The country music duo, High Valley, comprised of brothers Brad and Curtis Rempel, journeyed over 2,500 miles from a small farm town in Alberta, Canada to Nashville, TN to pursue their dream of sharing music with the world. For most of their upbringing they didn’t have access to TV or FM radio, but despite being alienated from pop-culture, music was still very prominent in their lives. Brad and Curtis learned to play guitar on their parents’ cheap 12-string and bass guitars that the family purchased from Sears, and their three older sisters taught them to sing. Over the years Brad and Curtis have grown from a couple kids singing on the farm to sharing a stage with superstars like Carrie Underwood, Shania Twain, Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, and Martina McBride. We had the opportunity to talk to Curtis about how the unstoppable pair is making their dreams a reality through their major-label debut single, ‘Make You Mine,’ and debut album, ‘Dear Life,’ available now.
High Valley’s sound is inspired by the country music Brad and Curtis listened to during their childhood as artists like Ricky Skaggs and Diamond Rio came through the airwaves of their AM radio. “We grew up listening to a lot of bluegrass music and that’s just kind of who we are. We’re a bunch of farm kids that love that sound,” Curtis said. “We’ve been hearing bluegrass influenced music on pop radio for a while.” Brad had actually pointed this out to his brother noting the growing popularity of bands like Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers. “Genres are always shifting and I think it’s just perfect timing for us. We just signed with Warner and a lot more bluegrass instruments are getting represented on country radio these days.” The popularity of the duo’s single, ‘Make You Mine’ is a perfect example of that – the song reached the Top 25 on country radio and it continues to climb. “I think ‘Make You Mine’ is the most accurate representation of the High Valley sound that anybody’s ever heard. It’s super string driven as far as mandolins and guitars and banjos.” Curtis said.
In conjunction with the authentic High Valley sound, ‘Make You Mine’ had always stood out to the pair as one of their personal favorite songs. But when it came to choosing a single, it was important to the duo that their fans loved the song as much as they did. “We actually sent out a bunch of demos to our fan club. We’ve got our own app and our own fan club and we’ve got some crazy amazing fans. Anyway, we exclusively let the fans hear the demos and almost everybody voted for ‘Make You Mine’ as their favorite song. It was so clear that that was the favorite song out of like 40 songs we let them listen to,” Curtis explained.
The duo also utilized the High Valley app to allow their most dedicated fans to choose the rest of tracks on the album. For Curtis and Brad, fan involvement has been a big part of the decision-making process from the beginning. “There was a period of time where, you know, it was just me and Brad, we didn’t have management, we didn’t have a label… We wanted some insight and we didn’t have anybody to reach out to other than our friends and our fans,” Curtis explained, adding that the duo had already built up a solid following in their fan club. “We knew that they were our most hardcore fans and we wanted them to love what we were doing.” Initially they asked the fans vote on things like merch design and album art and it grew from there. “Eventually we were like, why don’t we talk to the fans about what music they want to hear? That’s ultimately what this whole thing revolves around is the music,” Curtis justified.
Their debut album, ‘Dear Life,’ features 11 tracks, and although Curtis doesn’t write, Brad had a hand in penning nine of the songs. Most of them can be described as a string-heavy, modernized bluegrass as Curtis previously mentioned, but the guys did take some risks by experimenting with their sound. “Sonically I guess some of the demos were different sounds than we had had in the past so we didn’t know if the fans would dig it,” said Curtis. “There’s another song called ‘She’s With Me’ that’s kind of got more of an Imagine Dragons vibe. Vocally, Brad’s like borderline screaming in the verses but that was one of the top voted songs as well. It was a little bit outside of the scope of what we would normally have done but, we were thrilled that the fans were into that one too. I guess that was a bit of a surprise.”
One thing High Valley fans can always count on is family-friendly music from the duo. Curtis explained how essential it is for them to put out music that families can enjoy together, “We don’t really believe in fluke or luck. I believe that God’s given us this opportunity and this platform for a reason,” Curtis stated. “We definitely feel like we’ve been called to provide the world with family-friendly entertainment. It might sound cheesy but our dream really is to one day, if we could sell out stadiums to families… there could be like family pricing options and you just see families walking around everywhere like it’s a circus or something!” They’ve had a small taste of what that’s like as they’ve had families come through meet and greet lines in the past. Curtis said that there’s no higher compliment than when parents thank the duo for making music that they weren’t afraid to let their kids listen to. “Those kind of comments are the most inspiring things for us and that’s the dream right there.” Brad and Curtis grew up attending an annual festival with their own family, which was a huge inspiration for this dream. “We considered it our local festival but we still had to drive five hours to get there,” Curtis laughed. “It was like the highlight of our year. There was this festival and then in second place was Christmas. That was the entertainment we grew up with and it definitely was a family event,” he described. “Our biggest, wildest dream was to play at that festival, and then like two years later we were. So we had to set new dreams.”
Following the trend of dreams coming true, the duo headlined a successful Make You Mine tour this past summer and recently joined Martina McBride as support on her Love Unleashed tour running throughout the end of the year. “We’ve had so many good experiences opening for different artists and Martina is no exception,” Curtis said. He went on to describe how McBride went out of her way to throw a post-show party so she and her band could get to know them. Brad and Curtis have been inspired not only by Martina’s music, but her generosity as well. “It was just really special to see her make that kind of effort to make us feel at home.” While out on the road High Valley was also set to make a stop in Boston last month at Country 102.5’s Monstah Bash, but unfortunately the show had to be cancelled last-minute. We can imagine that the guys were just as upset as the fans given the praise they had for the city. “Boston has been a great, great city for us. The fans in Boston are just, they’ve been supporting us since that single dropped,” Curtis exclaimed. “It’s been one of the biggest cities for us this year… I never would have thought that a few years ago, but it’s a country town!” The love we have is mutual and we’re so excited to hear more from High Valley. We’re sure they’ll make some time to swing through New England in the future, but in the meantime we have a brand new album that we’re sure to have on repeat.
You can purchase your copy of High Valley’s debut album ‘Dear Life’ on iTunes here.
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Main Photo Credit: Robby Klein