The Trews might be the most successful band you’ve never heard of, and the four members are working tirelessly to change that.

With two gold albums, a gold digital single, two No. 1 and 12 top 10 singles in Canada and nearly 1,000 shows under their collective belt —including slots with Rolling Stones, Robert Plant, KISS, Ace Frehley, Guns N’ Roses, Nickelback and Kid Rock — the Toronto-based rockers have taken matters into their own hands to make The Trews’ music known stateside by booking shows in the U.S. themselves. One of those stops will be at Frankie’s Inner City on Jan. 13.

“I don’t know, man,” The Trews’ Colin MacDonald said in response to why it’s been hard for his band to pick up steam in the U.S. “It’s a frustrating thing for me because I get tired of kind of defending my band. I just feel like we’re really, really good, and I think a lot of Americans would really love it if they got a chance to kind of come out and see it and get exposed to it. I think it’s a matter of we just haven’t found the right circumstance and place and time in the U.S.

“We haven’t had our quote-unquote ‘break’ there, so we’ve decided, like, we believe in our music enough and we believe in ourselves enough that we’re just willing to get into a van and keep driving around and playing clubs because we believe in what we’re doing, and we think there’s a place for it in the U.S.”

The Trews

Featuring MacDonald (lead vocals/guitar), his brother John-Angus MacDonald (guitar), their cousin Sean Dalton (drums) and longtime friend Jack Syperek (bass), The Trews formed in 1998 and is touring in support of its fourth full-length studio album “Hope & Ruin,” which came out in April.

The record has received critical acclaim from multiple media outlets, including the distinction of “No. 1 Rock Album of 2011” by Metal Odyssey. But despite the high praise and strong homeland support, the U.S. music industry has not been receptive to The Trews, according to MacDonald.

“Our agent in the U.S. kind of got fired and we just couldn’t find another one,” MacDonald said. “All the business guys seemed to be too scared to take a risk on our band, so we just said, ‘Well, f*** it; we’ll just do it ourselves.’ And we got more gigs at better clubs by just doing it that way than we ever did with any agent down there.”

For “Hope & Ruin,” The Trews retreated to The Bathouse Recording Studio in Bath, Ontario in January of 2010 after being invited by bassist Gord Sinclair of The Tragically Hip. A serene residence on the shores of Lake Ontario, The Bathouse proved to be the perfect respite to record for the frequently busy band that MacDonald said could sometimes work songs to death.

“There was no thinking involved,” MacDonald said. “We got to a point in our career where we’re like, ‘OK — we’re going to stop trying really hard and we’re just going to start making music that we just want to listen to and we want to play.’ And it was just a sum of all of our different influences. I mean, every song on the record was brought in by a different guy in the band.”

The result was a unified effort The Trews are proud of, something MacDonald attributed to Sinclair.

“It was a very, very collaborative [process], and I credit Gord Sinclair with bringing that kind of team spirit to the whole process because it was kind of like the best idea won,” MacDonald said. “It wasn’t about which guy came up with the idea.”

Constantly trying to improve, the band was also open to advice from Kid Rock while on tour with the Michigan native last spring. Known for his live show, Kid Rock taped The Trews’ set every night and gave the band DVD copies to evaluate its performances.

“We hung out every night after he played,” MacDonald said of Kid Rock. “We just kind of YouTube’d music videos and drank beer. He was really cordial and a really cool guy. We learned a lot from him.”

With the experience and drive to go with its success and talent, The Trews are pressing on stateside, one city and van ride at a time.

On Jan. 13, The Trews and Ryan Dunlap will perform at Frankie’s, located at 308 Main St. in Toledo. Tickets are $6 in advance and $8 the night of the show. Advance tickets can be purchased through all Ticketmaster outlets as well as locally at Culture Clash Records (419) 536-LOVE, and Ramalama Records, (419) 531-ROCK. Doors are at 9 p.m. and all ages are welcome. For more information, visit frankiesinnercity.com.

Tags: Ace Frehley, Frankie's, Guns N’ Roses, Kid Rock, Kiss, Nickelback, Robert Plant, Rolling Stones, The Trews

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 at 10:15 am and is filed under Music, Star.
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Any Robert Plant interview these days almost has to include an inquiry about his interest in a Led Zeppelin reunion.

But one really doesn’t need his words to know Plant’s thinking about the issue. His musical projects during the past three years — the period since Led Zeppelin reunited for a one-off concert as part of a memorial event for the late head of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun — pretty much make Plant’s intentions clear.

First came the 2008 CD, “Raising Sand,” which paired the former Zeppelin frontman with Alison Krauss performing a mostly low-key collection of rootsy bluegrass/country influenced covers. The CD went on to win the 2009 Grammy award for album of the year.

Plant’s latest CD, “Band Of Joy,” takes his exploration of American roots music in new directions, with the help of such stellar band members as guitarist Buddy Miller, mandolin player/multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott and singer Patty  Griffin.

