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YUKON
NEWS, JANUARY 14, 2009
THE ARTS
MUSIC TO RUN HUSKIES AND HUSQVARNAS
BY
By Genesee
Keevil
Senior Reporter
At minus 25, the cowboy hat and snakeskin boots were a
dead giveaway.
Tim Hus is not a Yukoner. But that hasn’t stopped
the Canadiana cowboy from singing about sled dogs and
chainsaws, growing muttonchops like a Yukon riverboat
gambler and that damned old Dempster Highway.
The rising Alberta country star finally made it North
last week, driving up the highway that’s made it
into lots of his truckin’ songs. The Alaska highway’s
grades and curves weren’t as threatening as expected.
Steamboat Mountain wasn’t much, he said.
But the Yukon is better than imagined.
“Everything
is called the gold pan or the nugget, and even the beer
has huskies and bears on it,” said Hus with a grin.
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“Most of the places I write about, I’m familiar
with so I was itchin’ to get up here and see if what I
had in mind was right – it is.”
Hus came to Whitehorse for a break, after a non-stop winter
of gigging down South.
He wanted to do some ice-fishing.
Hus didn’t catch anything, except an intimate gig at Music
Yukon.
“I play anywhere they need a guy in a hat,”
he said, the melting snow dripping off the wide tan brim onto
the table.
Turns out tractor pulls, rodeos, the Calgary Stampede and plenty
of bars all over Canada need a guy in a hat.
When Hus plays in boomtowns, like Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray,
there’s a sense that people are there just for work, he
said.
“They’re just there to make money; there’s
not a good sense of community,” he said.
“It’s
all men and equipment. And every place has a big row of diesels
out front – all running.
“I don’t get
that impression from the Yukon – people here have chosen
to be here.”
Hus would move to Whitehorse if it weren’t such a bad
location to tour from.
Bushpilot Buckaroo, his latest release is a frontier album.
And the North has that same frontier mythology to it, he said.
“I’m drawn to that here, with the paddlewheelers
and sled dogs.”
There’s a romance to Hus’ music that lures more
fans than the usual big-haired, tapered-jeans country scenesters.
There was an Alberta show where Hus walked into a room full
of punks, with tall purple Mohawks, leather jackets and spiky
studs.
“I was the only cowboy hat there,” he
said
“I thought,’This could be interesting’”
But as soon as he started singing, the punked-out crowd joined
in.
“They knew all my songs,” said Hus.
Great artists, like Johnny Cash, transcend their genres, and
Hus is thrilled when fans who can’t stand country take
to his tunes.
The songs are like touchstones, he said.
“I sing about
the different provinces, forestry, fishing, cowboying, truckin’,
and workin’ the oil rigs, and it doesn’t take too
long before I sing a song that hits home for everyone in the
audience.”
It all started in a log camp.
Fresh out of high school, Hus was set to drive truck, just like
his dad.
The brake course started on Friday, but on Thursday he got a
call from the logging camp and that was it.
“I wrote
my first song to entertain the guys in camp,” he said.
“They’re a great audience – entertainment
starved and tone deaf from all those chainsaws.”
It was a song about work in the camp, and it was a hit.
“I’m always looking for that common thread people
can grab hold of,” said Hus.
“And I got so good
at writing songs about working, I don’t work anymore.”
Hus grew up listening to American folk and railway songs in
Nelson, BC.
Songs like the Wreck of the Old ‘97 are great, but music
you can relate to is more inspiring, he said.
Stompin’ Tom Connors’ song about Vancouver’s
Second Narrows Bridge came to mind.
“It’s about
places I’ve been,” he said.
“You can actually
touch those places.”
Now, Stompin’ Tom has referred to Hus as an inspiration,
mentioning him to local media when he last played Calgary.
Hus was playing the same night, and, unfortunately, missed the
show.
Ian Tyson also came out to see Hus, who was just signed to Tyson’s
label, Stony Plain Records.
But Hus doesn’t want to be “plugged into the hit
machine,” and he doesn’t plan to move to Nashville,
Tennessee.
He’s more interested in chronicling the Canadian experience.
Canadian country singers writing about Texas sound goofy, he
said.
“They’ve never been there, it’s
just what they think they should be doing.”
“You
do better if you write honestly about what you know.”
Hus, who plans to return to the North, keeps on applying for
all the Yukon’s music festivals.
And he’s got lots to say about the territory.
“The trapline set and the cordwood split, racks in the
smokehouse all filled up, fresh game in the backs of the hunters’
trucks,” he sings in Huskies and Husqvarnas.
“Where sled dogs and chainsaws won’t let you down
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Tim Hus Music Copyright 2008
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