by Martyna Turczynowicz
“Richard Inman is the real deal.” That’s a phrase that’s repeated time and time again, when his name comes up in conversation. Whether he’s performing his own tunes or foot-stomping covers of David Allen Coe’s “Long Haired Redneck,” his authenticity is undeniable. For Richard Inman, country music has been a lifelong affair, from town fairs to Sunday car rides home from church in Grunthal, where the country musician grew up.
“As a kid, I was always into country music. We used to go to church every Sunday and on the way home from church we’d listen to this radio station out of Portage la Prairie, they do a Sunday request show. It was old people phoning in all these old things, like Johnny Cash and George Jones. My dad had Johnny Cash’s Live at Folsom Prison on tape and he’d play that. We were like five years old and that was the coolest thing, like a live concert in the living room. I just thought it was the best.”
With his teen years, and the rise to fame of folk-pop stars like Dallas Greene, he temporarily lost touch with his country roots. “When you’re a teenager, you don’t want to play country music. I was playing in a metal band. You want to do the ‘cool thing’ I guess.” Around the time he turned fourteen, he started writing his own music. The first songs were definitely country, but he didn’t let on. “I started writing my own songs around fourteen. Some of the first stuff I wrote was very country, but I didn’t let on. I made it as indie or as folk-pop as possible. Everybody was listening to Dallas Greene. Bring Me Your Love just came out so we were all listening to that.”
Then in 2013, the opportunity to play at the Winnipeg Folk Festival’s Galaxie Young Performers program came, and Inman brought his songs to a fresh audience. One of the songs he performed was “The D-Day Dodgers,” a ballad about a group of soldiers, among them his own grandfather, who fought at the Battle of Ortona in Italy during the Second World War.
“That song in particular, is telling a story, not from my point of view but something that my grandpa saw. It’s a combination of stories he told me, stories that my grandma would tell me after he passed away.”
Despite being an intense battle and having a high death toll, the soldiers who fought in Ortona were scorned as “D-Day Dodgers” and accused of taking the easy way out by not partaking in the invasion of Normandy. For Inman, it’s not only a matter of family history, but a piece of forgotten Canadian history.
The name “Smokey Smith” was somebody that Inman’s grandfather knew, Ernest Smokey Smith, the last living veteran to be awarded the Victoria Cross. “There’s a reference to Smokey Smith in the song. He was fighting in Italy as well. He died in 2005, but he was the last living veteran who got the Victorian Cross, which is the highest honour you can get. It’s important; it’s Canadian history that’s getting lost, which isn’t a good thing at all.”
Eventually, through opening for country musicians artists like Zachary Lucky, he came back to his country roots and fully committed to music.
“Slowly through the transition of opening for guys like Zachary Lucky, he’s my hero when it comes to playing live music -that guy just toured nonstop for like five years- I realized that’s what I wanna do: I wanna play in a room full of people, sing my own songs and get paid for it.”
So he started going back to those car rides home from church, Saturday nights listening to Johnny Cash and playing the guitar with his dad. “When I was a kid my dad would teach me to play chords, but I never knew how to play a song. Learning all those old country chords, it’s come full circle.”
These days, Inman is gigging all over and working towards releasing his first EP. It’s been a lengthy process, one that began in December 2013.
Long process or not, Inman has plenty of support from the musical community. Local musicians Aisha Belle, Jordan Bisonette, Matt Filopoulos and many others are on his upcoming album. His band, The Madtrappers, opened for the Crooked Brothers at their album release and are currently a weekly feature at Winnipeg’s most esteemed country haunt, the Times Change(d).
“Three years ago, I was the weird guy in the background with the shitty guitar. Me and my friend Tyler, we’d go in and sit in on these crazy jam sessions at Falcon Lake where the Crooked Brothers were living. I wasn’t very good at all when it came to jamming. Now I think I can call myself friends with them.”
Regardless of where Inman heads, there’s no doubt he’ll go far.