Corb Lund Plays To a Tiny Audience in Atlanta

File this as: Corb Lund begins conquering the U.S…

…or how a great singer/songwriter thoroughly entertained the friends and families of his opening acts, as well as a handful of die-hard fans.

In case you didn’t read Brady’s interview of Corb Lund from last week (and if you didn’t, what’s your problem?), the Canadian singer/songwriter notes that his biggest shows in Western Canada can attract a couple of thousand fans. It may take a little while for him to attract those same numbers in the United States, if Friday’s appearance at Smith’s Olde Bar in Atlanta is any indication. Despite a batch of great new songs, a standout band and a winning stage presence, Lund sang his last song in front of about 20 people–several of whom had drunk so much that they may not have been aware they were still at the concert.

Fortunately for everyone involved, his two opening acts brought with them a batch of family members, friends and fans, as that helped boost the crowd numbers to about 50 as Lund started his set. If he was disappointed at the turnout, he didn’t show it, as he and The Hurtin’ Albertans played for about 90 minutes, took a request from the crowd and even gave the die-hard fans a two-song encore. It was technically a CD release party for his newest album, Losin’ Lately Gambler, and he played several tracks from it. He said that “Devil’s Best Dress” showed off his Marty Robbins obsession, and he described “Long Gone To Saskatchewan” as a tribute to a fantasy place, where all your dreams can come true.

More than anything, though, this concert was Canadiana 101: Introduction to Corb Lund. A fair section of the show was also devoted to his two most recent releases, Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier! and Hair In My Eyes Like A Highland Steer. He showed off the full range of his songwriting abilities, from the humorous monologue of “All I Wanna Do Is Play Cards” to the mournful “Especially a Paint.” Just when you think that Lund writes mostly for humor’s sake, he breaks out a song written from the perspective of a former Nicaraguan Contra fighter, taking the CIA and the Reagan-era U.S. government to task for sending him out to kill communists, “but it was kinda hard to tell.” Bear in mind Lund sang this in a Red State.

Since the two local opening acts brought out a fair share of the audience, they deserve a mention, especially because the Georgia/Nashville pipeline that brought Alan Jackson and Travis Tritt to prominence is still churning out acts like Sugarland, Jason Aldean and Zac Brown Band. Chris Unck & The Black Roses definitely fall on the “alt” side of the country scale and had the biggest fanbase on the bill. Unck sounds a bit like Ryan Bingham, but even more whiskey-bent and hellbound. Oldstar, despite being only three months old, put together a pretty strong set of original material and a nice countrified cover of John Prine’s “Paradise.”

I don’t know if it was the economy, the fact that people were gearing up for the Georgia/LSU game the next day or that Chatham County Line was playing at the same time in Decatur, diluting the Americana audience. Lund would be best appreciated in front of a standing-room-only crowd hollering and clapping along to his music. That’s apparently the kind of reception he gets in Canada. Hopefully, he’ll start getting it down here, too.