By Jim Barber
It goes without saying, even though I’m about to say it, that it’s good to have friends. It’s even better to have friends when you’re a creative person seeking new approaches, new interpretations, new points of view and new challenges in the pursuit of your art.
When members of celebrated Canadian rock band The Trews were seeking a way to continue to grow as musicians, songwriters and performers, to explore strange new musical worlds, they reached out to a couple of fellow travelers on the rock and roll journey for inspiration and even a little metaphorical injection of new artistic vitality.
And they didn’t have far to turn, as their friends Brett and Jay Emmons of Kingston, Ontario’s The Glorious Sons are always close at hand. It is a remarkable relationship between the two acts, as at one point The Trews, in their capacity of somewhat elder statesmen on the Canadian music scene, acted as mentors and advocates for the then up-and-coming Glorious Sons. Now, the students have become the master (that may be overstating it a bit, but you get the point) as the Emmons brothers, the co-founders and creative core behind one of the Great White North’s most popular and dynamic bands over the past decade, reversed their role and became the ones offering inspiration, encouragement and motivation. It lead directly to the band’s dynamically diverse, but the elementally rock and roll new album, The Bloody Light.
“In 2023, we started with a producer, and we did eight or nine songs, and they weren’t really happening. We then kept kind of trying to revisit it, and we kept writing, and nothing was really landing. It just wasn’t sounding right, and we kind of just tabled that project. And all the while we were doing this, we were playing demos for a lot of our friends, and I guess colleagues, and at one point, my brother John-Angus was in Toronto with Brett Emmons from the Glorious Sons, and he was playing some of our latest round of demos, and Brett, he wasn’t too into them, to say the least. He called John-Angus the next day after they were hanging out and said, ‘just give me a chance to produce one Trews song, and I’ll try to make the greatest Trews song ever recorded.’ That’s a pretty bold claim, but we decided to give him a shot, because we all love Brett and the Glorious Sons, and John-Angus goes way back with them. He produced their first EP [Shapeless Art in 2013] and their first album [The Union the following year]. It was a bit of a full-circle moment, and next thing you know, Brett and Jay were in our rehearsal space in Hamilton, Ontario, and we co-wrote a song called ‘The Bloody Light,’ which is the lead-off song from the record and the name of the album. We immediately were like, oh, this is really great, exciting, and as soon as we had that feeling, after going through about a year of kind of searching for something cool, we decided to keep working with those guys, which eventually led to this record,” said Trews’ vocalist Colin MacDonald from his home in Hamilton, Ontario.
“Brett was just a phenomenal producer. I think he brought out the best in me vocally and lyrically and really helped me shape the songs nicely. So yeah, I love that guy. And I can’t say enough great things about him as a writer and a producer and a performer in his own right, obviously. He was really able to kind of home in on what I’ve been trying to say and really make it clear and really to the point. And I really appreciated that. Yeah, I mean, I love it that it’s come full circle between us and those guys in the Glorious Sons. It’s one of the things I’m always very proud of, and I think it’s been the key to The Trew’s longevity. I really get a kick out of that. I love working with younger producers, guys that have a fresh way of looking at things. And I like relinquishing some of my control in the interest of making something more interesting for the band. And a guy like Brett and his brother, Jay, they have very strong opinions on what The Trews should be. They grew up as fans of The Trews. I think Brett was a 10-year-old kid in the audience when we played the gig with The Hip across the causeway in Kingston in 2004. And Jay used to follow our band around America when we toured with Ace Frehley in 2008. So they had these kind of core memories of The Trews growing up as fans. They really wanted us to hit those marks that they thought were kind of quintessential to our band and also take The Trews in a direction that they thought would be really cool for us. And I think we succeeded in doing something like that with them.
“For a lot of our records, like Civilianaires, which came out in 2018, we worked with a young producer named Derek Hoffman. He kind of did the same thing. Listen, we’ve been doing this for so long, and we’ve been together for so long, for us to get stale would be the worst thing ever. We want to keep it interesting. And we want to kind of have that beginner’s mindset, even the way we approach our music. Which I think has been the reason why we’ve been able to make quality records and stick around. Because we don’t have this like, attitude of ‘no, The Trews do this and that’s it,’ you know? I think that’s just so limiting. One of the nicest moments for me when we started working with Brett and Jay was, I think, on the second song we did together, which was a song called ‘Downtown Again.’ I was in the vocal booth recording my vocals and my brother showed me a video on his phone after I was done singing for the day. And the take that we finally used, which was like the really, it just had some magic to it. All of the guys – Brett, Jay, and Steve [Kirstein], the engineer, who’s now actually the guitar player for Glorious Sons – they were all dancing around the control room singing because they were just that into it. You know, they’re like, ‘oh, he’s getting it, he’s getting it.’ And I just was so moved that I thought, okay, I can make a record with these guys. This is really cool. It was really inspiring. They approached it like a family. They were like, ‘no, this sounds like what I love about you guys.’ And that’s really cool.”
