After more than a decade long retreat from recording and performing, singer-songwriter Allen Dobb is returning with a new album, Alone Together, scheduled for release on February 9th, 2024. It’s a collection of ten new original songs drawn from characters, stories, and landscapes that are part of Dobb‘s experience working as a range management specialist in the interior of British Columbia. 

The vein of the Fraser River, and BC’s interior landscapes run through many of his new songs.  The first single, “All Costs,” is also the first song written by Dobb in several years. It charts the course of a rural couple coming to terms with their years spent together living on the land.

The melody came from a recording that Dobbs had archived a year or two before. After lots of lyrical exploration, the song drew on several threads. One being the easy fate of the river flowing slowly downhill contrasted with challenges that rural ranch life can bring in a relationship. Another thread was drawn from images and conversations he had gathered while helping with recovery efforts in the ranching community following the 2017 Cariboo and Elephant Hill wildfires. 

Alone Together was produced by Dobb’s brother and close collaborator, Cameron Dobb. It was recorded at their respective studios over the pandemic in Vancouver. Steeped in their own rural roots growing up on a farm in northwestern Alberta near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the brothers bring a depth and maturity to the songs and the production. The ten-song recording has a warmth and authenticity that harkens back to some of the classic country sounds of the 1970s while at the same time, it has its own currency.