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When Dan Davidson switched over to playing country music in 2014 he never felt like he was doing anything different.
“It’s something that we don’t even know we’re exposed to growing up in Alberta,” explains the St. Albert-born singer-songwriter who originally made his way on the national stage as guitarist and backing vocalist for local rockers Tupelo Honey back in 2003. “It’s just in our blood no matter what we start out playing.”
“Dan Davidson,” laughs Davidson, who will be playing the Starlite Room on Saturday as part of the Road to the Junos series leading up to the Juno Awards here in Edmonton on March 13. “Sounds like a pair of jeans! So that opened my mind to it a little bit. Then when I started playing shows I brought some of the Tupelo guys along and it felt like nothing changed. It was the same vibe on stage, high energy rock ‘n’ roll with a little twang.”
The formula worked. Davidson hit the charts in 2016 with the platinum-selling Found, an uptempo banger, and kept up with well-received, alternating singles in Canada and Australia. Drinking has been something of a lyrical theme in the last while. The last couple of years has seen Really Shouldn’t Drink Around You, his hit collaboration with Australian singer Hayley Jensen from 2021, and Girl Drinks Beer, a 2022 team-up with another Aussie, Travis Collins. Last year he continued the trend with the release of his third EP, 6 Songs to Midnight, a number one on the Canadian iTunes Country charts, which featured the single Warm Beer. The song was given double duty when Davidson reconfigured the lyrics and dropped it as We Want the Cup during last year’s Oiler playoff run.
“It’s this guy who has a thing called Duffy’s Puppets,” Davidson says. “He does lots of stuff for the Children’s Festival in St. Albert. I saw some of his work in a video for a band in the States and just thought that I really needed to get that in the video. His puppets are so amazing, and he’s so passionate about what he does. I wanted to use them because you’re always looking for something interesting to do in country music. There’s so many videos of Daisy Dukes and riverbanks and truck beds. I really want to see personality shine through a video, especially in the country music genre.”
Rellik
Speaking of musicians from other genres comfortably moving over to country, Edmonton “hip-hop fusion” artist Rellik has decided to wade right into the market with his latest single, This Town.
“We decided to lean a little more into it on our upcoming record,” the rapper and singer-songwriter explains on a break from his afternoon gig as a DJ at 89.3 The Raven. “It was pretty easy because my band is all country guys who play mandolin, banjo and pedal steel. I had a pop-country sound in my mind, but then we hit the studio and the guys just turned it more straight-up country. I mean, it’s still got an urban feel, but it’s definitely a little more on the traditional side.”
“We were playing big stages and doing well, but a lot of people would ask me why I wasn’t incorporating guitar into what I was doing,” he says. “This was at a time when Kid Rock, Incubus and Limp Bizkit were starting to do that, combine elements of rock with hip hop. I guess I just wasn’t ready.”
It was with his fourth album, Signal from Earth, that Rellik began to rethink his songwriting. With his career in the hip hop world picking up steam, and songs appearing on TV shows such as Blackstone and Arctic Air, he gambled on trying a different route by hiring a full band to play behind him. It was a gutsy move, but Rellik feels it was necessary.
“A little bit of it had to do with the live show,” he notes. “I’ve played with a DJ and hype man at festivals, and it’s just a different energy than when you have five or six guys on a stage behind you and everybody’s playing live instruments. It’s just a different feel, and I love it so much.”
Rellik says the yet-to-be-titled new album will drop in May after a little bit of fine tuning in the studio. Fans can expect more of the same vibe as This Town as he continues to explore his current interest in roots music, though he doesn’t rule out the possibility of returning to hip hop in the future.
“It’s funny because a lot of times I actually miss hip hop,” says Rellik, who will bring his band to the Starlite Room on March 12 for a Junofest show. “Sometimes I’ll go back home and whip up some hip-hop beats and then start writing rhymes. So who knows, in the next couple of years you might see me go back and focus on a hip-hop record. Wherever it takes me at the moment, because I really like the freedom and the flexibility to just kind of do what I feel I want to do in the moment.”
Davidson will play as part of the final week for the Road to The JUNOS Concert Series, which wraps up with a sold-out show featuring Mariel Buckley and Lucas Chaisson at La Cité Francophone on Feb 28. Picking up from there is Junofest, which kicks off March 10 with an impressive roster of Canadian talent again spread across city venues.
The Sloan show at Starlite is already sold out, but there are other excellent options through that the weekend. These include ex-Edmontonians Altameda at 9910 and Cadence Weapon at The Common on March 10, bills headlined by Washboard Union at The Union and Carter & the Capitals at The Buckingham on March 11, and Angelique Francis at the Aviary and Rich Aucoin at Evolution Wonderlounge on March 12.
