Preview
THE SWIFTYS
Thursday, February 19
Ironwood
There are three approximate groupings that make up the Great Country Music Divide. 1.) The poppish, stadium-sized, easy-listening one (where most of the cabbage is at), 2.) the artful downtown one (home to punk and alt-rock graduates) and 3.) the old school, blue-collar rural ex-pat variety that takes its true country lineage pretty much for granted.
Guitarist and keyboard player with Edmonton music scene alt-country fixtures Old Reliable, Shawn "Swifty" Jonasson is a fan of the latter two. "I love playing in Old Reliable. Where my heart really is," he adds, "is the ’70s outlaw country sound – guys like Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash." A junior member of the decade-old Old Reliable, he yearned, as country musicians do, to do his own thing. Swifty found himself an able rhythm section and aptly enough dubbed his new trio (with rotating additional members making an irregular quartet) The Swiftys.
A city guy at the moment, Jonasson is a country boy at heart. He moved to Edmonton in 1995 from the tiny town of Dauphin, Manitoba. Growing up in town, he spent most of his time out working on the family farm. "I miss it and if it wasn’t for music and being surrounded by musicians and venues, I’d be living in the middle of nowhere, living that lifestyle." He plans to do so again down the road when his career(s) are more established.
A farm kid until the age of 20, even now he’s attracted to the country-compatible world of truck driving. Although he doesn’t want to brag. "I’m not long haul or anything." Flatbed pilot by day, he’s a performer nights and weekends.
"You’ve got to keep it real," he says philosophically. City musicians invented alt-country, a hybrid of influences, out of respect for the country genre, he believes. He respects the stuff, however, (he’s a big Corb Lund fan, praising his latest release, Five Dollar Bill, as "a real country album") and listens to the entire country spectrum, including mainstream pop-country.
"In the alt-country realm, those songs are real and they’re written with heart. It’s more country than what they call country now." And it’s often cool and compelling (Neko Case, The Sadies, Old 97’s, The Supersuckers) but – and this ain’t a knock – it’s not country. "You can’t sing those kind of songs (pure country) having lived in the city all your life," Jonasson says chuckling.
He’s looking to tackle rural audiences via radio play and live performance just as the Corb Lund Band is currently doing. In the meantime he’s knocking on as many big city college radio station doors as he can. Jonasson hopes that the small town audience will also eventually take an interest in The Swiftys laid-back, wise-beyond-its-years country sound. An earnest dash of the late Johnny Cash, another of Jay Farrar, his steady, strong voice sits comfortably over minimal yet lush instrumentation, making the band a good candidate for city or country.
Deep-voiced and deliberate of speech, not unlike the Man In Black himself, Jonasson’s nickname sounds an ironic one: ‘We calls him Swifty cuz he don’t rattle none.’ In a hail of pistol fire, one imagines him carefully, in the middle of muddy main street, reloading a double-barreled shotgun, snapping it shut, thumbing the hammers, then unhurriedly blowing the bad guys off their horses as they ride past. But no, during high school he was swift, literally, in sports.
Whatever the origin, the nickname stuck. And it appears that nicknames are a Swiftys prerequisite – they all have ‘em.
"Not really," says Jonasson, "I kind of gave them those names. I think it was Shyler Jansen and I from Old Reliable that gave Grant Stovel the nickname Stovetop. I gave Joey Johnson the name Thump because he’s got such a workin’ man approach to the standup bass. I don’t think he likes it too much but he didn’t come up with anything better," he says with a slo-mo chuckle.
A recent new father, Jonasson has back-burnered performing and songwriting for a stretch. With a truck to drive and a new mouth to feed, there’s plenty of grist for the mill, however, as he revs the Swiftys back up.
"When I’m out there driving around there’s lots of words and melodies coming to me," he says. "I work alone and I enjoy the job that way. It gives me that head space. Sometimes too much." |
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