'The Deaner' and Nightseeker go heavy here, and Brandon

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Deaner, second from left, and Nightseeker.

If you haven't seen the Canadian comedy Fubar 2 and intend to do so, this interview contains a potential spoiler:

Dean Murdoch, a.k.a. "The Deaner," a.k.a. actor Paul Spence, is Luke Skywalker's father.

OK, not really. But if you've seen either of director Michael Dowse's Fubar movies, you know Dean would blow your mind to the degree of that Empire Strikes Back third-act revelation if he could. And, in fact, that's the plan when Dean and his band Nightseeker bring their heavy-metal song stylings to the Pyramid Cabaret tonight and Brandon's Trails West Inn on Friday.

At the very least, you could call this tour a personal triumph, considering the conclusion of Fubar 2 when (and this is where the actual spoiler comes into play) Dean lost his second testicle to cancer, but emerged from the experience as capable of hitting the high notes as adeptly as any blue-collar rock god this side of Bon Scott.

The Deaner spoke to the Free Press on the phone from the tour.

FP: We last saw you in the kind-of triumphant conclusion of Fubar 2. Is this tour kind of a victory lap?

Deaner: Yeah, you could say that. Basically, what happened is that we were just rockin' out and really getting into jamming and recording some tunes, and people were emailing us and sending us messages, saying, 'Come on, man, when are you going to tour?' So we said: Let's see what that's all about.

Ideally, when you're in a band, you're on tour. That's how you make your living, you know? So we did out West last fall there and that was really rockin' but we didn't make it all the way to Winnipeg, so we were like: Let's set that up. So we're touching down like a fiery meteorite in Winnipeg and Brandon. It's a Dean-a-toba Tour of Terror. It's Dean-a-toba 2012.

FP: Nightseeker sounds kind of like a Night Ranger tribute band. It's not, right?

Deaner: Yeah, I had kind of forgotten that Night Ranger was already a band. That's the problem when it comes to naming your band. All the good one-word band names are taken, like Anvil. Everything that has one word in it is done so you have to do two words and 'Night' 'Seeker' sounded pretty cool together.

There's also an ancient fable about the Nightseeker, a seeker of lost goods -- if you lose something, you call on the Nightseeker. But he exacts a pretty hefty price. It might be your soul or it might just be your watch. You only know after.

FP: So should one mind one's goods when going to see Nightseeker?

Deaner: I think you should mind your goods when you go to any rock show because you're going to be super-loaded for sure. If you've got one of those wallets that just pops out of your pants because your jeans are too tight, you've got to leave those jeans at home. You've got to wear the ones with the deep pockets.

FP: At the end of Fubar 2, you had some pretty radical surgery that would have knocked a lot of guys out, but it was pretty much a rebound for you.

Deaner: Yeah, it was kind of like déj vu and I'm going down this road again, but the thing is, if you break one leg, you're like, 'Oh, I have to learn how to walk again,' and it seems like the end of the world. But if you break your other leg, you just go: here we go again. You pull out the old crutches and you go back to your old habits to when you only had one leg.

So I've got no nuts, but at the same time I can still walk -- you've got to look at it that way.

FP: Does the show interlock with the universe of Fubar, or is it all about the music?

Deaner: There's a lot of music in Fubar that me and the boys wrote so there's definitely some interlocking of the rock, if you will. I play an (Iron) Maiden tune or two, but mostly originals, but there's some tunes in there that people will recognize from the movies.

You'll feel like you were at a Fubar party, for sure. I'm not going to be there with Terry or Tron or Trish, but you're going to feel like you're in the world of Fubar. Everywhere you look, there's going to be people shotgunning beers... I'm assuming.

Nightseeker plays at the Pyramid at 8 tonight and at Brandon's Trails West Inn on Friday. Tickets to the Pyramid are $24.50 at Ticketmaster, and are also available at Into the Music and Kustom Kulture.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 25, 2012 E4