He was a rock star, then changed paths to become a country star.
It was only a partial transition. In this summer's video for the single Miles To Go, he proudly sports an Iron Maiden T-shirt along with his black cowboy hat and rough jeans. With his chinstrap beard and arms full of tattoos, he looks like he is still the frontman for post-grunge power band Jet Black Stare, not the soaring solo artist Rod Black.
It is the latter version Prince George gets tonight. The BC Northern Exhibition's headline act is this Vancouver-based modern country boy. He was a finalist for top male vocalist at the most recent BCCMA awards show, as well as a Horizon Award nominee.
"I grew up with Waylon and Johnny but then I got into Black Sabbath and AC/DC. You can have it all, right? Music is music," he said. "We are all influenced by different things. Garth Brooks is one of my favourites and he grew up listening to Iron Maiden and Zeppelin. Corb Lund, oh my god, the Smalls (the hard rock band once fronted by the Canadian country star). Kenny Rogers even started out in a rock band. Genres aren't too far apart."
Jet Black Stare was a hot commodity from 2007-11. They launched singles like Ready To Roll, In This Life (heard prominently on the hit show Sons of Anarchy), I'm Breathing and others on the famed Island-Def Jam recording label. They toured with
3 Doors Down, Theory of a Dead Man, Drowning Pool, Saliva, and many others, even breaking into the Billboard charts.
"It was a southern rock band, but it just got heavier in the studio, and now I get to go back to where it all started," said Black. He was raised in Langley, which has close urban ties to Vancouver but also has plenty of agri-living where country music flourishes.
"It has a lot to do with how I was brought up - my family was involved in rodeo and chuckwagon racing - so country music has been a big part of my background. It's what it started off as, and I'm just very fortunate for sure to be able to keep on doing it."
There's an element of good fortune about Black being anywhere, doing anything. He doesn't describe his youth as being a trip down the wrong path, but he definitely made a couple of definitive choices that put him deeply at risk, and coming out alive shaped his thinking heavily. In one instance he literally died, but medical responders got his vital signs started again. He was 19.
"I was drinking 190-proof moonshine. I was trying to impress some girls at a party, and I just grabbed the jug and went for it. I wasn't even a big drinker. It was one night I was out with my friends," he said. "I remember a lot of it. I definitely saw 'things' and it literally changed my life forever. Then, a month later, we flipped a car, not wearing a seat belt, and after the eye-opener of the flatline experience and then that crash soon after, sometimes you have to have something like that (to shift your thinking) so I moved to Edmonton and decided to pursue my music heavily and just have a different outlook on life in general."
Rock, country, the life experiences of Rod Black, it all merges in the music. The Jet Black Stare single I'm Breathing was written directly about the flatline experience, and now that he has carved a solid country music body of work - the singles Long Gone, Go Big Or Go Home, Keepin' On and most recently Miles To Go (released to radio in the U.S. just this week) - he is thinking back about the rock band's material with fresh eyes.
"Its ironic you say that. We just played at Grand Forks, and the promoter there said is there any way you could play Ready To Roll? and I'd been thinking about how to re-work that, country-fy it a little, and it went over quite well. So we were at rehearsal last night and we got working on it to include it in the set. We're thinking of working I'm Breathing into it as well."
Prince George audiences will see if they got it ready in time for tonight's concert. Rod Black headlines at the BCNE at 7 p.m. on the stage in Kin 3. He applauded Hub City Motors, Country 97-FM, Dave Mothus and Candie Charalambidis for being instrumental in getting him there for this concert appearance. Following the Prince George show he is heading down to Nashville where he splits his residency time, because the music is gaining traction there as well. He's happy to perform here first, since P.G. has been a supportive city in his past, and he wants to say thank you the BCNE way.
