Down the dirt road with Dean Brody
Intimate small-stage setting tells the story behind the songs
Dean Brody has just wrapped a summer tour that saw him headline The Budweiser Stage in August.
He could have his pick of arenas in Canada to play at this point. He’s one of Canada’s biggest country stars, a 13-time CCMA Award winner and two-time Juno Award winner.
Which makes it the perfect time to go smaller.
On a scratchy phone line from Nashville, where he’s lived for a year, the British Columbia-born Brody says one of the highlights of his last tour was a “kitchen party” segment for which he and the band would go on a B-stage and do an acoustic set.
“We got a lot of feedback from that saying, ‘Hey, that was my favourite part of the show,’ and so we’re like, ‘Let’s make that the show.’”
The result is his Dirt Road Stories tour, for which he and a couple of band members will play smaller towns and intimate venues, including FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines Nov. 1.
“This is going to be cool, man. We don’t normally get to play like this. The last eight years it’s been a full band, full production, lights, wall of sound. So I like the more intimate setting and just being able to chill out a bit and make that connection with my fans up close.”
It seems to be an itch every singer/ songwriter like Brody has to scratch — a stripped-down tour with the focus on the songs.
“I think it’s something you just naturally go to,” says Brody, “because if you are a songwriter, you write a lot by yourself. You’re used to being around just a guitar and yourself. So it’s quite natural for us.
“It’s nice to change it up. I love the bigger stages and the big production — that’s a lot of fun, too — but my personality definitely lends itself to a more intimate setting to tell the stories behind the songs.”
Songs that have earned him male artist of the year honours twice at the CCMA Awards, and the Juno for country album of the year for 2015’s “Gypsy Road.”
After his triumphant show on The Budweiser Stage in Toronto (he played the same venue in 2017 with Niagara’s Tim Hicks), most artists would feel the pressure to go bigger and better. Brody is familiar with the feeling — he’s felt it his whole career. And he welcomes it.
“I think when the pressure’s gone, it’s not a good thing. You get complacent. I put a lot of pressure on myself to keep evolving and keep morphing into something that challenges me.
“It’s good to have that healthy fear inside of you that (says), ‘Hey, don’t get too comfortable in this position. Keep trying something, keep working hard.’”
Following his instincts has clearly served him well — his last album featured a guest rapper — though Brody admits there were times he wondered if he should ‘fit in’ more
with the rest of the country crowd.
“Instead of trying to be different from the pack, I feel like, ‘Man, I need to be more like the pack.’ We experiment, sometimes it works out and sometimes it’s a train wreck.”
Following the acoustic tour, which wraps up Dec. 3 in Cranbrook, B.C., Brody will head back to the studio to bang off his seventh album. That might make him a ‘grizzled old vet’ to some — he’s even been nudged to put out a greatest hits album. But with plenty of new stuff coming, it’s not on his radar.
“I’m thinking that’s more like a retirement plan. I’m definitely not ready for that yet.”