I had the chance to sit down with brothers Colin and John-Angus in Toronto, just prior to the Indie Awards that were being held later that week.

TINA PEEK: Hi guys, how are you doing?

COLIN MACDONALD: Hey, how are you doing?

TP: Not too bad. Thanks for joining me. I guess congratulations are in order, because the band is up for four Indie Award nominations for Favorite Album for No Time For Later, Radio Favorite Single for “Hold Me In Your Arms”, Favorite Video for “Hold Me In Your Arms” and Favorite Live Artist/Group. How does it feel to finally get this great recognition, because you really are a hard working band?

CM: It feels really good because it’s always nice to be recognized, especially by your peers. We were always really proud of this album and we always felt that we took an artistic kind of leap, because we thought this was definitely our most accomplished and coolest record to date. We hit the road and it was cool, we started to get into bigger venues and stuff and we were anxious to see how all the industry people would react to this album. And it seems that most people on the whole, who have sat down and listened to the record, are recognizing how could it is, because we’ve made records in the past, but didn’t get much recognition from the industry, so it was nice and we’re certainly proud of it.

TP: And will you guys be performing at the Indie Awards this year?

CM: Actually we’re not able to make it to the Indie Awards this year. We’ve been to a couple of Indies in the past and they’re a lot of fun, but we actually have a show that night in Calgary, so we’re not going to make it to the show. But we’re playing during Canadian Music Week, on the 12th [of March]. We’re returning to the Glenn Gould Theatre where we played for two nights in late January, for the purposes of recording and releasing an acoustic live record, which is something you can keep an eye out for, but we’re returning there because obviously during Canadian Music Week, the entire industry’s in town. So we’re going to launch and showcase that side of the band as well during CMW this year. It’s part of CMW, just not at the Indie Awards.

TP: So did you take a pass on the Indie Awards?

CM: Actually we were pre-booked long before the nominations were announced, we didn’t know it was that night.

JOHN-ANGUS MACDONALD: Yeah, we made those arrangements about two months before the awards were announced.

TP: I remember you guys last year, you did an acoustic performance, I think it was last year, at the Mod Club as part of Gibson Guitars and Sirius Radio?

J-AM: Yeah

TP: It was for Sirius radio and you guys were up there performing…

CM: Yeah, I think that one was a couple of years ago.

J-AM: Was it?

TP: Was it, I get confused. [Laughter]

CM: I think Serena Ryder was there that year, too.

TP: Yeah. Serena Ryder, that’s right. Well the band is also up for Juno Award nominations this year, one for Group Of The Year and another for Rock Album Of The Year. What is it like to be nominated for the Junos as opposed to say, the Indie Awards? Is there a difference for you with either of those awards?

CM: Well the Juno’s are a little more visible an Awards ceremony. I think more people are familiar with it than the Indies’, so I think it has a broader reach. We’ve been up for Junos before and we’ve been up for Indies before and we’ve won Indies before, but I don’t think that either really changes your life in any drastic way, other than it’s kind of nice to just be nominated. That’s the typical thing that everybody says, but we’re just going to carry on doing what we do, with or without awards, ya’ know?

J-AM: And I wouldn’t mind not even being nominated, but sometimes it’s just good to get the band name out there for us, because you can only do so much touring and so much—I mean, we release singles, we put out albums and we tour and it’s always a bonus to have the extra visibility for us because every time we get nominated for something, it becomes a national story, or an international one in the case of the Independent Award we just won in America. It just gives the fans a little bit more, something to put on our website, something new to say, “Hey folks, look we’re here. We’ve done this together, with our fans.” And people are recognizing it and it helps to build the hype for the band all over again. This whole business is peaks and valleys, especially for bands on a long term kind of run like us, where sometimes it gets really slow and stuff. And it never hurts when all of a sudden you’ve got six or seven nominations in various awards. So you can just sort of say, “Hey The Trews are still alive and well,” because there are always new bands that come around and replace other bands, and we like to stay current and we like to keep kicking ass as much as we can. These things can do nothing but help, because I think that if we just sat around, just waiting for award nominations and just waited for accolades, then we’d be in trouble. But we’re always writing new songs and trying to become a better band and a cooler band and this shit helps, I think.

TP: You mentioned the Independent Music Awards earlier and you won Best Hard Rock Song for “Hold Me In Your Arms” in that category. Do you find that it’s important for Canadian bands to be recognized in the States, so that they can try and make the crossover to be more successful?

J-AM: Definitely.

