Canada’s favorite cowboy, Corb Lund, is back with his first album of all original music in almost five years. El Viejo is a stunning character study of gamblers and loners moving from card game to card game, perfectly bridging modern Americana with the likes of Jerry Reed, Del McCoury and Marty Robbins with a Springsteen-like sense of storytelling in three-minute bursts.
The album was recorded entirely in Lund’s living room backed by his band, The Hurtin’ Albertans, using only acoustic instruments. The tone is set immediately with the opening track “The Card Players,” an upbeat rambling number about trying to explain yourself to a pit boss who’s caught onto your scam. Gambling pops up again and again across the record on tracks like “Out On A Win,” “When the Game Gets Hot,” and “I Had It All.” But that’s just one of the themes that makes up the record. “Redneck Rehab” is about trying to kick speed while also digging into the horse business; “Girl With The Stratocaster” is a song Lund admits to being “kinda Eagles-y” about a girl he once saw on stage, a visual that stuck with him. And he’s not wrong about the Eagles vibe. While “It Takes Practice,” is either about learning to play guitar or learning to be a bad guy (or possibly both) told over a brilliant folk/country swing line. One of the most starkly beautiful tracks here is “Insha’allah,” about a warrior fighting alongside Lawrence of Arabia during World War I. The music is as beautiful as the subject is random on an album full of gambling tunes.
The album closes with “That Old Familiar Drunken Feeling,” a song about being too high on a weed gummy and needing to drink to come back to form in time to perform – quite possibly Lund’s most endearing song in his career so far. The record and title track are dedicated to his longtime friend, mentor, and sometime collaborator Ian Tyson, who passed away in 2022. The song is a fitting tribute that manages to be both sentimental and catchy.
