>>PREVIEW
THE TREWS
Wednesday, March 1
The Whiskey
Poor bastard. A guy seemingly as nice as Colin MacDonald, singer-guitarist for Nova Scotia’s The Trews, deserves better from some hack writer than to be dragged into one of those tired conversations about Can Con and the general state of Canadian rock as a whole.
Alas, our young hero has no choice. Because there he is – the best example of those rare Canadian musicians who make exactly the kind of music that they want to make, expressing themselves exactly as they choose, while simultaneously landing smack dab in the middle of the mainstream Canadian airwaves. It sounds modern and hard-edged enough for today’s young rock fans, but just safe enough to be allowed on the Coca Cola stages of the world. Most can’t choose to do this – it happens or it doesn’t. But, needless to say, like all Canadian rockers who strive to be more than a check mark in radio’s Canadian content column, MacDonald is resistant to this line of conversation.
"Well, I don’t really want to be the next Can Con band," he says.
Fool. A guy who has burned as much gasoline as he has in the last two years of relentless touring, burning through the distilled remains of long extinct creatures by the gallon, should instinctively know what happens as soon as you put one foot into a tar pit. But MacDonald steps in neck-deep, flailing about and sinking deeper by the minute, talking about their goals being modest and having "no illusions of being as big as Nickelback next year." MacDonald’s in a tough spot here – forced to balance humility and hopeful speculation, just because some dumbass writer steered him there.
But it’s for his own good, really. Because now that we’ve brought this age-old Canuck band identity crisis into the light, we can set about proving that The Trews never really gave a thought to being the poster boys for Canadian rock. And the evidence lies in the recording of Den of Thieves, The Trews’s newest record. The point that comes across, numerous, numerous times, is how overjoyed they were to discover their new ideas, different from those that spawned their last album, House of Ill Repute, and the big single "Not Ready to Go" – were being accepted, unhampered by stereotypical major label conflict.
"I’d always known that conflict existed," says MacDonald. "But we haven’t felt that shitty ‘Oh this album sucks, go record a whole new record and make it this style’ thing yet."
The Trews’s biggest problem is likely going to be repeating it all for a third album, a problem they hope to thwart by writing more songs on the road. But that, too, poses problems.
"The thing that scares me about being on the road is that you’re not in touch with reality. You’re in touch with your van and getting to sound-check and having wake-up calls." |
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