More specifically, MacDonald talked about how Brett Emmons pushed him to extend his voice, to essentially take off the any restraints and unleash it on a number of tracks for The Bloody Light.
“Brett really, really pushed me. And we did a lot of takes and he really wanted me to use my entire range. So he said for me to start as low as I can go and as high as I can go. And it was, you know, there was a lot of takes and he was very particular about what he wanted from me. There were some days where we’d do 50 takes and we’d end up going with take three anyway, but that’s another story,” MacDonald said with a chuckle.
“He really pushed me vocally and I’m grateful for it. It was great to have a guy like that to work with. Having a vocalist produce you vocally was so great because he could just sing me what he wanted to hear. He’d be like, ‘do this part like this,’ you know? Sometimes you work with a producer who can’t sing and they’re trying to explain something to you. It’s very, I don’t know, hard to understand sometimes. But Brett was very direct with his instructions. I think on a couple of occasions he was getting me to go pretty outside my limits so I’m like, ‘hey, maybe you try doing that.’ But no, but overall it was wonderful. I got everything I need from a producer out of Brett Emmons, I’ll tell you that.”
The Trews have been a staple on the music scene since the burst out of their hometown of Antigonish, on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, with their now platinum selling debut album, House of Ill Fame in 2003. All but one of their six subsequent albums charted in the top 10 in Canada, to increasing critical and popular acclaim. Songs such as ‘Not Ready to Go,’ ‘Poor Ol’ Broken Hearted Me,’ ‘Hold Me In Your Arms,’ ‘Hope & Ruin,’ ‘What’s Fair is Fair,’ and their powerfully evocative single honouring Canada’s fallen military personnel, ‘Highway of Heroes,’ continue to be concert favourite’s and radio staples.
But over 20-plus years, people change. As individual humans, as songwriters, as performers and musicians, MacDonald, his brother John-Angus, co-founder/bassist Jack Syperek and newest member, drummer Theo Mckibbon, are obviously not in the same life situations and headspace as they were as hungry 20-somethings looking to satisfy their rock and roll dreams. Times change, perspectives change; hell, tastes in music change, and the way that music is consumed has also undergone monumental, paradigm-shifting transformations.
“I think as a human being, you just live your life and you go through things, and the best songs tend to be the ones that are reflecting your life as it’s happening. So like, sure, we could go and say, oh, we’re gonna make a big political rock opera. If the songs aren’t coming, then you’re not gonna have the record. So in the case of this album, I just think all the best songs, the ones that really stood out to us were the ones that were kind of deep, emotional, personal, very human songs, and they just ended up being the best tunes. So I think for every band, themes kind of show up when you start working. If you think too much about it, you put too much of that into it, it can kind of ruin it. So I think a lot of those things present themselves as you go through the process. In terms of what was sort of inspiring it, I don’t know if you’ve been around for the last four or five years, but there’s been a lot of existential happenings in the world, and I think that definitely makes its way into the songwriting, and a lot of uncertainty too. We just got through a pandemic, and then we’re right back into the second Trump administration. It just seems like it’s kind of one thing after another in the world. I think that ends up, you know, coming out of us as artists. I mean we’re just human beings living life like everybody else, and we have the same fears, and, you know, hopes, and all of those things, and they’re reflected in the lyrics. I think songs like ‘Love or Pain,’ and ‘Between the End and Once Upon a Time’ from the new record are just really about, you know, becoming more connected with yourself, and more connected with the people around you, and maturing, and living life, and trying to understand yourself, and understanding yourself in relation to your environment, and the people you’re surrounded with,” MacDonald said, dropping the ‘M’ word, which few rock and rollers want to admit happens in their lives – maturity.
“I think that’s inspired us trying to better ourselves, and get better at our craft, and go places that we haven’t gone yet, and I think that’s what keeps it fresh and interesting for us, and it still sounds like the truth at the end of the day. We’re definitely not 21 year olds writing bar rock anthems now, we’re in our late 40s writing bar rock anthems now [another chuckle]. We’re just growing as people, and we’ve always worked really hard at our music, and really hard on the craft, and yeah, it’s good to know that it’s growing gracefully with us, the music.”
