Duo brings high-energy country to Westman

Canadian country duo The Abrams are celebrating their 25th anniversary by touring rural communities in Manitoba — a province where the brothers say they’ve “always felt at home.”

“I often like to think that if we aren’t bringing our music out there to the more remote parts of our country, we aren’t doing our job,” John Abrams said Wednesday from Flin Flon before he, his brother James and the crew climbed into their tour bus to head to their next show.

“We love getting a chance to come back to particularly smaller communities in Canada after being out on the road elsewhere, because we love connecting with our own heritage,” Abrams said.

The duo from the Kingston, Ont., area have been on tour since Jan. 22, playing shows in Souris, Pinawa, Dauphin, Carman and Flin Flon prior to their latest show in Brandon on Thursday evening at the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium.

The band is scheduled to play at ArtsForward in Neepawa tonight at 7:30 p.m. and at Killarney’s Shamrock Centre on Saturday at 7 p.m.

“No matter where we go, we have someone to call up and stop in for a visit,” Abrams said, noting that they have family and friends in southeastern Manitoba.

The brothers, who are in their 30s now, started performing in March 2001 at the ages of 11 and nine and have played across North America, Europe and Israel.

They are the fourth generation to carry on the family band — a musical legacy that began in the 1930s with their great grandparents, who would tour around as a “sweetheart country gospel duo,” Abrams said.

The band was passed down to his grandparents in the 1970s before his father joined to kickstart a bluegrass band that performed around Ontario. Once the brothers started singing and playing the violin and guitar together, they were “hooked,” he said.

They took over the band and became The Abrams Brothers before shortening the band name to The Abrams.

“It’s this wild feeling of having this family legacy and this deep, rich history to draw from, and a career that has, you know, spanned most of our lives,”Abrams said, adding that they have a “youthful unrest” that drives them to seek out new audiences around the world.

Abrams said the duo learned how to blend their voices in harmony by listening to American musical brother acts such as Jim and Jesse McReynolds, The Louvin Brothers and The Everly Brothers.

The duo’s sound is influenced by bluegrass, country, pop and EDM genres, Abrams said. He and James enjoy covering songs by Swedish House Mafia and Avicii.

“Our style of country music is very high energy … and that really hearkens back to growing up playing in bluegrass music, which is a very high energy music,” Abrams said.

The band’s first EPs, “The Abrams,” released in 2016, followed by “Reminder” in 2019, were recorded in a small shack-like studio in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, near the Shenandoah River.

The Abrams have been writing songs for a new record over the past year in their home studio.

The upcoming album, expected to be released later this year, has a “mountain pop” feel because it fuses country and bluegrass, but with a modernized twist, Abrams said.

They have been playing songs off the new record during the Manitoba tour, including one called “Homecoming,” which is inspired by growing up on their parents’ farm in Joyceville, northeast of Kingston.

Abrams described how the gate that leads to the farmhouse broke when the brothers were teenagers and it was never fixed, resulting in it not closing properly.

“We thought that was a beautiful symbol, particularly as we get older, that no matter what happens and no matter where we go, the gate is always broken open at our house,” he said.

“We can always come home and know that there’s nothing in the way of getting us back to the table to reconnect with our family.”

The duo has opened shows for such artists as John Hammond, Feist, Dean Brody, The Chicks, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Luke Combs. In 2022, they won the Country Music Association of Ontario award for group or duo of the year.

In 2005, at ages 12 and 15, The Abrams were the youngest Canadian duo to play alongside Mike Snider and his string band at the Grand Ole Opry stage in Nashville, Tenn.

“That was a real watershed moment for us,” Abrams said.

“It was the most surreal and incredible experience that lasted all of four minutes in our lives.”

Abrams said his advice to emerging artists picking up an instrument for the first time is to “play with other people and play for other people.”

“If you can overcome the nervousness that comes with those two things, you will probably not stop playing your instrument.”

» tadamski@brandonsun.com