The four members of
head-banging Hamilton rock outfit Monster Truck are not new to the Canadian
music scene, having spent the past decade diligently slugging away in bands
including Saint Alvia, the Reason and Eaglefight.
But there's one crucial
difference already being felt by the quartet ahead of Tuesday's release of
their debut LP "Furiosity," and it's one summed up by bassist/singer
Jon Harvey with a succinctness appropriate for a band known for no-nonsense
chug-and-slug rock.
That difference?
"I'd say: success,"
Harvey says with a smile.
He elaborates no further as
his more garrulous guitarist Jeremy Widerman picks up where he left off, but in
this case, perhaps no more information was really needed.
For one thing, Monster Truck
claimed a Juno Award, for breakthrough group of the year, at last month's
ceremony in Regina, without a full-length album to their name.
And on this day, the foursome
is navigating a packed day of press with slight weariness but more
appreciation, having encountered enough media indifference with past projects.
Of course, there are plenty of
reasons Monster Truck is attracting so much attention. Garnering comparisons to
Saskatoon's shaggy retro-minded Southern rockers the Sheepdogs, Monster Truck
is a throwback that mines '70s riff-rock and sludge-slinging '90s grunge in
almost equal measure, simultaneously inspiring well-earned comparisons to Deep
Purple (for whom they opened) and Soundgarden.
And more superficially, the
band has a fairly unified sense of style, swaddled as they are in faded denim,
dense beards and unkempt manes.
"It's a product of being
lazy," Widerman says of the band's hirsute style.
"I don't like shaving. I
just don't like it," contributes Harvey.
"I honestly just look
like a six-year-old when I shave my beard off," adds Widerman.
"There's lots of reasons (for our style). There's definitely that element
that we all spend so much time together, there's just a natural unifying trend
that happens. It's not really a conscious decision. It just kind of happens
naturally as a result of spending so much time together and hanging out
together. We shop at the same stores."
The band came together in
similarly organic — even coincidental — fashion. "Monster Truck" was
the group's nickname for drummer Steve Kiely's "loud and crappy" van.
They joked that it would be a good name for a band. Two days later, they were
having their first practice.
For years, they had mused on
starting a riff-rock band, just idle chit-chat while hanging out and
"smoking lots of joints." They talked about it more than they meant
to do it, but once the moniker emerged, everything else fell into place.
The band would be a "cover
band with no cover songs," Widerman explains. It was a lark, and one that
they didn't necessarily take all that seriously at first.
"It was just for
fun," Harvey explains. "Beer money."
But things started to happen
fast. In previous bands, Widerman and Harvey agree that they were somewhat
strategic in their thinking — they would try to land a video on MuchMusic, or
try to secure a foothold on radio — but this time, none of those concerns
seemed relevant. They just played, since after all, what chance did Monster
Truck have to succeed?
"Once we stopped caring
about it, those things started coming after us," Widerman recalls.
"And it kind of was like, we had these tour offers and these show offers
and people wanting us to go here and there. We had to reassess what we were
doing. Are we going to go for this all the way? Are we going to buy a van? Are
we going to take time off work?
"(We) kind of just
decided that was something we wanted to give one last shot at."
Harvey and Widerman don't
adore the idea that Monster Truck is simply plumbing the past. At the same
time, they're quite open in citing the modest roots of some of their songs. For
instance, the seed for the single "Sweet Mountain River" was planted
with keyboardist Brandon Bliss's honest appraisal of a picturesque upstate New
York waterway as a "sweet mountain river." The next logical thought?
"Let's call our song that
and let's write it so it sounds like Mountain," Harvey explains.
Still, Widerman doesn't like
being referred to as a revivalist.
"To us, it's a
combination of all the best elements of rock," he said. "We really
love classic rock, but at the same time, we grew up in the grunge era and we
kind of evolved into listening to punk and all that.
"Being a throwback band
or just doing a rehash of the '70s only," he added, "it's almost like
a cop-out really because there's been so many other great things that have
happened."
And good things have sure been
happening to his group of late.
They can hardly believe it.
Certainly, if you could go back to the band's nascent stages and tell the
band's then-disillusioned principal members of their impending good fortune —
Juno wins, high-profile tours, major-label distribution — you would have been
promptly dismissed.
"I would have laughed in
your face," Widerman said. "But the bigger shocker to us, would've
been Slash is going to wear your shirt onstage. I'd be like: 'You are high. You
are so high. There's no way that's going to happen.' And like, you're going to
open for Deep Purple — there was no way that they are even going to know the
existence of me for their entire life.
"Those moments were those
things that you never count on or expect and when they happen it's just one of
the sweetest things. And we couldn't be more grateful for the opportunities we've
been given." (Source)
