How Montreal found its place in Quebec’s long embrace of Cowboy Core

Country music and cowboy core, long a rural staple in Quebec, have made urban inroads into Montreal—and they aren't going anywhere.

J.P. Karwacki

November 8, 2024- Read time: 9 min

Photograph: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

When the country singer Luke Bryan came to play the Bell Centre in 2016, evenko—the organizers of Montreal’s biggest festivals like OSHEAGA, Jazz Fest, Les Francos de Montréal, and Montréal en Lumière—was shocked. The show had sold out in presales.

At the time, Montreal was never considered a country market by the team. Country music heavily relies on radio as a major driver of its genre in the States and the rest of Canada, but Montreal didn’t (and still doesn’t) have any stations devoted to it. The lack of exposure didn’t seem to calculate at first.

“Montreal wasn’t even on the radar. But when we saw how fast the Luke Bryan show sold out, it got us thinking. We started digging into the stats, and noticed that country music was being streamed here more and more. That led us to create LASSO,” says Audray Johnson, a member of LASSO’s booking team.

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