The Dead South head out on crossCanada tour
For Canadian bluegrass-rockers The Dead South, being friends first makes for good company
Stompy Regina bluegrass-rockers The Dead South had already been selling out shows in Germany, of all places, when one of their videos went viral.
The 2016 video depicts the four-man band dressed as classic western gentlemen in white shirts, suspenders and black hats performing the stripped-down In Hell I’ll Be in Good Company in various urban and rural locations. A whistled melody and walking bass line (on cello) set the hook before the banjo starts plucking and fingers take to snapping.
It’s been viewed more than 154 million times, and helped propel the folky group to a remarkable level of international stardom. Just in the last year or so, they have played high-profile gigs at England’s Glastonbury Festival and Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre, signed a deal with Canadian indie label Six Shooter Records and made their third album at the famed Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama. Sugar and Joy came out this month.
But the intense pace of the previous stretch was not without its challenges. One of the original members, banjo player Colton Crawford, had to take a two-year break from the road because of insomnia and exhaustion. Now that he’s back in the lineup, the band is committed to maintaining a sustainable path through self-care, open communication and careful scheduling.
This week, they embarked on their first cross-Canada headlining tour, a journey that brings them to Ottawa’s TD Place for a pre-Halloween celebration on Tuesday. (They’re dubbing themselves the Undead South for the occasion and inviting fans to dress in costume.)
In this condensed interview, singer-guitarist Nate Hilts, 29, talks about the band’s trajectory, the new album and why they still
don’t have a drummer.
Q Congratulations on the new record. It sounds great. Was it a dream come true to record at Muscle Shoals, the same place where legendary acts like the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon and Aretha Franklin have all recorded?
A Yeah, it was definitely something special. We grew up listening to all the great bands that have recorded so many albums there.
Q It’s been a couple of years since your last album, and you had a viral video in that time. Was that a breakthrough for the band?
A Definitely to a degree, but we actually started touring heavily in 2014 after we got signed to a German label. We were going to Germany four times a year, sometimes more, and that was picking up a lot of steam for us. But the video definitely took it to the next level.
Q Why Germany?
A There’s no exact answer to it, but I think the theory is that it was something new, and it was a
sound that people were appreciating and a niche for people to get into.
Q Tell me a bit about the new album.
A It’s called Sugar and Joy, but that’s an ironic name because the songs are not uplifting. They’re kind of dark. They were all written within a two-year span, I’d say. Shortly after Colton quit the band, I started writing the songs on this album. And we lost a manager at one point so that’s a theme as well.
Q I understand Colton is back in the lineup. How have things changed?
A We used to go out touring for two-and-a-half-month stints overseas, and as soon as we got home, we’d start playing again. We just said yes to everything.
And now we make it so that we do three weeks at a time, and have at least a three-week break. Also on the road, we’re trying to be a lot healthier and more mindful of the sustainability of ourselves and the band. The way we see it, we’re friends first and then a band and then a business.
Q You’ve had some landmark shows this year, including Glastonbury and Red Rocks. How does it feel to be getting bigger all the time?
A t’s interesting because it’s nothing that we ever expected. We just put one foot in front of the other, so when these opportunities come about, we get really excited. We take it as it comes.
Q You’re going out on tour across Canada this month. Is that a big deal?
A We’re really excited. We’ve never played east of Quebec before. It’s our first full Canadian tour. Just the way everything has been built up, we started playing here (Saskatchewan) and Alberta, and then we started playing overseas. We’d always fly right over the Maritimes.
Q I’m curious to hear how the band came together. What’s your origin story?
A I met Colton in university in Regina right after I came back from Laval University in Quebec City, and during that time I was getting more into guitar and listening to more old-style bluegrass and stuff like Old Crow Medicine Show and Trampled by Turtles. Colton came over one day and said, “Oh, I just got a banjo. I want to play something like this.” Our friends Danny (Kenyon, cello) and Scott (Pringle, guitar, mandolin, vocals) were in the city so we started inviting them over to jam and this is the lineup that we have today.
Q Were you listening to Mumford and Sons, too?
A I was definitely a fan of them when they came out but we had no aspirations to be like them, and we don’t consider ourselves to be like them.
Q But the banjo?
A Yeah, but Colton was more inspired by bands like Modest Mouse, where they had some banjo lines that he fell in love with. And then he found out that Steve Martin was this worldclass banjo player and he fell in love with him, too. That took him to the Earl Scruggs train and he kept on rolling.
Q So now that you’re playing bigger shows, including arenas, will you get a drummer to fill out the sound?
A No, no, no. We’re not a drummer band.
Q What have you got against drummers?
A (Laughs) We’re definitely not against drummers. We just got so used to not having one, we make our own percussive sounds. I love drummers. We just don’t have one, and we’re OK with that. lsaxberg@postmedia.com