Corb Lund excited for ‘homecoming’ Stampede show

By Chris Brown on July 20, 2018.

cbrown@medicinehatnews.com @MHNBrown

Medicine Hat and the Medicine Hat Exhibition & Stampede hold a special place in Corb Lund’s heart.

Growing up just outside of Taber it was a short drive from the family home to the Gas City. Back in the day Lund and his father competed in the Stampede here and Corb is pretty sure he’s still got a memento stored away somewhere.

“I was a junior steer rider when I was 13 or something,” he recalled last week. “I think I was second place. I’ve still got the stub some somewhere because I’m a nerd.”

Lund said he’s going to try to find the stub and share it with his fans on social media.

While Lund has performed in Medicine Hat before, July 25 will be his first Stampede show. He’s playing Wild West Wednesday with High Valley. He’s excited to make his Medicine Hat Stampede debut, saying shows in this part of the world are always like a homecoming show for him.

“It’s fun playing this stuff all over but it’s especially cool playing this area where people know what I’m singing about,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of specific stuff in the tunes about southern Alberta, family history and that kind of thing. They get all the references.”

Lund plays all across the world, from small Alberta towns to The Big Apple. Oozing cowboy, rancher, rodeo and all things “Western,” Lund is still able to connect with any audience. And boy can they be different.

He describes the crowds at his urban shows as “Steve Earle and John Prine songwriter fans”. When he’s in the rural areas he says the crowds are agricultural people who get what he’s singing about.

“There’s difference factions of my audience from different backgrounds,” he said. “I like that. I think it’s cool when you can get people to mix together.”

He said not everybody at the shows always gets all the western talk and themes in the songs, but they do appreciate it and find it interesting. That comes down to the authenticity in the songwriting.

“No matter what your background us whether it’s western or urban or whatever I think if you’re honest about your own experience and write about it people will find the universality in it,” he explains, adding corporate radio misses the boat trying to reach all of the people all the time.

“They try to make it deliberately generic so it doesn’t offend anybody but you lose all the authenticity,” he said. “I think it’s important to sing and write about what you know and what your personal experience has been and then, no matter how different it is for somebody else, if you’re honest about it the universality shines through. I always tell people that when I was into Bruce Springsteen as kid. He was from the New Jersey slums and he was singing about that it was totally alien to me but I still got it because he was a good songwriter.”

Lund is writing music for a new album now. He’s hoping to be in the studio recording late this year or early next.

About a month after the Stampede show Lund and fellow Albertan Ian Tyson will perform at Drumheller’s Badlands Amphitheatre. An Evening of Cowboy Songs and Stories happens Aug. 25.

“It’s going to be awesome,” he said. “We sort of swap songs and share stories, sing harmony on each other’s stuff. He’s doing good for 84, still singing and riding.”

Tickets for the Stampede show start at $69 and are available online at mhstampede.com, by calling 403-527-1234 or 1-888-MHRODEO and in person at the Stampede office, the Medicine Hat Mall customer service desk or the Grandstand box office at show time.

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