The Trews are, without a doubt, the greatest rock band of their generation. It’s just a shame that this fact has been lost on U.S. audiences. Originally hailing from Nova Scotia, the Canadian foursome have been making brilliant music for over a decade in the Great White North, and now it’s time for Stateside listeners to wake up to what they’ve been missing.

LISTEN NOW: The Trews – “One by One”

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In most respects, The Trews might seem like an anachronism. The band looks like they just walked off the set of Almost Famous - lead singer Colin MacDonald filling the shoes of Jeff Bebe, while brother John-Angus plays the Russell Hammond character, the long haired guitarist extraordinaire with mystique. Rounding out the group are Jack Syperek on bass and Sean Dalton on skins. Together, The Trews have scored radio singles, huge festival slots and heavy video rotation in their homeland.

The States? Not so much. As countless Canadian acts have made waves in the American indie scene, The Trews have inexplicably been left out in the cold (no offense to the Canadian climate). All of that should change with the release of their latest record, Hope & Ruin, on April 12th. Performer recently had an opportunity to chat with guitarist John-Angus MacDonald about the band’s history, the new record and breaking the American market.

I know you and your brother [lead singer Colin] grew up in Nova Scotia. What drove you to pursue music and who were some of your earlier influences up there?

Music was always around the household growing up, so it was definitely a part of our lives from as far back as I can remember. I especially remember listening or our dad playing piano when we were young. It’s always been a passion and a hobby, so I think joining a rock band in our teens was just a natural extension of that passion.

Can you tell us a little about how the band got started and how the first record (House of Ill Fame) came to be?

We left Nova Scotia in 2000. That was about the time three out of the four of us had just gotten out of high school. And then we decided to set up shop in Southern Ontario. With Toronto being one of the Meccas of the Canadian industry, we wanted to be close by but we couldn’t afford to be in Toronto, so we ended up setting up shop in Niagara Falls for a few years. And it was there that we started to perform pretty regularly: we had some weekly gigs at a bar in Niagara, weekly gigs at a bar in Hamilton, weekly gigs at a bar in Toronto, and that was sort of the foundation of getting a fan base going and attracting some attention.

We met our manager that way, then got the booking agents through that, and eventually we were able to make a record. We signed on to our manager’s record label [Bumstead] and we got our first record out through Sony Music in Canada. So that was sort of the beginning of it all. We worked for Grady Johnson on that first record, who played with Big Sugar. We were really big fans of the band, so it was a neat thrill for us at that time to work with him. That sort of launched everything for us.

You then started work on Den of Thieves. In the States, I know that was going to be released and then kind of disappeared from the marketplace. What exactly happened with that record?

It was…I don’t really know, you know? I know we had something set up. I think that it was a weird time for the label, and there were a lot of shake-ups going on – we were getting fired, we were getting hired and it was kind of strange. And I think that it sort of fell through the cracks in America. We definitely did a lot of showcasing for labels and tried to get it going and it eventually came out on some imprint of Sony, but you couldn’t buy it anywhere in America. We toured a lot behind it, and we saw a lot of America for the first time, which was a great experience. And we managed to turn a few markets into good cities to return to for the live thing, you know? But it never took off on the radio, and I think that was sort of label’s plan – to work the band through commercial radio, and when the first single didn’t take off they dropped the project. The only thing that kept us going in the States was the fact that we were willing to return and try to build a fan base with our live show.

Den of Thieves features my favorite song, “Ishmael and Maggie.” You guys are obviously known for your songwriting and your great original music, but it’s also got a beautiful cover of Tracy Bonham’s “Naked” on it, too. How did that come about?

That was through our producer Jack Douglas, a legend in his own time. He’s a great, great man. He made his name doing the early Aerosmith stuff and he did work on John Lennon’s last record as well. He’s done all these amazing things, and we sort of looked him up and it turns out he was coming back from the dead, so to speak, and starting to work a lot again – he was working with Aerosmith at the time. We hired him to do our record – it was awesome, a lot of fun. The idea to do that song came from him. I think he thought that our record needed a solid ballad and he wasn’t sure that we had one in our canon. And he had worked with Tracy on the Aerosmith record Honkin’ on Bobo. She had played some violin, and he thought that Colin’s voice could do it, and he was right.

He was absolutely right. It’s a great fit for his voice.

And he also did a gender flip with the lyrics, which I think was kind of funny, because Tracy sings it from first person perspective and Colin sings it at the person. So it kind of gave it a different twist. It’s actually probably my least favorite tune on the record, but that’s only because we didn’t write it, I’m sure.

Well, I like it if that counts for anything.

No, a lot of people did. I don’t dislike it. It’s just I’ve found the true test is whether we still play it in the live show, and that one fizzled out pretty quick. That might just be our egos talking.

Around that time, 2004-05, we saw a huge influx of Canadian acts really break through the mainstream in the States. Now for you guys, it didn’t really happen at the same time. Was it frustrating for you to see other Canadian bands reach a wider audience here while you guys were busting your asses out on the road?

Well to me that’s like going to the casino. You play your odds and what happens, happens. There’s so much music going on all the time that those bands are just a fraction of what’s out there and who we were playing with. You know, you try not to get bitter about these things because everybody’s on their own path and everybody’s got their own career going on. And there’s a slew of bands that are way behind us in the race too, so you’ve got to be grateful for what you’ve got and try to push forward and forge new ground and not let it get you down. At the end of the day, it might be just around the corner, or maybe it’ll never happen, it just is what it is. I guess you’ve got to be a little Buddhist about it [laughs].

It’s great to hear that you guys have a good attitude. Following Den of Thieves you released No Time for Later, and then followed that with an acoustic record. What led to that decision?

