How a love of Norwegian black metal helped forge a career in cowboy music.
Corb Lund is a cowboy and rancher who also happens to write, sing and perform cowboy songs, he also happens to be a favourite of those discerning listeners who are in the know. He has recently released “El Viejo” which he recorded live in his front room with his band the Hurtin’ Albertans, and the title track celebrates his friend and fellow folk and cowboy artist, Ian Tyson. Americana UK’s Martin Johnson caught up with Corb Lund in his hotel room as he toured Europe to discuss the new album and his friendship with Ian Tyson. While it may not seem so strange for a Canadian prairie rancher to also be a cowboy singer, he shares the influence Norwegian black metal and his own time in a metal band have ultimately had on his approach to writing cowboy songs, and the need to find his own voice no matter what genre he is playing. His own voice includes writing songs that reflect real rural living, rather than the caricature that is too often presented by modern country music. He also reveals himself to be a bit of a European and British history buff and contrasts this with the fact that until 125 years ago “Native American folks were running things” where he lives.
How has Europe been treating you this time around?
It’s been really great. The shows have been really big because we are opening for a bigger band, the Dead South. We’ve played the East and 9 or 10 countries I think. The jet lag is killing me because I’m not getting adjusted because the ice hockey finals are on back home and my favourite team is in the final. It’s a 7 game series and all the games start at 2 a.m. over here and it’s not helping. Just substitute football and you guys will understand.
Your new album “El Viejo” is a basic acoustic album with the Hurtin’ Albertans. How much does it owe to the late great Ian Tyson?
Quite a bit. He passed away a year and a half ago, I guess, and he was a really good friend of ours and a good friend to the band and I knew him for 15 or 20 years. As you probably read, we named the record after him, “The Old Man” was our nickname for him over the last few years. I think Tom Russell came up with that name for him, it was his nickname.
You have your own ranch in Alberta, how much does ranch life influence your music?
It’s probably the biggest influence on my music. Not all my songs are cowboy songs, but a lot of them are, and a lot of the stories are set in the West. I also have a colourful cast of characters in my ancestry to draw from, oil riggers, cowboys, rodeo people, ranchers, card cheats, and all sorts of things. It’s interesting to me because whether you are talking about traditional country music or americana, there aren’t a lot of agriculturally based lyrics across all of the genres. There are not a whole lot of like lyrics about actual rural living, though traditional country plays lip service with songs about ridiculous things like pick-ups and stuff. But there are very few people under the umbrella of country music that are writing rural-based lyrics and we try to do that because I think it is important and it’s my culture and it’s what I grew up with. I think in large part country music has drifted lyrically away from the country part.
‘Redneck Rehab’ is a graphic song with a great beat.
Yeah, that’s got a bit of its tongue in its cheek there, but it is also based on the reality of rural drug use, there’s a lot of that happening.
You mentioned your family earlier, and you have the theme of the outlaw gambler on the new record. What is behind that?
I wasn’t really trying to say anything other than trying to express what was on my mind, and I play a lot of cards. There’s a game out in England called Omaha Holdin’ which is similar to Texas Holdin’ but more complex and I play that a lot, and I grew up with cards so I’m pretty familiar with the gambling head space so that came up in some of the songs. I tend to write about what’s on my mind, so if I’m doing home renovation I’ll write about carpentry, if I’m fixing fence on the ranch I’ll write about those kinds of things, and if I’m playing a lot of cards I’ll write card songs. It’s sort of a free-flowing thing, and the lucky thing about being on the fringes of the music business is that I can write about whatever I want, and I do. I usually find love songs such a bore, occasionally there’s a good one and there’s been some amazing ones written in the past, and I’ve written a few myself, but it seems for a lot of people when they sit down with a blank page that’s the default position, it’s got to be a love song. I just have no patience with that, there are so many interesting things in the world to write about.
‘Insha’Allah’ is a surprising song for someone from the Canadian Rockies.
Yes, it is. I read a lot, and as you probably know I have a few records with military history songs on them, and it could have been on my “Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!” album of a few years ago. It’s about an Arab desert fighter fighting with one of your guys, Lawrence of Arabia, to help overthrow the Ottoman Turks who were controlling the Arabs in World War 1.
You recorded “El Viejo” at home. Were all the songs ready to go or was it more organic than that?
Yeah, I did more advance work than I normally do, and we recorded it all live in my living room. It wasn’t a situation where you could take the recording you have and change the guitar part or replace the vocal because we were all in the one room with the mics, so everything is in all the microphones so you can’t take anything out. I had to have everything worked out and arranged beforehand and then just press record and lay it down live. I prefer that way of recording now, the longer I’m involved in music, the less patience I have for perfect-sounding shiny records. That’s not what it’s about, it’s about human vulnerability and communication, and so I think that comes across better in a raw format, recording in a raw way.
What’s the dynamics with the Hurtin’ Albertans who played amazingly on the record?
Yeah, we had a blast, we had a great time recording it. It’s a combination, I normally come in with a well-developed roadmap for the song, and I have a good idea where I want it to get loud and where I want it to get soft, but when the guys put their spin on it there’s always a lot of surprises and 75% of the time I like the surprises. If I don’t like something I’ll just axe it, but most of their suggestions are just great. They are all very versatile and are all able to follow me along whatever path I want to take. Another thing I don’t like is when every song on a record you hear is similar stylistically, so we’ve always striven to make records with stylistic versatility. Fast songs, slow songs, emotionals and reasonables, some fun songs, some sad songs, some aggressive songs, and in addition to those dynamics we also try and use a variety of stylistic influences. So, having a bunch of guys who can handle that is important, and these guys are able to do that.
