Hungry hearts

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This article was published 25/05/2021 (1944 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Joey Serlin and Daniel Greaves’ latest musical venture sounds similar to the way the two started their musical journey as the Watchmen in Winnipeg years ago. 

The only thing different between coming up with songs for their new band, Serlin Greaves, and those early teenage licks is the parental intervention.

“We would rehearse in Joey’s basement in Winnipeg, and I can remember your mom flicking the light switch off and on when it was just a little too loud or a little too long. Those are the memories I have when we started,” Greaves says of their teenage years during a conference call with Serlin. 

Instead of working on songs in parents’ basements, the two former Winnipeggers — who helped form the Watchmen in 1988 — had their own places to create: Motel Bar, Greaves’ tavern in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, and Vapor Music, a Toronto recording studio Serlin runs.

The back-to-the-future-style swapping of song ideas sparked a surge of creativity among the duo and a new album, Sad Songs for Sale, which comes out Friday. 

“It wasn’t by detailed design,” Serlin says of when the pair’s creative juices began to flow last summer. “I hadn’t written full-length songs in a long time. By natural instinct I contacted Danny and shared them with him and he liked them. It really evolved from a handful of songs to a full album.” 

Greaves brought some songs to the table as well, but he didn’t realize an album could be made until they put together Porch Light, a tune about seeking a second chance that includes the album’s title in its bridge: “Sad songs for sale / but my credit’s gone to hell, with you.”

“It was like me bringing songs to him, and him putting some rock ’n’ roll on it and me singing on his stuff. It ended up as, ‘Holy crap, we’ve got a record here,’ Greaves remembered. “It was an unexpected, beautiful surprise.”

Serlin Greaves may be an offshoot from a band that’s been on-again, off-again for the past 15 years, earning two Juno nominations and scoring such hits such as 1994’s All Uncovered and 1998’s Any Day Now, but Watchmen fans shouldn’t fret that Sad Songs for Sale is a weepy departure. The album is filled with straight-ahead, ’90s-style rock and power ballads with liberal flourishes of feedback. 

“It was like me bringing songs to him, and him putting some rock ’n’ roll on it and me singing on his stuff. It ended up as, ‘Holy crap, we’ve got a record here.’ It was an unexpected, beautiful surprise.” – Daniel Greaves

“Not once did we say, ‘Hey, we can’t do this, it’s too much like the Watchmen,’ or ‘Let’s do this because it would be like the Watchmen.’ We just kind of wrote our songs,” Serlin says.

“It would be way weirder to have it not sound like the Watchmen. We were a big part of what that sound came to be,” Greaves adds. “I want all our Watchmen fans to come along with us on this ride.”

The album’s first single, Teenage Heart, approaches the next generation of young music lovers and the way social media and the digital age surround so much of their lives. In keeping with the song’s message, Serlin Greaves has released a lyric video to raise mental-health awareness and ask fans to donate to Kids Help Phone, which provides confidential telephone and online counselling.

Serlin Greaves tested the waters last November when it released a single, a cover of The Needle and the Damage Done, a Neil Young tune from 1971 that two decades later became a standard among grunge bands.

The former Winnipeg rock legend’s longevity, along with other artists such as Bruce Springsteen, helped Serlin and Greaves — both of whom turned 50 in 2020 — realize the amp can be cranked up no matter what the age of the musician turning the dial.

“When I read that Springsteen biography (2016’s Born to Run), one thing that really blew me away was his hunger after decades in the business. Striving to write and keep saying something that would be meaningful to people,” Serlin says. “It made me look at myself and say ‘No excuses, get back to writing.’”

Despite Serlin Greaves’ hunger to return to the stage, it’ll be some time before the new duo, or the Watchmen, will perform before live audiences. They’ve scheduled the next best thing, a livestream concert that will emanate from Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern on June 24. The show begins at 7 p.m., Winnipeg time, and tickets, which go for $16.50, are available at wfp.to/serlingreaves.

Greaves hears from fans who love live shows and who say their patience is being tested with this long pandemic hiatus.

“I’ve heard the term ‘revenge travel’ when people will travel (the first chance they get) and it’ll be the same thing with music, ‘revenge concert-going.’ People will do it with such vim and vigour like we’ve probably never seen,” he says.

“I don’t think we’re going to realize how great it will be from the stage perspective and from the fan’s perspective. It’s going to be bonkers.”

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca  

Twitter:@AlanDSmall