Corb Lund & the Hurtin' Albertans

Ever see one of those openers that just blows your hair back? Corb Lund is a bona fide populist country-rock star in Canada, rolling across the prairies like a cash-gathering machine, playing to sold-out auditoriums and concert halls. Both of Lund's latest records, $5 Bill and Hair in my Eyes Like a Highland Steer, went gold in Canada, and he was recently named "Best Independent Country Artist Worth Signing" by Nashville Scene. He's the Canadian Country Music Association Songwriter of the Year, and Highland Steer was chosen Outstanding Roots Recording. Yet despite all the accolades and accomplishments, Lund and his Hurtin' Albertans are completing a two-week Texas swing opening shows for Hayes Carll (who recently spent three weeks in September opening for Lund at venues across Western Canada).

Lund, who migrated south to chase his muse in Austin for a couple of years, brings a highly educated Western wildness and cowhand contrariness to his literate brand of mile-a-minute country music. Backed by a band nourished equally in jazz schools and honky tonks, Lund delivers brain-teasing neo-cowboy hipster rhymes that show he knows as much about Kerouac and Dylan as he does about Larry Mahan and Ian Tyson. Lund has one of the most interesting pushing-the-boundaries bands in the alt-country genre. He probably won't be opening the next time he and the Albertans fly south.