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Patrick bringing country chops to Cochrane show

Leave it to a Canadian bluegrasser to put country music back on track. Meghan Patrick rolled her first thousand miles of touring and first blistered her fingers on guitar strings in the band The Stone Sparrows.
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Canadian country musician Meghan Patrick is seen in an undated handout photo. Patrick opens for Tom Cochrane and Red Rider at CN Centre on Monday.

Leave it to a Canadian bluegrasser to put country music back on track.

Meghan Patrick rolled her first thousand miles of touring and first blistered her fingers on guitar strings in the band The Stone Sparrows. This wasn't just a band of weekend tailgate pickers. The Stone Sparrows played the Toronto Jazz Festival, they played at the famed Horseshoe Tavern, they produced an EP and an LP and they toured all over Canada.

Patrick and her bandmates Sam Balson, James Gorry and Oliver Ward put the band on ice about two years ago. Gorry and Ward poured themselves into a new business venture, the startup company Manantler Brewing, a craft beer venture in the band's hometown of Bowmanville, Ont.

Patrick, meanwhile, felt the pull of the electric guitar's strings. She and her fellow Sparrows parted as good friends, they still enjoy each other's company and each other's musicianship, but she is focused hard on her new solo project, and judging by the video views, single downloads, concert ticket sales and wave of high-powered supporters lining up to associate with her work, the country music industry is focused on her.

"I love both genres so much for different reasons," said Patrick, in between map checks as she navigated the tour van's driver (Gorry, as a matter of fact, who is fiddling in her country band these days and taking his turn at the wheel) through the exits and on-ramps from Hope onto the highway towards Kelowna where they are going to open for Tom Cochrane. They will push on to P.G. to do the same on Monday night.

"The side of me that really likes to rock out, and electric guitars, that's what I love about what I'm doing right now. Whereas bluegrass keeps you honest as a musician. There's nothing to hide behind. You've got to be on your game and a little more nuanced, which is really cool. I became a much better guitar player because of bluegrass. In our (Stone Sparrows) formation, I was the only guitar player so if something sounded funky with the guitars, everyone knew it was me."

She speaks in highly self-deprecating tones when discussing her guitar abilities, but the fact is she wails on the six-string and has a voice to match. She also beams a rare stage presence. That's exactly where the fireworks went off in her brain that music was more than her hobby, it was her profession, her passion, her boyfriend.

"With the Stone Sparrows, I can remember an exact moment," she said. "We were in Halifax playing this awesome festival. It was a bit different. There were fewer artists and we all had to play one set every day of the festival, a different time slot each day. The Sunday, I remember, because all the people who had seen us on Friday and Saturday and bought our CD had been listening to it back in their trailers during the weekend. They knew the songs. I was like, this is amazing and I don't ever want to do anything else for the rest of my life. It was pretty epic. We all got matching tattoos on that tour, in Newfoundland. There may have been some screech involved."

Canada's tongue-clawing rum, indigenous to Newfoundland and Labrador, was not the only reason she wrote the song I Won't Drink. There were a lot of experiences that led to her seeing alcohol as a symbol for the crutches we use to limp around problems, and bad medicine we self-prescribe to balm our wounds and insecurities.

That was the song she played at an audition for the executives of Warner Music Canada, and they liked what they heard. They signed Patrick to a deal, and that triggered a campaign of industry introductions, songwriting collaborations and a gathering blanket of key supporters helping her launch her solo career with a head of steam.

Some of those names are simply staggering. Vince Gill, Chad Kroeger, Justin Niebank, Chantal Kreviazuk, Buddy Owen, Rodney Clawson, Gord Bamford, Patricia Conroy, etc. And while big names frequently act as hired guns for up-and-coming acts, these people saddled up and went for long rides on her behalf. Their creative investments went further than usual and the smart money is on a one-word reason: quality. She isn't trying to produce hit songs, she is trying to produce quality songs.

It just so happens that quality songs make the best hits.

You might have heard of some of them.

She got the fuse lit in the North American scene with Boom Chicka Wow Wow, followed it up with Grit & Grace (the video is popping eyes with its cinematic use of the Docville Wild West Movie Set located a short distance from her Bowmanville home), and now she's scoring huge numbers for the new single Still Loving You (a winsome duet with country star Joe Nichols).

Again, the video for the song is scoring audience points as much as the lyrics and melody. Patrick has done these two song-movies with the same director. She opted to avoid the MTV-style video director and turned instead to an indie filmmaker kicking her own kind of critical ass in the short-film industry.

"Emma Higgins is just brilliant," Patrick said. "Emma is amazing. She and I get along great. I love seeing another female in this industry just so good at her job, just en pointe. She got me right away. Doing videos is a new thing for me, and something that was kind of nerve wracking, and especially this last one. It was tough, very emotional, and the idea that this guy (the male lead actor) you just met is your boyfriend who's been together with you for years... All those things can get kind of awkward, and she was so great at knowing what I needed and making me feel comfortable, and she was really talented at pulling the best out of me."

She has the drive to win like an elite athlete because she is one. The physical fitness so evident on stage is not window dressing, Patrick was a competitive snowboarder before injuries halted her sports aspirations.

She still likes to ride the slopes for fun, though, and she lit up at the mention of all the powder power packed into the Prince George region.

She also got a wow out of the descriptions of the city's annual Alefest event. Remember, her two bandmates own their own craft brewery, and she has a song called I Believe In Beer.

"I'm going to reach out to them," about making that tune the Alefest theme.

She'll try it out on Prince George audiences Monday night when she and her band open the show for Tom Cochrane and Red Rider on their Mad Mad World 25 tour.