“Did you even listen to our new record?”

Grady singer-guitarist Gordie Johnson challenges me from the other end of a telephone over a truck-stop sandwich.

“The blues are history and I have no interest in being a curator.”

This writer has often referred to Johnson’s last band, Big Sugar, as a blues-reggae band, so the question was digging about what it was like playing in a straight-up blues band.

According to Johnson, Good as Dead (released by Alternative Tentacles in the U.S. and by local upstart label C12 Records in Canada) is not a straight-up blues record.

“We throw so much into this mix … I mean, listen to the accordion, lap steel and the riffs.”

But it is a Grady record, and the backdrop for this, their third release, is Austin, Texas, not the Jamaican neighborhood in Toronto, Ont., which Johnson left behind in 2004.

Recorded in the hills northwest of Austin at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales Recording Studio, Good as Dead soaks up the high-desert sonics and reflects the wealth of talent that is Austin.

Toronto native, Ben Richardson (The Phantoms) and Austin local, Nina Singh (Grady’s third drummer), round out this super-solid power trio.

“‘Round here the accordion player is king,” said Johnson, and he could definitely be referring to Michael Ramos (John Mellencamp, Los Lonely Boys), who lends his hand on the Tejano-influenced If I Was King.

He teams up with country-truckin’ outsider Dale Watson on his song Truck Stop in La Grange, and puts the Moonhangers frontman Ethan Shaw to work on a couple of tracks.

This album hits country, metal, sludge and hard-driving rock throughout its 40-plus minutes, which includes a jaw-dropping organic version of the Tragically Hip’s Boots or Hearts.

Johnson’s overdriven sound is as loud as it ever was in Big Sugar, with the right to wear his “shredneck” influences on his sleeve.

When asked about his Winnipeg connections, he informs that he was born here – a surprise to this writer, but I was digging a little deeper. There’s a little shop of St. Matthews Avenue that Grady’s identity owes a lot to, I suggest.

“Oh yeah, Gar Gilles,” Johnson says. “We actually use the Garnet amp’s logo as influence on our own. I went to see him every time I was in Winnipeg, even if I was just visiting family. I was sad to hear when he had passed on [in 2003, at age 85].”

The West End inventor and legend made the vacuum tube-based amplifiers that gave bands like the Guess Who their gritty and driven sound.

So how does Johnson relate to the Garnet amp now?

“I have found the right sound. I have just stopped looking.”

The band also uses Canadian noise masters Traynor Amps to round out their menacingly thick sound.

So their upcoming Winnipeg show is a bit of a homecoming?

“Yeah, first show in the [C12 Records] label’s town, visiting my family and the Garnet connection … feels good. We are looking forward to the Winnipeg audience ‘cause they always make it feel like we’re home.”

Published in Volume 64, Number 8 of The Uniter (October 22, 2009)