“I’m doing an interview with you because I am very proud of what I’m doing now in the present tense,” Plant said, once again shooting down any prospect of a Zeppelin reunion. “That really is my entire raison d’etre  … I’m on a journey here.”

Robert Plant

Plant thought it was understood that the 2007 reunion show would be a one-off event.

“I don’t think we’ve ever thought of it going any farther, to be honest,” Plant said. “I think the great thing about it was that we could do it, and we did it really well with dignity and with excitement. The idea of traveling around the sports facilities of the world is something that would have to be thought about really, really carefully.”

That opinion, however, may have changed in the aftermath of the reunion gig. There have been reports online and in print media that Plant’s former band mates, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, are both interested in a reunion tour, and may have auditioned different singers (including Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler) to fill Plant’s role as frontman.

The other musician involved in the reunion, Jason Bonham (son of the late Zeppelin drummer John Bonham) has also expressed enthusiasm in press reports for a Zeppelin reunion and said that he, Page and Jones spent time in 2008 working on material and rehearsing.

The fact that those rehearsals never panned out and that Jones recently has been gigging as part of the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures (which also includes Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age) and that Page has a solo album in the works haven’t silenced the rumors of a future for Led Zeppelin.

For Plant, though, playing the December 2007 reunion accomplished the goals he had for Zeppelin, essentially bringing closure to a band career that ended with the 1980 death of John Bonham. He noted that Bonham’s widow and mother attended the concert.

“The Bonham family went away from there going ‘Yeah, OK, that’s good,’” Plant said. “That made my heart sing.”

The quality of the show also allowed Zeppelin to go out on a good note, Plant said.

“That night was a spectacular night,” he said. “It was really something special. For me now, I can’t see any way of it carrying on. I just don’t know how, mechanically, it could happen. It (a tour) is such a huge deal. And I’ve seen people do huge deals. I’ve seen Genesis on tour, U2, people like that, and it becomes a military operation rather than just enjoying the time.”

Being in the moment creatively and as a performer — and moving forward artistically — are clearly top priorities for Plant.

And while the “Band Of Joy” CD is not a part two of “Raising Sand” by any means, Plant sees it as a next step in his musical journey — one in which he is gaining musical knowledge and learning to sing in different styles and intensities than during his Led Zeppelin years and on the eight rock-oriented solo albums he has released since Zeppelin.

“Obviously there’s a continuum because I went back to Buddy (Miller) and back to Nashville, where I knew I could get all of the jobs done in one place, and I knew there was a fund of people and a great understanding of music,” Plant said. “Now bear in mind, I’m the student here. And when we sit on the bus together, everybody else is in one place and I’m kind of playing catch-up on a lot of other American music that I didn’t know about.

“It’s a great learning curve for me, but it (the music on “Band Of Joy”) is a lot tougher and it’s much more tricky than ‘Raising Sand,’” he said. “It really does growl and clunk and it comes out of the church. It’s Sunday morning and definitely Saturday night.”

The album project (which is named after Plant’s pre-Led Zeppelin group, Band Of Joy) began with Plant recruiting Miller, a key band member on the “Raising Sand” tour, to produce, choose songs, recruit musicians and coordinate recording sessions for the new CD.

In December 2009 a first recording session was held, and after initially being excited with the results, Plant realized the direction of the music was a bit off. That’s when the “Band Of Joy” CD took on a whole different facet.

“Initially we created a very pastoral sound,” Plant said. “We were making a very pretty record. And over Christmas I realized I’ve got to have some sinew in there. I called Buddy and I said we need to pump this thing up a bit and get even more dynamic interplay between the kind of mood of the songs. He suggested would I think about Patty (Griffin), and I said ‘Of course.’  Patty’s got just the right voice to bring the edge onto the record, to create a bit more of a cutting edge. And also, [there was] a change of material, with a lot more kind of spook, so the second session became much tougher and much more psychedelic, if you like.”

The entire core lineup of Band Of Joy is on tour with Plant now — Miller, Scott, Griffin, drummer Marco Giovino and bassist Byron House — and the singer expects the new material to evolve further as the group performs its concerts. With Plant, Griffin, Scott, Miller and House all being accomplished singers, Plant said the shows have become a “massive vocal experience.”

The musical format and musicians involved are also allowing Plant to reinterpret some songs from the Zeppelin catalog, with Griffin playing a key role. He noted she takes the song “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” down a notably different path.

“I can’t tell you how impressed I am with Patty,” Plant said. “The way that she connects with me onstage is both humorous and incredibly, the voices together, because when we both let rip, when we let it go, man, with a couple of raised eyebrows, we take things up a notch.”

Robert Plant will play Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor at 8 p.m. on Jan. 21.

Tags: Ann Arbor, Led Zepplin, Robert Plant, University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 at 9:36 am and is filed under In Concert, Star.
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