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If you’ve been thinking the Calgary roots scene is setting the bar in our province these days, two recent albums releases back u that line of thought.
Rivers and Rails: A Tribute To Alberta and Beautiful Dreamers: Alberta Sessions Vol. 1 showcase the deep pool of talented roots musicians who have made significant contributions to our scene going back to the mid-‘70s.
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Additional material comes from Billy Cowsill with the Co-Dependents, Mark Koenig, steel player Jeff Bradshaw, Beautiful Joe and k.d. lang. MacGonigill was lang’s road manager on her first two national tours.
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Stewart MacDougall, who wrote Busy Being Blue which lang sings on Dreamers, also turns in a fine performance of Days I’m With The Horses for Ralph Boyd Johnson’s project. Pineo contributed Canadian Whiskey and American Guns to the Rivers disc, and Cowsill’s last recorded performances with both MacDougall and Johnson are found on this disc, which came out of a seed of an idea.
“Suzanne Leacock, who is the wife of Tim Leacock of the Co-Dependents, thought she had a good hook for a song with the line ‘rivers and rails,’ so she, Billy and myself ended up getting a song out of it. Suddenly the idea for a collection of songs about the history of Alberta was born,” says Johnson, who enlisted the services of 27 writers for the 15 song album.
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