HI JEREMY, are you looking forward to coming back to Ireland next week?
Yeah! We had such a good show in Belfast with Nickleback last October that I was like, "we have gotta f***ing go back there!".
We were really blown away by the response of the crowds in Belfast and Dublin and how awesome it was. I went straight to our booking agent and told them they had to add had to add Irish dates to our tour – because what's the point in opening there for Nickleback if we're not gonna try and come back to headline?
So that's what we're gonna do!
Monster Truck have kind of made their name outside of Canada by opening for big acts like Nickleback, Deep Purple and Slash. Was that a deliberate strategy?
Yeah, we've been running that gameplan now for six or seven years. We actually did the same thing when we first started breaking into Canada too, just going out and opening for bands and then coming back shortly after to try and headline.
You're still very much in demand as an opening act. Is that just because all these different bands happen to love your music, or is there more to it?
We have no shortage of tour offers. In fact, we have to turn down as many as we accept. It's not just the music, though – I think the word is also out that we're easy to tour with.
We run our technical specs really self-contained, we bring all our own gear and production gear too. In addition to that, we're all pretty easy to have around the dressing room areas – we make sure that we're out of people's way, we're nice and efficient and on-time. All the stuff that you gotta do to get repeat business, basically.
It must be exciting to finally be doing your first ever European headline tour, are you really busy getting ready for it right now?
Not at all! (laughs)
Well, I was up at 6.30am for yoga this morning, so I guess you could call that 'getting ready for the tour'?
We just got home from our Canadian tour yesterday, so we've actually got some time off with family and stuff. Typically, we don't practice between back-to-back tours – but in this case, I wish we could have, because of the headlining nature.
We've been doing opening slots for so long that it would have been nice to go through some of the 'back' material to make sure we have some of the older songs that we'll be playing in these longer sets as tight as possible. I guess we're just gonna have to figure it out at soundcheck in Belfast!
You started Monster Truck as a way to let off steam while your other band The Reason were going through some legal problems. Seven years and two acclaimed albums on, is the band still as much fun now that it's taken off as your 'main gig'?
The fun level is definitely still there, but we've settled into this kind of comfort zone though. The fun we have now is different, because we've taken away some of the uncertainty and the nerves.
It feels really cool to know that you're going to go out onto an arena stage and know that you're gonna kill it. Whereas, even a year or two ago, when we were going out onto those stages it was like "holy s***, are we really doing this?!"
So things are always evolving: the fun is still there, but our level of professionalism and confidence have really gone up. We just played Toronto: getting to go up there in front of all our family and friends and peers, knowing that we were going to put on an amazing arena rock show, that's a different level of fun than gettin' drunk and playing for 75 people at home in Hamilton. But it's all good and it's all awesome.
Hamilton is best known for producing comedy greats like Martin Short and Eugene Levy and Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman. Are there any other big bands from your hometown?
It's pretty well-rounded, man. There's other bands like the Arkells, who are like more in the pop scene and there a lot of great bands that have come out of Hamilton and have been big in Canada.
Put it this way: Hamilton has more than its fair share of musicians for whatever reason. We've got Toronto right next door and I feel like we produce just as many talented artists as they do even though they've got 10 times the population.
What first inspired you to start playing guitar and is there a key musical influence which has shaped Monster Truck's sound?
For me personally, and I hate this f***in' question because I hate my f***in' answer – it's Kurt Cobain and Nevermind. It's kind of testament to how important that record was at the time, but I've heard enough of and about Nevermind. I've listened to that record so much that I can basically replay the whole album in my head whenever I want to – and I definitely think it's been talked about enough.
Not to say that it's overrated, because there's certainly almost no chance of that happening – and I can still listen to Bleach, Incesticide and In Utero – but come on, let's talk about Soundgarden or anything else apart from yet another Nevermind or Kurt Cobain anniversary.
Every year they come up with something different and I just think it's been driven into the dirt.
With Monster Truck, when we first started, there was a lot of discussion between myself and our singer Jon about Grand Funk Railroad, their existence in the late 60s and early 70s and how they kind of get left behind in conversations about 'the best classic rock bands of all time' when you hear a lot about Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd etc.
But Grand Funk Railroad were like the biggest rock band in the world for a little while between '69 to '71, before they had some legal problems which put them on the shelf. when they came back, they changed their sound and never really managed to capture the same energy they had first time around.
We always thought it was kind of criminal how they lost that original magic, so we wanted to capture some of that and bring it back into the scene.
:: Monster Truck, Monday March 13, The Limelight 2, Belfast, 7pm / Tuesday March 14, The Academy, Dublin.
