TORONTO — When Gord Bamford first started experiencing a strange discomfort around Christmas, he responded — true to his working-class country image — with stubborn stoicism.
But even cowboys have moms.
So with only days remaining until the release of his major-label debut album and an accompanying national tour, the 35-year-old Bamford finally sought medical help — and subsequently had to undergo emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder.
“I was trying to tough it out but this tour goes literally to the end of May, so it was actually my mom who just showed up at my house,” laughed Bamford during a recent interview at a Toronto bar, roughly a week after his release from hospital.
“(She said), ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ You know how moms get.”
With the ordeal just barely behind him, Bamford said he was still on the mend as he slouched against the bar for an interview, his eyes shaded by a black cowboy hat.
Aside from a bit of lingering tenderness though, he was feeling much better. Certainly, he’d passed the most crucial health test.
“I’m back to drinking beer again,” he said, smiling. “So we’re good.”
Bamford couldn’t afford much more time to nurse his wounds.
On Tuesday, he launches an extensive national trek in Saint John, N.B., that will see him on the road until a May 25 show in Chilliwack, B.C., with only brief breaks in-between.
And he’s supporting the recent release of his fifth studio album, Is It Friday Yet? The disc marks Bamford’s major-label debut — he’s signed with Sony for this release and a Christmas album due out later this year — and could thus prove crucial to determining whether the Lacombe, Alta., native’s traditional, no-nonsense country can crack through to a bigger audience.
But Bamford doesn’t necessarily see it that way. He released his four previous albums on his own label, with 2010’s Juno-nominated Day Job providing a commercial breakthrough for the plain-spoken father of three.
So as far as he’s concerned, Sony has just as much to prove as he does.
“I don’t think I have any pressure,” said Bamford, whose children Memphis, Paisley and Nash range in age from two to seven years old.
“I think it’s more ... the label that might have pressure. Because we’ve had so much success that, in our minds, we believe that they’re just going to keep that going and then some.
“Obviously, though, I gotta deliver the product to them.”
That Bamford, who splits his time between Alberta and Nashville, refers to his new disc as “product” shouldn’t necessarily raise any red flags. He prides himself on his pragmatic approach to songwriting, and he tries to speak objectively about the chart potential of any one of the 13 tracks on his new record.
The album’s title track is a “blue-collar anthem” that Bamford thinks will be universally relatable. The honky-tonk Must Be a Woman is “very commercial radio,” as Bamford sums it up in the liner notes, while Farm Girl Strong similarly has “radio written all over it.”
Bamford makes no apologies about his commercial ambition, noting that he would be loath to record a song he felt wasn’t accessible enough for frequent radio play even if the tune appealed to him personally.
“I try to make records that I think all (the songs) could make the radio — if I threw a dart at them and hit (a song), it would be on the radio,” he said.
“As a fan of music, I can’t stand buying records that you hear a song on the radio, you buy the record, and it really disappoints you — I feel like I got ripped off. So for me, I wanna put songs on there that when fans go buy the record they feel like their money’s well-spent.”
Still, that’s not to say that Bamford shies away from personal material. The mournful Leaning on a Lonesome Song was inspired by the recent death of his brother-in-law, while Now That You’re Gone finds Bamford musing on how he’d manage if he ever lost his wife.
But given Bamford’s sharp business sense, he does have clear goals for what he wants to achieve with his latest disc.
“We talk about Day Job, we won everything we could win there,” said Bamford, who reeled in several Canadian Country Music Awards for that last effort, including album of the year.
“It was awesome, but to get to the next level, we couldn’t get any farther on our own. ... (Sony is) doing a great job so far. We wouldn’t be able to open (these) doors — at least, it would take us time, five-six years to do that stuff.
“Time’s not on my hands. I’m 35 years old. So we gotta get moving on this thing. It’s exciting. Our deal with them, I think it only elevates what we’re doing.”