Rising stars

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This article was published 12/09/2010 (5813 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If there’s one thing you can say about this year’s candidates for the Canadian Country Music Association’s Rising Star Award, it’s that none lacks a work ethic.

Chad Brownlee’s path from hockey prospect for the Vancouver Canucks to mainstage performer at the Big Valley Jamboree is certainly impressive, as is his success with the song, Hood of My Car.

Former Canadian Idol runner-up Jaydee Bixby has been shuttling between Vancouver and Nashville while working two albums in three years, Cowboys and Cadillacs and 2010’s Easy to Love, which gave him a Top 20 hit with Boy Inside the Man.

Meanwhile, the two British Columbia sisters who make up One More Girl have squeezed a couple of Top 10s (When It Ain’t Rainin’, Tumblin’ Tears) and one Top 20 hit (I Can Love Anyone) out of their 2009 album Big Sky.

St. Albert, Alta.’s Marlee Scott is living in Nashville, where she’s spent the last three years working on her career with Big Ride Entertainment. Her self-titled debut did respectably in 2008 after an effort three years earlier on 306 Records (Souvenir). She has spent part of this summer assembling songs for her upcoming, yet-to-be-titled third album.

“You listen to a thousand songs until you find a few that are a little more edgy,” she says. “That’s the thing about the business; everyone wants you to be different but still in the box.”

St. Albert is a long way away from Tennessee, but it’s even farther from the hamlet of La Crete, Alta., to Music City. The three brothers who make up High Valley have made that trip so many times, they don’t even think about it anymore.

“If you get to the border of Canada, that’s only halfway to La Crete,” says Brad Rempel, lead vocalist and eldest of the brothers, who have been compared to the band Alabama because of their remarkable, three-part harmonies.

“It’s about as far north in Alberta as you can get.”

Rempel has no problem with touring small towns, partly because any small town looks sizable compared to where he was born, but also because he simply enjoys the feeling of being an important part of an evening there.

“You get out there and you could be the biggest band that ever hit the place. You’re treated really nicely. That being said, to play an awards show like we’ll be doing in Edmonton is ridiculously exciting, and to play at the home of the Oilers is crazy.”

The Rising Star Award is one of eight awards that will be handed out Sunday night at Edmonton’s Rexall Place. The CCMA Awards show will be broadcast live by CBC at 7 p.m.

— Postmedia News