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No stranger to Canadian and international audiences, Russell deCarle is recognized as the lead singer and a founding member of award-winning multi-platinum country-roots group Prairie Oyster. For over a decade, he has concentrated on his solo career...

No stranger to Canadian and international audiences, Russell deCarle is recognized as the lead singer and a founding member of award-winning multi-platinum country-roots group Prairie Oyster. For over a decade, he has concentrated on his solo career, and has released four recordings, the most recent being The End of the Road.

deCarle’s music isn’t easily categorized. Apparent are a lifetime of influences absorbing a wide range of musical genres from a time when Buck Owens, Frank Sinatra, and The Beatles could be heard back-to-back on commercial radio. 

For some artists, the urge to make solo records asserts itself almost as soon as they start to gain attention as part of a successful band. Not so for deCarle: “For decades people were asking for a solo record,” he says, “but I never thought I was ready and the band always satisfied the musical part of my life.”

Russell's sound may surprise those who remember Prairie Oyster, but truth is that the band was always more than a “country” band, and deCarle’s warm, burnished and intimate voice has always honoured an eclectic range of songs. True to form, the songs off his most recent albums The End of the Road and Alone in this Crowd offer a fluent collection of songs that mix southern soul and restrained balladry, with obvious touches of jazz, blues, old-school country, and western swing. deCarle’s songwriting has absorbed all those influences, and he avidly listens to both soul singers and the men and women who made early country music so compelling.

As Russell puts it, “I want people to be emotionally invested in these songs, whether I wrote them or whether they were created by others. If they touched audiences in some way — well, that would be the best thing that could happen.”