>>PREVIEW
PRIESTESS
Monday, April 2
Hifi Club
By night, Mikey Heppner is the front man and guitarist for Priestess, one of Montreal’s most searing rock ’n’ roll bands. By day, Heppner is a morning person, very fond of cats and obsessed with an obscure avant-garde band from the late ’60s called Henry Cow.
Fittingly, last month during Monster Jam, Priestess’ "Talk to Her" was played over the sound system three times while the trucks barrelled over mud piles and flattened old jalopies.
"Really?" sks Heppner, incredulously. "Like a monster truck rally? That’s pretty cool. I don’t know if we’re going to live up to giant trucks."
As a rock band, you’d figure that Priestess would easily have some scandalous stories as dramatic as monster trucks, but Heppner reveals a little known fact about himself.
"I actually am not a very scandalous person," he says, matter-of-factly. "We don’t do cocaine and stuff like that, which most people do in rock bands. Anybody who is on tour with us knows that we party really, really hard and it’s kind of insane.
"I’m kind of a guy who, like I’ll drink and shit at the show, but I usually won’t let it carry on until seven in the morning. The other guys in the band do. I‘m kind of the shepherd in a way."
Heppner began playing the guitar 12 years ago, as a 13-year-old hooked on Black Sabbath and Nirvana. Throughout high school, he became hooked on complicated prog rock. Eventually, along with three friends, he formed The Dropouts – a punk band that played Montreal and the surrounding area. It was a hobby band that he started with his pal Oliver Corbeil, who eventually dropped out of The Dropouts to form The Stills.
Growing up in Morin Heights, a sleepy area located an hour-and-a-half north of Montreal, provided enough reason for Heppner to seek out a musical education. All there was to do was search for new music.
"It’s really not a suburb. It’s north of the suburbs. It’s mountains and forests and the middle of nowhere. The music I got into was either through friends… I do a lot of discovering and anthropology on my own. I discovered that I loved the Beatles, so I went to try and find all their music. Then, I discovered Jethro Tull. Through that, I discovered Frank Zappa. This is before moving to the city and we didn’t have any Internet – this is just talking with other people and going to record stores and trying to find old records."
When Heppner made the move to the city, he stumbled upon Montreal rock legends, Tricky Woo, and the motivation to start Priestess was set.
"It was only moving to the city and discovering Tricky Woo that I was like, holy fuck, these guys sound like old school fuckin’ Blue Cheer. I was like, holy shit. At the time that Sometimes I Cry came out in 1999, that was completely not happening at all. So that was a major spark reminding me that you could totally play this kind of music."
Between Tricky Woo and Bionic, Heppner saw that rock could exist without embarrassing schtick. In 2003, Priestess officially formed. Two years later, they released their fist-pumping debut, Hello Master. They toured with the likes of Motorhead, Gwar and Dinosaur Jr. This summer, they’ll be recording their followup album, which Heppner says will be more of the same rock, but only better.
"We fall into the class of a band that is just doing it the way we want to and not basing any of our decisions on things that have worked in the past or things that people suggest might work for us. We go with the gut." |
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