Days spent with friends, playing songs and finding musical chemistry, has borne a new album.
The Doggone Brothers Band, a folksy bluegrass Kootenay quartet, is releasing their first full-length album Hard Luck Livin' with a series of regional concerts in April.
Band members Michael Hepher, Clayton Parsons, Rhonda Shippy and Leah Gardner have created an 12-track album with meaningful lyrics that capture the depth of the human experience.
"Our biggest inspiration is playing music together," said Hepher. "We're a band that's formed around jamming. Bluegrass and old-time tradition has a huge tradition of playing together, as real live people sitting around making music; drawing from a common lexicon of songs, but creating a bunch of music that is just for us."
"Our inspiration is to continue to make music that has those moments of synchronicity, where you are trying to find your way into the music together, and live in that music space where you're all on that endorphin plane. [It's] finding a beautiful harmony or creating a riff that suits the song just right," he added.
The album tracks reflect the personal authentic lived experiences of the band's members.
Hepher wrote All the Kings Horses 20 years ago after a particularly emotional breakup, and it's finally getting some momentum. The song speaks to reassembling one's life and putting the pieces of the self back together again when a relationship comes to an end. The lyric "All the king's horses/and all the king's men/can't put me together again," references a popular phrase from children's nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty.
"It's a trying to put the pieces back together after spending time in an intense way with someone and realizing your paths have to go different ways. It's a breakup song, but it's more a reflection on reassembling," said Hepher.
The album's title track was inspired by Parsons' trek on the Camino de Santiago in Spain, a pilgrimage route leading to the shrine of apostle James near Spain's northern coast. The song recounts the journey, where he and his wife arrived at a hostel after a long day out in the hot summer sun, only to find it full with no room to sleep.
One song, Red Rocking Chair, is not an original, but a traditional folk song. Hepher said the song has no known origins and has changed over the years, as music artists have added new lyrics.
"What I've done is gone through the verses, and found my favourites and compiled it into a narrative that makes a little bit of sense to me," he said.
Micahel Hepher is a Fernie mandolin player who began making music with Cranbrook-based guitarist and banjo-player Clayton Parsons nine years ago, after they connected at a mutual friend's party. Fiddler Leah Gardner (from Golden), and bassist Rhonda Shippy (from Canmore) later completed the group, giving the band regional representation.
The seeds for Hard Luck Livin' were sown during a song-writing retreat.
The Doggone Brothers Band are doing a regional concert tour to launch their new album, with shows at Fernie's Knox United Church on Apr. 3 at 7:30 p.m, Canmore's artsPlace on Apr. 4 at 7:30 p.m., Sundre Arts Centre on Apr. 6 at 2 p.m., Cranbrook's Key City Theatre on Apr. 11 at 7:30 p.m., and The Legion in Golden on Apr. 12, time to be determined.
The album will be released on CD, vinyl and streaming platforms. Red Rocking Chair has already been released on Spotify.
