colter wall

colter wall hails from swift current, saskatchewan – a prairie town about two hours north of montana. he is not yet 23, but you wouldn’t know that by listening to his work. his voice is a deep gravelly baritone that sounds like it has weathered the effects of decades of cigarettes and life on the road. his songwriting gives you the impression as though he has lived those years on the road, spinning tales of jealous murders, whiskey marathons, run ins with the law and other character yarns. even though he has been described as part of the revivalist outlaw country movement, he is actually more of a folk singer. think tom waits meets townes van zandt. steve earle recently declared that ‘colter wall is bar-none the best young singer-songwriter i’ve seen in twenty years’. if you want to just stop after hearing that and go order this album, i’ll wait.

one of the things that i think is most promising about the young man is his respect for classic singer songwriters, like the above named van zandt. he has clearly been infusing his soul with old folk music. as i mentioned, if you closed your eyes, you would swear you were listening to a 60 year old veteran of the texas folk circuit. but instead he is the son of brad wall, a conservative politician descended from mennonite homesteaders and is the current premier of saskatchewan. the province is nearly the size of texas, but has only a million citizens. colter claims that the big sky environment of his youth has put a stamp on his creations.

produced by dave cobb (it seems more and more like i have to write that in every post), their mission statement going in was ‘less is more’. most of the arrangements are simply colter and his guitar. tyler childers does a guest vocal appearance on townes’ ‘fraulein’ (i was first turned on to colter by that blonde i ran into at tyler’s concert here, along with cody jinks). i have had this for awhile and have been spinning it relentlessly. but i was holding off on writing about it as i saw that he had a release coming out last week. turns out it was a rerelease of his debut ep from 2015. i listened to that all weekend and i can recommend both. if you have to pick one, i would get ‘colter wall’ first, but the ep is very good and only costs seven bucks. you heard it here first.