Snow depression
Roots man Scott Nolan identifies himself as ‘Canadiana music’
Melissa Martin



If you’re looking for the heart and soul of Scott Nolan’s music, don’t look too deeply within city limits.

Sure, you can find Nolan and his band kicking up their heels each Wednesday at the warmly communal Bella Vista pizzeria or providing a rollicking soundtrack to bourbon and chicken tossing at the Times Change(d) but — even with his deep local roots — Nolan still flourishes most when he’s farthest from home.

“In the last year, I’ve become pretty reclusive,” explains the now-bearded Nolan, sipping a bottle of juice on an Osborne Village patio. “But I get out on the road and it’s like… I’m not the same person I am here. I’m really outgoing out there. I just have a real genuine interest in meeting new people.”

Through his pen and guitar, a myriad places and faces and characters are front and centre in Nolan’s music. His 2003 debut solo album, Postcards, was a collection of stories both profoundly geographic and tremendously intimate, spinning tales of guitar slingers, beer-drinking grandmothers and navy boys around imagery of endless highways and Alberta foothills.

“I’ve written a new song for Nanton. There’s a new song for Brooks,” Nolan says of two Alberta towns that provided inspiration. “They’re all related to what people have said. In Nanton, this big drunken trucker leans in to me and says, ‘I’m gonna tell you what your problem is. You’re a $6 dollar band in a $3 dollar town.’ Him making that comment got the ball rolling to where I could get the rest of this song I had been working on.”

Nolan’s new album, No Bourbon & Bad Radio, carries on that tradition. With a title inspired by the Bella Vista, the album is for the most part dreamier and more reflective than the feisty Postcards — though Nolan still slips in some of his signature foot-stompers, such as Right on the Wrong Time.

“It’s fuller sounding (than Postcards),” Nolan says of his latest effort, which he self-produced. “We recorded it all to two-inch tape, very much like the old records. We stuck to older equipment. Sonically, it’s broader sounding, and there’s a certain kind of warmth to it.”

Place and time figure prominently on the album. No Bourbon’s opener is simply named Golden, after the British Columbia mountain town. Songs such as Sad Story/Beautiful Song and Rosie explore a dusty, yearning loneliness that could be found at any highway diner in rural Saskatchewan, while the album’s dirty, bluesy title track captures the open-hearted crowd at those Bella Wednesdays (and even features 15 regulars singing boozy backup vocals).

Other inspiration came from the town of Slocan, B.C., where Nolan found himself an unexpected hit at a now-shuttered small-town drinking hole.

“As far as I can tell, this town has been in recession since its inception,” he says. “But for one reason or another, it really embraced us. A big chunk of the town came to our show. People there have no money to spare, but they’ll spare it on us. I find that pretty inspiring.”

And so Slocan found itself obliquely immortalized on No Bourbon as the inspiration for the sauntering roots number Daytime Moon.

With that kind of geographic appeal — and bolstered by Nolan’s pebbly, whiskey-soaked vocals and the smoky rhythms of the record’s band (which includes longtime drummer Joanna Miller and New Meanies Damon Mitchell and Sky Onosson) — the album becomes a deliciously unpretentious slice of something that Nolan finds chronically under-recognized: Canadiana.

“It’s funny because you never hear the phrase ‘Canadiana.’ It’s always ‘Americana,’” he says. “But there’s a pretty old tradition in Canada of that sort of stuff.”

Now that Nolan is working with a record label, more people will perhaps get the chance to hear his take on that High Northern sound. After the former Leaderhouse bassist and Motel 75 leader left group projects to try out solo flight, he spent several years building his career independently. But, after being asked by local label Transistor 66 to donate a song to the Guess Who’s Home tribute album earlier this year, Nolan found himself jumping onto the label’s eclectic roster, which also includes punkers the Fabulous Kildonans and rockabilly kings The Rowdymen.

Only a month into a formal working partnership, Nolan is pleased with the Transistor 66 experience, and his excitement is tangible as the topic keeps worming its way into the conversation.

“I don’t want someone to do it for me. I just want someone to do it with me,” he says of his relationship with the label. “I feel like it’s everything I could have hoped for. It feels good knowing I have people behind me.”

With the additional support that Transistor 66 brings, Nolan is ready to strike out on the next phase of his career. Landing a spot with Transistor paved the way for a deal with U.K. roots label Sonic Rendezvous, which will make him European labelmates with one of his heroes, Lucinda Williams.

While Nolan is hoping to tour there in 2006 with his current band (which includes Miller, Big Dave McLean band guitarist Chris Carmichael, and Motel 75 bassist Mike Webster), his ultimate career goals, as always, remain modest.

Perhaps those low-key hopes reflect the fact Nolan has for several years been living out every musician’s biggest dream: supporting himself entirely through his music. Half a decade from now, all he hopes is for more of the same.

“In five years? I’ll hopefully be touring, and playing to audience of 100 or so people,” he says. “My goals aren’t set high. I recognize that with what I do for a living, I won’t ever be able to retire. So I just want to be comfortable.”

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