Not performing in 2012

Previously Performed in: 2007, 2004

(MB)  Alt-Country, Singer-Songwriter

http://www.nathanmusic.ca

What is western music? Is it the sound of the wide open plains or a smoky saloon? Tales of taciturn men and long-suffering ladies who cry tears in their beer? Or has that tradition been replaced by something more complicated, where horses have become fast cars and saloons are now strip malls, but even in the most urban setting, there's the restless, rough-and-tumble feel of a frontier town, and everyone still yearns to get the hell out of Dodge sometimes?

It's that kind of west that Nathan taps into on their third album, Key Principles. The Winnipeg band, singer/guitarist Keri Latimer, singer/accordionist/banjo-ist/guitarist Shelley Marshall, bassist Devin Latimer and drummer Damon Mitchell harness the essence of the Canadian Prairies in the same way songwriter Jim White puts his finger on the idiosyncrasies of the American South. From John Paul's Delivery, a nostalgic ode to sneaking out of the house to "campfire fuelled by some old fence / skies like planetariums," to Trans Am, whose gentle thrum is the sound of small-town restlessness ("This is not a great escape / no miles to go no distance gained / the foreground bends to let me by / it knows I won't leave it behind"), Nathan documents the paradox of places that are somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

- From their website

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