Alberta country icon Canyon bares soul on new album
Alberta country icon and Renaissance man George Canyon mixes lyrical soul-searching with classic covers on upcoming 12th album, Southside of Heaven
For fans of country singer George Canyon, it may take a significant leap of imagination to picture him as the “Teen Angel” in a production of Grease.
In the 1978 film version, you may remember, the part was played by ex-teen idol Frankie Avalon, who was clad all in white as he crooned Beauty School Dropout, a cautionary tale about a “teenage ne’er do well.”
Nevertheless, Canyon is scheduled to put his own stamp on the role later this year during a weeklong stint at Toronto’s Winter Garden Theatre.
The hockey-loving, Albertabased singer is known for his neotraditionalist country leanings and for wrapping that smooth baritone around songs about his kids, veterans, grandpas and God, not beauty school dropouts. But it turns out he is no stranger to Grease the Musical.
“It was one of the first musicals I did as a kid in school,” says Canyon, in an interview with Postmedia. “It was a production back in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. It was at the deCoste theatre in Pictou. We did Grease and I was Johnny Casino. I played at the dance, that was my job. Then I was one of the greasers — I think that’s what they called them — in the gang with Danny and all that. It’s funny when you think back on it, how life kind of comes full-circle.”
It’s also a reminder that while Canyon may still be best known for his singing career, he has always been a bit of a Renaissance man. He has tried his hand at straight acting (Heartland, Trailer Park Boys and the western Dawn of Steel), musical theatre and even dabbled in politics with a quickly aborted run for the federal Conservative nomination in Bow Valley back in 2014. For the past four seasons, he has also been the official singer of the national anthem for the Calgary Flames.
But, ultimately, George Canyon is known for being George Canyon, the ruggedly handsome country crooner who lives on a ranch outside of Calgary, occasionally playing cowboys in film and TV, and being one of Canada’s most reliable hitmakers in country music. As such, he makes no real attempt to reinvent the wheel on Southside of Heaven, his 12th studio record that comes out May 25. As with 2016’s I Got This, Canyon enlisted Jeff Johnson as producer, a young singer-songwriter who has also worked with Wes Mack, Meghan Patrick and Dallas Smith.
“To speak about myself in the third person, we always try to get that George Canyon sound,” he says. “Usually that comes from the song choice.”
There’s guitar-fuelled country stompers, pretty ballads and perhaps just enough hints of newNashville country pop to entice radio programmers. As for his subject matter, the tunes hit on many of Canyon’s recurring concerns. He Found God That Way, a Canyon co-write with Buddy Owens, checks off three major ones: Veterans, grandfathers and God.
“My granddads were in the war and Buddy’s granddad was in the war,” says Canyon.
“We’re both Christian men and we were talking about how my granddad never went to church. He said ‘You don’t have to go to church to find God, he’s everywhere.’ We wondered what it was like, especially in the Second World War, going over and not knowing what was going to happen and, I guess like any military in any war, not knowing what the day was going to look like and if they were going to see the end of the day and finding God that way. They say people will reach out to God, even atheists, in their last moments. It’s kind of where that song was born from.”
Southside of Heaven also adds three intriguing, and very different, cover tunes to his repertoire. Although, to be fair, his rollicking take on Stompin’ Tom Connors’ The Hockey Song isn’t really new. Canyon says he has been playing the song since he was a kid in Nova Scotia, but finally put it down to tape as part of a tribute album. He says he sees it as Canada’s second national anthem.
“I still play hockey twice a week and, of course, I’m a small part of the Calgary Flames,” he says. “I was asked to do a song on the Stompin’ Tom 50th anniversary record. I immediately said yes, of course. It was a huge honour. It turned out I got to do the Hockey Song. It was one of the coolest things in my career. The label said ‘Hey, you should include this on your record.’” They didn’t get any argument from me.”
Canyon also sings a heartfelt version of Eric Church’s Your Old Man’s Son, which he dedicates to the fathers of those injured or killed in the April 6 Humboldt Broncos bus crash in Saskatchewan. Sixteen people died in the tragedy.
“I didn’t know what to do as a dad and a fan of hockey,” he says. “What do you say? There’s nothing you can say. My wife’s idea was to put the little green ribbon beside that song on the back of the album. So when you look at the back of the album you’ll see that little green ribbon and that’s what it represents. It’s just a way of dedicating something to the dads whose sons are still alive and the dads that lost their sons.”
While promoting the record, Canyon has played Your Old Man’s Son for radio stations with only his acoustic guitar. That tends to be a bit of a litmus test for the singer, whether he has written the song or not. The first test is whether or not he emotionally connects to the song in some way: does it make him happy, or sad or angry? The second is whether he can faithfully reproduce it by himself with only his guitar.
He knew he had come across a winner when he played Bruce Guthro’s 1998 hit Falling, another cover on the album, on CBC’s First Play Live in Toronto earlier this month. Check out the YouTube video, which shows Canyon playing before a small but rapt studio audience with stripped-down backing.
“It was the first time in my career where we finished the song and it was just dead silence,” he says. “You could hear a pin drop. It was just crazy quiet. I literally didn’t know what to do. So I whispered into the mic, ‘it’s over.’”
George Canyon’s Southside of Heaven will be released on May 25.