Cowan: 43,000 fans were choosin' country music at Montreal's Lasso fest
Even if you’re not a country music fan, you’ve probably heard Ella Langley’s hit song Choosin’ Texas.
There’s a good chance you liked it, too.
Choosin’ Texas has spent 35 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart and, more impressive, has been No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 17 weeks — the fourth longest-running No. 1 song ever.
Although Montreal doesn’t have a major country music radio station, Langley’s hit is played regularly on The Beat 92.5 and 95.9 Virgin Radio.
That’s a sign of how country music continues to grow everywhere, including Montreal. The Lasso festival’s fifth annual edition, held on the weekend at Parc Jean-Drapeau, attracted 43,000 fans over two days.
Lasso came on the heels of country superstar Luke Combs playing two shows at Parc Jean-Drapeau in late May, attracting 65,000 fans. Combs wrapped up the latest leg of his My Kinda Saturday Night Tour this month with three sold-out shows of about 90,000 fans at London’s Wembley Stadium, and has sold more than 1.3 million tickets on the tour.
“Country is the only genre of music that for the last year and a half the arrow’s been pointing straight north,” Patrick Guay, Evenko’s senior manager for booking, concerts and events — including Lasso and Osheaga — said in a one-on-one interview Sunday at Parc Jean-Drapeau. “So people are starting to pay attention to that.”
Thirty-six artists performed at Lasso on the weekend, including headliners Jon Pardi, Thomas Rhett, Old Dominion and Mumford & Sons, who closed things out Sunday night with an outstanding 90-minute set that ended with impressive fireworks.
Guay said Evenko would like to eventually expand Lasso to three days like Osheaga, which started out as a two-day music festival in 2006 for genres like rock, pop, hip-hop and indie and grew to three days five years later.
“A lot of these (country) artists, like Jon Pardi, it’s their first time ever playing Montreal,” Guay said. “And so when they do come here, they’re like: ‘How come I haven’t played here before?’ They’re just blown away by the crowds.
“I’m in Nashville twice a year (booking performers) and every time I go it’s like: ‘Oh, you guys are that festival.’ We have some of the best restaurants in Montreal serving them food backstage and it’s been going a long way. If you treat artists right, the word will get around.”
Guay said he’s working on bringing Langley to Montreal to either play at the Bell Centre or Lasso.
“They definitely have the desire to come through,” Guay said. “It’s got to be right timing and stuff like that. We’ll see … we’ll see what happens next year.”
Country music continues to evolve with different types of new artists, and that was on display at Lasso. Local bilingual band Classe Moyenne was fantastic, and Nanaimo, B.C., native Cameron Whitcomb showed why he’s one of country’s fastest-rising young stars with his energetic performance.
But Old Dominion lead singer Matthew Ramsey believes the famous phrase “three chords and the truth” — coined by legendary Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard — remains the essence of the genre.
“The songwriting is what makes country music country,” Ramsey said in a phone interview ahead of Lasso. “So, if you can really be honest about life and really speak to that and just keep it as simple as you can, which is a challenge as a musician and as a songwriter, I think that is still the backbone of country music.”
Ramsey grew up in the rural mountains of Virginia in a town with fewer than 1,000 people. Country was always playing on the radio at home, but later he got heavily into grunge music and he still loves listening to that genre.
“As I grew older, I started to hear (country) through a different lens and go: ‘This stuff is actually about my life. I should start to try and see if I can write some of this stuff,’” Ramsey said. “And many, many years later, here we are.”
Old Dominion has been named Group of the Year a record eight consecutive times by the Academy of Country Music and seven straight times by the Country Music Association.
During a break between songs in a very entertaining performance Sunday night that had fans dancing and singing along, Ramsey said: “Our only goal is to make sure you feel a little bit better when you leave here than when you came.”
Old Dominion’s music certainly did that.
Ramsey is a big fan of Langley and appreciates what she’s doing now for country music.
“I think anyone like Ella, who’s doing such a great job of staying true to herself — the three chords and the truth … she’s out there living that,” he said.
“I think more and more these days authenticity is what is starting to shine through and be attractive to people, because there’s lots of inauthentic stuff out there — just in the culture. So anything that’s authentic is really going to cut through, and I think country music has a lot of authenticity when you really break it down.
“So, I think any artist that can stay true and be as authentic as possible is going to cut through and help the genre as a whole.”
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