Category: country music

Article content

Lisa Brokop is bringing Christmas home to Canada.

Article content

This week, the Nashville-based country singer kicked off her western Canadian tour of A Classic Country Christmas. The tour will make six stops in Alberta and British Columbia including one right here in Spruce Grove at Horizon Stage on Sunday, Nov. 27.

“I’m excited. I’ve always wanted to do a solo Christmas tour and Horizon Stage is actually one of my favourite stages. The people who come are always so welcoming so I think it’s going to be a lot of fun,” said Brokop.

Inspired by the success of her show, Legendary Ladies of Country, featuring the songs of some of the greatest female country singers of the 20th century, A Classic Country Christmas similarly consists of Christmas favourites such as “O Holy Night,” “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem,” “Christmas Time’s a Comin’,” and “Shake Me I Rattle (Squeeze Me I Cry).”

Article content

Born in Surrey, B.C., Brokop grew up in a musical family with parents who valued country music above all else. As a child, she sang in the family band, before joining her first touring act at the age of 15. In 1990, at 16, she began her solo career with the release of her first single, “Daddy, Sing to Me,” written by Ron Irving. By 19, she was signed to Capitol Records and permanently relocated to Nashville, Tenn.

“I don’t remember ever not having the desire to go to Nashville to make a living in music. I didn’t really ever want to be anything else. It was a calling that I felt pretty early on. I knew Nashville was where many of the famous country music singers went so that’s where I wanted to go and try to become a success,” said Brokop.

Article content

Over the next three years, she released two critically acclaimed albums, Every Little Girls Dream (1994) and self-titled Lisa Brokop (1996) which together garnered hits such as “Give Me a Ring Sometime,” “Take That,” “Before He Kissed Me,” and “She Can’t Save Him.” The former was certified gold in Canada for selling over 40,000 copies. In 1995, Brokop was nominated for Top New Female Vocalist by the prestigious Academy of Country Music in the United States.

In 1998, she signed with Sony Nashville/Columbia Records and released her fourth studio album, When You Get To Be You featuring the hit singles “What’s Not To Love,” “How Do I Let Go,” and the top-10 Canadian hit, “Better Off Broken” — her highest charting single to date (No. 8). Since then, she has released three more studio albums, Undeniable (2000), Hey, Do You Know Me (2005), and Beautiful Tragedy (2008).

Article content

“I think the simplicity and the storytelling of country music are what still draw me to it today. The roots of my sound have always been fairly traditional even the many of the songs I had on the radio in the 1990s were contemporary,” said Brokop.

While her gold record is admittedly her proudest achievement, she said her career has been dotted with other memorable moments such as opening for Alan Jackson in front of 18,000 people and performing at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville — the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974. She said knowing every one of her heroes from Kenny Rogers to Anne Murray had stood on the same stage was an incredible feeling.

In recent years, she has turned her focus to writing and touring productions such as Legendary Ladies of Country, The Patsy Cline Project, and most recently, A Classic Country Christmas. She said these projects are a way for her to honour the artists who paved the way for her own career as well as perform some of her favourite songs written by others. Initially, A Classic Country Christmas was supposed to debut in 2020 but the pandemic has delayed its touring until now.

Article content

“It’s been fun getting into the Christmas spirit a little early as I’ve been rehearsing for the shows. I think this is going to be a chance for people to experience warmth, joy, and laughter and remember the reason for the season,” said Brokop.

In addition to Spruce Grove, the tour will make stops in Bassano, Alta., Camrose, Alta., Courtenay, B.C., Coquitlam, B.C., and Chilliwack., B.C. The 90-minute performance will include two 45-minute sets and feature a four-piece band (including Brokop) of piano, bass, and guitar.

The show will start at 7:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased via horizonstage.com.

“It’s going to be a blast. I’m hoping everyone will be able to put aside their troubles for a night and just enjoy some fun music and get into the Christmas spirit,” said Brokop.

rhowell@postmedia.com

https://twitter.com/rudyhowellrepex

Share this article in your social network

In a scene in the 2018 documentary From Hull to Heatongrad, Paul Heaton stands in a bedroom of his house in south Manchester and goes on an only-joking-but-not-really rant about his lack of recognition from the music industry. He points at the wall, the only awards on his shelf are for amateur football (“player of the year, Marsh United 1980-81”). “I’ve got nowt for music,” he says. “Give me something! And it’s got to be for best songwriter. Just putting it out there. Or best song. Oh I’m joking,” he continues. “I’d take anything”.

