Press

Penguin Eggs Summer 2009 review

Robin Hunter and the Six Foot Bullies
You Just Gotta Get Used Of It (Independent)

Robin Hunter should need no introduction to music lovers in Canada. The ongoing fact of his relative obscurity is just one more thing that’s wrong with this country, in my opinion. Hunter’s a guy I’ll go see perform any time I can, whether alone or surrounded by the Six Foot Bullies (a.k.a. Dobro player John Woroschuk and bassist Thom Golub) because, aside from being an exemplary guitarist, the man invests himself anew in his songs every time he plays them. 
Rooted in gut-bucket blues, Hunter’s muscular, nuanced songs are the product of innumerable influences seen and unseen, even discordant echoes of his profligate post-punk youth, though in clever, unexpected ways that don’t break character. You Just Gotta Get Used Of It is a typically exacting yet joyously loose union of Hunter’s remarkable multi-talents with those of gifted sidemen keenly attuned to making the tunes as honest, singular and visceral as they must sound in Hunter’s head, which I’m guessing is kind of an odd place to be. So let’s get behind this one, people. You’ll thank me later.
– By Scott Lingley

 Exclaim Magazine November 2008
  
Robin Hunter and the Six Foot Bullies
Stanley Milner Library, Edmonton AB October 9
By Fish Griwkowsky

Many words have been written about former punks gone to field, now saggily fronting country or blues bands. An easier way to put it is that we all eventually get old and fat and tired, but still persist. Robin Hunter’s story arc is different, though.

This new CD of his, You Just Gotta Get Used of It (released at a cozy cabaret show in an older oil boom’s library theatre), has a lot of the same vibrations he used back as lead singer of the Imagineers, flowing in a wave of music that included the smalls and SNFU. Then, as now, Hunter’s deep respect for older blues slows things down as part of the experiment, especially seen live.

The faces Hunter made as he sang a slide-blues song about an invisible suit chasing him around worked on so many levels it was sick. And his angsty “A Way Out of the Irons” just gives a listener juice. Bookended by John Woroschuk’s sublime mandolin and the imposing standup bass of Thom Golub, they really are three of the best-sharpened musicians in the city. Throw in Hunter’s screwball improv stand-up banter and the openers, and it was a hell of a ticket.

He asked a number of friends to join him for the “evening with” — the bear-ish roots traditionalist Andy Donnelly, the smoky and sultry Sheri-Lee Wisor, and Old Reliable’s constantly-evolving Mark Davis, who I’ve never heard sing so dangerously tender.

Anachronistic down to the paintings behind the players, it all felt like a future museum’s hologram of some idealized history. What it really was, though, is proof that sometimes we can outdo even our own legends.
It's going to be the year of the Hunter

by Fish Griwkowsky 

You Just Gotta Get Used of It

Indie

Sun Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5

As much as I cherish hazy memories of Robin Hunter smashing around the stage in a punk rock band through the entire '90s, playing the guitar with his teeth under a boneless poodle of hair, his new album is inarguably a beautiful thing set firmly in his present.

The players involved are flexible and dramatic, the production by John Blerot again proving he has simply the best set of ears in the Edmonton area. Every little scrape of skin on ribbed string is bottled forever for us.

Overall, it's calm (until it busts open), complicated (except for the simple parts) and altogether unpredictable. Hunter does not make safe choices. Instead he lets songs melt in your ears, choruses shifting several keys as Thom Golub's priceless Bela Nagy upright bass provides the friction.

There's something almost theatrical about this, Tom Waits-y - though, there is nothing of the dreaded "actor music" here. But contrast Golub's deep bass picking with Hunter's high voice on the last song, Sunken Gem, and you'll get what I mean. It's this half-but-never-fully defeated promise of a guy underwater to rise up and take over everything ... soon.

"This is gonna be my year," is how the album ends, which might not be a bad prediction for Hunter.

Other notable songs are the Band-swanky Purple is a Royal Colour (that actually has the Canadian spelling, impressively) and the radio-friendly A Way Out of the Irons, which has enough pinches of pure rock magic to serve as the axis of the entire album. It's a classic last song on the first side, for all of you who remember a substance called vinyl - easily one of the best tunes of the year from anywhere, tingling with subtle little production Easter eggs. I pulled out the headphones and went twice as crazy. There's also a slide blues number about an empty suit harassing the singer down the street that's especially clever.

In a word, yes. In two, yes, please.

