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EDMONTON
JOURNAL, JUNE 17, 2010
HUS
OBSERVES THE LAND
COUNTRY-FOLK SINGER CASTS HIS LYRICAL
NET ACROSS CANADA ON NEW ALBUM
By
Tom Murray, Freelance
MUSIC PREVIEW
You're not going to trap Tim Hus in any practical discussions
about where Hockeytown lies, so don't even try.
"This is Canada, so no matter where you are, it's
Hockeytown," explains the Calgary singer-songwriter,
deftly sidestepping all Flames vs. Oilers questions.
"It's one of the things that ties us together as
a nation." |
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Granted, it's not the most blazingly original of observations,
but then Hockeytown (the album) isn't hinging exclusively on
our favourite sport. Hus has been thinking a lot about the country
lately, unsurprising considering his loaded touring schedule
and the fact that much of it has been done in the company of
Stompin' Tom Connors, Hus's most obvious musical antecedent.
"I had an awful lot of late-night talks with
Tom while on tour with him," Hus admits. "He's a man
who's really seriously looked at Canada, and he sees a cultural
deficit, an identity crisis of sorts. He attributes it to the
fact that we never had a War of Independence the way that America
did, a turning point where we stood up and said who we were.
We've never made a defining stand about this, and Tom feels
it's his job to write songs that give people a sense of who
they are. It's important to him, and now it's become important
to me, as well."
Hus has always been a keen observer of the land in which he
lives, filling five albums' worth of detail on western Canadian
lore, both old and recent.
Tall tales, coal-mining songs, saloon ballads and long-haul
driving ditties are all sewn together with a regional-sounding
country-folk feel and a reportorial eye. On his second Stony
Plain Records release, though, he's thrown his lyrical net across
the nation, from the Pacific to the Atlantic ( North Atlantic
Trawler), with stops in Hamilton ( Hamilton Steel), Saskatchewan,
Manitoba and, of course, Alberta.
"Well, that's just it. I was always writing about what
was familiar to me, but now I'm trying to get more in. I like
Tom's philosophy; it gives me fresh purpose."
Hugging the line between country and folk music has allowed
Hus to escape the bland, overproduced prison that comes from
embracing Nashville, but it also gives him an opportunity to
speak on behalf of people left out by the ever-narrowing shift
in music. If the hot country pop tart of the moment represents
glitz, success and money to listeners, Hus is more about celebrating
the identity of the people who buy his albums. Small things
-- the small town where they grew up, their trade, the roads
they travel every day of their lives.
"A fan once came up to me and said, 'You know that feeling
you get when your name is in the paper?' I know what he means,
because for your average person, seeing your name in the paper
is kinda cool. Your friends call you up, your parents clip the
article out and post it on the fridge. It's a big deal. Well,
this guy said that when he hears a song that I wrote about where
he lives, or what he does for a living, it legitimatizes it
for him. It makes him feel good. Well, I mean, how could I ask
for more than that from what I do for a living?"
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