An Olympics Report from Country Artist Corb Lund

Hello, people. Corb Lund here, your unofficial 2010 Olympic Games correspondent. I’ve been tasked with sending back some dispatches from Vancouver while I’m in town playing music during the Olympics. First of all, if you don’t know me, I’m Canadian, and my band, The Hurtin’ Albertans and I, play old fashioned/alt/roots/underground/indie/subversive/Americana/whatever country music; basically I write my own songs, don’t slick up my records too much and help to represent the underbelly of country music that is mostly absent from the mainstream airwaves. We are one of a number of Canadian bands that have been asked to play as part of the Cultural Olympiad during the Games in Vancouver. I think that’s what they call it. It’s basically a handful of outdoor festive party gigs here at the Olympics. We play Feb 17, 18 and 19th in Vancouver, Surrey and Whistler, respectively.

A couple weeks ago I played at four different torch relay events in my home province of Alberta (we’re one province east of British Columbia, where the games are being held) as the ceremonial Olympic fire made its way through some of the many Canadian small towns on its journey to Vancouver to light the BIG flame at the Games’ opening ceremony. So over the next few days I’m gonna give you some of my thoughts and impressions about things Olympic from my quasi-insider vantage point.

Security is tight, and the band and I have all gone through rigorous security and background checks to even be allowed within the compound to play our shows (I’m not kidding). Even our guitar amps had to go through security checks, so you have nothing to fear. All is as it should be. In the next few articles, I’ll spend less time introducing myself and more time on what’s going on out here, but I felt if we’re going to spend some time together you should know a little about my perspective. Ok, let’s get started.

The Torch Comes to Taber

As mentioned, a few weeks ago I played at a handful of Olympic torch relay events in Alberta, culminating in Taber, the town where I grew up. My parents still have cattle there, and so it was a bit of a homecoming. Family, friends of the family, enemies of the family; everybody turned out. I came away from the torch ceremony with a pretty good feeling about the whole thing. I was kind of conflicted at the time, because the level of corporate sponsorship at the events was overwhelming. I mean, I like sugar water as much as the next guy, but you could barely see the Olympic rings on the stage for all the sponsor logos. But, as one of the crew guys told me, if not for the sponsors the events wouldn’t have happened. And I have to remember that not everyone is as sensitive to that kind of thing as I am. I have a hard time trusting large, organized groups of people. I get a funny feeling when I see big bunches of people all marching in the same direction with the light in their eyes about the BIG IDEA, whatever it is. They make me nervous. I mostly only trust people I can shake hands with. I’m not sure if that makes me a redneck or a hippy. Maybe a little of both.

Anyway, on balance, the whole torch experience was pretty cool. I’ve been around a little and have seen some things in my life, and I may even be a little jaded. I had initially regarded playing at these events as work. They were gigs that I was being paid to perform at and I hadn’t expected to actually feel anything outside of the usual fun of performing my songs in front of people. But when the torch actually appeared in the distance, being carried by one of thousands of volunteers selected for the task of carrying it across the country and the crowd’s murmur grew to a cheer, I couldn’t help being caught up in it. Our longtime family doctor, and my league baseball coach, Gerald Beckie lit the torch onstage in Taber. Ever since I can remember he has been a pillar of the community in Taber and has spent countless hours coaching kids’ sports, picking them up for practice and finding them used equipment so they could play hockey or baseball. I think he was the perfect choice to light the torch in Taber, and I’m glad I got to see it.

I’m proud of my country, and it feels good knowing that the whole world is going to be here as our guests for a couple of weeks. And I like the idea of celebrating the excellence of athletes who have spent their whole lives preparing for this, probably not making much money along the way. I suspect it’s a little like being a musician and struggling for years to hone your thing until you’re ready to put it out there and see how it holds up against everybody else. Sure, the Olympics are big business, and there are steroid scandals and committee corruption and all the rest of it, but I still like the spirit behind the Games. It’s about as pure as you’re gonna get in sport at that level. Citius, Altius, Fortius! Let’s go.

My Favourite Winter Olympic Sports

I like hockey (Canuck, right?), biathlon and downhill skiing. I don’t like ice dancing or ski ballet or snowboarding tricks so much. I guess I’m old school. Downhill alpine skiing is serious business. Everybody talks about the ski jumpers, but downhill, man, that’s scary shit. I’ve skied recreationally since I was a kid, and it’s fun. But it can be terrifying, and generally when I ski I’m thinking about how to slow down. Those guys point ‘em downhill and do EVERYTHING they can to go faster, the whole way down the course. Geez, that takes balls. And this is coming from someone who used to ride bulls at ten years old. Young bulls, but bulls nevertheless; ornery old cows were worse, actually. Those old gals could buck. And come after you too. So I know at least a little about extreme sports. But downhill skiing. Yup, that’s badass.

