What's called "new country," a slick and soulless abomination of a traditional American music, has a widespread audience, no doubt. Some though, those folks who take their art and sounds more seriously, loathe with a passion new country and all of its big hat-no cattle façade.
"I hate it," says John Showman. "The attitude of it, the branding of it, the way it's marketed - it's not something I like."
A case in point, made firmly.
Showman sings and fiddles for New Country Rehab, the latest captivators on the Toronto roots scene. While Nashville new guards Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum and Zac Brown were charting high and predictably in 2010, Showman and NCR were recording its animated self-titled debut - out this week - and building up a live following with spinning, spark-heeled appearances at local music parlours.
Showman, a serious but good-natured 39-year-old, sat down at a downtown café to speak about his new adventures in bluegrass. New Country Rehab formed casually enough - Showman was looking for a trio that allowed him so sing more than he did with his other groups Creaking Tree String Quartet and the Foggy Hogtown Boys - but quickly outgrew its modest beginnings.
"We started getting a reaction," Showman says, referring to small, weekly crowds at the now defunct Troubadour pub. "People liked it. I came to realize it could be more than just me singing on a Tuesday night."
The original trio added a double bassist (Ben Whitley, of the Canadian folk-family Whitleys), giving the ensemble a busier bottom end. The material is a mix of excited, inventive traditionals and Hank Williams covers ( Ramblin' Man, The Log Train and Mind Your Own Business) and meaty originals written by Showman and the bubble-bursting guitarist Champagne James Robertson.
The quartet's energy and experimentation is a result of players working within new musical roles. The creatively restless Robertson, who adds his ingenuity to Elvis Bossa Nova and also sides with jazz bassist Brandi Disterheft, dropped his electric guitar to use an effects-laden, pawn-shopped acoustic one for NCR. Roman Tome, normally a percussionist, takes to a drum kit.
"We're just trying to make music that is intense," sums up Showman, a classically trained Ottawa native. "My original idea was [to]rewrite the music of Hank Williams or Doc Watson or the Delmore Brothers, and keeping the lyrics."
What was it that Williams himself once said, about finding one's voice? Something like: "I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, but then I found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I started singin' like myself."
And so, something like Williams' Ramblin' Man has a trippier feel and an odd meter. The vibe of Bruce Springsteen's State Trooper is less ominous than the original. Where the desperate midnight-driving character in Springsteen's version might have a dead body in the trunk, NCR's take is less haunting - suggesting less a stand-off shoot-out than a wild police-car pursuit, using a fiddle as a siren.
"He's not going to go along peacefully," says Showman, about Springsteen's man with a clear conscience about the "things that I done."
"He's going to run - he's not pulling over."
One of the album's original tunes, Angel of Death, might be confused with Williams' own The Angel of Death. Showman's lyrics ("Keep love in your heart, until your very last breath") mirror Williams: "When the angel of death, comes down after you/ Can you smile and say, that you have been true.")
Showman and Robertson's Bury Me also address the classic folk theme of mortality. "We live in a society that's pretty well removed from death," explains Showman. "You don't see people dying unless it's on television." The disconnect from mortality grows with each generation - a detrimental trend. "You live a stronger life," reasons Showman, "if you're aware you're going to die."
The freewheeling story-song Last Hand is nominally a card-player's tale, but it also addresses fairness and independence. It's about living for oneself, and doing it the right way.
The cheats and bottom-liners in this world might see themselves as winning, their victories measured in silver and gold and in balance sheets. Showman, a gambler as anyone else, plays the game even if the deck is stacked. "Their going to reach more people, of course," he says, referring to the corporate new-country machines. "But I feel fortunate that I have to bust my ass to get an audience. I'm happy for to scrap for every fan I have."
New Country Rehab plays Guelph, Ont., Thursday; Toronto's El Mocambo, Friday; London, Sat., and Halifax's Dead of Winter Festival, Jan. 26; with more dates to follow.