The public gave him enormous recognition long ago: forming in Hull when Heaton was on the dole, The Housemartins had huge hits in the 80s with “Happy Hour” and yuletide number one “Caravan of Love”. And after their debut single “Song for Whoever” reached number two in 1988, you were only ever the flick of a radio switch away from hearing The Beautiful South’s 90’s soul-pop hits like “Rotterdam (or Anywhere)” and “Perfect 10” – it was once estimated that one in seven households in the country owned a Beautiful South record.

This year, though, he finally got that new trinket: Heaton was awarded an Ivor Novello for Outstanding Song Collection. It was just acknowledgment for a brilliantly consistent songwriter who mixes lyrical wit and bite with the sort of melodies that you can’t get out of your head. So how did he feel?

“I was incredibly grateful,” he says, “but I’ve been sarcastic about how late it came. Even the wording, it’s like some goofy thing – ‘songwriting collection’ is like the ‘most improved player’ trophy,” he says, laughing. “Someone that hasn’t scored a goal and has been on the bench for the whole season but they’re the only one who’s not been given anything yet.”

Still, it was something of a belated correction for the way The Beautiful South – never a critics favourite – have been somewhat airbrushed out of the 90s music story. “It feels a little bit like history’s been rewritten,” Heaton says. “We’d never be in one of those 200 best albums of the 90s lists. But we didn’t particularly sound or look like bands that you associate with the 90s. And it can be quite helpful not to have a sound that dated. It can be limiting if you sound like a band from the 90s. It’s though you’re doing a permanent revival”.

It’s turned out to be quite a year for Heaton. Last month his fifth album with former Beautiful South singer Jacqui Abbott, N.K-Pop, followed 2020’s Manchester Calling in reaching number one. Full of exuberant, Heatonian pop-rock and soul, it has capped a successful decade’s reunion with Abbott, who left The Beautiful South seven years before they split in 2007. “And it wasn’t necessarily my idea either,” Heaton says. “But it was a great idea. I was worried we’d be associated with the past, that singing again with Jacqui might just sound like a Beautiful South tribute”. He says the initial reaction to new songs made him feel more comfortable with the idea. “It can still be a challenge working with Jacqui, as she can’t always turn up (Abbott’s son is severely autistic). But it’s been brilliant”.

N.K-Pop shows age has not taken away Heaton’s edge: it deals with love and loss (including his mother’s death), but also politics, extremism and nationhood. Handing over his Ivor Novello, broadcaster Stuart Maconie said Heaton had two aims in life: to write the perfect pop song, and to overthrow the state. Heaton laughs in half-agreement: raised in Sheffield and then Surrey, he was politicised by Arthur Scargill and the miners’ strike, and calls himself “a more old-school political animal on the left” (in the 90s he didn’t vote for Tony Blair, but the Socialist Labour Party). “So I’m more about overthrowing the power in this country. That includes part of the state, but also the monarchy, House of Lords and probably House of Commons. And police, obviously”.

New song “Sunny Side Up” rails against the media landscape turning people to extremism. I suggest it’s often his generation that has proved suspectable to this rhetoric. “I know a lot of people my age who I used to go to the pub with and none of them were interested in politics. I’d say now out of 40, 20 of them have been radicalised on Brexit, on immigration, etc. They’re not nasty pieces of work at all most of them. I would still be able to sit down and have a good chat. But if you look at their social media stuff, which I try not to do, it’s all very familiar right-wing stuff. It seems like a gradual slide into it. I think a lot of people were reading stuff in lockdown. At the heart of it I think people are just pissed off with everything. But I think you can convert these people to a positive course. There hasn’t been anyone yet who has said: ‘Let’s take hold of Brexit and turn it into something left wing.’”

Heaton turned 60 in May, “a nice time to be alive”. To celebrate, he placed £1,000 behind the bar at 60 of his favourite pubs across the country so people could have a drink on him. A formerly heavy drinker (“I drink far less these days, previously it was part of the day”), pub culture has been a central theme to Heaton’s life and work. It’s how he writes – like previous albums, N.K-Pop was written while drinking on holiday abroad – and some of his best songs, such as “Happy Hour” and “Old Red Eyes is Back”, deal with the highs and lows of boozing.

