“So it’s a nice mixture of what we feel represents our band. Mates described his band’s sound: “It’s a cross of rootsy, raw stuff that we grew up listening to ” and obviously stuff that’s a little bit aggressive, too.” he said. Studio albums often feature session musicians, which Emerson Drive disdains. It’s nice to know that Josh and Teddy have been real pillars in our career in finding that live sound in the studio.” It’s a tough thing to do because you don’t have the element of a live audience and just that energy that you get with a crowd. “Our fans and people who come to see our shows have always enjoyed what they hear live, so the trick in the studio is to take that live sound and re-create it. “It’s so easy to put a lot of bells and whistles on top of stuff and make it bigger than it should sound,” Mates said. Gentry coined the term “countrified” to described Emerson Drive’s style. A follow-up record, “Believe,” with the current single “Belongs to You,” is due out April 7. Leo and Gentry helped the band make its 2008 album “Countrified,” which included “Moments” and two more top 25 singles. Leo reportedly said Emerson Drive was the best live band he had heard in years. “We only played 27 minutes, (but they) were pretty important minutes.”Īnother break came when producer Josh Leo and Alabama’s Teddy Gentry heard Emerson Drive perform in Bowling Green, Ky. “We played in front of 17,000 people every other night, 72 shows over a year and a half,” Mates said. Emerson Drive hooks up with the historic Alaska Highway’s Mile Marker 0.Ī lot of fans discovered Emerson Drive when the band opened for Shania Twain. Mates renamed the band Emerson Drive, a road five miles from his hometown Grand Prairie, Alberta. already had a group called 12 Gauge, rappers out of New York. The first thing they learned was that the U.S. ![]() ![]() “All those years in the bars molded our sound and who we were going to be,” Mates said.Īfter releasing a pair of independent CDs in Canada, the band moved to Nashville in 1999 hoping to become a country sensation. When the members were 16 and 17 years old, they would play five sets of covers a night. Originally named 12 Gauge, the band’s only remaining founding member is Mates, who said his favorite artist growing up was George Strait. Well, almost never: Mates has missed two gigs with illness in nine years, so one concert out of about every 800. “When someone comes to us who has gone through something tragic in their life, we can completely relate to it.”Įmerson Drive is known for never using guest musicians on its albums, singing soulful harmonies on both ballads and rockers, and never missing a show. “We’ve grown as people from this, and it’s nice to know that out of all of this we have a story to share with people,” Mates said. Bourque quit the group and moved home to Canada a month before his death. ![]() The touring band is together 200 days a year. In the song, a homeless man contemplates taking his own life but ultimately he decides to live.Įmerson Drive didn’t realize the weight of Bourque’s troubles ” surprising, Mates said, because everyone was so close.
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