyes exudes a sparkling, organic feel that comes with the combination of working in a Nashville studio with a familiar producer, Harry Stinson, and with a familiar band — Lund’s own road trio, bassist Kurt Ciesla, drummer Brady Valgardson and Winnipeg guitar whiz Grant Siemens.

It also remains true to Lund’s songwriting ethos — full of tales about the stuck trucks, rodeos, hell-raisin’, beautiful country and honest living that come with life in rural Alberta.

Lund is not unaware of the irony of a rural kid making a name in the cities as an indie musician before being discovered by the kind of folks he lives and works with.

“We’re all small-town kids,” he says. “But I’m prepared to handle this stuff. I know that I have to be sensitive to the sensibilities of our core fans. But it’s also kind of fun to go to things like the CCMAs, because we’re the outlaws in that world — and they all really like our stuff.

“It is what it is, and as long as I’m doing the music I wanna do, then that’s fine.”

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