He’s owned a pub, The Kings Arms in Salford, and for his 50^th birthday underwent a pub tour, cycling 2,500 miles over 40 days. “I suppose it’s microcosm of society, isn’t it? A pub is a weird mix of characters that you wouldn’t get anywhere else. And people are quite frank in the pub. I like that.”

He says the birthday gesture was a way to show appreciation to the people who’ve supported his career. He was taken aback by the reaction: he was inundated with photos and videos; on a BBC News report, one guy called the event “an alternative Jubilee”. “I suppose we live in an era of greed, so it was nice to get everyone in the pub.”

This is typical of Heaton, who we can safely chalk up as one of the good guys. Recently, he’s played free gigs for NHS staff; when music monthly Q Magazine closed, he donated £35,000 to the editors and staff; in 2017 he offered to nationalise his back catalogue, but was rebuffed by then Conservative Business Secretary Greg Clark. “I thought it was a good idea. You could quite easily take the royalties and run an adult learning centre”. It’s easy to imagine a host of other secret acts of kindness, similar to George Michael.

On their upcoming winter tour, Heaton and Abbott have kept ticket prices capped at a noble £30, an act to combat what he previously called “industry greed” amid the cost of living crisis. The price is a snip compared to other major artists, and the gesture has gone down well with his fanbase and beyond. Today, though, he seems slightly uneasy about it.

“In retrospect, it looks a bit silly,” he says. “But it wasn’t meant to undercut people, it was meant to show it can be done. It does seem people are unhappy with their favourite bands over ticket prices. But I didn’t even think of other bands when we set price. And look, we’ll still make a profit on the tour. We’re just reducing the profit that we’d make.”

Heaton seems remarkably unmoved by money and success: he lives a modest, neighbourly existence with his wife in a terraced house in Withington, Manchester. “I’m determined that money won’t rule my decisions. Because money is controlling, and it’s incredibly discomforting for some people. And it can be for me. So I try not to let it control me. So what probably comes across as socialist, is I actually get quite angry about how much I’m paid, and think I want to do something about it. And what I do is try to make other people happy with what I’ve received. It sounds a bit corny and cliched. But it’s a more positive thought about what you can do with your money.”

The relative anonymity suits him. “I’m more famous for my songs than I am facially. I probably could have walked into a few of those pubs and sat down and had a drink and wouldn’t have got noticed,” he says. “And that’s how I like it.”

Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott tour from 26 November. For more details: paulheaton.co.uk

It’s a tradition as tried and true as grandma’s pumpkin pie. Every year on Thanksgiving Day, a football team has to make the worst possible pick for a halftime performer from the dregs of pop country, and embarrass country music on a national stage like your drunk uncle going on a racist tirade in front of your fiance.

This year off of their shameful 40-3 loss against the Dallas Cowboys, the Minnesota Vikings have chosen Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line to be the halftime performer for the NFL’s primetime Thanksgiving Day game.

The only thing more low rent than booking Florida Georgia Line for your halftime show is booking half of Florida Georgia Line for your halftime show. But of course the Vikings had no other choice if they wanted to book Florida Georgia Line since the duo officially broke up earlier this year amid plummeting interest in their tired Bro-Country shtick.

Minnesota Vikings fans took to social media to blow raspberries at the decision of course, because it’s not 2013 anymore, and most people have awoken to just how horrible Bro-Country is, while a whole slew of fans were left befuddled because barely anybody knew the specific names for the Florida Georgia Line dudes anyway. “Is he Florida, or Georgia?” was a common refrain. Tyler Hubbard is Georgia, incidentally.

Truth is, Tyler Hubbard’s solo stuff probably isn’t as terrible as Florida Georgia Line was, but when you’re at rock bottom, it’s not hard to improve. Still, couldn’t they find a better performer than the leftovers of country music’s Bro phase? Here in 2022, you have a bunch of newer country artists that are way more popular than one half of Florida Georgia Line. A look at the charts, and you can see that even more independent artists like Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers surpass the popularity of Tyler Hubbard.

Don’t be surprised if in the coming years, we don’t see artists like Tyler Childers, Zach Bryan, the Turnpike Troubadours, Billy Strings, Cody Jinks, and others playing these kinds of performances. After all, they’re all now graduating to the area level of popularity, while Tyler Hubbard is out there pulling opening duty for Keith Urban.

