Finally there’s new stuff from Saskatchewan on DevilDuck! Gunner & Smith spent a while with the guys of The Local Group - a bluegrass band from Saskatoon, who Geoff Smith (songwriter of Gunner & Smith) met while working at a bluegrass festival in the northern Boreal forest in Saskatchewan and some of you might already know Jaxon, the banjo player of The Local Group, as the bass player of Gunner & Smith on their latest Europe Tour in September 2019 - and recorded three songs.
Two of them should sound pretty familiar to Gunner & Smith listeners, because they both appeared on one of the older albums. You can hear ‘Wisconsin’ - which is the namesake for the EP as well - on their latest record “Byzantium” (2019) and ‘He Once Was a Good Man’ gave the name for the first Gunner & Smith album, which was released back in 2014.

But now the songs are embellished with a completely new sound - not the guitar-driven americana folk you would expect. This time the songs are accompanied by the banjo and upright bass melodies of The Local Group and that is setting the songs in a whole new light.

“I wanted to filter some of my songs through a completely different instrumentation and I’ve always enjoyed bluegrass music. So I had the idea to do a few tracks with The Local Group.” - Geoff Smith

The third song you’ll hear on the “Wisconsin”-EP will be “I’ll Be Here in the Morning” a Townes Van Zandt Cover that perfectly fits in row with the other songs and completes the 12 minutes of folk music magnificently!

Quotes for “Byzantium“:

„It sometimes reminds me of the attitude of Townes van Zandt and Neil Young“
- Aachener Ztg.

„Pink Floyd meets Townes van Zandt“ - Classic Rock

„Country Rock Noir - I really like the guitars sounding like Crazy Horse.“ - Rolling Stone

Not that you think Gunner & Smith are now following their friends The Dead South with changing more to the Bluegrass scene - this is just a great little project with friends.
Gunner & Smith have already written a bunch of songs which will again be produced by and with Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes) as soon as he is able to leave Nashville flying in to Saskatoon….