E.B. Anderson & The Resolutes

"EB Anderson and the Resolutes cook up a stew that gives off the aroma of salt air, diesel and stale tears. Hearty, and utterly satisfying."
- Tom Bedell - Q104 Host

"When I first heard the CD I was really impressed. Good bunch of fun and some great songs. Love the spirit of Townes that's poking out in places and I'm really looking forward to catching another live show". Dave Gunning - Dave Gunning

"When I first heard the CD I was really impressed. Good bunch of fun and some great songs. Love the spirit of Townes that's poking out in places and I'm really looking forward to catching another live show". Dave Gunning - Dave Gunning

"I believe that EB Anderson and the Resolutes have the potential to bring more people together and make more friends than any other musicians I know. This band is a very focused musical effort. It's all about playing well, and singing well, too. EB Anderson and the Resolutes have managed to find a sound that I believe folks are craving! Their ability to use a wide variety of stringed instruments and keep an,old time feel while making you want to crank up the volume is a huge compliment to our Maritime tradition." Fleur Mainville - Fleur Mainville (musician, host of East Coast Road Trip)

Growing up in Trenton, Bert Anderson was always in awe of the New Glasgow Riverfront Jubilee.
It was a highlight of the summer for the music enthusiast, to see and hear some of the greats he grew up listening to on the radio.
Now he gets to share the stage with them at this year’s Jubilee as part of EB Anderson and the Resolutes.
Anderson and his band will be taking the stage kicking off the Sunday night of this year’s Jubilee followed by Dave Gunning, Matt Anderson, Kim Mitchell and the Stanfields.
“Growing up I went to the Jubilee every year. I always loved listening to music and I liked seeing it performed live,” says Anderson. “Playing the Jubilee was always something I wanted to do.”
Anderson began playing guitar in Grade 6 and was in and out of bands through high school until about two years ago when he teamed up with his current fellow musicians, Rob Anderson, Stephen MacNeil and Derek Thomas, to form EB Anderson and the Resolutes.
“We are very excited to play the Jubilee,” he says.
EB Anderson and the Resolutes have played Glasgow Square before and performed main stage at the Trenton Fun Fest last year during the town’s centennial celebrations, but Anderson says this is probably their largest venue to date.
“We are so excited not only to play, but about the company we will be sharing the stage with that night,” he says. “I have been going to see the Stanfields play before anyone knew who they were and Kim Mitchell is amazing. It’s very exciting.”
When referring to the style of music his band plays, Anderson says, “We always try to come up with an accurate description of our style and the best I can say is vintage. It’s more of an older style of country and pre-war blues. I was very much influenced by The Birds and outlaw country musicians like Hank Williams but also by people like Steve Earle. I think we (the band) draw inspiration from a little bit of everything.”
Although Anderson says he’s not yet nervous, that may change as he approaches the main stage at Glasgow Square in August.
“I think we’ve played enough shows that we’re not all that nervous as of right now,” he says. “As for me, I just started singing a few years ago so I still get a bit nervous until I’m about half way through the first song and realize there won’t be a monumental disaster; at the beginning at least.”
For anyone who hasn’t seen EB Anderson and the Resolutes, expect to be entertained.
“There aren’t a lot of other bands playing the style of music we are right now,” he says. “For every show we do, we try to put out a high energy set. I have a lot of respect for the people in my band, they are a talented group of musicians. If nothing else you will hear some good performing and be entertained.”
EB Anderson and the Resolutes are currently working on some new material for a second album.
“We will probably be playing a lot of songs that aren’t on our current album.”
- Pictou Advocate

When E.B. Anderson and The Resolutes show up at the New Glasgow Riverfront Jubilee this year, don’t expect them to be fitting into any specific music genre.
As lead vocalist for the band, E.B. Anderson says, they like to take the best from all genres and neither he nor his fellow band members are fans of shoehorning music into a single genre.
“When we started the band we didn't really even know what kind of band it was going to be,” he said. “Our first gig was at a country music bar and we mostly played our more traditional sounding country stuff, a few originals and some covers - somse Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and a Townes Van Zandt tune - and afterwards they said, you know it sounds good but its but its not really the kind of country we want - we were too country for the country bar. After that I think we just decided were gonna play songs we want to play, and if I wanna write a country song ill write a country song, if I wanna write a jazzy song I’ll write a jazzy song – a folk song, whatever. When you get down to it a good song is a good song, regardless of genre.”
He said their inspiration is as varied as their style.
“We all came from mostly different backgrounds, but had a lot of common likes. I listened to a lot of old country when I was a kid and slowly, somewhat reluctantly was drawn back to it,” he said. “But with that there was a lot of old rock n roll and a ton of blues music, with some newer stuff. A lot of Hank Williams, Lightning Hopkins, Gram Parsons, and the first time I heard Townes Van Zandt I was sold lock stock and barrel.”
Anderson said he’s been going to the Jubillee since he was a kid and to be able to perform this year with a great lineup of musicians who will each offer a different sound is a real treat, he said.
About 50 per cent of the Resolutes music is new now and they are looking forward to sharing it with Pictou County fans.
”I love festival gigs because you get to really focus on playing your set just full out,” he said. “When you're playing in bars you're expected to play multiple sets over hour. Here we have just one shot to make an impression, and that gets everyone fired up.”
The New Glasgow Riverfront Jubilee will be held this Friday through Sunday at the Glasgow Square Theatre. E.B. Anderson and The Resolutes perform Sunday. - New Glasgow News

