Archives uncovered

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/09/2014 (4269 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 1994, the Watchmen released their sophomore album In the Trees. It was a career-making record for the Winnipeg band, a commercial and critical success that earned the group a Juno nomination and went platinum in Canada.

The videos for Boneyard Tree and All Uncovered became mainstays on MuchMusic, the Watchmen spent two years on the road touring in support of the record and In the Trees entered the annals of CanRock history as a classic.

Now, the Watchmen — vocalist Danny Greaves, guitarist Joey Serlin, drummer Sammy Kohn and bassist Ken Tizzard — are celebrating the 20th anniversary of this landmark album with a two-disc, 34-track deluxe edition of In the Trees, out today via Universal Music.

The first disc features a remastered version of the record, along with never-before-heard demos of album outtakes. The second disc is a treasure trove of rarities, including demos circa 1993 — back when Pete Loewen was on bass — as well as the first demo sessions featuring Tizzard, live recordings taken from the soundboard at a Dutch radio station and a live acoustic version of In My Mind, recorded at the Q107 studios in Toronto.

It’s an exhaustive package that appeals to the nerdiest of music fans. We all know the type: the rabid B-sides and rarities completist who will scour used record stores for limited-edition pressings and Japanese singles in pursuit of owning an artist’s entire catalogue.

In other words, it appeals to music fans like Kohn, who masterminded this project.

“I’ve been the keeper of all things archival since day one,” he says over the phone from Toronto. “I had a pretty hefty vault.” (And by “vault” he means shoeboxes in his parents’ basement.) “I always envisioned when we were in the heart of things that it might be of interest to people who love to follow bands. I’m first and foremost a music fan. I’ll go and pick up everything. I’m a huge fan of bootlegs and outtakes. I’m a fan of artists who have a robust body of work. I understand what it’s like to be a fan. I understand that language.”

And if there’s any Watchmen album deserving of the deluxe treatment, it’s In the Trees. Our current cultural nostalgia for all things ’90s aside, the followup to 1992’s McLaren Furnace Room is, simply put, a great collection of great songs.

“I don’t think any one of us would have entertained the idea of going to our old record label if we didn’t think the album was strong,” Kohn says. (In the Trees was released on MCA Records, a subsidiary of what is now Universal Music Group.) “I think it was our finest hour in terms of recording.”

Kohn admits that there was some trepidation about listening to the demos, which were recorded on cassette — “It’s a pretty crude format. I had to cross my fingers and hope they sounded good” — but he was pleasantly surprised.

“We were always a very rehearsed band. We still are. We play songs we wrote 25 years ago and we’re still fine-tuning.”

Indeed, fans of In the Trees will be handsomely rewarded by this package; it serves as a kind of aural history, documenting Tizzard’s addition to the band, as well as how these now-classic songs came together.

It also serves as a reminder of just how integral the Watchmen were to Winnipeg’s music scene.

“Legacy maintenance is what we try to do,” Kohn says. “We want to be remembered as a great band — but specifically in Winnipeg. We were part of the second wave after the Guess Who and BTO in the early ’90s. Making a little mark in terms of the city’s rich musical history is something we we’re proud of.”

The band — which calls Toronto home these days — is playing a handful of shows in support of the deluxe edition, including a two-night stand at the famed Horseshoe Tavern. (A hometown show hasn’t been announced yet.) The band will also be the subject of a forthcoming biography, Uncovered: The Story of the Watchmen by Toronto writer Vanessa Azzoli, due out this month via Eternal Cavalier Press.

That there’s still such an appetite for the Watchmen isn’t lost on Kohn.

“The Watchmen never made it big-big, but the fans we do have are rabid,” he says. “Twenty years down the road, we don’t take that for granted.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca