Canadian singer-songwriter Lund has been on the Lonesome Highway radar for nearly two decades. We first saw him perform with his band, The Hurtin’ Albertans, at the Kilkenny Roots Festival in 2006. His albums regularly feature in our end-of-year favourites. From a ranching background, Lund is a torch carrier for traditional Western music and has received numerous awards in Canada, America, and Europe. We chatted with him recently before his trip to Ireland later this month to play shows in Dublin and Kilkenny.
You are finishing some European dates before you come to Ireland for shows.
Yes. We’re opening for the Canadian band The Dead South, playing in eight countries. They’re much bigger than us, so it’s a great opportunity to get in front of people. I have my band with me on this part of the European tour, but my Irish shows will be solo acoustic story-telling shows.
Do you recall your first shows at Kilkenny Roots Festival back in 2006?
Yes, I do. That was super fun. We had plans to come over again before the plague hit, so I’m glad to be on my way back to Ireland. Ireland and the American West are my two favourite places to visit.
You come from a traditional cowboy family and environment but chose a music career rather than follow that path.
I’ve had a meandering career path. My family have been cowboy ranchers on my mom and dad’s side for many generations. They first settled in Newton, Nevada, in the 1840s and moved to Western Canada to settle there and raise cattle in the Rocky Mountains around the turn of that century. I grew up on horseback, working with cattle and rodeo. I thought that was normal and what everyone did. I understand now that some people find that exotic and interesting, but to me, it just seemed like daily life. So, when I discovered Black Sabbath and Motorhead, that was exotic to me and opened up a whole new world, it was that kind of music that got me to pick up guitar in the first place.
Your first music venture was in a metal band.
Yes. I was in a metal band for most of my twenties, but I figured out shortly after picking up a Les Paul guitar that I could also play all those old cowboy songs that I grew up with, so I was also learning Western music when I was into heavy bands. I had already made a couple of Western records when the rock band retired, and I just jumped into it with both feet. I think that explains my writing style to an extent. The metal scene I was involved with was very fringe, indie, and underground, and the ethos of that scene was to find your own voice, be unique, and find your own style. My songwriting was forged in that kind of furnace, and when I started writing Western and acoustic songs, I brought a certain element of quirkiness and contrariness to my writing. That was a result of being introduced to an independent and fringe music scene to begin with. So, all these years later, here I am writing strange cowboy songs.
Was the metal scene typical of teenage rebellion?
Maybe in retrospect. At the time, I was not particularly unhappy with my surroundings; I just found metal fascinating and interesting, something fresh and new. That’s pretty common with kids; you hear rock and roll, and it’s a whole new world. Rebellious might be a little strong, but it was a way of finding my own path in the world. My family is very traditional, but to their credit, they were supportive even if it freaked them out a little bit. My dad, in addition to being a rancher, was also a doctor, a Western artist with watercolours, and a cowboy intellectual. If he didn’t totally understand what I was doing, he could partially relate to it on an artistic level. It all worked out, and they were thrilled when I started writing cowboy songs.
You’ve continued on that career path rather than ranching.
My family still have the cattle ranch. I could barely have a dog; maybe I will someday if I finally retire from music, so I rent out my grass. It’s about five miles north of the Montana border, close to Glacier National Park, a wonderful country.
Your three latest albums have covered a lot of ground. AGRICULTURAL TRAGIC from 2020 was a typical Corb Lund album, SONGS MY FRIENDS WROTE from 2022 was a covers album and EL VIEJO, released earlier this year, was a tribute album to a close friend and mentor.
Although I wrote all the songs, EL VIEJO is a tribute album that is dedicated to and named after a friend of mine, Ian Tyson, who had passed away. He was a famous folk and cowboy songwriter in Canada. EL VIEJO is Spanish for the old man, which was Ian Tyson’s nickname. The album was something that I had wanted to do for some time; it’s all acoustic, and there is no single electric instrument on the record. We recorded it sitting in a circle in my living room, there’s no computer trickery or layering, just the four of us playing the songs live in a room.
How was that experience compared to the traditional studio recording environment?
The more I do this, the less patience I have for perfect, shiny records. I’ve never been into super overproduced records, and mine are becoming less and less produced as time goes on. This whole thing that we are doing as artists and musicians is communicating, so I really like it when I hear Johnny Cash’s bass player hit a wrong note, Bob Dylan screw up a melody, or Ramblin’ Jack Elliott start a song, stop and restart it, I love all that, it’s human. I don’t care for perfection anymore; I care more about rawness. That’s what we did with EL VIEJO. We did our best to play well, of course, but it was very organic, and that’s what I’m gravitating toward.