This led to a discussion on the importance of music in tough times, not only for the audiences who are seeking solace and emotional sanctuary, but for the artists who create that music, who are seeking a way to process the vagaries and vicissitudes of life in a way that is healthy and satiating.
“One million percent, and I think what got me through like, you know, the 2020, 2021 pandemic was just writing every day, writing all the time, and a few of those songs showed up on the record. It’s a really good point you’re making, because it is therapeutic for me, and for the band to process everything through what we get to do for a living. It is such an expressive outlet to put all of this angst, and heartache, and confusion, and hope, and love, that we can all put it into the music. Ideally, the hope is that, you know, people will feel that when they listen to it; that they can have a place to go where they can maybe feel heard just by hearing what we’re doing. That’s what’s been driving us forward. And it is a lifeline, you know. Even over the pandemic, I used to do live streams from my living room every Friday for our fans on Facebook and Instagram. And to this day, people are still saying, oh, thank you for doing that. I’m like, no, thank you. I was doing that for me. A lot of people were tuning in, but I needed it as much. I mean, we needed it as much as the people listening. You’re right, music has always been a safe place. It’s been a place to make sense of things. And it’s been a place of empathy. That’s the most important part of music is when someone out there feels like me or someone out there is feeling what I’m feeling and going through it and I am too. And that we’re gonna do this together. I think that’s just so beautiful. I think the last thing the world needs right now is more podcasts and people just talking about things, because you can just go on and on and on and on. It’s never ending. But with a song, when it’s done really well, you don’t have to say as much. It’s like, oh, it’s all there. I get it. I feel it, you know? If that’s making sense,” MacDonald said, emphasizing the connective aspect of music.
“It’s definitely what we’ve been thinking for a very long time. People listen to so much music now. There’s so much music out there and people need it. They love it. And hopefully they’re going to want stuff that’s a little bit deeper than just the surface level. Maybe they’re going to want something that speaks to a deeper part of their humanity, and that’s why we keep going with it. I mean, it’s been kind of an ever-changing situation for us just in terms of the way the music industry has gone through its ups and downs and just staying vital as a band has become very important for us. Earlier today, when we were doing press, my brother said that we just want to get out what we’re doing no matter what it is, whether it’s on vinyl or CD or streaming or whatever, because we just want people to hear what we do. We have a lot of confidence in it. If anything, I mean, we’re working harder at it now than we ever have because we really do believe we’ve got lots more good music left in us. I just don’t think we’re taking it for granted and I think we’re very grateful for what we’ve built over this many years and we want to keep building on that. We still feel like we have stuff to say in these kinds of crazy times of not knowing what’s real and what’s not these days. We’re just trying to stay authentic and say something meaningful and hopefully move somebody on a human emotional level. Maybe I’m being way too optimistic but that’s definitely what’s been driving it.”
There’s an obvious evocativeness about the album title and title track, The Bloody Light. As MacDonald previously stated, it began in the fertile and occasionally twisted, gothic-minded gray matter of Brett Emmons, which means there really can be multiple meanings. ‘Beauty,’ or in this case, meaning, is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
“I love the title because to me it could mean so many things. The way I look at it is just like how hard it is to get to those moments of illumination, which is kind of a more pretentious way of looking at it. It also could just be your British grandmother saying, ‘turn off that bloody light!’ There’re so many ways you can look at it. And Brett actually came to us with that idea. That was his, that was like his song. We all wrote it together but came to us and said let’s work on this idea. We all came to the table with a bunch of little ideas just to start off, and it just came together really quickly,” he said, not ruling out the title being a more horror-minded possible interpretation, or even that it represents the proverbial ‘light at the end of the tunnel.’
“I had kind of thought about it as a little bit autobiographical. I’m not sure if it was necessarily about me right now, but it definitely felt like a song about me when I was in my younger years, for sure, and just constantly thinking that elusive thing, that magic, looking for something that’s just a little bit on the horizon and kind of falling short, but still staying on that journey. Brett described it as like a Western where he just pictures an old cowboy roaming through the desert on his horse, both of them without water.”
‘Carolina’ veers away from that film-noir Western movie vibe to more heartfelt accents of grown-up love and gratitude, as MacDonald explains it was inspired by his partner of the same name. Again, it is a more mature (there’s that damn word again!) take on romance that what the 21-yea-old version of the singer may have composed.
