Sad Sorry-Ass Folk Singer by Cort Delano

Toe-tapping arrangements and organic melodies of his songs are reminiscent of Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt.

Audience members of Cort's live show have compared his stage presence to the likes of Arlo Guthrie and Stompin' Tom Connors. Cort's performances are vibrant and engaging, full of heart and emotion. He has taken this energy around North America from San Francisco to Toronto. His popularity is growing with past performances at Heritage Park, Spruce Meadows (Calgary), Chapters/Indigo, South Country Fair, opening up for John Wort Hannam and most recently for the Webber Brothers and Kinny Star.

Compared to his first album Fools Moon, the 14 original compositions on Sad Sorry-Ass Folk Singer, demonstrate his growth both as a musician and as a songwriter revealing his diversity to cross musical genres. "The songs on my first record," observes Cort Delano, "I wrote for personal satisfaction while I was discovering music as a creative outlet. Then I began to recognize the intricacies of songwriting, the inlays and layers and realized it as a trade. And as a masonry chisels in the last notch to complete a cathedral; I too can carve my craft; perpetually honing my skills as a Poet, Songwriter, Historian and a Performer."

"A true Poet, with an instinct for the perfect hook, Cort is bound for greatness." Writes Troy Kokol.

Song Revisits Mayerthorpe

The Calgary Herald

Song revisits Mayerthorpe

'I wanted to get inside the story'

Heath McCoy, Calgary Herald

Published: Thursday, April 19, 2007

Preview

For a storytelling folk-singer like Cort Delano, the nightmarish scene that went down on March 3, 2005, on a farm near the Alberta town of Mayerthorpe, was too tragically compelling to pass on. For all its horror and ugliness, the tale had to be told in song, and the 28-year-old Calgarian was determined to tell it.

At the Gates, a song on Delano's new album Sad Sorry-Ass Folk Singer, is a vivid reimagining of the events two years ago when town bully James Roszko, a convicted pedophile and known drug dealer, ambushed and killed four RCMP officers who were investigating claims of stolen truck parts and marijuana plants on his farm.

The case sparked a national outpouring of grief and outrage, a media frenzy, and a made-for-TV movie, To Serve and Protect: Tragedy at Mayerthorpe, which is set to air on CTV later this year.

Delano, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter and an Alberta history buff, was driving from Calgary to Red Deer in the fall of 2006, thinking about the incident, when he was struck with the idea for a song.

"It was almost winter and I was driving along, looking out on this desolate landscape," Delano says. "I had been doing a lot of reading on what went down and where it was and I just thought Mayerthorpe is way out there. I think you can get a bit stir crazy in those hills."

In a sense, Delano is speaking from experience. Years ago, when he was fresh out of his hometown high school in Claresholm, Alta., Delano did a stint in Alberta's oilpatch.

"It really puts you through the gears," he says. "Working as a jughound, I'd work for weeks on end up north, in the middle of nowhere, and you do kind of lose touch. After about 30 days you do get a bit stir crazy. You're just involved in a completely different reality. . . . That can have a negative effect."

Delano put himself in that mindset when he composed his harshly-strummed, hotly burning folk number, At the Gates. "I was trying to write it like a historian or a journalist, not taking sides, but just trying to get the details down," Delano says.

"I wanted to get inside the story and see what really went on. . . . Then that last line, ('If they cross the gate line, they will cross me for the last time.') that's the killer's perspective. That's him."

Writing the song was a natural for Delano, who will be releasing his full-length CD on April 20 at the Ironwood.

Since he began playing guitar and writing songs at the age of 22, Delano has come to see Alberta's culture and history as his muse.

This is reflected on such album cuts as On the Ground, written from the perspective of a bullrider; Jughound, about life on the oilpatch; and Ballad of Jerry Potts, inspired by the true-life historical figure who helped settle violent relations between the North West Mounted Police and native Canadians in the 1800s.

As Delano sees it, Alberta offers a bottomless well of material for any aspiring songwriter. He's one of a number of local musicians, such as Corb Lund and

"It's the Wild West out here with the oil and all the boom and bust stories. It's like the songs Woody Guthrie sang, y'know?

"There's no dust storms yet," Delano jokes, referring to the infamous "Dust Bowl" of the 1930s, which devastated the prairies and inspired Guthrie to write his famed album, Dust Bowl Ballads. "But it sure is windy."

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