But you can’t keep a good cowboy down. Out of that tension, the North Country Collective was born — part survival instinct, part passion project, and fully rooted in a desire to build something better. Driven by an artist-first ethos and a shared commitment to community, Bob Sumner, Elliot C Way, Johnny 99, and Nick Lawton came together to spotlight a vibrant roots scene they felt had long been overlooked in Vancouver’s music landscape.

“I would much rather just be writing songs and making records,” laughs Way. “But, you know, if you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em — that’s kind of the mentality, right?”

Johnny 99 is a songwriter and session guitar player based in Toronto, ON.

North Country Collective started as Way’s way out of Vancouver, where he felt trapped as an artist. Recognizing he couldn’t do it on his own, he tapped fellow artists and industry connects in the wake of the pandemic and started dreaming up a DIY collective that would share knowledge and resources with artists that were in a similar position to him: dedicated wholly to their craft and with excellent songs in their library, but without a clear path forward in making their careers more sustainable.

“You can pay to get on a ferry to get to the island,” says Way, “and there are only so many towns to play there, so there isn’t much of a circuit there. Then you have the Rockies the other way. Nothing to the north and a border that keeps you out unless you have an expensive visa to play down there. We’ve been landlocked in Vancouver for so long and I think that’s what eats bands alive out here, because people just give up, it’s too expensive.”

Chaya Harvey’s songs are draped in the traditions of folk and early country music, with glimmers of the English Folk Revival period. She will be releasing an EP sometime in 2025 with North Country Collective.

“Basically, there’s a core group of guys that have been working together, playing together, dreaming together for 15-20 years, trying to put on shows, trying to get things going, working on projects together,” says Lawton, who brings almost two decades of major label experience at Universal Music to the collective. “At some point, Elliot had this dream of, ‘Let’s get all this combined.’ Let’s combine forces. Let’s unite under a common umbrella, the NCC. He’s a dreamer, but he gets things done.”

Quickly, North Country Collective tapped into their community and brought together experienced industry together with talented artists. They brought in their friends at Tiny Kingdom for their industry advice and digital distribution help; they struck up a deal with their friends over at Sakamano Music Group to help with sync deals; they work closely with Erik Nielsen, who recorded, engineered and produced the collective’s first four releases and helped shape and define NCC’s sound. It takes a village and North Country Collective are certainly bringing everyone they can on board to best help out in their respective areas of expertise, all in the name of supporting a roster of artists built around the twin foundations of honest songwriting and storytelling.

“Elliot’s just always like, ‘We’ve got to do this, we’ve just got to create the scene.’ We’re not really a business, we’re not really a label,” says Sumner on the eve of a big US tour launch in support of his album, Some Place to Rest Easy. “We have aspirations and we have dreams, but we’re really just a bunch of people helping a bunch of people out.”

Vancouver-based/NCC allum Ben Aresnault’s Make Way For This Heartache is out now — Read our interview here

North Country Collective’s roster includes both Sumner and Way, as well as fellow dyed-in-the-wool roots musicians Ben Arsenault, Chance Lovett, Johnny 99, The Wild North, Ian Badger and Chaya Harvey. The collective has been instrumental in helping these artists release albums, organise shows and showcases, book tours, ink deals, and connect to communities across North America. In an effort to keep increasing the visibility of their artists, they’re working hard on an NCC showcase during this year’s Junos in Vancouver, as well as expanding their collective into Alberta with the help of in-demand guitarist, Tyler Allen, and a showcase planned during the Calgary Stampede this summer. 

“We’re kind of making something out of nothing, although there was already quite a strong community behind [the scene],” says Way. “It’s more like, how do we make [NCC] be a thing? Like a logo that people can look to for quality and assurance for the music they love, that we love. And I think that’s the strength of our brand: our integrity and the mission statement behind what we want to be doing, what people are noticing, finding inspiring. The kind of people that are attracted to what we do, the musicians that are attracted to working with us — it’s all intertwined. It becomes this web that reaches further and further.”

North Country Collective is presenting a collective showcase on March 28 at the Fox Cabaret.