Lisa Saunders
Publicist with Sound Strategy Music
The Winnipeg country-folk trio, The Crooked Brothers, will be stopping in Golden during their western tour on Monday Jan. 23 to play at the Local Hero Western Pub.
The Crooked Brothers’ blend of timeless country classic sounds, back porch blues and stomping scrap yard funk has gained the attention of many folk festival and roots music fans. The band’s three-part harmonies are offset by singer Matt Foster’s trademark charming “growl” – backed by a pumping, folk/roots beat.
The Crooked Brothers are known for their diverse instrumentation, vocal arrangements, and a fascination with the past. Even their name has a contemplative, seasoned aura about it. “The brothers part of our name relates to the archetypical bluegrass, folk, family band idea. We’re essentially brothers every way but biologically,” explains The Crooked Brothers’ Jesse Matas. “The crooked part is derived from a book we all read called “Ironweed” by William Kennedy. He used the term “crooked” to described people after they’ve died. He says ‘they’ve gone crooked’, or ‘he was all crooked’. It seemed to fit with our band. One of our original goals was to see beauty in everything including death.”
That includes the first song on Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? The album comes blazing out of the gate with the song “17 Horses”, which paints a historic depiction of hard times during a rural anthrax epidemic in the spring of 1931. “It’s somewhat historical, rooted in a story about a bunch of horses passing away when they were building the Trans Canada Highway through Manitoba’s Whiteshell Provincial Park,” says Matas. The horses had kicked up some naturally-occurring anthrax in the soil, leading to their demise.
Other songs, like “Winter’s Come” tackle the painful end of relationships. “We have a lot of heartbreak songs which are definitely ‘moving’ to yourself when you’re writing them. ‘Winter’s Come’ is about a woman leaving a man to go south, and the man figuring out what to do now.” Matas says two of the band members went through some “pretty heavy heartbreak” while writing material for their new CD.
“This album is a lot more direct in inspiration. These songs are all based on things that really happened,” says Matas. Despite the sometimes heavy subject matter, the CD as a whole is lively, energetic, danceable and entertaining.
The show is at 8 p.m., and admission is free. To learn more about The Crooked Brothers, please visit www.crookedbrothers.com.
