July 20, By Anna LoPinto. Seems like an appropriate spot to chat with the Canadian cowboy. Originally from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, a city less than miles from the Montana border, Wall, now 26, has released three successful full-length albums, an EP, and multiple singles.
He has a rich baritone that makes singing about rifles sound like a sweet lullaby. Both of us being part-time Tennessee residents, Wall and I have spent time together in the do-si-do social life of Nashville honky-tonks.
We met I think in at the American Legion Post 82 , and the last time we saw each other we think was in at the Ranchlands concert. While I chat from my car in a Sheridan parking lot, Wall is in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan, near the town of Maple Creek. Like many of us, this time gave him a newfound perspective on his priorities. And now, after six years of hard touring — two months on, one week off — he plans on spending much of spring and summer at his new home, then hit touring hard in the fall and winter.
Though he is skilled at bringing new interpretations to old songs and elevating them, he is equally adept at creating his own and is prolific in his writing. A mix of boreal forest and prairie, Saskatchewan has a fascinating ecological and cultural history, but of the historical 60 million acres of prairie that once encompassed Saskatchewan, only 8. He was 19 when he wrote those songs and was immersing himself in American roots music.
He traced his interest back to classic rock, blues and country, bluegrass, and Appalachian folk songs. Once I had the first line, I knew I would go back to the Appalachian influence, that it would be sentimental, and would be a song about the passing of a loved one.
