ATHABASCA — A break is as good as a rest, they say, but when the break is forced and the end undetermined, one singer took advantage of the time.
Tim Hus has been travelling the country, even the world sometimes, playing his original music for almost 20 years but when the pandemic hit and there were no performances to do, he did the first thing he had wanted to do in a long time – spend more time with his sons.
“I've got two little boys, Huckleberry and Arlo,” Hus said in an interview Sept. 30. “And when the pandemic started, they were three and one … and I would sort of have to say I really lucked out that way because I have always spent a lot of time on the road.”
For years Hus and his two companions making up his travelling band have toured up to 200 dates per year all over North America, venturing sometimes to Europe and other exotic locales.
“(We’ve) been over in Korea, and even the Caribbean Island of Martinique; was down there on a cultural exchange,” he said. “So, I'd always been on the go and if a person could pick a couple of years to sort of stay close to home, it kind of it really sort of lined up for me. That's about the best two years that could happen to a person.”
Now that things have opened up though, Hus is back on the road, catching up on dates cancelled by COVID-19, like the one he will be doing Oct. 7 at the Nancy Appleby Theatre in Athabasca.
“This is one in a long line of makeup dates,” said Hus. "There’s a lot of dates for a couple of years there that were musical chairs and so this is one of the dates that we're finally honouring.”
And he’s happy to get people back into a room, up close and personal.
“The live concert business that I've been in for almost 20 years now, that was obviously a very hard, hard hit, because essentially, we are in the people-gathering business,” he said. “And what makes that good is everything that makes COVID bad, which is a whole bunch of people sitting up close.”
Hus and his band mates did try and do a couple drive-in concerts and some livestreaming but mostly it was just doing projects at home and hanging out with his boys which filled his days living in Sundre with his wife Janelle.
“I moved to Alberta to be a travelling cowboy singer,” said Hus, who grew up in Nelson, B.C. “If you want to be a big country music star you go to Nashville, Tennessee, and you want to be a Canadian cowboy singer, you go to Calgary, Alberta. I knew Ian Tyson was out there and I’d been to the Stampede, and it seemed like a good idea.”
But all that travelling has added more music to his repertoire which his stand-up bass player, Spider Bishop, and drummer Thom Moon are ready to perform.
“I’ve built a troubadour-style career and we’ve spent so much time touring; I’ve got songs making a kind of Canadiana travelogue,” he said. “Stories and songs from all different parts of the country and people I’ve met. (It’s) kind of a little bit of a musical journey presented in a cowboy-country sort of way.”
Tickets and season passes are available at Value Drug Mart and Whispering Hills Fuels in Athabasca or by calling Harvey at 780-675-4158 or George at 780-698-3957.
