High Valley

More than a dozen years into making music, brothers Brad and Curtis Rempel – better known as hitmaking country duo High Valley – experienced the most full-circle moment of their career just recently. A fan sent a video of himself riding a tractor and listening to the pair’s latest single, depicting exactly what they themselves used to do growing up in the small Canadian farm town of La Crete, Alberta – one of the many memories vividly detailed on High Valley’s aptly titled new EP, Grew Up On That.

The six-song project is the duo’s first since their major label debut, 2016’s Dear Life, which spawned two Gold-certified singles, including their first top 10 at country radio, “She’s With Me.” While Brad insists that Dear Life was also intensely personal, Grew Up On That feels even more special to High Valley. The project encapsulates their growth as husbands and

fathers over the past four years, right down to a track about having “the talk” with their kids called “One Day You’ll Get It.”

“Some of the stuff that’s on this new record are subject matters that we wouldn’t have even dreamt of recording four years ago,” Brad says with a laugh. “Our kids are growing up, and we’re learning more about ourselves in the process. We’re also able to look back at who we were at those ages and remember what was important to us then – a lot of which, we realized, is still important to us today.”

Other unique personal touches are sprinkled throughout Grew Up On That, like the melodious “Show Me the Way” that features Nashville songwriter Jillian Edwards, a favorite of Curtis and his wife, Myranda. High Valley further pay homage to their leading ladies with the heartfelt ballad “Your Mama,” written by Florida Georgia Line’s Tyler Hubbard, Ben West, Josh Miller and Troy Verges.

Adds Brad, “Mothers are over-worked and under-celebrated, and we just thought, what an amazing opportunity for us to send this message out to the whole world, and especially to our own kids.”

Mid-tempo love song “Northern Star,” a story of a man finding a guiding light in his significant other; offers a similar sentiment, and High Valley’s optimism shines bright on the buoyant “River’s Still Running.” But perhaps the most impactful for both Brad and Curtis is the EP’s anthemic title track, especially after putting together the song’s sentimental music video. The walls of the set, a recreation of the garage where they used to practice, were lined with old photographs from the group’s humble beginnings, before they were climbing charts, touring the globe with superstars like Tim McGraw and Faith Hill and headlining their own shows.

“All the photos really made that song special to us, just looking back on our childhood and thinking about all the small details that made us who we are – and reminded us to focus on those details for our kids, so they can have great memories of growing up like we do,” Curtis gushes.

The nostalgia-tinted family-driven EP is just the beginning. In fact, Brad has already penned 22 songs since finishing Grew Up on That, and he and Curtis are excited to start releasing music more frequently. High Valley are on a mission to bring people together by telling their own stories in their music -- and Grew Up on That perfectly continues that meaningful narrative.

“I’d love to go down in history as being that band that made records that families could listen to together, and that parents are actually encouraged to play around their kids because they could enjoy them as a family,” Brad says. “That’s the goal with our whole life, on stage and off. It’s a very big blessing that people understand, appreciate and support that that’s what we’re about.”