(Photo contributed)
Three albums in and Antigonish, N.S. rockers The Trews continue to ride a wave of fame that has yet to slow. But at the same time, the band continues to grow – never drifting far from their tried and true form of radio-friendly pop-rock, but adding a little more lyrical depth and some different (and heavier) sounds to their arsenal.
The band – singer/guitarist Colin MacDonald, his brother John Angus on guitar, Jack Syperek on bass and Sean Dalton on drums – is currently in the middle of an East Coast tour that will see them play Saint John, N.B. tonight, Moncton, N.B. tomorrow night, Hubbards, N.S. on Thursday and Halifax, N.S. on Saturday.
Shortly before hitting the road for the East Coast, Colin MacDonald spoke to East Coast Noise about the band’s latest album, No Time For Later, touring and the flak the band has received from some for getting a little political on the new disc.
It’s been a busy summer for the band since the new album came out.
“We’re doing the biggest shows we’ve done of our careers in terms of headlining, doing a lot of outdoor summer festivals everywhere,” he says of the band’s recent exploits. “We’ve been to pretty much every major city in Canada this summer. It’s been going great. We’re not really an opening band for anybody anymore. We’re just doing our own shows and getting thousands of people out.”
MacDonald says the band isn’t on the level of headlining the arena shows they were regularly opening a few years ago, but their audiences continue to grow in Canada as they pursue the same success stateside and overseas.
“It’s a lot more gratifying now to be doing our own shows and have people knowing all the songs and being there only for The Trews,” he admits.
While things are going well, the band has received some flak over the lyrical content of their latest disc, where the band got a little political at times. Single “Paranoid Freak” is about the paranoia spread by media, whether it’s the latest outbreak of a virus or another overseas war. But the touchy track is “Gun Control,” a heavier tune that tackles the issue of school shootings. It was written in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings last year.
The band is known for lighthearted rockers or “songs about girls” as MacDonald calls them, but the singer says as he hit his late-20s he began picking up on more and more of what is going on in the world around him, some of which was disturbing.
A lyric in “Gun Control,” which describes a school shooting, reads, “Freedom to take other people’s freedom away, is this what has become of the U.S.A, why oh why do they second guess, gun control, my my my what an ugly mess …”.
MacDonald says the song drew “a line in the sand” on the issue for the band, and gave the normally carefree, fun tunes of The Trews some extra weight that some listeners don’t like.
“You kind of maybe alienate some people, people that either don’t believe in gun control or people who think that I’ve got no right as a rock n’ roll singer to have an opinion on events in the world,” he says. “But I certainly felt at the time that I needed to say that stuff. I couldn’t muster up any more songs about girls at the time.
“I remember I was in New York City one night, and this guy came up to me and said, ‘Look man, I like your band and you guys really rock, but you’re from Canada and it’s not really your place to talk about our gun control laws.’ And I’m like, ‘yeah, but I’m not really talking about that. I’m talking about senseless killings of kids at school.’
“I think it’s a pretty universal topic. I’m not just saying, ‘Oh, the United States is good, or the United States is bad,’ I’m saying like no, ‘this is wrong, and if this kid couldn’t get a gun, then it would have been prevented, at least in my opinion.’”
Not all of the songs on No Time For Later are political. The title track is a carefree rocker, while new single “Man of Two Minds” is about a guy torn (or not so torn) between two loves.
Each of the band’s albums thus far has been produced by different producers. Ex-Big Sugar and current Grady frontman helmed the band’s debut House of Ill Fame, while veteran producer Jack Douglas (Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper) worked with the band on sophomore album Den of Thieves. Gus Van Go and Werner F. (The Stills, Priestess) produced No Time For Later.
MacDonald says The Trews have been a unit “forever” and they’d like to stay that way, so to keep things fresh and moving along, they bring in new people to work with each time.
“We have to throw new people into the mix as producers, we have an extra guy on the keyboards (Jeff Heisholt), I’ve written with some other people … we’re constantly trying to reinvent ourselves, or at least try to push ourselves artistically so we can keep feeling excited about what we’re doing, you know. And with every new producer, I like that kind of feeling of the unknown.”
The new album has been out for a few months now and it’s on its third single. Once the band wraps up the East Coast tour and some university dates, they plan to release No Time For Later in the U.S. and overseas, where they will spend some time touring.
While the band lives in Ontario now, MacDonald says they make it home to Nova Scotia regularly.
“We still consider ourselves an East Coast band, and until (Detroit Red Wings assistant coach) Paul MacLean brought home the Stanley Cup (recently), we were the pride of Antigonish,” he says with a laugh.
