Corb Lund

As the dust settles on Canada’s annual Country Music Awards which were held in Saint John, New Brunswick, the big winners on the night, Corb Lund and the Hurtin’ Albertans, are celebrating with a coast to coast tour across Canada.

Picking up Album of the Year for “Hair In My Eyes Like A Highland Steer” and Roots Artist of The Year, Corb’s album also picked up a gong for Album Design of the Year.

These awards top off a roller coaster ride for Corb and the band over the last two years during which time he has picked up a swag of awards and both his albums “Five Dollar Bill” and “Hair In My Eyes Like A Highland Steer” have achieved gold sales in the Canadian market.
Corb has also been nominated for 4 Western Canadian Music Awards (to be announced shortly) in the following categories – Entertainer of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Outstanding Independent Recording, Outstanding Roots Recording.
His most recent album is now set for release in the USA this month which will be supported by a major tour.

Corb and the boys have spent the last two years touring the world and his most recent Australian appearance was at the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival in March this year where he played to an appreciative audience.

Corb’s next Australian single “Counterfeiters’ Blues” will be released in October with a great video which is sure to appeal to all his Country Music Channel fans. Corb’s last video, “Hair In My Eyes Like a Highland Steer” recently spent 2 weeks in the No.1 spot on the CMC chart.

Corb has a very strong fan base in Australia and he will head back on tour in the first quarter of 2007.

CORB LUND RIDING HIGH WITH TWO GOLD ALBUMS IN CANADA AND MAKING GREAT STRIDES DOWNUNDER

What a Year it's Been for Canada's favorite cowboy! His latest album Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer as well as his previous album Five Dollar Bill just hit the Gold mark in Canada, an achievement no doubt thrilling for an artist whose list of accolades this year is longer than The Lone Ranger's lasso!

First there was Roots Artist/Group of the Year and Independent Group of the Year at the CCMAs, then Favourite Folk Artist/Group at the Indie Awards, followed by Entertainer of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards, THEN Roots and Traditional Album of the Year at the 2006 JUNO AWARDS.

Corb's latest single 'Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer' (which is included on Vital Entertainment’s latest radio sampler) is picking up airplay all over Australia. The video was “Country Pick” on the Country Music Channel this week and is proving a big hit with Corb’s many Australian fans.

A crowd favourite at this year’s Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival, Corb is already planning a return tour to Australia in the first quarter of 2007.

Corb is currently on a major tour of Canada before setting some time aside to write for his new album which will be released early next year.
Corb current albums: VES0002 FIVE DOLLAR BILL

VES0007 HAIR IN MY EYES LIKE A HIGHLAND STEER
For further information please contact Vital Entertainment Solutions
Phone: 02 9712 2046 Email: vitalentertainment@gmail com

CORB LUND FINISHES WORLD TOUR AND FLYS BACK TO CANADA FOR THE OPENING OF THE HORROR-FLICK “SLITHER”

Amid achieving international success as a musician, Canada’s very own Juno award-winning Corb Lund is making his way onto the silver screen as well. The Edmonton-based country roots artist makes his film debut in the Universal Pictures horror-flick, Slither.

From James Gunn, the man who brought us “Dawn of the Dead” comes a Bright Light Pictures production set in Wheelsy, South Carolina, following the misadventures of town citizen Grant Grant and his alien encounters. Corb Lund and the Hurtin’ Albertans make a performance appearance at the celebration of the first day of hunting season playing, of course, the performing band members. “Slither” has received some great reviews in Australia and is a “must” for all who love the gross, gooey and gory!

Corb has just completed a world tour which included a string of dates in the U.K and Europe and a six day tour of Australia to promote his latest album “Hair In My Eyes Like a Highland Steer” which included an appearance at Byron Bay’s prestigious Blues and Roots Festival.

Vital Entertainment Solutions will shortly be issuing Corb’s second single from the album which is the title track “Hair in My Eyes Like A Highland Steer” which has a brilliant video clip to accompany it. Corb has a strong following in Australia and is a firm favourite on The Country Music Channel.
For further information please call Ronda Toner
ph:02 9798 8824 mob:0408 704 345
rtoner@bigpond.net.au
Meryl Gross
Vital Entertainment Solutions
P.O. Box 513
DRUMMOYNE 1470 NSW AUSTRALIA
PH: 02 9712 2046
MB: 0408 971 220
Photos below -Harrigans Irish Pub Pokolbin Hunter Valley NSW
16th April 2006 (Easter Sunday)

Corb Lund bridges town and country - Canadian Press. Bob Weber, EDMONTON

Corb Lund, Alberta's western music renegade, stumbles a bit at first trying to explain the title of his much-anticipated new album.

Then he starts to talk about how his grandfather used to raise Highlands -- known for the distinctive topknot that droops over their eyes -- back on the family ranch near Taber in southern Alberta.

