A country artist of many influences

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This article was published 12/05/2017 (3415 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mixing country and rap always feels like a strange and confusing decision, yet many collaborations of the two genres have been massively successful.

Rapper Nelly and country superstar Tim McGraw had a huge hit with the track Over and Over. More recently, there was the remix of the song Cruise, which also featured Nelly, this time working with Florida Georgia Line. The song was deemed the Hot Country Songs chart’s all-time No. 1 by Billboard in 2016.

Snoop Dogg also took a dip into the country world, performing Superman with Willie Nelson, a weirdly endearing track about their mutual love of marijuana.

And now, Canadian country star Dean Brody, who performs at the MTS Centre Friday night, has added himself to that list with his latest album, Beautiful Freakshow. His record features not only rap, but reggae- and rock-influenced songs among its more classic country tracks.

“I feel really good about it,” Brody says. “I was a little bit nervous about releasing this record because it is a conglomerate of a bunch of different influences that I just kind of ran with — that’s one of the reasons we chose Beautiful Freakshow as the title for the record, because it kind of is an odd pairing.”

Genre-hopping is something that comes naturally to the 41-year-old Brody, however — his eclectic taste developed as a young child, as he says his local AM radio station wasn’t genre-specific; they’d hop from Anne Murray to AC/DC and play everything in between.

“I think I was 14 before I realized there was actual genres out there,” he says, laughing.

“But you know, having said all that, the lyrics (on Beautiful Freakshow) I feel are still country. Like Beautiful Girl is about going out to the country, and even Beautiful Freakshow, it’s about this country boy and love crossing boundaries and the imaginary borders we have around cultures or socio-economic levels of society.”

The title track features Shevy Price, an MC out of Nova Scotia (where Brody now lives with his family) who was suggested to Brody because of her raw style and the authentic storytelling abilities.

Also because the idea of him, or really any country artist, rapping is something he deems “a little awkward.”

“If you go and listen to her work it’s like, it’s very edgy and real and really anti-commercial,” Brody says of Price.

“I think she was hesitant at first because country music is commercial — it’s not your underground scene, it’s a popular scene — so she was a little hesitant until she heard the song and was like, ‘Oh man, I’d love to, whatever you need,’ and I came up with these cool parts and went to her studio and work with her. It was really cool hanging out with her crowd, it was kind of like the song — really wild.”

But the song that is grabbing his fans’ attention most is the heartstring-pulling ballad Time, a song about making of the most of the time you have with those you love.

The premise alone is enough to get an especially sentimental person going, but paired with the comparatively sparse arrangement and a video that visualizes some of the more emotional lyrics, it’s a direct route to tear-town.

“It was a song that I actually submitted to my producer Matt, I think the last song… I kind of didn’t think it would be much simply because it was so ‘country,’ but he was like, ‘Man this is great’ and played it for his daughter and she cried. And she’s 15, so we thought maybe it was something, maybe it’s not just us that love this song,” he says.

“It really resonated and people have been sharing their stories. I only get a few… actual letters and stuff, but people are saying the song really helped — some of it was sad, saying they wished they spent more time with their kids when they were at home, but other ones say the song makes them want to enjoy today and not always live for tomorrow.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel