Linda McRae has a interesting musical pedigree, starting out as part of Vancouver’s burgeoning late ’70s- early ’80s punk scene in bands
including Squirrels in Bondage, and then exploring her more folky side with Spirit of the West, and now as an alt-country solo artist.
She is in the midst of a tour with acoustic bluesman Ken Hamm, which comes to the Lethbridge Folk Club’s Wolf’s Den, Nov. 27.
“Country, folk and blues all have very similar roots,” McRae observed adding that is why the tour with Ken Hamm is working so well.
“They are both real forcefull and there is a lot of energy. You could probably consider Hank Williams to be the first punk because he did things his way and nobody wrote better songs than Hank,” McRae continued, who also played with Johnny Rotten as well.
“And a lot of people have gone from playing punk to playing Americana or alt-country. There’s a real common thread between them,” she continued. “‘There’s something about the honesty and simplicity of the music that appeals to me,” she said adding she writes songs about the working class, real people.
She also spent several years with Spirit of the West.
“Yeah, I did that for eight years. I played a lot of shows all over the world. It was a lot of fun,” she said.
Lately, she has been living outside of Nashville for the past three years, and finds it a real creative and inspirational atmosphere to be in, though that is likely because she isn’t trying to break into the mainstream country market.
“I’m not 22 and I’m not trying to be Taylor Swift, thankfully,” she said.
“Politically it’s a lot farther right than we are, so that takes some getting used to. It is a great place to live. Musically it is very open. The music community is very small and very close knit,” she said.