Then he recalls his own long-hair days as a member of the Smalls, the punk band he helped front during the '90s. And it all starts to make a kind of sense.

"I thought (that title) was kind of cool. It spans the gap. It kind of refers to my rock 'n' roll past, and any reference to cattle has an obvious western element to it. I thought it tied in rather nicely."

Spanning gaps between town and country is a big part of what Lund is all about. His weathered old pickup wouldn't look out of place in any cattle town, but its bumper sticker -- I Brake for Goth Chicks -- is distinctly urban.

"My stuff has one foot in a real old-fashioned cowboy place but it's also got a foot in sort of a modern era," says Lund, on the eve of a six-week national tour.

"There's plenty of guys out there that write retro, chase-the-herd-down-the-dusty-trail kind of songs, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I'm more interested in the current state of that mode of life and that culture and how it's being crushed up against modern times and the ironies that it produces. "It's more interesting to me to examine what's going on now."

The new album follows up 2002's Five Dollar Bill -- which earned him Roots Group of Year from the Canadian Country Music Association -- and builds on that disc's offerings of sharply written story songs, jaunty western swingers and meditations on the life and landscape of cattle country.

Lund works hard to get things right. Mom and dad, who still run cattle in Taber, often vet his lyrics to make sure the descriptions and terms are authentic. Nothing's more important in the cowboy world than authenticity, he says.

"I've felt for a long time that there's a parallel between western music and (hip hop). Credibility in both of those worlds is very key.

"If you're in London, England, you can just put on a cowboy hat. But if you're singing in Longview, they can tell from the lyric if you're full of (expletive) or not."

Never fear. Hair in My Eyes offers the ultimate in cowboy cred -- duets with western icon Ian Tyson and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, known to pop historians as the living link between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.

His vocal pairing with Tyson on The Rodeo's Over comes off almost as a passing of the torch.

"I didn't write it as a duet," Lund says. "I just wrote it and then we started playing with it and it took on this other dimension almost like a generational thing."

Authenticity is also key to the underground music scene he was a part of in the Smalls, too.

"That whole scene rewards uniqueness and actively seeks it out," he says. "It's almost the opposite in mainstream country. It's very regulated and people are afraid to take chances."

Lund credits his indie seasoning for the character of his current albums. "Doing that has allowed me to come back to the western world on my own terms," he says. "If I hadn't done that, you wouldn't have an album like this."

As a result Lund's audience now includes both urban underground music fans and the rural listeners of country radio.

"We play a city like Calgary or Edmonton and half the audience is urban hipsters and for the other half, the cowboys show and the riggers are there and the odd aging punk rocker, and somebody brought their grandma.

"To have it come around full circle where all of a sudden my extended family and people in small towns get it, it's kind of neat. That's one of the things I'm most proud of, is the diversity of the audience, cause that speaks to the universality of the themes."

After all, everyone loves the cowboy ideal. Lund proves it with a story about how his dad, a onetime rodeo cowboy, once helped organize a rodeo in the African country of Zambia.

"It was 10 years after their independence and they wanted to have a Wild West show," says Lund. "They did a week of performances and they brought the house down. These Canadians could jump off a galloping horse and wrestle a steer and rope a calf and do all this crazy stuff with animals and the local guys would get bucked off.

"Then they noticed the Canadian guys had this can of stuff in their pocket that they would take a pinch of now and then. They were tribal people and they were convinced it was some kind of potion or magical dust that helped them control these animals.
"It was Copenhagen" -- the brand of smokeless tobacco.
CORB LUND – Voted Free Press Canada “Country album of the Year”
Hair In My Eyes Like A Highland Steer

Alberta’s Corb Lund makes traditional cowboy music that appeals equally to Great Grandpa and the college student with spiky hair. On his fourth album, Lund displays wit and charm as he explores ragtime, rockabilly, Waylon-style twangy rock and lowdown country blues along with pretty cowboy ballads – complete with Ian Tyson’s vocal blessings – and western swing.

Others may try, but no one else does it as engagingly or as infectiously. Buy two copies as you’ll be sure to wear one out
-Bruce Leperre

Coming from four generations of ranchers and cowboys, Corb Lund's songs are peppered with imagery of bronc riding, cattle ranching, oil rigging, card playing and bootlegging whiskey on horseback. Billboard Magazine described his writing as "a delight in the vein of the best honky-tonk recordings of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Jerry Jeff Walker but also influenced by the story-telling style of Marty Robbins, Ian Tyson, and Johnny Cash, the Corb Lund Band's third album oozes authenticity."