There is a sense of morality in the songs that is enhanced by the simple arrangements.
I’m not sure whether it is more simplistic or not, it is certainly more raw, and the recording process is more raw, but I’m not sure the parts are more simplistic. I think it is the immediacy of the way the songs were recorded and presented. The longer I do this the more I appreciate when Johnny Cash’s bass player plays a wrong note, or Dylan drops a line, or Ramblin’ Jack Elliott is not on pitch. I like that kind of stuff, it makes it more human, right?
What is the summer bringing for you when you get back to Canada?
Sleep for about three days I hope. July and August are our harvest season for music, we play a lot of rodeos, fairs and festivals in the summer like all bands. So, it gets pretty hectic again and we’ve been out for months since February and I can barely see straight, and when I go home I’m going to try and sleep, reconnect with my dog and do my laundry, and then the summer festival fires up so no rest for the wicked.
Is this Corb Lund feeling the hand of time on his shoulders?
Yes, of course. Time waits for no man. It was kind of brought home to me pretty clearly a few years ago, there’s a cowboy music festival in Elko, Northern Nevada, and they put together a song swop with three artists on stage where you trade songs, and there was me, Ian Tyson, and Colter Wall and I was no longer the young guy, I was the middle guy now. Colter is doing well, he’s a great friend.
Western music, or cowboy music, is quite distinct from country music. They share some of the same roots for sure, but country music was originally Appalachian music, and western music was more of a balladeering and storytelling form. They both have folk roots but cowboy music has much different lyrical content than Appalachian music.
What residual influences do you have from Norwegian Black Metal?
I grew up in a very Western situation, my family were all cowboys, ranchers, and stuff, and it seemed like normal life to me. I guess some people might find that exotic and interesting but to me it was just everyday life, so when I discovered Black Sabbath at 15 it was very interesting to me, and a whole other world opened up. What got me to pick up the guitar is metal, and I played in a metal band in the ‘90s but I never stopped liking western music, Johnny Horton, Marty Robbins and all the story songs I grew up with. So, I continued to write that sort of stuff, and when the metal band rang its course in 2001 I’d already made a couple of acoustic records, so I picked up with it and got serious. The ethos of the indie metal scene I was involved with was that you were supposed to find your own voice, it was very underground and indie and fringe, and it was very important to find your own unique voice. My songwriting was forged in that kind of situation, and I think if I’d started writing western songs right out of the gate I think they would have been a lot more down the middle, but because my songwriting genes were created in a situation where you are supposed to be unique and find your own quirky way of expressing yourself, I think I’ve carried that forward into my acoustic or western music. To me, there seem to be lots of quirky avenues I go down that others don’t because my songwriting was forged in a furnace where you had to do that, and I’ve carried it forward. I don’t care about boundaries though I respect all the old forms, western swing, bluegrass and folk, but I don’t bow down to them. I just take all that stuff and throw it all into a cauldron and see what comes out, art’s messy.
What are your thoughts on Ian Tyson?
He had a couple of different phases to his career. He was riding broncs and rodeoing then he broke his leg, and he claimed he learnt to play the guitar in the hospital, and folk was what was happening so he started playing folk and became a huge superstar. I’m not sure how many younger people today realise how massive folk was in the ‘60s, it was the place to be, and he told me the night the Beatles played Ed Sullivan the lights went out on the folk scene overnight, and he said everyone in the folk scene had to retool like Dylan or just get out of it. He just started playing country music, and he went to Nashville for a while I think, and then in the ‘80s, he started writing traditional cowboy music. He was one of the biggest luminaries in the renaissance in traditional cowboy music that started in the ‘80s, and so he’s had two or three tracks to his career. I kind of identify with that since I used to play a whole different style of music myself.
He had his Woodstock era as well.
Yeah. He’s got that record he made called “Great Speckled Bird” which is almost proto-Burrito Brothers or something. He was a really influential guy, and I would forget sometimes because we became really good friends and we’re from the same area, but then I’d see a signed picture of Neil Young on the wall or hear Johnny Cash’s version of ‘Four Strong Winds’ and it would remind me who I was talking to.
At AUK, we like to share music with our readers. What are three of your favourite tracks, albums or artists on your playlists?
Nobody’s going to like this, but I’m revisiting all the Norwegian black metal bands I used to like in the ‘90s, like Mayhem, Burzum, the new Edenbridge heavy metal album, and Sabbath, Motorhead and all that stuff was a major influence on my youth. I’m down a very deep Steve Cropper hole at the moment. Oh, and CCR.
Finally, do you want to say anything to our UK readers?
I love it over there, and it’s where everything started. I also like drinking in pubs that are a thousand years old. I live in one of the newest parts of the world in terms of colonisation, it’s only something like 125 years since people were living in tepees where I’m from, the Native American folks were running things until very recently. Where I’m from if a building is 50 years old we put a plaque on it, and the time depth in the UK and Europe is really fascinating to me. On the tour with the Dead South, we played a bunch of countries we’d never played before, we played Slovakia, Austria, The Czech Republic, and Hungary and it was really interesting historically speaking. I’m not sure what it’s like in the UK, but in North America, we don’t get a lot of light shone on that part of the world’s history, and it’s a fascinating history. I played that part of the world with my rock band and it seems like it’s come a long way in twenty years or so.
