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Alberta band High Valley performs at Red Deer’s Memorial Centre

Date is set for Nov. 10
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From a farm in Northern Alberta to Music City, Nashville.

From being a single guy in a band to becoming a married parent of two kids.

High Valley’s Brad Rempel knows how big a difference a few years can make.

So when his wife commented on how tall their seven- and five-year-old children are growing, then wistfully added, “I feel we’re just hanging on for dear life,” he immediately understood her sentiment.

That sense of time passing too quickly, and needing to hang on to all the little moments before they’re gone is captured in High Valley’s upcoming album, Dear Life.

Rempel, who performs with his brother Curtis and their band on Thursday, Nov. 10, at Red Deer’s Memorial Centre, said he tried to write each song — including I Ain’t Changing, Memory Makin’ and Roads We’ve Never Taken — as if he was journaling.

“I was writing about my hopes, my wishes, what we should be thankful for, what we should be scared of… This album is like a letter to life,” said Rempel, who believes a sense of nostalgia permeates the record, as well as “a hopefulness that’s very upbeat.”

Many of the new tunes are toe-tappingly dance-able, a happy mixture of twangy, old-style country and modern radio-friendly production. “Some people are calling it pop-grass,” in the vein of Mumford & Sons or The Lumineers, admitted Rempel, the group’s lead singer, who takes this as a huge compliment.

Melding pop with bluegrass is no big deal to brothers who grew up without TV and with very little radio influence in a Mennonite farming community near La Crete. Rempel recalled the only radio station transmitted a lot of static and farm reports from 300 miles away during his childhood. If you were lucky and the weather was cold enough, a traditional country song could occasionally be heard.

Growing up in this insular environment left the Rempel brothers with a love for “old-school country music,” but also a willingness to be open to fresh ideas.

Lead guitarist Curtis has stated, “You could say it’s weird that we come from the upbringing we do and make this kind of music, but if you analyze Dear Life and the messages on it, you can almost tell that we were brought up the way we were.”

The first single from the album, Every Week’s Got a Friday is climbing Canadian radio charts — while the first cut from the U.S. version of the Dear Life album (the song Make You Mine from High Valley’s previous album that was not released in America) is doing very well in the U.S.

Brad feels the opportunity to cross between countries and musical genres is an amazing situation to be in for a band from Northern Alberta.

His family has now lived in Nashville for six years and loves it, spending beach days on the Gulf Coast and weekends in the stands, watching his kids play football.

But Brad and Curtis Rempel always look forward to touring in Alberta. “We played in London, England, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Halifax and Phoenix — all in the same week.” But no crowds ever cheer louder or longer than those in Alberta, said Brad.

“They’ve supported us right from the beginning.”

Tickets for the show are available from the Black Knight Ticket Centre.

lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com