THE FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT
Reklaws cap off stellar year with four CCMA nods She would buy us tapes of Donny and Marie and say ‘Study these two! ’ ... I don’t think we ever watched one.
Jenna and Stuart Walker have been to the Canadian Country Music Awards before.
For years, the siblings would sit in the “nosebleeds” and plot their future as they watched Canadian country stars accept their trophies.
“We would buy the cheapest tickets from a scalper outside and just go watch it and dream,” Stuart says in an interview from Nashville. “We would sit up there and feel ... it wasn’t anger ... it was just eagerness. It was ‘We can do this! We know we can do this! We just need to write the right songs and have the right people believe in us.’”
On Sunday, the Reklaws (Walker spelled backward) will give their debut CCMA performance in Calgary, topping off a whirlwind year that has included hit singles, a Juno nomination and having their song Long Live The Night picked up as the theme song for the CFL’S Thursday Night Football.
Just last week, the duo released their first full-length album, Freshman Year.
They’re also nominated for four awards this year, including a nod for album of the year for their 2018 EP Feels Like That, group or duo of the year, and video of the year. On top of that, they’re in the running for the Apple Music Fans’ Choice Award, which pits them against some heavy-hitters, including Dean Brody, Dallas Smith, Paul Brandt and Gord Bamford.
“It’s the biggest compliment, especially to see your name against huge acts that you studied for a long time,” says Jenna. “It’s going to be crazy. We are just so blessed to be nominated. So we don’t even care what happens. We excited to be there and be recognized in that way.”
Given that 2019 seems to be the year the Reklaws’ career came of age, the act’s full-length album is appropriately titled.
While not a concept album per se, Freshman Year is chock full of catchy country-pop tunes — check out Summer of You, Long Live The Night, Raised By The Radio and Hometown Kids — that evoke nostalgia and youthful spirit.
“We wrote from that perspective,” Jenna says. “A huge part of our life was being at school and being around friends. The emotions and things you go through during that time is where we got our inspiration for these songs.
“It made sense to call it Freshman Year. And it kind of is our freshman album, it’s our first real, full-length album.”
By the time Jenna and her younger brother Stuart hit their high school years in southern Ontario, they were already veterans when it came to performing. Jenna and Stuart were among five siblings who grew up on a farm near Cambridge, Ont.
“It wasn’t like a dairy farm or anything, it was like a theme farm that the public would come out to on weekends in October,” Stuart says. “Basically, it was Halloween-themed with a corn maze, a pumpkin patch, a haunted barn and haunted hay ride.
“The main event was pig races. The halftime show of that pig race was Jenna and I when I was eight years old and Jenna was 10. Our parents said, ‘Listen, we need five minutes to change over the pigs in the back stall. During that five minutes, sing a song or two and keep the audience entertained.’ We were shaking in our boots. But after doing that 10 times every single October, I guess it numbed all the nerves in us and made us used to the stage and performing for people.”
The duo’s mother, meanwhile, was a devoted fan of siblings Donny and Marie Osmond. And those earnest Mormons may not have been the hippest of touchstones for Jenna and Stuart’s generation, but their mother insisted they take some cues from that brother-sister duo’s heyday.
“She was always obsessed with them,” says Jenna.
“She would buy us tapes of Donny and Marie and say ‘Study these two! You need to be these two!’ I don’t think we ever watched one. I think she just liked the idea that it was a sibling thing.”
Eventually, the two discovered decidedly cooler influences, including Johnny Cash, and began developing their own chops as songwriters.
They signed with Universal in 2017, released Hometown Kids as their first single later that year and the Feels Like That EP in 2018.
The Reklaws will be busy during Canadian Country Week in Calgary, which kicks off Thursday. They’ll play in the Fan Village and will be part of a songwriting series.
They will also be part of Friday’s CCMA Legends Show alongside Carolyn Dawn Johnson, Alan Doyle, Jade Eagleson, Lindsay Ell, Tim Hicks, Andrew Hyatt, Aaron Pritchett, Deric Ruttan, Tenille Townes, The Wilkinsons and Michelle Wright.
Their involvement in the Legends showcase seems like a passing-of-the-torch, proof they’re an act that’s come to represent the future of Canadian country music.
“We’re pairing up with legends,” Jenna says. “They are the legends, we’re just lucky to be a part of it. It’s going to be awesome.
“We all get paired up and we do a duet with people. We’re not going to say who, because I think it’s supposed to be a surprise. It will be a night of amazing duets and singing other people’s songs.”
Country legend Charlie Major will officially be inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in Calgary Friday night.
The CCMA gala dinner will also see Anya Wilson, a longtime publicist, inducted in the builder category.
Both were originally announced as this year’s inductees in June but will be presented with their plaques at the event during Country Music Week festivities.
Major has been a fixture in Canadian country music since the early ’90s when he became the first Canadian artist to score six No. 1 hits with his debut album, The Other Side, in 1993.
He had nine more chart-toppers after that, releasing more than 20 singles and seven studio albums.
Major has sold nearly half a million records in Canada, has won three Junos and seven CCMA awards.
“It is an honour to be inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame with so many of my heroes and mentors like Ian Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, The Good Brothers, Terry Carisse and Murray Mclauchlan to name a few,” said Major. “I’m sincerely humbled and look forward to celebrating with everyone in Calgary.”
The other inductee, Wilson, began her music career in the U.K. in publicity and radio promotion. She’s worked with legendary artists such as David Bowie and T. Rex. She later moved to Toronto and broke ground as the first independent female radio tracker in Canada.
She has served on numerous CCMA committees, helped establish a radio presence at the annual CCMA conference and voluntarily became the organization’s first publicist.
She was also a driving force in the creation of the Country Music Association of Ontario and served as its vice-president for several years.
“I couldn’t be more pleased and humbled by this honour,” said Wilson. “I’m so used to operating behind the scenes that it feels equally strange and wonderful to be publicly recognized for my contributions.”
Inductees of the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame are chosen annually by a selected Hall of Fame Electors Committee, comprised of over 70 industry peers.
The ceremony will take place at a private event.