Ski jumping looks scary too, but I’ll give it to the downhill eighty-mile-an-hour boys. One mistake and you know the rest. I had an Austrian friend whose uncle died in a race just before he was supposed to compete in the Olympics back in the sixties. Actually, come to think of it, the luge guys go pretty damn fast too. Luge is an event where people rocket down a track on a tiny sled. A couple of days ago one of the luge team guys from Georgia (the country in the Caucasus, not the state) flew off the track and was killed instantly on a training run. Very tragic.

I really dig watching the biathlon. I believe it has Scandinavian roots, so that might be why it appeals to my Viking genes, and I’ve always been intrigued by the shooting sports anyway. Being from the country, I’ve shot at ducks and gophers and tin cans since I was a little kid. And FYI, in rural Canada, we have lots of guns. Don’t believe everything you hear about Canadians. We have a very rugged frontier history of our own up here, a cold one in fact, and despite the onslaught of urban modernity and paralyzing politeness, old fashioned rural culture flourishes in the wide open spaces outside our cities. Hudson Bay blankets, .303 British Enfield rilfes, wolves, grizzly bears, log cabins, sleigh horses, pack mules and forty below zero.

The shooting sports still exist in the Olympics, but it seems to me they don’t get talked about much anymore. They’re a very traditional part of sporting culture but appear to slowly be getting watered down by the powers that be. The Committee of the Allied Mother Hens for Safety for Cultural Correctness, I’m guessing. Biathlon competition used to involve serious centrefire calibres that represented the military origins of the sport. 30-06, 7.62, that kind of thing. In 1978 they dumbed it down to .22 rimfire for some reason and that’s what they shoot today. I think in the summer games they shoot a lot of AIR rifles. Urg.

But the spirit of it is still there, and I’m respectful of the challenge biathlon presents. As any shooter would attest, it would be really hard to place accurate hits when you’re out of breath and your heart is pounding from all that cross country skiing. Coolness.

And then there’s hockey. We live for hockey up here. I’m a pretty serious Edmonton Oilers fan. I even wrote them a theme song. I know my way around the game pretty well, but I’m not a serious ‘know every wrinkle of hockey strategy’ type fan. There’s lots of guys that know hockey inside out–way more than me. I’m more of a serious ‘love the team and cheer for them loudly’ type fan. There’s something in the air in Edmonton when the Oilers are winning, and especially at playoff time. Unfortunately, this year finds us at the very bottom of the entire NHL standings, so Olympic hockey is a welcome distraction. I’m a fan of the Oilers, winning or losing, thick or thin, but jeez, everybody needs a break. This year has been tough sledding. And the good news is, I went to the Team Canada vs Norway game yesterday.

To buy Olympic tickets legitimately you have to enter some kind of lottery months ahead of time, and then shell out a few grand for a whole block of tickets if you are chosen. My buddy and Meti guide, Holtman (the same Holtman that’s in my Truck Got Stuck song) had his number pulled, paid the four grand and got a bunch of tickets, including these. Canada was a strong favourite going in, favored wipe Norway out. They played conservatively the first period, and at the first intermission the score was tied at zero. The Canadians lit it up in the second and third periods, though; final score 8-0 Canada. More details about the game in my next post.

Canada is hoping for gold this year at home, but the Russians and the Swedes both look pretty strong. Maybe the States. But we have home ice advantage.

Speaking of that, my only beef with the Olympic hockey this year is that for some goofy reason they’re not using the Olympic/European size ice surface. Normally international hockey is played on a significantly larger ice surface than the NHL uses. This tends to favour skilled players. There’s more room to stickhandle and skate, and evade body checks. On big ice you have to be a good skater. That clog-up-the-middle, rough-up-the-good-players stuff doesn’t work as well on big ice. The talented guys have more room to work. I like rough hockey as much as the next red blooded Canadian, but I always look forward to the Olympics because it makes for an interesting change from what we usually see all winter. And I’ve always liked watching finesse in hockey more than thuggery. But this year, they’re using the same ice surface that the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks play on, saying that it would be too expensive to enlarge the rink. For the many billions of dollars that are being spent on the Games, you’d think that they could buck up and provide the proper dimensions. I’m disappointed. But I’m still going. And I get to cheer for Jarome Iginla for once. He’s the marquee player for the Calgary Flames, Edmonton’s arch rival and neighbour, so usually when he plays well it’s bad news for the Oilers. He’s a great player though; very skilled but scrappy too. He can take care of himself. Drop the puck, baby.

Ok. Take care, and I’ll have more to say in a couple of days, after we’ve played a show or two in the belly of the beast.

Over and out,
Corb Lund
Alberta, Canada