A startling realization struck as Lady Marilyn and I enjoyed Corb Lund’s set earlier this month. His masterpiece album Cabin Fever is 10 years old. Damn — that decade went by quick. Cabin Fever has a special place in Clan lore, and not simply because it is a damn fine album chock full of expertly crafted songs. In the winter of 2012-13, it served as the soundtrack for a season of hauling up and down the mountain when daughter Ceili was a member of the Sisters Outlaws ski team.
That year, we had to do most of our training and racing at Mt. Bachelor, outside of Bend, which is a pretty good jaunt from home. Sometimes I strapped on the skis, other times, Marilyn and I snowshoed up to the finish line to cheer the Outlaws on. And in both directions on the drive up and back, the CD in the player was Cabin Fever.
Gettin’ Down On The Mountain was a kind of multiple-meanings theme song…
Ceili was just 13 years old — and now she’s all growed up and married off. A whole lotta livin’ happened in the decade that has passed. And Cabin Fever is still a mainstay.
It’s not surprising that the album holds up a decade on. It took Corb three years to write it — he has a high standard and it took that long to hit it. Being a real-deal artist, he isn’t writing or recording to catch the latest trend. The work is timeless. Some of the songs on the record are haunting — The One Left in the Chamber never loses its ability to generate chills.
You gotta love a song where a narcissistic bully of a gunslinger talks himself into a bullet:
September may be my favorite track. Corb says he doesn’t write many love songs, and the ones he does tend to veer off into reflections on horses. This one — I dunno, it just got me, and still does.
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From cowboy singers to pirates. Ye Banished Privateers released a stripped down version of my favorite of their repertoire — another Frontier Partisan tragedy song:
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Just a reminder that Yellowstone: 1923 premiers on Sunday, December 18. Don’t make her tell you twice…
Quixotic Mainer says
I torment friends and family with “Dig Gravedigger Dig” seasonally around Halloween. Cabin Fever is a classic all the way through all year for me though.
JimC says
Hah!