Lynyrd Skynyrd has 40 years and 30 million album sales behind them, while Whiskey Myers is looking to make their Canadian debut on Friday night at Affinity Place.
The southern rock band from Texas is opening for Skynyrd, and they make for a perfect intro, blending the styles first made popular by the classic rockers in the 1970s with folk and blues.
“It will be good. It will be high energy. If (people) are there to see Lynyrd Skynyrd, they’re going to like it,” said Cody Cannon, lead singer and acoustic guitarist.
Cannon spoke with the Mercury over the phone last week about the importance of storytelling in their music and coming from small-town Texas roots.
Cannon is from Neches, Texas, and the band has claimed a number of small Texas cities southeast of Dallas as home, including Tyler, where the band was formed, and now Palestine. Cannon said it’s in those towns where the band really draws its identity.
“I think that might be one of the single biggest influences on our music. You write what you know,” he said.
He noted the band members didn’t play a lot of music growing up, instead finding an outlet in sports. Whiskey Myers is each band member’s first band.
The band is somewhat of a brotherhood. Cannon and guitarist John Jeffers were taught by Jeffers’s father to play guitar. Guitarist Cody Tate knew Cannon from working together at a sporting goods store. After finding drummer Jeff Hogg when the group moved to Tyler, the band enlisted Cannon’s cousin Gary Brown to play bass even though he didn’t play the instrument.
Though they may have been scraped together from humble roots, Whiskey Myers has built a name for themselves and developed an audience around North America and beyond. They started small and got bigger and better.
“If you do something long enough, you should get better at it, and I think we’ve gotten better,” said Cannon, and the sound was particularly honed between 2011’s Firewater and 2014’s Early Morning Shakes.
“We have so many influences from rock and roll to country to folk to singer-songwriter and the blues. It goes kind of all over the place, so our music just drives from all of that,” added Cannon.
The band has been together for about eight years, much of that time spent on the road, touring and playing to audiences across the United States. In between they’ve recorded three albums.
For Whiskey Myers, the Western Canada leg of the tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd will be their first time performing in Canada, and Estevan is the tour’s first stop. Last week saw temperatures in Estevan dip near -30 C, and that got Cannon’s attention.
“I wasn’t expecting that. It sounds pretty cold,” said Cannon with a Texas twang and a laugh. “But anytime we get to play in a new place for new fans and giving people who listen to us an opportunity to see us live is always a blessing, so that’s what we’re looking forward to.”
While the temperature forecast for their Friday concert should be a little more forgiving, the Prairie chill isn’t Cannon’s first choice for the evening air.
Whiskey Myers played with Lynyrd Skynyrd last summer during a show in Houston, but this tour will be the first time playing multiple shows with the classic rockers originally from Jacksonville, Fla. The band is especially comfortable on the road.
“We’re always on tour. Always. That’s how we make our living,” said Cannon. “We’ve been doing that, and hopefully, we’ll be looking forward to a new album.”
Cannon said they are expecting to record some new material this year, but that may not be in the immediate future. The band has a steady tour schedule through to at least May.
The Texas quintet doesn’t rest on any conceived laurels of glitz and glam. The band’s website plainly states, “Whiskey Myers makes honest music.” The band relies completely on the material they record and perform.
“We never try to establish a certain thing or do it a certain way. It just comes out that way. That’s, kind of, our deal,” said Cannon.
It’s that honest, natural connection to the everyman that may endear them most to fans in Estevan and elsewhere.