It’s a new day in country music, and institutions like the NFL should take notice. It’s time to start giving artists from the more independent side of country music a fair shot at these opportunities. After all, don’t you think fans might dig something they may not know about more than something they already know sucks?

According to traditional accounts, the soon-to-be-emperor Dom Pedro declared Brazilian independence beside the Ipiranga River on Sept. 7, 1822. A palace-like monument, built to commemorate the moment, eventually became the Ipiranga Museum. The museum closed in 2013 for repairs and just reopened on Brazil’s bicentennial (Sept. 7). The exhibits are often contrarian, taking a sharply critical view of the way history is traditionally taught, down to the explanation of the 19th-century painter Pedro Américo’s room-size painting “Independence or Death,” which depicts the moment when Dom Pedro, on horseback, declared independence from Portugal. Exhibits range from household items and historic photos to a sound-and-light show projected onto a scale model replica of São Paulo in 1841. Free entry until Dec. 6, then 30 reais.

Adam Hood never assumed he would play the Grand Ole Opry.

“I mean, it’s always your dream,” explains Hood, 47, during an interview with PEOPLE. “It’s always what you want to do. For anybody that’s an artist or a writer or anything that’s in that realm, it’s definitely the pinnacle. I just didn’t know that it was in our scope.”

Actually, the acclaimed singer/songwriter still can’t believe it.

“I think I am still processing it,” he explains of his Opry debut last month. “I honestly thought it would be a little bit more chaotic than it was. It was a pretty well-oiled machine! I mean, I was as nervous as you would’ve expected me to be, but after the sound check, I really relaxed.”

His composure continued through his two-song set in which Hood performed two original songs – “Way Too Long” off his 2014 album Welcome to the Big World and “Harder Stuff” off his latest record, Bad Days Better.

“I tried to pick out the songs that had the least amount of cuss words in them,” he laughs of the special night that had him playing on the same night as Opry members Darius Rucker, Bill Anderson, Jeannie Seely, Lauren Alaina and Dustin Lynch. “I had to watch myself.”

Granted, Hood had countless songs to pick from, as he has served as the writer for a slew of songs recorded by artists such as Miranda Lambert, Cody Jinks, Ashland Craft, Drake White, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Little Big Town.

“I’ve seen Little Big Town do ‘Front Porch Thing’ onstage at the Opry,” Hood remarks of the song he co-wrote alongside Chris Stapleton for the group’s platinum album, Tornado.

But these days and at this point in his career, Hood says he is enjoying keeping some more songs to himself, some of which have now found their way to his new album Bad Days Better, which peaked in the top 10 on the Americana albums chart.

“You can have so many expectations for what you want the record to be going into it, but then it’s always fascinating me what the record turns into as opposed to how it starts,” Hood says of his fifth studio album released in September. “But I just think we went deeper with this record.”

Collaborating once again with producer extraordinaire Brent Cobb, Hood eventually nailed the album concept down to just what he does best.

“I think in the past, I have approached albums by making them more like a songwriter’s record, which is cool and it’s fun, but this was more like a stylistic record,” says Hood, who recorded the entirety of the rootsy record at Capricorn Studios. “We tried to shoot for songs that had the lyrical content that is to be expected, but also stuff that had deep roots. I wanted it to be as musically representative of what I do as opposed to just lyrically representative.”

ECOMM:I Find the Best Deals on Amazon for a Living — Here Are 7 Holiday Gifts I’m Shopping Before Black Friday

And to do that, Hood found himself reflecting on his upbringing in Opelika, Alabama, where he started playing hometown shows as a 16-year-old, landing a weekly residency at a local restaurant playing songs by the likes of John Hiatt, Steve Warner, Hank Williams Jr, and Vince Gill.

“I wanted to be able to shed positive light on my upbringing and things like that,” explains Hood, who is said to have been discovered by Lambert after her van broke down, which led to a publishing deal in Nashville. “I think ‘the South’ gets a little bit of a bad rap sometimes. I know everybody points a finger at somebody else, but there’s a lot to be celebrated in Alabama, and there’s a lot to be proud of. It’s a product of my influence, so that’s what I really wanted to bring out without saying it. It’s really easy to piss people off these days.”

He draws in a deep breath.

“I’m not trying to tell you how you feel,” the father of three continues. “You are allowed to interpret this however you want to, but here’s how I’m saying it. That’s the beauty of being a songwriter.”