I always have a soft spot for bands that appreciate the “have guitar, will travel” attitude, and E.B. Anderson and the Resolutes earn major points for being the first act that comes to mind that’s played a concert on Big Tancook Island, just offshore from Blandford.

Reachable mostly by a ferry from Chester, the tight little community proved to be a most hospitable audience for the Trenton native and his hardy trio of upright bassist Steve MacNeil, drummer Derek Thomas and guitarist Rob Anderson.

“It was a good time; it’s a wild site for a show,” says Anderson by phone from Truro. “We played at this woman’s house that was right by the water, and it seemed like most of the island turned out for the show.

SEE ALSO: Pick of the Week: Ryan Cook, Wrestling with Demons

“They told me about the island’s sauerkraut industry, from the cabbage they’d grow there, but the deer kept eating it all. At first, they just had a few does, but then a buck got out there and had his way with them.”

Large four-footed friends have been on Anderson’s mind a lot lately, with the release of his new CD Broken Down Horse. One of his first shows following its launch is at this weekend’s Smokin’ Blues Fest 3 in Aylesford at the Fox Mountain Camping Park.

E.B. Anderson and the Resolutes join a cross-Maritimes roster that includes fellow Nova Scotia acts Shirley Jackson and Her Good Rockin’ Daddies, Dan Doiron and Catahoula Brown, P.E.I. band Bad Habits and MusicNB 2012 blues performer of the year, the Terry Whalen Band.

The Annapolis Valley celebration of East Coast blues takes place Friday and Saturday. Tickets are available at the Ticket Atlantic box office (ticketatlantic.com or 451-1221). For more details, visit smokinbluesfest.com.

Not that you’d consider E.B. Anderson and the Resolutes a blues band, it’s just one of the ingredients in the band’s country/folk/rock and roll stew on Broken Down Horse, recorded in Halifax at Scott Ferguson’s Studio FMP, Ross Billard’s R&B Productions and Sonic Temple.

“I never really know how to describe it. I guess it’s a mishmash of all the different kinds of music that I like,” says Anderson.

Anderson is comfortable living at that crossroads where country, blues and rock collide, like musicians he admires such as Gram Parsons and Neil Young. On Broken Down Horse, he draws inspiration from some of these names — not so much their music as the lives they’ve led.

For example, the forlorn Snow Falls on Denver got its initial spark from a story of songwriter Townes Van Zandt riding his horse from Colorado to Texas and back again.

“I got this image in my head of Townes heading down to Houston from Denver for the winter, that’s where it started,” explains Anderson.

“The song isn’t really about that though; if anything, it’s more about tricking yourself into falsely believing things that seemed like a good idea at the time.

“It’s like making yourself feel that you are where you belong. Like the song says, ‘I thought that I was home … but I know that I’m alone.’ And that’s sort of inspired by (Van Zandt’s) life too.”

The memory of another musician who constantly felt the urge to roam and expressed that urge in songs like I’m a Long Gone Daddy and I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive also kick-started the album’s pairing of the songs Ohio and Ramblin’. But as with Snow Falls on Denver, that initial thought gets taken in new directions.

“It starts off as the story of a guy who picks up Hank Williams’ ghost along the highway. He was on his way to Ohio when he died in the back of his limousine,” he says.

“But then it switches to this other song I had called Ramblin’, so it goes from a guy giving a ride to a ghost to these further travels.

“But it’s funny how I have these songs that are inspired by other musicians. But they all go off on these new tangents. Sometimes I don’t even know what they’re about in the end. … Probably something deeply personal that I’m not even aware of yet. That’s one of the things I love about music, that you can draw your own conclusions.” - Stephen Cooke

With so many choices of what to listen to, and access to music being virtually unlimited these days, fans almost need to set up their own algorithmic filter to find the music that might best suit them. If I was setting the parameters of a formula to find good country music and separate the wheat from the chaff, I’d most certainly tell it to favor any songwriters from Oklahoma, and any throwback country artists from Canada.