CM: Yeah, especially now, because we’re at a point in our career when we’re actually going to be taking a serious go at breaking into the American…

TP: Consciousness.

J-AM: Yeah, whatever you call it, so it’s important to us now because we’ve finally got a label down there, a team down there that believes in us as much as we believe in us.

TP: Who’s the label?

CM: They’re called MRV and they’re a subsidiary of EMI and they’re sort of putting their money where their mouth is and they’re going to give it the old college try. [we all laugh]

J-AM: And now I think these things, like Colin said, just serve to get your name out there. And in the case of the Independent Music Award we picked up, we were really flattered by the fact that it was judged by Roger Daltry of The Who and Peter Gabriel.

CM: And even guys like even Keith Urban, who are amongst the biggest musicians in the world, so…

J-AM: So we feel it was judged by the right people, you know? It was a music award, not necessarily an industry award. So we’re flattered and honored by that and it couldn’t have come at a better time, because we’re trying to break into the U.S. The album comes out in April and we’re going to start touring at that time.

TP: Are you? That was my next question. Have you got a specific release date for the album?

CM: You know probably better than me!

TP: I actually don’t. [we’re laughing]

J-AM: [asks their manager, who happens to be in the next room] April 7th. There ya go!

TP: April 7th. Okay, cool. So what can you, as Canadian artists, do to help sell the record and help Americans see what we in Canada already know, that you guys are a kick-ass Canadian rock band?

J-AM: It’s kind of a long, hard road but the connecting point with our band has always been our live show. And we’ve tried over numerous records to remedy that, but that still seems to be the number one thing. Because we’re really good live. We’re really good at expressing the raw energy of rock‘n’roll.

TP: I would agree with that.

CM: It’s a pretty positive vibe. Even if the topics are dark, we still have this kind of bright, visceral connection with our music and I think people can immediately hear it. They’re like, “Oh wow, I didn’t like The Trews, my friend dragged me here tonight, but now I’m gonna go see every show!” And that’s pretty much how we’ve won every fan we’ve garnered over the years. It’s because they connect to whatever incant we put behind our music and it’s set towards playing live. It’s just our natural instinct and we’re naturally good at it and that’s how we win fans. So I’d imagine there’s going to be a lot of touring, a lot of getting in the van and hitting every town we can, and I think hopefully we’ll be able to section off the U.S. and kind of divide and conquer—spend three weeks in the northeast, maybe go home for a bit, then spend a couple of weeks in the midwest, then go home for a bit, as opposed to—we don’t want to kill ourselves driving from Chicago to Texas and back over to New York City.

J-AM: And having the radio play that we have in Canada, it’s already started Like the Canadian stations reach into Buffalo and Canadian stations reach into Detroit and those are two cities we do well in. And we can also do very well in New York, just from having gone there a number of times. So we’ve already started, we just have to nurture it and grow it.

CM: And the one thing I love about American fans is, once they do buy it and once they do get into it, I find them pretty damn loyal.

J-AM: Most loyal fans around.

CM: Pretty damn loyal, it’s like, we were blown away. We played a show in Buffalo a couple of weeks ago and there were like, a thousand people there, and they were so into it. It was the most connected we’ve ever felt to an audience, ya know?

TP: Really.

CM: Yeah. It was really insane. And we’ve done a lot of shows. We’ve done a lot of really big shows and that was amongst our best, if not one of our best. It was just the way we felt from the crowd. They were just amazing, singing every word. It was great.

TP: So once the album is released in the States in April, you’re going to start touring right away?

J-AM: Yeah we’re going to start touring right after the Junos.

TP: How long do you anticipate the tour to last, are you gonna go full out for a year?

J-AM: It’ll probably be something like that, I would imagine a year, we’ll be headlining, we’ll be opening, we’ll be doing everything we can.

CM: I think the interesting thing--what happens in Canada, is you go out and struggle and it takes a few months and you’re working your ass off and all of a sudden, something takes off and you’ve gotta work three million times harder because like, when we were struggling to get gigs the first couple of years we were up in Ontario, trying to get our name into it and then our single took off and we were begging our manager to give us some time off. [laughter] If things go well, you can really be out there for a while, you know? I think we’re older and more mature and able to deal with it a little better. I remember when we first kind of took off in Canada, it was flat out for three or four years, not really looking back, finishing a record and get back on the road because the hype was there and we were trying to build it to a certain level.

