How are you guys feeling about the tour with Weezer?
Were excited for it! Should be a lot of fun. We have a lot of respect for a band like Weezer who have been at it as long as they have. We were fans back in the mid to late 90’s, so it will be cool to share the stage with them.
Yeah, you guys have toured with some pretty big bands before haven’t you?
Yeah its always fun; there’s always something you can take away from it to sort of add to your collective experience.
What can fans expect from this tour?
Were on directly before Weezer, we play about 45 minutes. We’ll probably do a little bit of everything; a couple of brand new songs that we might do, we have a new single that’s out called “A Lot of Work for A Little Love” from our last album which was like a greatest hits album, and we’ll do some oldies but goodies.
Tell me a bit about your new single “A Lot of Work for A Little Love”
It kicks off the record ‘Time Capsule’ that we put out in the fall which is a greatest hits album. We put 4 new songs on it to give it more bonus value for our fans, and this is one of the new songs. It’s a pretty heavy slamming rock song, a good riff to play, its heavy and we like playing it.
Could you also tell me about the song ‘Beautiful and Tragic’ and the meaning behind that?
That was the first song off ‘Time Capsule’. That song was wrote by the singer Colin (my brother) with his fiancée Serene Ryder, they got engaged last year. When they first started going out they were writing a bunch of songs together, and that was one of them that he brought to us and we thought it could fit with what we were doing. We started playing it live and we really like playing it and people like hearing it. The lyrics have a sense of nostalgia to them. I like them, its sort of one of those songs that brings you back to a situation in your life that may have happened in the past but still feels strongly to you.
For someone who hasn’t listened to the Trews, what would you say ‘Time Capsule’ is all about?
We’ve been putting out records since 2003 so its been almost 15 years and that kind of goes by in a heartbeat when youre living this life of touring and making records. It starts with a brand new song because we didn’t want this record to be the end of an era, it kind of is just like a stop gap. It is in between what we were and what were gonna be. So it starts with a new song and then goes right back to ‘Not Ready To Go’ which was our first single to reach number one and it kicked off our career. Without that song and the success that it had, we wouldn’t still be here. It’s that, and then it goes through all the rest of them. We get saddled with this comment a lot and its that people know a lot of our songs and don’t necessarily know us or the name. If you listen to it, stream it, buy it, or check it out I think if you grew up in Canada you will probably be familiar with a lot of it. We try to make it fun, we spread out the new songs throughout it so that we can shake it up a bit. Other than that you’ll have to listen to it yourself or come see a live show.
You mention “what you were and what you’re gonna be”, so whats next for The Trews?
I think in order to earn your keep as a performing band that goes out and expects a crowd to follow them, it makes you challenge yourself creatively- you have to keep your best stuff coming at all times. Were not really in the results business were more in the work business. We go to work and write our songs, make our records and we can’t really predict the results of that but what we can control is putting everything we have into it. At this moment, were working really hard on a new batch of songs that we hope are the best that we’ve done yet. That’s where were at. If you follow our band and have loved us all along its not going to disappoint but it will cast the net even wider. Its not gonna be wholesale change of sound because we are who we are. I think were in a good place to push ourselves and try some new things.
So on St.Patrick’s day you guys announced that yourself and Colin are going to be joining Hermatige Green in Ireland in April, will this be your first show in Ireland?
Yeah we’ve been to the UK at-least half a dozen times but we’ve never made that pop over to Ireland before and Hermatige Green that came into my rounds through a friend of mine Sean Russell, suggested that we link up. He thought we would like eachother and get along, as well as our fans would like eachother. So he invited us out to do this show at a place called St.Johns castle that holds about 2000 people and they sold it out, and they very generously offered us the opening spot and we thought we couldn’t turn it down. Since theyre a bit more of a rootsy folksy band, we thought we would just bring our acoustic duo show to that. Were probably going to stretch it out to a week long tour; we’ll try to play in Dublin and a few other spots.
