Losin' Lately Gambler

You might not know it from Taylor Swift’s recent sweep at the CMA ceremony, but country music was once made by people that knew what it meant to get dirt under their fingernails. Not that there’s anything wrong with beauty queens who can write and sing, but there just aren’t any rural roots to be found underneath all those platinum blonde hairdos. Yes, friends, real cowboys wrote and sang songs about real country life. And if you long for that era, Corb Lund is a worthy throwback to those days of old.

Losin’ Lately Gambler is filled with songs that lean more toward raising animals, than raising one’s profile among fellow high school students. (Sorry, Taylor, but it’s the truth). Anyhow, a song like “Talkin’ Veterinarian Blues” is what Bob Dylan would have sounded like in ’65, had he decided to herd cattle in Calgary, rather than sit by Woody Guthrie’s bedside learning the history of politicized folk music. It has a great lyric, too, which takes comedic shots at strip mall veterinarians. It will even make city folk chuckle.

The song “It’s Hard To Keep A White Shirt Clean” (Listen Here) sounds like something a mom might sing when doing laundry for her young boys. However, it’s more along the lines of “Working Man Blues” because this one has a lyric for those who wear white shirts to do blue collar dirty work.

Lund may be making some of the best modern Americana music these days, but the singer/songwriter is actually from Canada. All good country songwriters take pride in where they’re from, and Lund mentions his home country a few times throughout this work. One song is called “Alberta Says Hello”, while another is titled “Long Gone To Saskatchewan”. He even comes off like a John Denver-esque environmentalist during “This Is My Prairie”, which reveals sincere regional pride. In fact, Lund would fit right in at Farm Aid, if he hasn’t already been there. And to give “This Is My Prairie” extra emotional weight, the track features mournful horns played by Sonic Fedora.

Real cowboys love drinkin’ almost as much as they love their farms, and Lund reveals his passion for booze during a live in Australia recording of “Rye Whiskey/Time To Switch To Whiskey”. It’s not hard to imagine Willie Nelson leading his Family Band on this one, although it’s equally difficult to imagine him ever leaving “Whiskey River” off the set list.

Whiskey is a great analogy for real country music because it will likely go down harsh if you’re not used to it. Lund is a little rough around the edges and never tries to come off like a pretty boy country singer. And you see that type of “cowboy” all the time at country shows. These are the ones all dressed up in their Saturday night cowboy gear, yet you know for certain they never get their white shirts dirty! However, Lund dresses the ragged-but-right real deal from start to finish during this excellent release. If you give him half the chance, he may make you decide to throw away your near beer for his amber reality. And that would be a mighty good shot of reality.

-Dan MacIntosh

Corb Lund has a way with words. Take some of the self-penned descriptions of his music on his MySpace page -- "scruffy country, dissident country, organic country, free range country, western music with some hair on it." Apparently Corb wants fans to know that he's not your average, run-of-the-mill country singer/songwriter. The tracks on the his new album, 'Losin' Lately Gambler,' make the same point.

Even though this is his first project aimed specifically at the U.S. marketplace, Corb doesn't stray far from his stories about his rural upbringing in southern Alberta, Canada, and the long line of ranchers that came before him in his family. "I didn't change anything about the way I approached making this album," Corb says of the the project, which was produced by Harry Stinson from Marty Stuart's Fabulous Superlatives. "It's funny, but there are two songs about Canada on here, but it wasn't on purpose. We'll see how they go. I've found if you write interesting things, people will pick up on it even if they don't know about it. It's important to write about your own background and your part of the world."

Corb pays tribute to two major influences in his life, his dad and Marty Robbins, on the disc. In 'Talkin' Veterinarian Blues,' the singer takes true stories from his father's years as a vet on Canadian ranches and weaves them into a wild tale about replacing a bird for an elderly client and charging a client after an unsuccessful attempt to rescue a cow. The Spanish guitar on 'Devil's Best Dressed' is a direct throwback to Robbins, whose 'Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs' had a big influence on Corb. He also draws inspiration from Johnny Horton's legacy of historical songs, like 'The Battle of New Orleans,' along with other legendar writers like Kris Kristofferson, Ian Tyson and Ramblin' Jack Elliot.

In reality, though, Cord didn't have to look further than his family when it came to a influences. "My grandpas used to sing all these old Western cowboy ballads. Those songs come from before recorded music -- they're traditional numbers that the cowboys always sing in camp, or just for fun, to entertain themselves. My grandpas knew all those songs," Corb says. "The first song I ever knew was called 'The Strawberry Roan,' a cowboy song that's at least 150 years old."

The singer's wide approach to music have taken him to venues around the world, from the main stage at Glastonbury in the UK and Virginfest in Canada to Doug Moreland's Cattleac Calf Fry in Manchester, Texas. He continues to reside in Edmonton, where his family has worked the land for 120 years, but admits that he is on the road a lot more than he's home these days.

The album's first single, 'A Game In Town Like This,' is about losing at cards but, according to Corb, "it's also a metaphor for losing at deeper things." He explores the game of cards on the title track, as well, an autobiographical song about "a fantastic 5/5 pot limit Omaha game not far from here. I perfectly capture the mood I was going for on that one, about a card game that I played in for years in my hometown," Corb says. "Yep, it's pretty true to life for me."

Corb brings a unique voice and unique perspective to his music that is a little country, a little western and a lot of fun. "It's an old fashioned boom-chicka-boom country," he says of the new project. After a pause, he comes up with one more description to add to his MySpace page. "It's the kind of country music your dad would listen to."

-Vernell Hackett, September 28, 2009