AMERICAN
CORB LUND
A Album of the month
All-acoustic jamboree from prolific Canadian
GLEANPRODUCTIONS
El Viejo
NEW WEST
8/10
LUND’S last album, 2022’s Songs My Friends Wrote, was a self-explanatory bunch of covers from songwriters he’s admired and got to know over the years: Todd Snider, Hayes Carll, Tom Russell, Fred Eaglesmith and the like.
But in pride of place were two songs – “Montana Waltz” and “Road To Las Cruces” –from veteran Ian Tyson.
His mentor and fellow Canadian sadly passed away that December, prompting Lund and his trusty Hurtin’ Albertans to record El Viejo in his honour.
The sober title track is adirect tribute. Translated as ‘the old one’, the name that mutual ally Tom Russell took to calling Tyson in recent times, Lund salutes his memory, mourning his loss while also celebrating his influence, leaving boots to fill that “I’m not sure we ever will”. As with everything on El Viejo, it’s apurely unplugged affair, Lund and the band repairing to his front room in Alberta armed only with acoustic guitars, banjo, mandolin, upright bass and drums.
The quick-take, live-in-the-room approach serves these songs well. Lund uses Marty Robbins, Kris Kristofferson, Bobbie Gentry and Jerry Reed as arough tonal and lyrical fix, essaying tales of washed-up fighters, gamblers, drug casualties and outcasts. “The Cardplayers”, certainly, owes much to Robbins’ soupedup outlaw aesthetic, racing along on guitar and flush with harmonies. There’s awonderful rockabilly feel to the Reed-ish “I Had It All”, its bluesy harmonica intro and freight train chug marking the fate of ano-good chancer who pissed away his money in search of easy thrills. “Redneck Rehab” is just as good as it suggests, aspirited hillbilly rocker whose hapless protagonist is “Up for days in the Georgia pine/Choppin’ wood and choppin’ lines”. The song ultimately finds acompanion in the spectacular “Old Familiar Drunken Feeling”, a true-life account of Lund’s unhappy experience with an edible hallucinogen prior to agig in Colorado. “You’re just gonna have to try to ride the rank bastard out”, he sings, deep in the grip of herbal terror. “Onstage I was freakin’ out”.