“Drive south with the one you love,” John Hiatt wrote. In a new single, Joe Nolan taps into his own gruff exterior with a new song called “Broken Angel,” one that tells a story of love done and gone. “I drive myself crazy every time I’m passing through the city where you used to be mine,” he sings. It’s a very different kind of road trip.

Reviews for Joe Nolan’s new album, “Tornado,” continue to roll in and he is getting ready to blow your minds at his hometown album launch concerts in Alberta this month. I am very much looking forward to this, since I made the mistake of watching the Oscars and I haven’t been able to get that stupid song from the movie Frozen out of my head ever since.

Headbanger meets heartbreaker in Joe Nolan, the rising young songwriter whose new album, Tornado, was just released by Six Shooter Records. On stage, Joe’s intense, intimate performances are at once guttural and ethereal, and of no time or place whatsoever.

Like a hurricane, Tornado has hit the streets, and we celebrated in style at The Cameron House on release day (Jan 28) with a short and sweet set from Joe (not that he’s short, but he IS very sweet.

While it’s not every day that a songwriter makes it from the shadows of open mic nights to the high wattage, real deal scene, Joe Nolan’s old soul lyrics and striking vocals suggest that the odds of breaking through are in his favour.

Six Shooter Records loves songwriters. The label is the proud home to artists who brave the darkness alone, who offer haunting artifacts of their solitary takes on life’s big ideas and minute details.