GB Roots Release Second Album, ‘Tumbleweed’

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Americana-blues duo GB Roots released their second album, Tumbleweed, Friday, March 2. Collectively produced by the band and Mitch Merrett, they draw from their love of Americana and blues, taking the listener on a journey through the old west with electric guitars and soulful vocals.

Comprised of JUNO-nominated musicians Kirby Green and David Barber, GB Roots’ showcase their individual skill set and diverse songwriting on Tumbleweed, which packs a little bit of everything in with varying influences and a ‘wild-west’ punch.

The album’s first single, “Better Get Your Gun,” narrates a universally relatable tale. The Daily Country premiered the song, noting the bluesy track’s soulful vocals and crisp guitar riffs. Country Fancast premiered the video, calling it “mesmerizing.”

“On the surface, it’s about this guy trying to get out of his hometown and how that turns him into an outlaw. But it’s also about a lot of other things — dealing with leaving home when you’re young and things not always turning out the way you wanted, the battle of good over evil, addiction. Sometimes in life you feel like you aren’t getting anywhere, you feel like things aren’t going right, you make the wrong decisions. It’s a dark place to be,” says Barber.

The second single, “Halfway,” is an electric guitar-heavy ballad about running from the devil and being “halfway between dead and alive.” The song premiered with Cowboys & Indians Magazine, who said the track is “slow, harrowing, and eerie.” The title track is energized and catchy, centering around bright horns. The Country Note premiered “Tumbleweed,” noting the rock-infused electric guitar and Green’s vocals.

Tumbleweed follows the blues-Americana duo’s 2012 debut release The Key, which was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award and charted on the Roots Music Report in both the United States and Canada. Based out of Vancouver, the band has been nominated multiple times at the British Columbia Country Music Awards and won the Covenant Awards’ Jazz/Blues “Song of the Year” for the single “Swing Low.”

Kirby Green and Dave Barber were both brought together by their unusual love of bluegrass and Americana — well, unusual for Western Canadians at least. The two met in Edmonton at Grant MacEwan University, where Green studied bass and Barber studied guitar. While in college, both began freelancing with Canadian artists and establishing themselves in the Alberta music scene, but ultimately wanted to start a musical project that would allow them to write and perform their own original music. Consequently, GB Roots was born. They recorded an unreleased three-song demo and started touring regionally, which led to the band being awarded a Rawlco Radio Grant. The grant funded the duo’s 2012 debut release The Key, which was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award and charted on the Roots Music Report in both the United States and Canada.

Soon after recording the album, Green and Barber decided to move to Vancouver to pursue music together and to freelance as skilled instrumentalists. Since then, Green has won the British Columbia Country Music Awards’ “Bass Player of The Year” three consecutive years in a row and frequently plays with artists like Barney Bentall, Shari Ulrich and Aaron Pritchett. Barber was nominated for “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the Canadian Country Music Awards and The British Columbia Country Music Awards, where he was also a nominee for “Guitar Player of The Year”. He regularly plays with artists like Chad Brownlee and Colin James and is noted for the popular banjo hook on Coleman Hell’s 4x platinum-selling single, “2 Heads”. Both were nominated for a JUNO at the 2017 Juno Awards for their work with the group The High Bar Gang.