The Corb Lund Band has progressed into a blazing roots-country band fresh off record deals with revered labels Stony Plain Records of Canada and UK's Loose Music. The chameleonic Lund, who was for 12 years the leader of popular indie rock band The Smalls, is now a little bit country and a little bit rock 'n' roll. The band was recently nominated for four separate Canadian Industry Awards including Best Roots Group or Album at the Canadian JUNO Awards, CMW's Canadian Independent Music Awards, Canadian Country Music Awards (CCMAs) and the Western Canadian Music Awards (WCMAs) where the band was awarded "Outstanding Independent Album". The Corb Lund Band recently received another nod at the upcoming U.S. Independent Music Awards in New Jersey in the country/bluegrass category. Their new album, Five Dollar Bill, appeared on the Best of 2002 lists in Americana UK, Toronto's Exclaim! Magazine, Eye Magazine and The Globe and Mail, and reached an impressive #29 on the Americana Airplay Chart and #20 on the Roots Music Report Roots-Country Chart.
Rory Maloney
RM Management
0411 211 274

The Corb Lund Band has progressed into a blazing roots-country band fresh off record deals with revered labels Stony Plain Records of Canada and UK's Loose Music. The chameleonic Lund, who was for 12 years the leader of popular indie rock band The Smalls, is now a little bit country and a little bit rock 'n' roll. The band was recently nominated for a JUNO Award for Roots & Traditional Album of the year (Group) and for Folk Album of the Year at CMW's Canadian Independent Music Awards. Their new album, Five Dollar Bill, appeared on the Best of 2002 lists in Americana UK, Toronto's Exclaim! Magazine, Eye Magazine and The Globe and Mail, and was recently featured in Billboard Magazine.

About Corb:

Corb Lund is the singer and songwriter for the Corb Lund Band. As Corb puts it, he grew up 'in Southern Alberta, in the foothills
of the Rockies.' Corb's music gives the style of a younger and maybe darker point of view than most contemporary country songwriters today. His music is influenced by his experiences riding horseback, chasing cattle and rodeoing in Southern Alberta and living on the family farm and ranches near Taber, Cardston and Rosemary. Coming from four generations of ranchers and cowboys, Corb left his hometown of Taber and moved to Edmonton where he attended Grant MacEwan Performing Arts School to study jazz guitar and bass.

Corb was a founding member of Western Canada's independent phenomena, The Smalls, who during their twelve-year career, sold over 35,000 of their four independently released CDs. Corb and the smalls toured extensively in Canada, the US and Europe including a stint in Bosnia, Slovenia and Czech Republic. The band recently retired in the fall of 2001.

Needing time to reflect on the next phase of his career, Corb went to live in Austin, Texas to write music for five months. Encouraged by the positive feedback he received from audiences in Austin, the band traveled to Nashville and recorded a few songs with producer Harry Stinson (Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Earl Scruggs). Often asked if he had returned from Austin with new songs about Texas, Corb replies that it had the opposite effect on him…the proud and friendly Texans made him even more aware of the region from which he came. Many of the songs on the new CD reflect the people and culture of Alberta's wild rose cattle country; the northern reaches of the American west; the plains and foothills of the Rockies.

Achievements and Performance Highlights:

Five Dollar Bill has received rave reviews in entertainment magazines and newspaper publications including Billboard Magazine, Exclaim!, Globe and Mail, Penguin Eggs, Country Music News, Country Music People (UK), Eye Magazine, Canadian Rodeo News, BBC and the Yorkshire Post.

Five Dollar Bill is currently #51 on the American Radio Charts. The album reached an impressive #13 on the Canadian College and Community radio charts and is receiving rotation on a number of Canadian commercial country radio stations where the title-track was #1 for three weeks on the Top 5 at 5 on Red Deer's CKGY Country Radio. The single "Roughest Neck Around" was licensed to Big Mutha Truckers, a Sony Playstation and X-Box video game which will be released in early 2003 and also appears on the "Further Beyond Nashville" compilation CD.

The Corb Lund Band has a strong and loyal grass roots following in Canada where they play to solid crowds in various venues across the provinces. The band recently wrapped up a solid Canadian/U.S. tour highlighted by an enthusiastic 800+ crowd in Edmonton. The band also embarked on two U.K. tours in 2002 where they performed at Further Beyond Nashville, London's premier Americana Festival, the legendary Borderline venue and at the Canadian Consulate/ Embassy in Trafalagar Square.

Australian Countrymusic Newsonline
From Richard Drumdee Patterson in Canada
Email <cancountrynews@yahoo.com >
PO Box 988 Stn B Ottawa ON Canada K1P 5R1

Coming from four generations of ranchers and cowboys, Corb's songs are peppered with imagery of bronc riding, cattle ranching, oil rigging, card playing and bootlegging whiskey on horseback. Billboard Magazine described his writing as "a delight in the vein of the best honky-tonk recordings of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Jerry Jeff Walker but also influenced by the story-telling style of Marty Robbins, Ian Tyson, and Johnny Cash, the Corb Lund Band's third album oozes authenticity."