This is part two of a set of local reviews this year.
The music on Hands Up! has a westward shifting focus in an Interior B.C. style.
Okanagan singer/songwriter Rob Dinwoodie’s sound is distinctly regional and he’s a preserver of B.C. cowboy culture; a specialist in story-driven ballads.
Dinwoodie’s songs could be interpreted as western folk music, although of a frontier type –– a slower-paced, mellow haze surrounds them, due to Dinwoodie’s candid conversational delivery.
He’s part of a fraternity of traditional B.C. singers that includes Valdy and Gary Fjellgaard –– singer/songwriters whose tunes are based on real-life characters who have imprinted on local history and culture.
Hands Up! is an album dealing with past personalities whose names were discussed around campfires on open ranges of decades past: Jimmy McDonnell, Frances Barnard, Val Haynes and Billy Miner.
Dinwoodie himself is a well-travelled musician whose roots in a singing cowboy clan lend his themes integrity and friendly texture. His songs display a longing for simple times that shine through honestly.
His approach is simple: tell a story, convey a feeling and flesh this out with chords. It can be a campfire vibe (Val Haynes, Born to Be a Cowboy) or more elaborate, swinging arrangements like Jimmy McDonnell and Coyote Moon.
Dinwoodie is accompanied by sympathetic musicians (Dixon Zalit, Julia Newton, and Dan Oldfield) who colour his material with restraint and sensitivity to the style. Dinwoodie brings western-style B.C. balladry up to date while musing on the past.
