It’s mostly all about country music this week.
This week begins with back to back shows at the Geomatic Attic beginning with bluegrass band Slocan Ramblers, on July 29 and a stripped down solo show with Fred Eaglesmith and Tif Ginn the next day.

 Local country band the Dearly Departed will open for bluegrass band Slocan Ramblers on July 29 at at 8 p.m. sharp at the Geomatic Attic. Tickets cost $10 members, $20 guests, $22.50 online and $25 at the door.

 Unfortunately Fred Eaglesmith is competing with classic rocker John Fogerty at the Enmax Centre. Eaglesmith’s Geomatic Attic show begins at 8 p.m. with a solo set by Tif Ginn, July 30. Tickets cost $30 Advance, $32.50 Online, $35 Door.

John Fogerty, the frontman for classic rockers  Creedence Cleerwater Revival plays the Enmax Centre, July 30 beginning at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $35-$95. He will be joined by band mates Kenny Aronoff, Bob Malone, Shane Fogerty, James Lomenzo and Devon Pangle.

Canadian alt country icon Fred Eaglesmith is enjoying a rare solo tour which brings him to the Geomatic Attic, July 30.

“ I thought I’d give the band a break. We had  a very heavy winter,” said Eaglesmith from rural B.C., where he is enjoying a lot of places he  doesn’t hit as often as he would like too.
 It’s not every day we get to to Golden, B.C. or Great Falls, Montana,”  he said.

“It’s tough for these little clubs. There’s so much music and so many bands playing. They deserve a sell out, so I’ll come in and i can do that for them,” he said.
“I go out on my own every two or three years,” he said.

 He is touring with multi-instrumentalist Tif Ginn, who he has been playing with for six years now.
“ She’s a much better musician than I am. She reminds me of  Willie P Bennett. He was a much better musician than me. He always pushed me to become a better musician. She helps me to become a better musician like he did,” Eaglesmith said.
“ It’s been really great playing with Tif. We started in Chicago. And it’s  great to see people still excited to see us,” he said.

He said the set will include songs from throughout his 20 album career, some from his most recent “ Tambourine” and  a lot of new material.

“The new record will be out in the fall. It is more of a narrative than it is about the band,” he said, adding his band  appears on the new record.
“It is really stripped down. It’s more about the song, but it’s not folk like that, it still has a lot of rock,” he said.

It will always be a mystery to me why Edmonton born, Vancouver based punk icons SNFU never hit superstardom during the great punk resurgence of the early ’90s with the likes of Green Day, Bad Religion, Blink 182 and Sum 42. Perhaps because they were and still are too weird for the mainstream.

But a good sized Lethbridge crowd got a taste of Canadian  punk rock royalty, July 16 at Inferno.
Lone original member Ken Chin best known as Chi Pig, dressed in a sequinned dress and Warriors biker vest, knows how to pick musicians.

He had former Real McKenzies guitarist Dirty Kurt Robertson, UK Subs drummer Jamie Oliver plus Randy on guitar and Dave Bacon who played on SNFU's 1986 album If You Swear, You'll Catch No Fish.

 They were tight, tight, tight as they backed Chi Pig's quirky vocals with a whole lot of punk power and a touch of metal.

Chi Pig wasn’t bouncing off amplifiers or swinging props like a Devil's pitchfork around like he did back in the day, but you couldn’t take your eyes off the ever charismatic frontman, right from the beginning of the show when he hocked a loogie on the stage and tried to wipe it on Dirty Kurt who snarled “get away from me.”

After all he’s been through with addiction and health issues it’s a minor miracle Chi Pig is still alive, let alone still hitting some of the impressive vocal notes he was hitting.

 As expected they played a lot from the record “And No One Else Wanted to Play” including ‘Cannibal Cafe,’ which had the enthusiastic audience shouting along and my favourite  She’s Not on the Menu” for which he had Scallywags mohawked bassist Josh Scallywag shouting along.
 It was amazing. They focused on  “And No One Else wanted to play,”  but touched on music from throughout their career.

 The drummer was a blur of energy and  the whole band was locked in tight.
 The bassist Dave Bacon, with an artificial leg with the SNFU fish logo emblazoned on it, shouted at the crowd “Have you had enough yet” mid way through the set.

They hadn’t so SNFU was happy to pound out some more energetic punk, spanning all of their albums for another half hour.
 He shouted ‘had enough?’ at the end, and they played one last song.

“Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump” was a highlight, which Chi Pig said was about Lethbridge.

 I missed the opening set by Medicine Hat metal band Western Death, but was pleased to catch a solid set of music about drinking and screwing and being frustrated by life from local punks the Scallywags who were a trio for this show.

Bob Scallywag shouted the lyrics and they had the audience starting a mosh pit, which carried through to SNFU.

An enthusiastic audience enjoyed an upbeat set of bluegrass inspired music from Calgary’s Rotary Park, July 15 stopping by the Owl Acoustic Lounge on the first date of their new tour en route to South Country Fair.

I last saw Rotary Park at the Lethbridge Folk Club in February.

Since then they’ve released their second  CD “Be” so they decided to focus on the new music from that.

The band (Alex Ginella - Vocals/Guitar/Fiddle/Harmonica Colton Daigle - Vocals/Mandolin/Percussion Liam Testa - Vocals/Guitar Matt Coldwell - Vocals/Double Bass Tanner Day - Vocals/Banjo) switched instruments in between songs and sometimes in the middle of a song. They had superb vocal harmonies and undeniable musicianship.

They incorporated elements of jazz, folk, progressive rock and of course bluegrass. So I want to coin a new term to describe them— prog-grass as they combined a lot of those elements into experimental progressive rock including turning Pink Floyd's “Time” into a bluegrass song which allowed all of the band members to play tasteful solos. They also covered an old Irish song.

 They noted “they were tired of playing ‘Wagon Wheel’ and  ‘Folsom Prison Blues’  for corporate gigs during Stampede , so they were glad to play original music from their new CD “Be.”

 “Saskatchewan” was an early highlight which set the tone for the night as it gave everybody a chance to solo. Some of the many highlights included  “Canis Lupus,” and “Good Bye Baby Blues” and a couple songs about drinking. Each of the songs had different time signature changes, and different elements from country to ’50s doo wop music.