Tim Hus is on his way to the Water Valley Arts & Music Festival this summer. If you’re not familiar with Water Valley, you need to know that it’s just west of Highway 22.
Highway 22 is officially named The Cowboy Trail, so it’s fitting that Hus will play at this festival. His music is often called “Canadiana Cowboy,” and his tunes tell tales of the historic west and those who formed it. Hus has been a full-time musician for about 20 years, after growing up in the Kootenays. Now he lives in Sundre, not far from Water Valley.
“When I first got started in music, I was living in British Columbia, where I grew up. I worked in a logging camp, and then on a salmon boat, stuff like that. That’s when I first learned to play the guitar.”
Old country songs and cowboy songs were among the first tunes he mastered on the guitar. “The stories appealed to me,” he says. He received what he now considers to be good advice. “Someone told me that if there’s something you really want to do in your life, you should give it five years. That way, if it didn’t work out, then you could always feel that you gave it a good shot, and you wouldn’t have any regrets.”
Hus now says that hearing that advice when he was in his early 20s was helpful. “I figured the best thing you could be in this world was a traveling cowboy singer. A troubadour.” He moved to Calgary because it seemed like the place to be for a cowboy singer in Western Canada. “I got a little group together, and started playing the pubs and saloons.”
Touring led to more exposure to a variety of audiences, and he released his first album in 2002. “At the five-year point, I had a recording contract with Holger Petersen,” he says, “at Stony Plain Records.” Hus now has six recordings to his credit, three of them with Stony Plain Records.
Over the years, he’s shared the stage with many artists who have made music with cowboy connections. Ian Tyson, Stompin’ Tom Connors, and Corb Lund are just a few of the artists Hus names as influences and friends.
“It’s been great,” says Hus. “It worked out even better than I thought it would. I had a mentorship relationship with Stompin’ Tom. He went out of his way to help me along. He was the old veteran from the East Coast of Canada, and I was the young guy from the west. He liked that idea of a nation-wide Canadiana. He was the ultimate indie artist.”
Hus respects the history of the country and cowboy styles of music. “Wilf Carter and Hank Snow were among the first ones to record songs about Canada and include those place names. After that, Stompin’ Tom, Ian Tyson, and Gordon Lightfoot sang about Canada, too. I guess I am part of the third generation. I never got to meet Wilf Carter or Hank Snow, but I know lots of people who did. It wasn’t that long ago. It feels pretty great to be a link in that chain.”
The Water Valley Arts & Music Festival takes place June 20 – 22, 2025.
Find info about Tim Hus and the full lineup here.
Learn more about Tim Hus, including tour dates, at timhus.ca
“Western Star” is the title track from Tim Hus’s 2013 album:
