East Nashvillian

When Steve Dawson turned his attention to recording his newest solo album, he decided to create a mixture of his two homes. “I’ve lived in Canada for most of life,” Dawson says. “So I gathered up several of the Canadian musicians I know that live in Nashville and combined that with some of the best Nashville players.”

The result of this cross-border collaboration, Solid States and Loose Ends, is the newest album for solo artist, sideman, and record producer Dawson and is the focus of his album release show at The Basement, Thursday, May 5. The album is as much as result of Dawson’s decades of working in the Canadian folk and roots music scene as his more recent residency in Music City USA. The winner of seven Juno Awards and many other Canadian music industry honors as a producer and artist, Dawson and his family made to the move to Nashville three years ago.

“We were ready to make a change,” Dawson says, “and I knew a few people in Nashville. It just felt like a good time to move to a city that is so music-oriented. So we moved everything here including my studio, The Henhouse.”

That move to the Music City has been a productive one for Dawson, producing 12 albums in the last three years from his new base of operations. It also afforded him the opportunity to work with such first-class Nashville players as the McCrary Sisters, Fats Kaplin, Mike Bub, Jim Hoke and many others.