At this weekends Long Road Festival at Stafford Hall in Lutterworth, Leicestershire, Canadian artist Dan Davidson completed a rare hat-trick for a North American country artist – playing three different UK festival weekends having previously appeared at Buckle and Boots in 2022 and at London’s Country to Country in 2023. Yeah, it is the third time we've been here. Man, it was so much fun and it's so cool that we're seeing people reaching out from C2C that were there and saw us at one of our three shows that are coming out tonight. So that's kind of fun. That'd be good.The funny thing is like, the people that come to festivals in the UK, are actively searching out music, which is different than at home, because at home they're just there, because it's a festival, and they know it's country music, and they know the stars, but here, if there aren't the Carrie Underwoods, and the Keith Urbans, it's kind of better, because they're looking hard, and they actually then go and see the other artists, and don't camp out.
In the 18 months since Dan played C2C, he has played shows in Canada, Australia and Italy, become a morning show radio host in his hometown of Edmonton and also started filming his own kids TV show! I've got a few things on the go right now. I'm a little stressed! No, seriously though it's good, man. It all feeds into each other. I was promoting this concert series that I developed at home and this radio station, CFCW in Edmonton, reached out and were like, hey, why don't you come in and sit on the morning show and you can talk about your show for a couple of days. I did that, promoted my series and away I went. Then they called me a couple of days later and said, do you want to do this radio gig in the morning? Like, you can still tour, do all your stuff, and whenever you're home, just come in. It's going well though, the radio, and it works for coming over here and things. They make it work and it's a good, shameless self-promotion machine, which I like!!
Also, in that time his hometown Edmonton Oilers narrowly missed on lifting the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1990 Game seven, lost by one goal. One period is all we needed. Don't bring up my sadness. Edmonton just insane during that run and it's probably for the best that they didn't win, the city would have burned down!
This latest visit to the UK though was just a quick hop over the pond to play the Friday night and Saturday morning on The Long Road’s Front Porch stage before being part of a writer’s round event at York’s Vinyl Café. Yeah, we've never been to YorkandI heard that we sold out that little club over there. It's not huge, but I'm happy to, fill it up! Everyone just keeps telling us that it's a beautiful place.
Dan was one of a small group of Canadians on this years Long Road bill, similar to when he appeared at Buckle and Boots a few years back I knew the one other Canadian on the bill at Buckle – Matt Lang. Julian Taylor’s here and he’s been kicking around Toronto for 10,000 years. He's everlasting. You know, it's always cool to be a bit of a fish out of water at these festivals, because there's so many new names for us.
In recent months, we have had new music from Dan in the form of an updated version Won’t Forget from his 2023 EP, Nineteen Eighty Something, which featured fellow Canadian artist Tim Hicks and up and coming Australian signer Max Jackson Australia has kind of been a target of mine, because it's such a similar market to Canada. It's not quite America, but it's rowdy, and they appreciate their own, and they appreciate people coming there and spending the time, right? I released my first song there, and it was a collab with the Roadhammers, and it went top 10 right away, and I was like, oh, there's something here! So, I started spending the time, and spending the money, and being down there. It was honestly incredible, the reaction we were getting, the style that we have, just seems to click down there. I've been three times now, and I've collaborated with some of their biggest artists, like Travis Collins. I've been writing with Tim Hicks a lot and actually I co-wrote his new song, Miss Tom Petty, with him. He's co-wrote a bunch on my record, and so we've kind of just been working together lots, and he's just, he's a like-minded guy. I respect his hustle, and I think it goes the other way as well, and it just seemed like a good match, and he's such a good singer, and he's got so much energy, it just felt right.
I wanted to tie it into Australia, since it's been such a focus, and I just signed a record deal down there, with ABC Music, and they have this new girl, Max Jackson, who's been kind of coming up, and making some noise, good on TikTok, so it all just kind of fell into place! We were there in August, and then we were there again in April, so we were twice this year, which is a lot of money. It's building, and we've already said about coming to England, you've got to build. I like to think that people can pick up on that, that you're committing to their market a little bit. I just find that, I don't really want to put America as a focus for me, because I kind of run in a different direction, than a lot of artists do, so Canada, Australia, and Europe.I’m always looking for opportunities, you know. There’s obviously here in the UK that has been really, really cool, cause I like, I have friends on other genres and stuff here too, so I can spend some time writing, and just be here, which is kind of nice, We always have a lot of fun here too.