As weird as it may seem to pin one of the quality epicenters of today’s country music in the snowy regions north of the border, it’s almost a sure fire way to narrow your search to something that may hit on your sensibilities if you like country music that speaks to the heart, and is beholden to the roots.

From the rural regions of Nova Scotia and centered around the port town of Halifax, E. B. Anderson and the Resolutes are following in the footsteps of fellow Nova Scotia native Hank Snow and trying to preserve the classic sound of country music with their own style and approach. That means hitting on a lot of lonesome feelings, adding in a little bit of the blues, and inoculating a healthy dose of steel guitar and twang into their music.

Their third major album Cold Ground may originate in Canada, but the songs follow E.B. Anderson on his travels and trials through various ports of call on the North American continent. From the sidewalks of the big and scary New York City, to the Jersey suburb of Matawan, and all the way down to Music City itself, Anderson takes you on a journey and includes the white knuckle moments in between as he searches for love, himself, and the next song to sing.

Cold Ground starts off with the swingy, jazzy “She Used To,” with answering chorus lines and sauntering neo-traditional style that makes you think you might be in store for a Wayne Hancock/ early Justin Townes Earle-sounding matinee of throwback tunes. But Cold Ground goes on to be so much more than just a period piece. This is about the songwriting first and foremost, with styles ranging from modern traditional to early classic, and the Resolutes standing behind E.B. showing they’re attentive and astute enough to interpret his sentiments into the appropriate musical tones.

Cold Ground will make you shuffle your feet and bob your head, but its most memorable moments is when E.B. Anderson slows it down a bit and let’s the heartache breed on bending notes, slow moans, and extended choruses that squeeze every last drop of emotion out of the story before releasing you back to the next verse. That’s what is accomplished in the song “I’ve Seen You Around.” One of the other stellar tracks is the stripped down “No One Said It’d Be Easy,” where the songwriting hits its peak.

No one ever said that it’d be easy
But non one ever said it’d be this hard
It seems like every road’s another goddamn detour
Sometimes it’s a wonder how we ever got this far

Cold Ground never hits a sour note or an icy patch, even if some of the songs begin to blend into the background a bit after a few listens, and even if sometimes Anderson seems to be straining to find his authentic singing voice. Hiding at the very end is a song called “Devil On Our Backs” that almost sounds like it was from a different session than the rest of the record—a little ragged and loose, but in a good way. It may deceptively be the best song on the album and deserves to not be overlooked.

Fools are the ones who limit their musical experience based on the geographical origination point of the artists. The truth is great country music can come from anyone or anywhere as long as it’s made with heart, talent, and a keen knowledge and awareness of what country music is supposed to be about. Nova Scotia? Sure. It worked for Hank Snow, and it’s working for E.B. Anderson and the Resolutes.

1 3/4 of 2 Guns Up (7/10) - Saving Country Music Trigger

When one looks at the history of music evolution in North America, there are certain hotbeds that produce numerous artists and drive the evolution of music. Memphis is famous for rockabilly and soul, New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, and Seattle is credited with bringing alternative music to the masses during the '90s. There are numerous examples, but certain places seem to produce high quality artists against the odds. Way out in the eastern reaches of the continent lies the second smallest and poorest province in Canada, Nova Scotia. Like the aforementioned cities, this location has a rich history of high quality songwriters, including country artist George Canyon. It is also home to hidden gem, superb songwriter E.B. Anderson.

"Cold Ground" is an eclectic mix of musical styles, as Anderson and backing band The Resolutes deftly weave their way through a proudly North American blend. They touch on rockabilly, soul, rock and roll and elements of country and folk at various times. His soulful voice is strong and can pull of a howling rocker like "Matawan" as comfortably as critical darlings JD McPherson and Nathaniel Rateliff.

On "White Knuckle Driving," they provide a fast paced road song, an obvious east coast nod to Corb Lund's "Hurtin' Albertan." While the upbeat songs are wonderful, Anderson has a soft side as well. On "Take Time," they use steel guitar and Anderson's vocal range to full effect, drawing emotion through the sombre ballad. The hard luck tale "No One Said It'd Be Easy" is a melancholy look at life and love.

There is a prominent celebration of tradition found here. By acknowledging the roots of American music, Anderson stands out in an increasingly overproduced industry. Much like Jason Isbell, Anderson is a skilled songwriter who isn't afraid to experiment with different genres, backed capably by excellent musicians in The Resolutes. This is an excellent introduction to an artist who already sounds seasoned on his debut. - Country Standard Time Reviewed by Dustin Blumhagen