Album review: SCOTT COOK – Troubadourly Yours

August 20th, 2026 by jason

Website [Release date 21.08.26]

The title track opens the album with a seven minute autobiographical, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, influence checking stream of consciousness, my mouth was dry by the end of it. What an opener, and once Jack Kerouac was mentioned I was a devoted follower. It’s sung in a traditional melody along the lines of Devil Went Down to Georgia.

Scott Cook hails from the Canadian Prairies, currently Edmonton, Alberta when he is home, which isn’t often as, like his hero Woody Guthrie he has spent the last two decades touring the world. From the sounds of it in the opening song, this life has not always been easy. But it was a calling of which he had no choice. Living out of a van and on peoples floors, Scott has toured Canada, The US, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and has also managed to record and release seven previous albums to this one.

Scott has a big conscience, and is a man on a mission, which comes out in his songs, particularly A Bigger Tent and Frankie’s Braids, but all of them have some social comment embedded in them, delivered in his pleasant baritone voice.

On his travels Scott has made some good musical acquaintances and has utilized them on various tracks, including Australian mandolin player Justin Vilchez, Lyle Lovett’s fiddle player Warren Hood, and Toronto’s Lonesome Ace String fiddle player John Showman, and others, who laid down their tracks at home, on top of basic tracks recorded at radio station CJSR in his home town. Throughout the songs an upright bass is laid down by someone close to his heart – Pamela Mae.

Ten tracks in all, not one of them filler, all of them in the great story telling tradition of Woody, Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, the acoustic Springsteen, and Australian Paul Kelly, and throughout the album fellow Canadian, Gordon Lightfoot sprung to mind. There is a basic honesty and innocence in all the songs, making them very endearing and intimate. It’s like listening to a friend sing you a song they have just written about you.

It is packaged in a lavish thirty six page booklet, which lays bare his beliefs and political leanings and includes all the lyrics complete with chords. It even has a short music lesson on chords. He is releasing a further 320 pages in a hardback edition along these lines, shortly after this release in September.

It would make a great present for somebody who likes the aforementioned artists but has never heard of Scott. And if you don’t know anybody who fits that category, but you fit it yourself, go on treat yourself, you won’t be disappointed and you deserve it. ****

Review by Andy Sharrocks

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