“That song’s about real love, not just chasing around idealized, crazy love, I guess. I wrote it for my girlfriend who just so happens to be named Carolina. And at first I was like, I’ve never put an actual partner’s name in the song. I’ve written about a ton of relationships for sure, but her name just sounds so good in that chorus. And once it happened, it was too good to leave off. So that one’s for her. She’s Latina and that’s how her name is pronounced [Care-o-leen-a],” he explained before moving on to talk about one of the more powerful, compelling and emotionally resonant tracks from the album – ‘Manifest.’
“That is actually our single right now. With ‘Manifest’ I describe it as our ‘Don’t Stop Believin’.’ It’s a song about wishful thinking, and I guess it’s also about a little bit of that sort of hopefulness, even in the face of real struggles, when you’re going through a really rough patch, which can be helpful. I don’t read The Secret or any of those books. But I just thought it sounded nice. Once again, it kind of came out of me out of nowhere. If you really listen to the verse lyrics, it’s really about how we don’t really ever get it all. We want it all, which is kind of the bulk of all of our suffering, but at the end of the day, it’s a hard life, so keep going, keep trying to visualize good things for yourself. It’s kind of a sad song with a little tinge of hope to it, which is what I connected with.”
The aforementioned ‘Between The End and Once Upon A Time,’ is another track infused with the sort of wizened authenticity and perspective that come from hard-earned, occasionally scarring experience and the lumps and bumps one earns along the way.
“So I wrote that song at the beginning of the pandemic, but I didn’t really want to mention the pandemic around that, because on our last record, Wanderer [released in 2021], there was more pandemic themes, because it was written for the pandemic. But that was the first song I wrote in like April of 2020. And it was right when the world completely, you know, shut down. I just started thinking about my life up to that point. Typically you’re not really supposed to write songs about life itself as a songwriter, but I kind of did on that one. If there’s one time in history when you could do it with some level of authority, it would have been during the first global pandemic in a hundred years,” MacDonald said.
“It was kind of a dreamy kind of tune. It was like just images I had of the year leading up to that, like just being in St. John’s in the middle of July, waiting to do a show that night. I was just sitting by the harbour, and it was just images that were coming to my mind, and just some of the struggles that I’d gone through that year, And I just kind of put it all in a song. And it’s one of my favorite songs on the record.”
In terms of how much of The Bloody Light makes it into the band’s set when they go back on tour, MacDonald said there will probably be a fair representation in the set list, but that may change as time goes on.
”Every time we put out a record, you start playing like 10 songs a night from the new record, but once you’re really back into the tour mode, you’re doing like three, because people wanna hear all the old stuff, too, you know? But with this one, we’ve already road tested so many of the songs. I mean, ‘Bloody Light’ has already been in the set for a year, and ‘The Breakdown’ is in the set, and ‘Manifest’ is in the set. ‘Carolina’ will be a staple. I’m hoping that we’ll have you know, six or seven, for sure. And maybe even [the last song on the record] ‘Endless Weekend.’ That’s our silly little song at the end of the record. We were on the fence about putting that one out, but every album needs a kind of light moment like that, but it would be a good summer song.”
Before wrapping up, since his name was already mentioned earlier in the interview, the subject of touring with Ace Frehley, who died not long before this interview was conducted, came up again, as few Canadian artists can say they shared a stage with Kiss or even former members of Kiss.
“It’s always sad. Like it sucks to lose these legendary guys, you know. With Ace Frehley, we did a whole tour of America for six weeks with him in 2008, playing like House of Blues type clubs. And it was wonderful. He was so fun and so cool. And of course you know, Ace has got the only good [1978] solo record out of all the Kiss stuff,” said MacDonald.
“I love Kiss. Early Kiss is one of my favorite bands with albums like Dressed to Kill and like Hotter Than Hell and Destroyer and obviously Alive. Then to be on tour with Ace and he would play, you know, all of his best things. And like the drummer had a really good voice. So he’d sing like ‘Love Gun’ and those types of things. Ace was wild, man. He was just exactly like Ace Frehley. He really was like the guy from outer space, you know? And we hung out with the band and crew and he was always just cool. He was just exactly like you’d expect him to be. I remember this one story where we showed up in Cleveland and he got on stage and said like, ‘good evening, St. Louis.’ And his roadie, he had to run up and say, ‘no, no, it’s Cleveland, it’s Cleveland.’ It was like a classic moment, right out of Spinal Tap. We got to do a lot of great shows because of that tour. We played for thousands and thousands of die-hard Kiss fans for about six weeks. It was amazing.”
For more information on the Trews, including forthcoming tour plans and The Bloody Light, visit https://www.thetrewsmusic.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
