Content to have left the Nashville music machine behind, content to focus his career in Canada, content to be artistically responsible only to himself, Dean Brody may be the most ironic country music star there is. The twist on his story is, he got more success by leaving the Music Row machine than by staying inside the hitmaker system.
None of Brody's decisions were made in anger, only for the love for the simple family life in his home country. From that small-scale base of creative freedom, he keeps pumping out extraordinary song after extraordinary song.
What sets Brody's material apart is, the lyrics are never just about the party he went to or the girl he was fixated on. The lyrics are never boxed into the bed of a pickup truck or limply bottled at the bottom of a cold beer. He is one of the few modern country stars who insists on telling stories, on building a song on emotional tension and story arch. Brody writes himself into a peer group alongside the likes of Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert or Paul Brandt and it is Brandt with whom he is roaring across Canada right now on their co-headliner Road Trip Tour (along with Jess Moskaluke) which comes to Prince George on Tuesday night.
Brody has the farthest to come, among the three on the bill. Moskaluke is from Saskatchewan and Brandt is from Alberta while Brody and his family live in Nova Scotia these days, but he is a B.C. resident by birth and raising. Most of his youth was spent in the Kootenay town of Jaffray, and some time in the Okanagan, but he was born in Smithers and still remembers toddler impressions like that of his dad and uncle dressing out a moose in the family garage. It was the kind of upbringing that might well spark a born storyteller's imagination.
"I like to put myself in other people's shoes and write from their perspective, not just write about myself all the time," Brody said.
The most fertile proof is in songs like Dirt where he outlines the life of a person through the human relationship with soil; or Another Man's Gold where he discusses how some things get discarded by some only to find value for another; or Mountain Man where he comically tries to calm his romantic interest's fears while lost on a hike by explaining he knows how to handle survival skills.
The funniest part of that song (humour is a frequent tactic in Brody's work) is how true it probably is. That, and it contains the most Canuck of rhyming couplets: "baby don't panic, I know how to cook bannock."
His song Canadian Girls was loaded in maple syrup moments like that. You'd think that might alienate the country hotbed audiences of the United States but on the contrary, folks eat Brody's stuff up no matter where they're from.
"Me and Paul are not afraid to sing about Canadian things," Brody said. "That's one difference for sure (compared to his time living in Nashville's shallower pool of acceptable songwriting material). We don't worry about making Canadian references. You write what you like, and let it fall where it will. I wasn't thinking too much about American listeners when we wrote Canadian Girls, I was thinking about us. We hear about California girls in songs all the time; if an Australian band came and sang about Australian girls you'd probably be OK with it."
In Canada, Brody is also able to collaborate more widely than the Nashville formula usually allows. He has done acclaimed work with Maritime Celtic band Great Big Sea (the good-times anthem It's Friday), fellow new-country standout George Canyon, and alt-country rising star Lindi Ortega who joins the Road Trip Tour for some of their dates (Moskaluke subs in on part of the tour, as does Madeline Merlo and Whitney Rose).
"We have some amazing female artists on the road with us, so I'm really excited about a show that has three dimensions to it," Brody said.
"I think of myself going to a show, seeing three artists and all the production elements Paul and I are talking about. I'm going to do a chainsaw solo, as long as I can start it, and if it doesn't work I'll do an antler solo - so there'll be a surprise or two as well."
Brody is looking especially forward to the Prince George gig because his brother lives in the general area and gets to attend Tuesday's concert. Brody said that tour date had extra red circles around it on his own calendar.
Get tickets at Studio 2880, the CN Centre Box Office or online at the Ticketmaster website.
