PLAY ON THE FLAGS
Shania Twain, Nashville and the regional effect in Canadian country music
Canadian c o untr y music fans can safely split the genre into two groups of artists. The first group tries desperately to fit into America — they fly back and forth from Nashville burning money and time for a dream that either floats away or becomes assimilated. The second group doubles down on the regional effect, clings to a particular corner of Canada. It’s American dreams or provincial nostalgia.
The most obvious member of the first group is Shania Twain, who will be returning to Canada this weekend on her worldwide Rock This Country tour. Though most of her astonishing success played with what Canadian country could be, she is also a shining example of what Pitchfork critic Tom Ewing called “the imperial phase”: a time when an artist could bulldoze everything, becomes so successful commercially and aesthetically they are touchstones for the larger zeitgeist.
There is a phase after that, a kind of imperial decline, where national or genre identity becomes less important than sheer camp mass. This often rests on either a comeback tour after a long absence, or a residency in Vegas. Shania has both, joining Elton John, Liberace, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears and Celine Dion in that space. But even before her imperial or post-imperial stages, there were marks that she was not really Canadian. Her marriage to Mutt Lange, and years in a Swiss castle, are part of that world-conquering, get-away-with-anything part of her career, which exceeded nationhood.
But there are other less explicit examples of this kind of assimilation. Hank Snow is one of those examples of American ambition. He moved to the states early — first recording for RCA Victor’s Montreal division in 1936, recording for American labels soon after that, and finally moving down south in 1945. His performing for the Grand Ole Opry in 1950 sealed any Canadian identity into a hermetic space for American nationalism (for example, performing at campaign stops for the ardent segregationist George Wallace). There’s also the soft rock of Anne Murray, whose national identity was less important than her musical one. She was Canadian in the same way that Olivia Newton John was Australian — as a quirk or a wink.
There are even more artists who travelled this road without quite breaking through. Terri Clark muscled her way into the solid B List for a while, with five songs that broke the Billboard Hot Country 100. In the last few years, though, she has returned to Canada, and now her website trumpets her Canadian identity. Likewise, Jason McCoy had two seasons of a show called Nashville Bound, on CMT in Canada, trying to break his trucker country side project (The Road Hammers) in Music City in 2007.
Away from the Nashville set, we have a group of country artists who think of themselves as perhaps less Canadian than regional, defined by a particular part of the country: consider Cape Breton and Rita McNeil, Stompin’ Tom and P.E.I., and Ian Tyson singing about the ranchland he owns in the Albertan Foothills.
Though potentially successful in some terms, this distinction has its limitations for nationwide appeal. Corb Lund, for instance, closely tied to similar territory as Tyson, can sell out Stampede Rodeo Grounds, but has trouble booking more than one night at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern. Being a Canadian country art- ist, then, is telescoping conundrum: either be small enough to have a cult in the province or big enough to absorb all that is Nashville. It’s in some ways a microcosm for Canadian identity, where the argument could be made that our understanding of the country is fractured: we’re loyal not necessarily to the nation, but to a region, province or city.
But there have been a few artists, especially within the last six months, who suggest a new type of Canadian country singer: more ambitious than regional artists, but aware that this ambition does not have to rest south of the border.
The songs in Kira Isabella’s Caffeine & Big Dreams and Dean Brody’s Gypsy Road, both out this year, do not explicitly mention Canada, have a production that avoids the traps of playing authenticity and are smart and well constructed. They’re also albums that stand apart from the duelling traditions of regional or American ambitions.
Both Isabella and Brody have spent time in Nashville, and have relationships with Nashville producers and writers. Isabella’s “Quarterback” has broken through as an important political text, and as an ideal country song in both countries. But it is a song that moves towards a narrative of a young woman in the context of her local tragedy — it’s not a song that wants her to break through in Nashville, nor is it a song that positions itself within a region.
The song’s discussion of sexual assault is so tragic and so current that regional or national ambitions pale in comparison to it. The rest of the album surfs between these narratives about being young, or full of desire, or about a woman's identity (especially in “Coke Can”, where stopping for a drink after gassing up your car reminds a woman of her first love — or at least lust). It asks questions that seem more amorphous and less settled than notions of nationalism that already seem stale.
Dean Brody has sung about Canadian identity, sometimes badly (his awkward paean to girls in toques, “Canadian Girls”) and sometimes in wryly self-aware parodies of butch masculinity (“Mountain Man”). But in Gypsy Road there is less of an identity question that emerges — unlike Isabella, he is not putting as much effort into constructing personae or characters. It is an album that watches what Nashville is doing, but the point is the storytelling, which draws the universal into a specific, localized frame.
Brody shows us that a small town outside of Edmonton and a small town bar outside of Nashville have the same desires and the same set of knowledge. Songs like “Bringing Down The House”, which is fun enough to transcend being a bro anthem, and "Hillbilly", which takes a previously American term of derision and claims it as a class sign without geography, speak to a universal appeal without a specifically Nashville one. This might make Brody seem a bit cynical, but the collapsing of geography into an ambition that surrounds and sustains narratives is more important than who breaks in which sense.
The two albums are a mark of maturity for Canadian country. They are not assimilating into Nashville, denying their identity or their region. They also know that the massive quality of Shania can only be constructed by Shania.
But they are also not embarrassed for their successes. The humility of Canadian country music seems to be less and less relevant — and for a storytelling medium, the narrative skills have become a priority.