  

MUSIC

New Sounds - Robin Hunter & the Six Foot Bullies

EDEN MUNRO / eden@vueweekly.com

Robin Hunter & the Six Foot Bullies 
You Just Gotta Get Used Of It
(Independent)

Robin Hunter has been part of Edmonton’s music scene for long enough now that he qualifies as part of the old guard. For a good number of years, his role was largely defined by his work in the Imagineers, the indie-rock trio that put Hunter’s vocal and guitar talents to excellent use. When that band ended as the ‘90s came to a close, Hunter set out on another, somewhat quieter path, showing up as a sideman alongside a cast of musical characters like Wendy McNeill, Devilsplender and Everett Laroi, among others, as well as at the head of a new trio: Robin Hunter & the Six Foot Bullies. It’s with this band that Hunter is releasing a new album that reminds of just how much he means to this city.

The opening track, “Drunk Limousine,” starts off with Hunter’s voice announcing, “OK, one, two, three, four,” accompanied by a few chunky hits on muted strings, before the song bursts forth in a folky, bluegrass style. Hunter spins a circular tale about a circular life—work all day, come home, start all over again the next morning.
There’s a shift into dark and cloudy territory on the second half of the tune where the pace slows to a crawl and Hunter tears out a heartfelt verse or two, making it hurt while slowly letting a little ray of hope and light shine through: “I go out and I get bent / And I come home again to the years that went / I got a heart, I been hearing it beat / I been listening to this story repeat / There’s gotta be more to life then a job and an apartment / There’s gotta be more to life than the years that went.”
It’s beautiful, really, the way that Hunter doesn’t flinch from the downside in his lyrics, allowing for a rising and falling in spirit—sort of the way life works out for most folks.
The next couple of songs hold the record steady, the driving slide of “Purple is a Royal Colour” leading into the gentle rolling of “Dayless Moonlight.” Then, in the middle section of the album, Hunter & the Bullies turn up the pressure with a triple does of hurt.
“Dark Days Ahead” is the sort of blues you’d expect to hear in the Mississippi Delta during the bad times, Hunter singing all about hard luck and the blues, his percussive guitar pushing and pulling against Thom Golub’s singing bass and John Woroschuk’s  mandolin, while “A Way Out of the Irons” is about as epic as you can get working within the confines of a trio—Hunter’s voice rises above the growl of the music as he sings desperately of needing “a way to stop my blood from just slipping away.”
If this were a record, those tracks would end Side One and “Hard to Speak What You Wish”  would kick off the trip to the last groove, and it would be perfect for the job, moving slowly, ominously towards the real fray—gin and pain come together in this one.
As the record spins on, Hunter continues to dig into the darkest recesses of the soul where darkness and light can sometimes coexist. There’s a sense of wear and tear in the words and music, but I like to think it all turns out all right in the end.

Robin Hunter & the Six Foot Bullies

The stage diving will be at a minimum for local troubadour’s album release

CAROLYN NIKODYM / carolyn@vueweekly.com

It’s been five years since Robin Hunter & the Six Foot Bullies released an album. 
While you couldn’t exactly say that Hunter or his cohorts John Woroschuk and Thom Golub were lazing about on the success of their acoustic blues debut Your Heart My Sleeve—each of them have more than one musical ball in the air—five years is still a long time, so the trio is going to make an event out of its sophomore release.
Not only will the guys be joined on stage by a slew of friends to ring in You Just Gotta Get Used Of It, but they are also eschewing the traditional barroom party for the cosier confines of a theatre.
“It kind of takes me back to when I was playing in my old band [the Imagineers], whenever we would do all-ages shows, it was just the greatest experience, because the kids, they were there to see the music, and it wasn’t like, ‘OK, we’re going to get a beer and see Frank and Joe and Sally and hang out,’” Hunter explains. “It takes me back to when I was young and going to all-ages shows and they’re so into it, it’s just awesome.  
“The older theatre audience actually has a lot in common with the all-ages audience, for some reason,” he adds. “Even though they don’t, of course, do any stage diving, but they’re there to see the music, and you can feel this warmth and enthusiasm from the audience.”
For Hunter, everybody is involved in the music-making process, from the audience to the players. Although the Six Foot Bullies is touted as an outlet for his songwriting, it has never been about him telling others what to do.
“It’s kind of neat to have such great musicians because they will just come up with things that I never would have thought of,” he explains. “I like to be kind of flexible too, and just let them do what they do best. I’m a leave-it-to-the-experts kind of a guy.”
That isn’t to say that Hunter doesn’t have respect for musicians who have pretty specific visions for their music. He’s been a sideman enough to see any chance to play as a learning experience.
“They’ll say, ‘OK, I want you to play this melody in this spot,’ and they’ll play it for me or sing it for me, and I’ll do it, just like the way they want it,” Hunter says. “And sometimes, they’ll be, like, ‘Well, you just do what you think is good,’ and it’s nice to be on both sides of the fence that way, because you learn a lot about music that way.
“You get a real insight by just going into their head space,” he adds. “I kind of think that helps my songs too, because everybody’s got a different way of doing songs and writing and it just inspires me to do other things.”