From being a hero of yours and having a huge influence on your career, Ian Tyson became a close friend of yours.
Yes. We did some touring and recording together. He was quite a luminary and presence in my area in Alberta. It was under those terms when I first met him, but as the years went by, it became more of a friendship. The folk music scene in the 60s was huge; it was at Elvis or Beatles level, and his act at the time was Ian and Sylvia. He wrote some of the quintessential folk songs of the songs, Four Strong Winds, Someday Soon and Summer Wages. Neil Young and Johnny Cash have recorded his songs. He was also friends with The Clancy Brothers, who would have been contemporaries at that time.
The New West label has been very supportive of your music.
They’re great; I have been with them a long time, six records now, I think. I can’t think of a better label to be on for my lifestyle of unusual roots music. They give me a hundred per cent freehand. I think they can tell that I’m incorrigible. I’m fortunate that I’ve never had anyone in the music business try to direct me.
Though you seldom co-write, I’m interested in the people with whom you share writing credits. Hayes Carll and Jaida Dreyer come to mind.
Hayes and I met many years ago at a folk festival in Canada, which I think was in 2005. He’s a really good friend. We wrote one memorable song, Bible On The Dash, and toured together. Not so much lately. I’ve co-written a fair amount of stuff with Jaida Dreyer. She’s a transplanted Canadian; she lives in Nashville now, having grown up in Texas in the equestrian world. We’ve known each other forever and just get in a room and laugh a lot; I’ve written with her more than anyone else. Most of my co-writing, which hasn’t been a lot of it, has been with friends. I haven’t had much success doing official songwriting Nashville style, where you sit down in a room at 10 am with someone you don’t know.
I particularly love your co-write with Jaida, Redneck Rehab, on the new record; it’s hilarious and very clever. I presume it’s not autobiographical?
Jaida claims that it is actually autobiographical. That song was her idea, and I helped to flesh it out.
Alongside yourself, artists like Colter Wall, Riddy Armen, Sam Munsick, Andy Hedges, Wylie Gustafson, and Chris Guenther are flying the flag for Western/Cowboy music. Are you aware of all those guys, and do you feel part of a movement to keep that genre alive?
Yes, I’m friends with all those guys; it’s a very small group. From what I have read, it was sometime in the 1950s that a radio deejay put country and western together. Before that, there were two distinct styles, country being Appalachian music, which shares some roots with what I do; I like it but don’t personally identify with it as it’s not my background. Western music, on the other hand, is very much in line with my heritage, balladeering cowboy songs. They both have Scots and Irish roots, of course. Not everyone makes that distinction, but there are a few of us still writing music that actually has real agricultural content in it, which is quite rare now. There’s also a guy and friend of mine from Wyoming called Chancey Williams that also writing western music. The biggest example right now is another friend of mine, Cody Johnson, a Texan who writes cowboy stuff and is quite big now.
Colter Wall is appealing to a younger audience, which is encouraging. When he played Dublin a few years back, all the younger punters knew his songs word for word.
Colter has done something magical and amazing. I grew up with a lot of the songs he sings, old traditional cowboy songs that my grandfather sang. I opened for Colter at The Paradiso in Amsterdam before Covid, and all these Dutch hipsters were singing along to these old cowboy songs. Everything old becomes new again. Colter also has his own vocal style, which helps, and he’s a really good writer, too. He also raises cows in Saskatchewan; he’s a good guy.
In a parallel career, you played the leading role in the movie Guitar Lessons. Does that art form appeal to you, and is it one that you may pursue going forward?
That was an interesting experience. I’ve dabbled in acting but hadn’t done a lead role before. The producer and director is a friend of mine, and he strong-armed me into it. I was pretty freaked out, but it turned out well. It’s one of those things that if I had five lifetimes, I would love to pursue acting, but I have so many musical goals and don’t have time for acting unless it was something that would help my musical career, like Ryan Bingham. I’m also a visual artist, but I don’t have the time to put into that either. I’m actually the only person from my friend group who didn’t get music on Yellowstone, even though I have a lot of background in that world. Montana is right in my backyard, about ten miles from our ranch. They mustn’t like me (laughs).
What are those music goals in particular?
I’m trying to work on my guitar playing because it sucks. I’d like to make another metal record one of these years, and I’m enjoying the acoustic stuff we did on the new record, and I may pursue that for a while. I’d also like to make another old-style honky tonk record. I have a lot of things on my agenda.
Interview by Declan Culliton