Band tries different way to deliver the Trews

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/11/2014 (4346 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since forming in the late ’90s in Antigonish, N.S, the Trews have become one of CanRock’s most enduring workhorses, logging hundreds of kilometres following the yellow line back and forth across the Trans-Canada Highway.

Brothers Colin (vocals/guitar) and John-Angus MacDonald (guitar), their cousin Sean Dalton (drums) and Jack Syperek (bass) have earned a loyal following along the way and so, for their fifth full-length album, The Trews, the band enlisted help from its fans via a PledgeMusic campaign.

A direct-to-fan music platform, PledgeMusic works a little differently from a traditional crowd-sourcing initiative, allowing pledgers access to their favourite bands through exclusive content and experiences. PledgeMusic founder Benji Rogers pitched it to the band as the “ultimate fan-club experience.” For example, during the band’s 2013 campaign, $75 got you a 20-minute Skype chat with a Trews member of your choice, while $1,000 got you a four-on-four ball hockey game with the band. More than 1,000 fans pledged to the record, which was released in April 2014.

Colin MacDonald said the experience was a blast.

“People actually pledged on singing background vocals, so on six tunes on the record, there’s Trews fans singing the backup vocals. Everyone who did pledge, thankfully, had a good singing voice, so all the gang vocal parts were all keeper takes. I mean, we went in there one day with eight, maybe 10, Trews fans all gathered around the microphone just singing the ‘whoas’ and the ‘ays’ and the chorus parts. I got a real kick out of it. It brought home the whole concept of making the album with the fans. The fans are actually on the album.

“The street-hockey games have also been really fun. A little-known fact about the Trews: We’re actually a good ball hockey team. People are surprised. I don’t know how many games we’ve got coming up, but so far we’re 1-1.”

MacDonald doesn’t disclose how much money the band raised, saying only they made their goal and then some.

“It was a cool thing to do at this point in the game. We’ve done the indie label, the major label — we’ve done all the different things in the music industry. I found it to be new and exciting and inventive,” he said.

“When we started it was in its infant state; a lot of people are doing it now.”

Before the PledgeMusic campaign was even on the band’s radar, the Trews embarked on an intensive, five-month writing session for the new record. “Our phones were filled with little ideas,” MacDonald said. “We learned not to judge the process. We just wrote and wrote and tried not to edit ourselves too much. Sometimes we’d take the bridge from one song and marry it to the chorus of another. We’d cut, copy and paste. It was fun.”

When the band went into the studio with producer Gavin Brown (Metric, Tragically Hip, Billy Talent, Mother Mother), it had dozens and dozens of ideas to sift through. But, there were glimmers of gold. “We really didn’t know if we had a record until we listened back to all the ideas, and we realized, ‘Whoa, there’s a lot of strong ideas here.’ “

One of the strongest ideas turned into an affecting ballad called 65 Roses, dedicated to the band’s manager, Paul Gourlie, who died from cystic fibrosis in 2013 at age 39.

“We had the lyric. When kids get cystic fibrosis, because it’s such a hard word to pronounce for a kid, their parents just say, ‘You have 65 roses,’ ” McDonald said.

“So we wrote the song for him around that in tribute to the man, and it’s one of the better songs on the record, I think.

“He was one of the oldest-living people with CF at the time. And he never talked about it, you know? He was this tough, outgoing, kind of classic music agent guy. He was really upbeat, always looking on the bright side. I really liked him. He was there with us from the start. He booked our first shows as the Trews. We miss him. We wanted to send him off the only way we knew how.”

Another standout from the record is a pretty little acoustic track called In the Morning, which features a guest turn from Serena Ryder, an old friend of the band.

“We thought the part would be great for a female vocalist, so we called in the favour. She knocked it out of that park in a couple of takes, MacDonald said. “She’s really, really great.”

The Trews are taking their self-titled album across the country on a tour that stops by the Burton Cummings Theatre Monday night. MacDonald said the new material is going over well.

“That’s always the test of how well the record is doing for us — how many songs we can play live,” he said. “And every night we’re doing eight or nine new songs.”

The band’s new album wasn’t the only thing called The Trews to come out this year. In February, comedian Russell Brand debuted a YouTube web series called The Trews — a portmanteau of “true” and “news.” Brand’s prolific, too; a new webisode comes out every weekday.

“Of all the goddamn things in the world,” MacDonald said with a laugh. “We spent all this time trying to make the Trews — spelled t-r-e-w-s — an international name, and then he comes along and has this novel idea of combining ‘true’ and ‘news.’ I think the guy’s a bit foolish anyway, and I find it really funny that every time to look up our band, there’s that guy, sitting there doing his quote-unquote revolution and calling it The Trews.”

Still, Brand’s aware of the band, at least.

“The first day he launched it, he mentioned it’s also a Canadian band and a type of Scottish trousers,” MacDonald said. “Who knows — maybe he’ll give us a bit more props when he’s doing his revolution.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca