By Kate Harper
Twang is back in a big way.
It might be a bit strange to hear, but music with banjos and southern swagger may be the next big thing on the Canadian music scene.
Across the country, those who previously would have got their ya-yas out listening to rock bands like Broken Social Scene and Metric seem to be widening their musical palettes to include alternative country, of all things. This is perhaps a bit ironic, as young people have typically viewed country and roots music as deeply uncool.
Alternative country is a hybrid of musical styles. It’s basically rock and roll with a twangy twist. In songs by alternative country artists, you can usually find steel guitars or a fiddle combined with a gritty electric guitar sound. It’s been referred to as “cow punk” for the reason that it sounds more stripped down and less produced than its traditional country counterpart.
Canadian artists now seem to be picking up on the genre more than ever. Toronto singer-songwriter Justin Rutledge is one of the best examples. Rutledge has been described as a “Canadian Ryan Adams.” Ryan Adams is a popular American alternative country singer-songwriter.
Rutledge’s sophomore album, The Devil on a Bench in Stanley Park, garnered international critical acclaim from publications like Uncut magazine in the U.K. and Chart here in Canada. Rutledge played Austin, Texas’s South by Southwest festival last month and is planning a Canadian tour later this year.
More evidence of the indie scene’s new alternative country craze can be found with bands like Oshawa, Ont.’s Cuff the Duke, who fuse indie rock with country twang. Then there’s The Sadies and Elliott Brood, both based in Toronto, who do likewise.
Jon-Rae and the River, a collective of Toronto and Vancouver musicians, is quickly gaining popularity by mixing country, gospel, blues, and rock.
But when you get right down to it, the fact that Canadian musicians are preoccupied with country isn’t anything new. If one takes even a passing glance at Canada’s musical history book, it’s easy to see splashes of country-infused rock throughout its pages.
The most obvious evidence of this is Neil Young, who’s been playing country rock since the late 1960s. Though Young experimented with folk and jazz throughout the 1980s, he returned to country-influenced rock on 1990’s Freedom, and has been rocking a cowboy hat and spurs ever since.
The Band is probably the next best example. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, they melded lyrics about American folklore with country rock, creating a sound that was as popular on the other side of the border as it was in Canada.
There’s also Blue Rodeo, who’ve been a fixture on the Canadian scene since the 1980s. Guitarist Jim Cuddy actually appears on Justin Rutledge’s new album and has been described as a major influence on Rutledge’s sound.
The indie scene’s latest flirtation with country isn’t anything new, but it does represent a resurgence of interest among young people in the country genre.
This knocks over the stereotype that young people aren’t interested in country music styles. Despite the fact that this is just a variation on an already present theme, that alone should make people happy.