I think after No Time for Later, we had done so much touring for it, we were sort of – I don’t know if we were uninspired but I don’t think we were ready to make a record right away. We had this idea that we kept on the back burner that we’ve done periodically throughout our career, and it’s always turned a lot of heads. People are really intrigued by it and it also shines a whole new light on the songwriting and the vocal arrangements of the band. It’s a new angle on what we do. So we booked the shows at a theater in Toronto and did six shows and recorded them all. We told ourselves if we were happy with them we’d put it out. It turned out pretty good, so we did it as a live disc and DVD and toured behind it – twice actually. The first tour went so well, people were clamoring for more, so we went out and did it again.

I’d love to hear a little bit about the new record that’s coming out this month.

Yeah, the process was really laidback and really fun. We went up to a studio and we really didn’t know what we’d be doing, if it was going to be demos or songwriting or tracking. We just sort of went in with an open mind and a clean slate and knew we had to come up with some new material for a record. So we were cutting basically a song a day, and the studio is such that you can live in it, kind of like The Monkees, you know? There are beds and a play area and everything else, so it’s really an inspiring place to be.

LISTEN NOW: The Trews – “Hope & Ruin”

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I was curious about how you guys actually write, what the creative process is. Is there a primary lyricist or is it more of a collaborative effort?

It’s been different over the years. We don’t keep a map around that we follow every time. Like in the early days it was jamming, trying to find some music and melodies that excited us – lyrics usually came after that. And back then Colin was shouldering all the lyrics. As the career took off and we found ourselves more pressed for time, we’ve gone down a few other avenues, like writing with friends. We have a pretty small, tight group of people we trust creatively. Sometimes we do that co-writing thing – that’s usually Colin and me and a third party -but we still often write in the jam room, it just comes down to whether we have time.

And on this record, it was much more collaborative on every song, all the way through, even in the lyrics. Waking up in the studio, you’d have an idea for a song at breakfast, and by lunch it was somewhere near fruition, and then by dinner you’d be ready to track, so you’d break for dinner and record all night. The songs weren’t pre-prepared, like when we did No Time for Later, everything was pre-prepared in rehearsal and we knew it note for note, but that doesn’t really leave any room for magic or for the “lightening in a bottle” aspect. We were all getting along really well and we were all living together, which was the first time we’d been together since our very early days. The fact that we were in a studio where we had to go to sleep there and we had to wake up there and we were grocery shopping, it was an interesting trip back to 10 years ago.

As far as gear goes, I’ve seen you play live a number of times and obviously you’re a Gibson man. Is that as true in the studio as it is onstage? Do you use primarily the same setup?

I don’t know what I’m allowed to say [laughs]. Truthfully, I use whatever I can get my hands on. Basically, that’s another place to get inspired, through the way you’re reacting to a particular sound. So one of the great things that Gordon, who co-produced the record with us, brought to the table was the great collection of vintage guitars. One of the guitars that made almost every track was a 1956 Telecaster, and we were plugging that through old amps, little combo amps with tone and volume knobs. And we had a 335, a Gretsch Country Gentleman and all kinds of nice gear. Then I had my live stuff, my Les Pauls. They always make the record, I do love playing them. It’s probably my favorite electric guitar, especially for live shows.

I know that you guys also recently did an Australian tour. Can you describe that experience?

It was awesome. That was our first time down under. We put a compilation album out of our first three albums in Australia. We hadn’t released all the records yet down there, so it was like an introductory LP for the radio to start playing. [Editor's note - at press time, the band just completed a second Aussie road trip]

What’s life on the road like for a band that’s essentially made up of a lot of family members?

You know, it’s taxing at times. You don’t realize…we just did about three months, right, we were home a little bit here and there, but it was about a three-month kick in Australia. You don’t realize you find yourself resenting other members for this and that, and you’re aggravated and you’re picking at each other and you realize that anybody in that situation is doing that. You don’t really hate each other, it’s the same as how it was, it’s just you’re annoyed. You’re tired and you’re hung over, and it’s been a long tour, and all that kind of crap, but it’s hard not to think of them as real emotions and that you now hate the person. That’s not how it is, but I’ve always found that after a little time off, we get back together and we all get along fine and we still play really well together. But I think that could happen to any four people that are put in a tight situation for any amount of time.

Do you have any plans to come back to the States in support of this record?

Absolutely, yeah. We are definitely going to launch the record simultaneously. I think what really hurt us on the last record was that we had these lag times between when it came out in Canada and in the States. That confused people since the countries are so close. After it comes out, we’re definitely going back on the road.

What’s on your current iPod playlist? What are you guys listening to outside your own music?

I like that Mumford & Sons record, I think that’s a great one. Phoenix is a good band. I’m sort of always looking under every stone just to find a good tune here and there. Recently we were on tour and I was reminded of this great Kim Mitchell song from the ’80s called “Easy to Tame.” I hadn’t thought of Kim Mitchell in so many years, and I bought it on iTunes and thought, “That’s a great song, regardless of the production.” The production’s God-awful, but it’s a fantastic song. Another artist I listen to is David Francey – he’s a folk artist and an amazing songwriter. I usually just put my iPod on shuffle and discover songs like “Track 13″ on that record you never made it all the way through.

Any parting thoughts for the American audience that’s going to pick up the magazine?

I think music’s in really great shape. I think people are listening to more music and digesting more music and having a more open mind about music – becoming more literate about what’s out there. And I think they’re starting to understand what’s coming from a real place and I hope that trend continues and maybe the industry will somehow land on its feet again. But in the meantime, I hope they keep listening to great music – I’d like to think we’re a part of that.

http://www.thetrewsmusic.com/

Photographer: David Bastedo