by LORRAINE CARPENTER

"My parents are from England," says Katie Moore, "and when they moved to Alberta, they embraced many things Western, including country - including new country."

Fortunately for Moore, who moved to Hudson at age three and Montreal at 17, there was enough classic twang and teary, beery tuneage around the house to drown out Nashville's notoriously slick crossover sound. On the downside, years would pass before she was able to perform the music she loved.

"I didn't have anyone to play country music with 'cause it really wasn't cool when I was 18," says Moore, now 28. "I played guitar in an indie-rock basement band with a bunch of friends in the mid-'90s, but eventually I started playing shows on my own, doing covers of old country tunes."

Moore began to meet likeminded musicians through Barfly's Sunday bluegrass jams and the Wheel Club's hillbilly Mondays, hosted by venerable country buff and musician Bob Fuller. "The Wheel Club is cool, even though you can only play songs from before 1965. Bob gave me some tapes the first time I went there - he was like, ‘This is for your education.'"

Keen on tradition but not on purism, Moore's country, blues and waltz repertoire includes covers and original songs, some self-penned, others written by her bandmates Peter Hay and Randall Lawrence. Moore is currently collaborating on new, separate projects with the Sonny Best Band's Angela Desveaux and Plants and Animals' Warren Spicer, but followers of the local country scene might know Moore's name in the context of Katie Moore and the Country Gentlemen or Katie Moore and the Night Jars, whose players continue to accompany her despite the solo moniker on her new CD.

"I'm not very good at choosing names," she explains. "The Country Gentlemen is already a band and a night jar is a bird that stays up late and makes a lot of noise." Not a bad band name, Moore thought, until she learned through feedback that "night jar" produced a popular misconception. "Katie Moore and the Bedpans wasn't going over incredibly well."

With funny man Joe Cobden at Casa del Popolo
on Saturday, Feb. 26, 10 p.m., $6

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