The Cowboy’s Cowboy A Canadian sings about the life — not just the lifestyle — of the new West BY MARTY DEMAREST
“W
Corb Lund
hat’s a cowboy?” Corb Lund asks. “The word cowboy gets thrown around so carelessly these days, it’s offensive and an affront to the culture sometimes. So I’m awfully gun-shy about going around saying I’m a cowboy when there are guys out there still working cattle for a living.” So allow me (somebody who is actually “working cattle for a living”) to make a judgment call: Corb Lund is a cowboy. I know this because Corb’s grandpa and my grandpa raised hell together on the same Rocky Mountain prairies. Our dads climbed onto the same string of broncs in the summer rodeos. And even though Corb now leads a cattle-free life in an oil-rich Canadian metropolis, I usually see him with a guitar slung around his neck, standing onstage, testifying to a Western heritage that nobody but us cowboys can own. “I grew up in the country,” Corb explains over the phone. “Both grandpas had family ranches, I can ride, sort cattle, I used to rodeo and I’m a really shitty roper. But I don’t do any of that now, I just sing about it.” Just singing about it, of course, is a big part of the cowboy tradition — one that Corb has turned into his own brand of success. His music is a sort of highbrow honky-tonk, boom-chicka-boom country disco that Corb has failed to define but which has earned him a Juno award, a shelf of Canadian Country Music awards, not to mention an Americana Music Association “Emerging Artist” nomination for his sixth album. His most recent release, Cabin Fever, has drawn raves from the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post. And what they praise him for isn’t his ...continued on next page
MAY 16, 2013 INLANDER 41