Corb Lund

On El Viejo, Corb Lund not only pays tribute to late friend and mentor Ian Tyson, but has also created an ode to the notion of stripping everything down and letting the tape roll — simply capturing a moment of pure vulnerability and organic inspiration in real time.

“There’s not a single electric instrument on the whole thing, just acoustic sounds and singing,” Lund says. “In terms of having a vision, this is a record I’ve had in my sights for a while and it came out exactly how I’d hoped. We cut all the songs live in the same room with lots of bleed. A bunch of the songs we captured in one take, first time through.”

Much like his music, Lund is decidely hard to define. The western Canadian singer-songwriter is an elusive artist — onstage, offstage and in the studio — seamlessly weaving between the outlaw country, Western, and indie-folk realms with an honest curiosity and rowdy devotion to each.

Raised on the rolling prairies of Alberta in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, and hailing from generations of ranchers and rodeo people, Lund was instilled with the tried-n-true DIY sentiment of “if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself.”

“Growing up in a rural setting, you learned to do everything on your own — weld, fix a fence, fix a truck, start colts, whatever” Lund says. “At the start of my career, I just assumed I wouldn’t have a lot of help from the music industry, so I just did it all on my own — recorded albums in my basement, printed my own t-shirts, booked my own tours, became my own manager and publicist, whatever it took to get it done.”

Lund has a devoted audience comprised of city dwellers, along with authentic Western music fans still living an agricultural lifestyle; both sects finding elements of their lives reflected within the themes of the music, due to the fact that he toured for years with indie-metal band the smalls, and later turned his sights to writing Western songs. This has created a unique and quirky hybrid writing style.

Within Lund’s forthcoming 11-song LP is a common theme — possibly even a character thread — of the gambler, the outlaw who roams from place-to-place with no direction home, except for an unrelenting journey to seek out what lies just beyond the unknown horizon. “It’s a lot of minor keys and gambling songs, is what it is,” Lund says in a matter-of-fact tone. “It was just a few of us in my house. No studio. No outside producer. No adults in the room. No stress. I put a ton of work into the stuff beforehand and that made the band arrangement stuff a lot of fun to work out.”

Gathering around his living room, Lund & Co. tapped into his most cherished musical influences of acoustic tone and lyrical aptitude — Marty Robbins, Kris Kristofferson, Bobbie Gentry, Jerry Reed. “Since I was 10 years old, my favorite record of all-time is Marty Robbins’ ‘Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs’,” Lund says. “I identify very strongly with Western music. There aren’t a lot of artists writing legit cowboy stuff anymore, but there’s a few of us doing it, or trying to.”

Peeling back the layers and tales of his own ancestors, Lund makes note of his great-grandfather and how his presence — his ongoing legend and family lore — hung around the recording session. “He was apparently sort of a road gambler in Montana in the 1890s, as well as a whiskey bootlegger before settling our family homestead” Lund says. "I’ve heard more than a few stories about him. My mom denies it still, but I’ve seen his name in the Butte, Montana police blotter. He's there, alright. The song ‘When the Game Gets Hot’ is about a card cheat — about knowing how far to push it before you get caught.”

Reflecting on the vast, unforgiving landscape of his native Alberta and neighboring Montana, Lund can’t help but muse on how culturally, the real border is not so much the international east/west boundary, but the north/south line of Rocky Mountains themselves — the West in all its glory and perilous nature. “People in the Rockies are very self-reliant and there’s a fiery streak of independence out here,” Lund says. “So, all the cowboy stuff I sing about translates all the way down to Arizona and Texas — there’s a shared western lifestyle that transcends the border.”

And it’s that shared culture of the West which resided in the heart of soul of the late Ian Tyson. The famed Canadian singer-songwriter passed away last December, with friends and family far and wide raising a toast to the icon himself — Tyson, aka: “El Viejo.”

“He did his own thing, had his own sound and was never a person who chased trends. He was a close friend of the band and he clued me into the fact that cowboy stuff, including the music, translates south of the border. The West is the West,” Lund says. “Ian’s writing partner and our mutual friend, Tom Russell, used to call him ‘El Viejo,’ meaning ‘the old one’ or ‘the wise one.’ His death was a big loss for everybody — this record is in honor of my friend, Ian Tyson – ‘El Viejo’.”

Upcoming Shows


Apr
19
th
The Cedar Cultural Center
Apr
19
th
The Cedar Cultural Center

Past Shows


Jun
28
th
2022
7th St Entry
Jun
28
th
2022
7th St Entry

Corb Lund

with Lauren Morrow
Nov
7
th
2019
Turf Club
Nov
7
th
2019
Turf Club

Corb Lund

with Cole Diamond
May
22
nd
2018
Turf Club
May
22
nd
2018
Turf Club

Corb Lund

with Sarah Streitz

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