Canadian Musician - November/December 2017 | Page 36
On Oct. 16 th , 2015, Sony released
the band’s debut LP, Till the Wheels
Come Off. Its lead single, “Our Town,”
cracked the top 10 on Billboard’s Ca-
nadian country chart and spurred 18
busy months of tours, festivals, and
everything else involved in a major
label album cycle.
“We just stuck to the plan and
we knew it would work,” Oliver says,
sounding as much like a seasoned re-
cording artist as the CEO of a success-
ful tech startup. That plan was to be
calculated, contemplative, and ensure
that any move they made was a step
towards their end goal. “It takes time
to grow your business, but everyone
was onboard. We knew it would take
time, and we put the time in.”
Now, Cold Creek County is right in
between the release dates for a pair
of EPs. The first, Homemade, dropped
on June 2 nd , and bears a few distinct
differences to the band’s debut re-
lease. One is the slant towards a more
traditional take on country music,
compared to Till the Wheels Come Off’s
more modern sheen. The more obvi-
ous, though, is the voice at the centre
of the stereo field.
Between the two releases, the
band replaced original frontman
Brandon Scott with newcomer Ches
Anthony. In the same period, long-
time collaborator Jordan Honsinger
became an officially-minted member,
cementing Cold Creek County as a
six piece: Oliver on drums, Anthony
on lead vocals and guitar, Honsinger
on banjo and backing vocals, Trevor
MacLeod on lead guitar and vocals,
Josh Lester on guitar and vocals, and
his brother Justin on bass and vocals.
The story of how Anthony joined
the ranks is, in true Cold Creek County
fashion, an interesting one – part good
planning and part good luck.
“I was sitting around on the inter-
net and went to YouTube and typed in
‘great singer,’” Oliver begins. One of the
first videos to come up was Anthony
doing a vocal cover of Chris Stapleton’s
take on “Tennessee Whiskey.”
“I kinda kept him there in my back
pocket,” says Oliver. The band had
already scheduled a few auditions with
some semi-established vocalists, but
after those came and went, Oliver still
found himself drawn to the tattooed
fellow from Saskatchewan.
“[The other singers] were great,
but there was just something eating
at me, saying we should go with
someone that doesn’t have a name for
themselves yet,” Oliver offers candidly.
He put in a call to Anthony and
invited him to Ontario for a tryout. The
singer said he could make the trip in
36 • C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N
about three weeks; Oliver countered
with 48 hours. Ten minutes later, An-
thony sent Oliver a screenshot of the
itinerary of the flight he’d just booked
for the next day.
“It’s quite a thrill – that’s for sure,”
says Anthony in early fall 2017, think-
ing back to a whirlwind few months.
When he first got the call, Anthony
had been doing a lot of session work
on vocals and guitar. He was also
working in a studio and taking bar
gigs whenever he could to keep the
bills paid on the back of his passion. If
all went well, the opportunity being
pitched from the other end of the
line would be exactly what he’d been
striving for.
“I was … I don’t want to say ner-
vous, but just kind of a stranger,” An-
thony admits. “I just didn’t know what
to think.”
Musically, he fit right in – that
much is made clear over the course of
Homemade – but there was a deeper
level of compatibility there that both
sides had long sought. Call it “small
town synergy.”
Prior to Honsinger becoming a
formal member (he’s from Burlington,
ON), MacLeod was Cold Creek Coun-
ty’s resident city slicker, coming from
the bustling metropolis of Stratford,
ON, population 30,000. The others
trace their roots back to rural Ontario,
and in fact, had to cross Cold Creek
to get to one another’s houses for
rehearsals in the early years. The pop-
ulation of Anthony’s hometown of
Dalmeny, SK? 1,700.
“Joining this brotherhood, we
all share a lot of the same kinds of
interests,” says Anthony, whose work
experience outside of music includes
ice road trucking, working the oil patch,
and corralling wild boars. “We did a lot
of the same things growing up, so it’s a
cool thing to just kinda jump into and
feels like it fits good. It did seem like
it was meant to be, just hanging with
these guys and jamming.”
For the audition and subsequent
rehearsals, Anthony stayed at the Lester
family farm near Trenton, ON, pretty
much “living out of a Walmart bag.”
After being invited to officially man the
microphone, he was hoping to fly back
to Saskatchewan to pick up his truck,
instruments, and other belongings and
generally just get his life in order, but
there wasn’t really time for any of that.
Instead, he bought some new
underwear and got back to work.
Some variation of the phrase “putting
in the time” comes up repeatedly in
conversation with Oliver. It’s clearly
a key pillar of Cold Creek County’s
career plan.
Ches Anthony
Doug Oliver
Jordan Honsinger
Justin & Josh Lester