New West Theatre is going country in July.
They are exploring the roots and traditions of country music for their production Country Gold, which runs July 4-27 in the Yates Theatre.
“I always liked Charlie Pride,” enthused Juran Greene, making his New West Theatre debut in Country Gold: Songs of the Prai
rie Grass. He is best known as a soul and R and B singer with popular local R and B collective Hippodrome, so it seems New West would be a natural fit for him.
“Even Ray Charles has a lot of country in him,” Green continued adding he has always helped New West locate props.
“This time I had to find a saddle and they asked me ‘what kind, English, side saddle, western?’ And I said ‘I don’t know, just a saddle,’” he said.
While he won’t be performing any Charlie Pride or Ray Charles in this show, he will lend his big voice and stage presence to a big role in the production.
“I’ll be doing some Jerry Reed and doing some cowboy poetry and telling some tall tales,” Green continued.
There will be songs from the ’20s to the ’90s by musicians like Patsy Cline, George Jones, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Barbara Mandrell the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and many more.
“ Juran is the king of tall tales,” laughed New West Theatre artistic director Jeremy Mason, who is directing Country Gold.
This show is going to be a slightly different format.
“ We’re calling the set a fiddle barn,” Greene chuckled.
The stage is a giant barn, with some of the pieces borrowed from the set of Hatrix’s production of the Foreigner, and a lot closer to the audience, (about 10 feet closer) giving it a more intimate feel.
“We’ve done country shows twice before,” said Mason.
“ So Paul (Walker, musical director) and I looked at the song list and we had a great number of songs. But we wanted to stay away from the more pop side of country and focussed more on traditional country music. We wanted to see what makes country country. And a lot of that is storytelling,” he summarized adding there will be cowboy poetry and tall tales rather than “dramatized knock knock jokes” New West Theatre usually does. He noted the stories and tall tales will be akin to what Stuart McLean‘s Vinyl Cafe does.
“We’ve chosen songs that go as far back as the 1920s with the Carter Family as well as songs from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.
“We wanted the songs to show what it is like to grow up on the prairies,” he said.
The other big change is the shows will start a half hour earlier— at 7:30 p.m. each night to allow people coming in from out of town to get home earlier.
Kathy Zaborsky is glad to be back in Lethbridge performing with New West Theatre, though singing country music is a stretch for her.
“I’m trained as an opera singer so any New West show is a departure for me,” she said.
“They’ve got me exploring my lower range, which is a little difficult,” she said. She is also vocal choreographer for this show. She gets to show off her vocal range on Faith Hill’s “Breathe” as well as some Loretta Lynn on “ Coal Miner‘s Daughter.”
“It feels great. It feels a bit like coming back home. I feel lucky they invited me back,” she said.
She has been busy in Canmore performing in and directing a popular dinner theatre for the past year and a half.
But she is excited to explore country music.
“ I didn’t even know Cadillac Ranch was a Bruce Springsteen song,” she chuckled of one of the show’s cornerstone pieces.
“I didn’t even know what all the words were. I only knew ‘long and dark, shiny and black,’” grinned Greene.
“ We‘re enjoying it. I think people will enjoy it, so come to the show and have a party,” Zaborsky enthused.
The show runs July 4-27.
A version of this story appears in the July 10, 2013 edition of the Lethbridge Sun Times
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
