On El Viejo, Corb Lund not only pays tribute to late friend and mentor Ian Tyson, but has also created an ode to the notion of stripping everything down and letting the tape roll — simply capturing a moment of pure vulnerability and organic inspiration in real Time.

“There’s not a single electric instrument on the whole thing, just acoustic sounds and singing,” Lund says. “In terms of having a vision, this is a record I’ve had in my sights for a while and it came out exactly how I’d hoped. We cut all the songs live in the same room with lots of bleed. A bunch of the songs we captured in one take, first time Through.”

Much like his music, Lund is decidedly hard to define. The western Canadian singer-songwriter is an elusive artist — onstage, offstage and in the studio — seamlessly weaving between the outlaw country, Western, and indie-folk realms with an honest curiosity and rowdy devotion to each.

Raised on the rolling prairies of Alberta in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, and hailing from generations of ranchers and rodeo people, Lund was instilled with the tried-n-true DIY sentiment of “if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself.”

“Growing up in a rural setting, you learned to do everything on your own — weld, fix a fence, fix a truck, start colts, whatever” Lund says. “At the start of my career, I just assumed I wouldn’t have a lot of help from the music industry, so I just did it all on my own — recorded albums in my basement, printed my own t-shirts, booked my own tours, became my own manager and publicist, whatever it took to get it done.”

Lund has a devoted audience comprised of city dwellers, along with authentic Western music fans still living an agricultural lifestyle; both sects finding elements of their lives reflected within the themes of the music, due to the fact that he toured for years with indie-metal band the smalls, and later turned his sights to writing Western songs. This has created a unique and quirky hybrid writing style.