JULIE & THE WRONG GUYS with CASPER SKULLS at the Horseshoe (370 Queen West), September 7, doors 8:30 pm. $15. ticketfly.com, rotate.com, soundscapesmusic.com.
Over the past few years, there’s been a palpable revival of interest in Eric’s Trip: Sub Pop’s reissue of their classic lo-fi 1993 debut LP Love Tara a new book from Nimbus Publishing and a huge archive of older recordings and home video footage on YouTube and Bandcamp.
Julie Doiron hasn’t really spent much time reflecting on her old band lately, though. Just like in those days, she’s too busy with family to stop and think about their legacy.
“I got pregnant while I was touring my last album,” she explains. “I was super happy with that album [2012’s So Many Days] and I toured it while I was pregnant and made sure I could do as much touring as possible before my baby was born.”
“Truthfully, I’ve only written two songs [by myself] since that record came out. I think I was purposely not writing so that I wouldn’t have to leave my family and go out on tour.”
Besides, she has another band to think about: the newly reformed Julie & the Wrong Guys.
Summers in Sackville, where Doiron has lived intermittently over the past 20 years, are defined by SappyFest, the much-beloved annual festival she helped found back in 2006. So while she wasn’t writing music, there was plenty at her doorstep.
Eventually old collaborators came calling: Mike Peters from Cancer Bats, who had previously backed Doiron in 2011, had access to a secluded cabin in the Manitoba wilderness. What if the old band, which also included fellow Cancer Bat Jaye Schwarzer and rootsy singer/songwriter Eamon McGrath, got back together and spent a week jamming on some ideas?
“It was very scary at first,” Doiron explains. “We were getting ready to go and I kept telling the guys, ‘I don’t have anything. I don’t know what I’m going to sing about, I don’t know what we’re going to do.’ And the guys said, ‘Don’t worry. Let’s just hang out. It’ll be great.’ ”
“And then it was great,” she continues. “It was really a creative time and this album is 100 per cent collaborative. It wasn’t me bringing my already finished songs. We really wrote them together. I only had like, one or two lyrical ideas before I got to Manitoba. We jammed the songs together at the cottage, then I would go down to the lake and write some lyrics. I was feeling quite inspired because we were there just to work.”
Knowing they were on a roll, the band headed straight to a studio in Winnipeg to record the new batch of songs. The resulting LP, Julie & The Wrong Guys (the name’s a resurrected in-joke that’s now permanent), is another high-water mark in Doiron’s discography, further cementing her status not only as one of this era’s finest songwriters but also one its most dynamic collaborators.
She’s played with a diverse set of musicians over the years – the Wooden Stars, Daniel Romano, Gord Downie, Phil Elverum, Herman Dune, Shotgun & Jaybird, Chad VanGaalen – but the Wrong Guys give her the loudest, heaviest sound she’s had on record for years. She inhabits it effortlessly.
Although she expects to continue writing songs on her own, Doiron makes clear that the band is here to stay. A month-long cross-Canada tour kicks off at the Horseshoe on September 7, and the album comes out the next day via Dine Alone Records (you can hear it right now on CBC).
“It feels amazing to play this music again, and it makes me really happy,” Doiron reflects. “Because I’m older, and because I have more experience, I realize now that I don’t need to try to do it all at once. I can figure out what makes sense for my family and myself and the people in the band. Now I can just enjoy it.”
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