It had to happen. Sure, Rob Moir has played in some of the most important Toronto punk bands of the modern era — see his contributions to the downcast shuffle of Dead Letter Department, the hyper-charged political street-punk of Marilyn’s Vitamins, or even snotty pogo of The Stiffs, who recently got the cover treatment by Fucked Up’s Ben Cook — but the times, they’re a-changin.’ With his debut EP, This is the Lie, Moir follows that trodden country road blazed by the Chuck Ragans and Tim Barrys of the world: He went folk.

“Well, it’s not just folk music. There would be some old folkies who would listen to my record and be like, ‘I don’t like this at all!’” he laughs. “I think that (punk rock and) hip hop are similar, too. I was recently in Venice Beach, and you have all these guys with their CDs and headphones, trying to get you to hustle you to get into what they’re doing. It’s not that different from busking on the corner with a guitar or playing a punk rock show in a basement. It’s really something that anyone can pick up and do.”

What Moir’s trying to get at, here, is that you can take can take the Crass out of the boy, but you can’t take the boy out of the Crass. Indeed, while This is the Lie is a departure from his louder, angrier days — no, The Stiffs never included rustic banjos or warbling accordion — his musical stripes are clearly audible in his music. The EP feels irreverently piecemeal largely because, well, it is.

“We’re all guys that came from punk rock — we’re not classically-trained. Mikey (Leblanc) was playing accordion on the album, and he has no fucking clue what to do on that thing! And he figured it out,” he says. “It comes from being a fan of the Ramones. I love what I can do with a little instead of what I can do with a lot.”

It’s a telling remark. If Moir’s artistic tendencies veer towards minimalism, so, too, do his touring practices. Armed with a backpack full of merch and a guitar, he’s knee-deep in his first Canadian solo tour — something he’s accomplishing by Greyhound and by Via Rail. It’s an emerging tour method that, he notes, can be advantageous to singer-songwriters: Beyond economic reasons, he’s also been booked to play on the train between Winnipeg and Montreal.

“I don’t have an expensive production — I have a backpack and a guitar. Although I’m surprised that Via accepted me. I’m not exactly Gordon Lightfoot,” he chuckles. “But I could be risking my life in a car, or I could be sipping Merlot while I’m playing the train. You can’t beat that!”

But Moir possesses a softer spot for travel than most (“I think it’s crazy when musicians complain about it. There’s nothing more interesting in life,” he adds). This is the Lie, in fact, was written during a four-month bike trip through Europe — and accordingly, his amazement with the world seems more akin to a fresh-faced college grad. And that enthusiasm is audible on This is the Lie.

“I was writing those songs in my head — it sounds really hippie and new age — but I’d just try to work them out while I was cycling. When I’d get to someone’s house with a guitar, I’d be able to work them out on the music side,” he says. “Man, I genuinely loved travelling. I was constantly lost, I didn’t have GPS — it was just trying to understand maps in foreign languages. After being able to conquer that, you can do anything.”