Lund hoping to strike Oil

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This article was published 29/10/2009 (6181 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CORB Lund isn’t home enough to catch many Edmonton Oilers games.

The hard-touring country artist is on the road most of the year, but still follows his hometown team and catches games when he can.

He’s hoping to get into some for free now after penning a theme song for the Oilers — The Oil’s Back in Town — set to his song Roughest Neck Around.

"They play it before the games on the radio over the highlights of the previous game. I just love the Oilers; that’s what inspired me," he says, adding he didn’t get paid for the song, but would take a pair of season tickets if offered.

"I’d like it pro-rated over years," he says.

With 41 home games a season, not including pre-season and playoffs, Lund would probably have to take the tickets over a decade or so to get his full allotment.

Lund and his band the Hurtin’ Albertans — Winnipeg multi-instrumentalist Grant Siemens, bassist Kurt Ciesla and drummer Brady Valgardson — are on the road most of the year, travelling all over the world spreading their distinctive Canadiana. They visit the Burton Cummings Theatre Saturday (tickets are $19.50 and $27.50 at Ticketmaster).

The band is touring in support of Lund’s new album Losin’ Lately Gambler, the Juno Award-winner’s sixth solo effort, but first to get widespread distribution in the United States thanks to his new deal with New West Records, home to the likes of Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam and Kris Kristofferson.

For his American debut, Lund didn’t change his writing style to placate any potential new audience: Losin’ Lately Gambler is filled with Canadian references from chinooks to his dad’s veterinary background. He even touches on politics on This is My Prairie, which deals with oil corporations buying up land and poisoning the water.

"That’s based on real stuff. There’s a lot of tension building in Alberta between the landowners and the gas-oil people. My mom’s in a landowners group in Alberta; we’ve had family land there for 110 years. The corporations don’t (care), they just tear up the land and leave. We’re all hypocrites, I drive a van that burns gas, but it would be nice to look back in 50 years and think that we didn’t rip up every area of the province," Lund says.

The new album is a return to Lund’s core rootsy sound, which he deviated from on the military-themed 2007 album Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!

"None of them are conscious. I just write whatever turns my crank at the time. I didn’t set out to write an album about military history, it just turned out that way," he says.

With six albums under his belt buckle, Lund is having a harder time making a set list, so his band has to be on the ball; he doesn’t write one out ahead of time and just calls songs out as the show goes on. He has specific hand signals he gives to Siemens so the Winnipegger knows which instrument to play and how to tune it.

"Grant brought a whole other dimension to the band. We played as a three-piece for years and he was the perfect piece of the puzzle at the time. Everything he plays sounds like something from 1968: His tone and choice of licks are timeless," Lund says of Siemens, who joined the band seven years ago and inspired the band’s current onstage look.

When the group played here last year, Siemens wore a purple suit made by local designer Rebecca Nelson. Lund and the band liked it so much they got Nelson to make suits for everyone, which they will wear during their Halloween show.

"We’ll be dressed up as a hipster country band," Lund says.