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Telegraph-Journal (Staint John, NB) - September 13, 2006
Dusty Prairie Poets
With band members spread all over the country, the Dust Poets are a roving band of displaced prairie boys who carry on their western tradition, no matter where they hang their hats.
Corey Ticknor, the band's mandolin player - who also blows trumpet, trombone and adds vocal harmonies - is the band's sole East Coast resident. He rolled into Sackville a few years back when his wife took a job teaching at Mount Allison University.
"I'm along for the ride," he said, a grin in his voice. "She is keeping me in the manner to which I have become accustomed."
The Dust Poets play a rootsy kind of music that fits well with New Brunswick aces Hot Toddy and Isaac and Blewett. It's organic, skilfully played music inflused with a Blue Rodeo tinge, both rhythmically and vocally. Lead singer and songwriter Murray D. Evans' voice bears more than a passing resemblence to Blue Rodeo balladeer Jim Cuddy. The Dust Poets are rounded out by Karla Ferguson (accordion, piano), Sean McManus (clarinet, saxophone, percussion) and Gord Mowat (double bass).
The band's heading this way for its first East Coast tour, playing Rothsey's Sessions Cafe on Wednesday, then Sackville's Convocation Hall on Friday as part of its Performing Arts Series.
The band got together in Brandon, MB, although four of the five members have since relocated. Three ended up in Toronto, with Evans the sole Manitoba hold out.
"It was a way to hang out in Brandon," Ticknor said. "It was a country klezmer joke thing." The band - back when it was (meaninglessly) called das macht Show - recorded its debut album in an afternoon for a lark.
"We got nominated for a Prairie Music Award in 2002 for that album (One Night In Berlin). That was just a solid day's work," Ticknor said, laughing. "We started taking ourselves more seriously after that."
Since then, these dusty poets have put out a sophmore effort, Four Legs Good and the recent Lovesick Town. Their albums feature hometown losers, lovesick hillbillies and a stern rebuke of mall culture.
We are small town, cynical prairie hicks and that's what we sound like," said Ticknor, who hails from Carberry, MB. "We play 1,200-seat theatres and your living room."