TP: Well I think the band has accomplished that, certainly in Canada and especially in Ontario. I’ve been to quite a few of your shows, and they’re always sold out and there’s always this great vibe at your shows. So, I would definitely agree that your live shows are what make you. Even at the acoustic show I attended, your drummer Sean played every piece of percussion instrument you could think of. It was just great.

J-AM: Yeah, definitely. He’s a talented Newfoundlander. [Laughter]

TP: Okay, I have to ask you guys this, because there’s a rumor going around that Alice Cooper personally christened The Trews as “A great young band with a Zeppelin feel.” Is there any truth to that?

CM: Yeah, it’s our tune “Hold Me In Your Arms” and he played it on his show. And it’s funny, because we wrote that song because we were covering “Whole Lotta Love” on one of our big tours all the time and I remember at one point thinking to ourselves, “We definitely need a tune that’s gonna be that heavy, that great groove, like a Led Zeppelin tune and that’s how “Hold Me In Your Arms” came about. It was another riff from an older song that wasn’t working at all, and I think one day Sean listened to it and he cut the beat in half and it ended up with this really cool, middle drum part, which I think makes the song. And we just kept saying “Hold me in your arms, Whole Lotta Love”, whatever. And then everybody kept telling us it sounded like fuckin’ Audioslave and we’re like, “No, it’s not Audioslave, it’s Led Zeppelin.” [We all laugh] Get a grip, we don’t sound like Audioslave, this is Led Zeppelin. [much laughter]

J-AM: That kind of pisses me off that people write that song off as an Audioslave rip-off, but I don’t think it sounds like that at all. We’re a ‘70s rock-inspired band for most of our time.

TP: Well clearly, Alice Cooper should know.

J-AM: Alice got it right!! Alice knows!!

CM: Yeah, we actually had the chance to meet Alice Cooper at a Juno Awards when they were held in Edmonton, it was our first Juno Awards He was inducting Bob Ezron into the Hall Of Fame, so we had the chance to meet Alice Cooper, which was really cool. And then we met him again two years ago at the Classic Rock Magazine Awards in London. We were up for Best New Artist, and he was up accepting an award for Frank Zappa, so we ended up at the same Gala awards dinner there again. So twice we got a chance to bump into him. And I don’t know if that had anything to do with him talking about us on his show “Nights With Alice Cooper”, but I’m sure it didn’t hurt. And it’s also the kind of track I think he can appreciate, you know?

TP: That’s pretty ironic, I didn’t know you guys had run into him two or three times already.

J-AM: He’s a wonderful person, which many people will attest to. He’s got all the time in the world for everybody and he’s a great golfer! [Laughs]

TP: Yes, he loves his golf. You’ve got four nominations this year at the Indie Awards, the most of any Canadian band, which is a true achievement, congratulations.

J-AM: Thank you.

CM: We thought it was kind of ironic because in the National Post, they’d printed an article with a picture of me on it and they said, “Take that Nickelback”, because they weren’t nominated for an Indie award. And the irony is, I think we’re the only band at the Indie Awards that actually had been out on tour with them, so that was kind of funny.

TP: So how do you feel your chances are, I mean, obviously it’s always a crapshoot, but what do you think?

J-AM: We don’t think about that.

CM: We don’t think about that, because it’s really not important if you win, it’s like, some body else said this, “It’s not a swim meet”.

TP: Yeah, it’s not like there’s a winner and a loser.

CM: Yeah it’s not like you get a ribbon that means your album is the best. If we win for Best Album, there’s going to be a million people out there who are going to think that somebody else had the best album.

TP: That’s a good point.

CM: It’s just about a little bit of fun and press and accolade, it’s not really that important. Overall it’s not gonna make or break anybody’s career.

J-AM: We’ve lost more awards than we’ve won and it’s never brought us down, ya know?

TP: So what else would you like to talk about today?

J-AM: Well I think what we really want to promote is the release of our record in the U.S. and we’re gonna be up there, so keep an eye out for us. And if you see us on the marquee of your town, it’s worth the ten bucks.

CM: Maybe even three or four bucks. [laughter]

J-AM: Or maybe it’s a free cover. It’s worth the free cover. Go buy yourself a beer and check us out.

CM: If you happen to be in the Cincinnati area and there’s a free cover at the bar there, tell them to come out!

TP: Is that the plan, is to keep covers to a minimum?

J-AM: No, I think basically what we’re getting at is we’re taking everything to the next level for a little while, to get our name up there, just showcase what we’re all about, so if you have a chance, check us out because you won’t be disappointed.

TP: And I can certainly vouch for that!