Jr. Gone Wild back with new songs
Revered cow-punks bowed to pressure from fans
Jr. Gone Wild With: Ryland Moranz When: Thursday, Sept. 3 and Friday, Sept. 4 at 8 p.m. Where: The Mercury Room, 10575 114th St. Tickets: $25 per show, $40 for both (plus service charges) at yeglive.ca
Two years after Jr. Gone Wild’s reunion, Edmonton’s revered cowpunks know they can’t just keep playing the same old tunes from the ’80s and ’90s.
As much as fans want to hear the classics — including Slept All Afternoon, I Don’t Know About All That, and Just the Other Day — there’s also an appetite for fresh material.
“Everyone asks us: ‘How come you don’t have any new songs?’” says guitarist Steve Loree.
“Well, we’ve got some, but we want to be comfortable with them and we want them to be good. There’s a lot of pressure on us to have great songs. That’s tough, man. That takes a lot of brain power — and we don’t have a lot of brain power.”
All kidding aside, the Wild ones don’t have nearly as much time to live, breathe and sleep Jr. as they did in their 20s and 30s.
Loree, who also plays in two other bands, runs a studio in Nanton. (He worked on Ian Tyson’s latest album, Carnero Vaquero.) Frontman and principal songwriter Mike McDonald just closed his five-year-old store, Permanent Records, due to a combo of declining revenues and increased rent.
“I’m going back to being a wannabe rock star as opposed to a wannabe businessman,” laughs the singer, guitarist and father of two.
To that end, McDonald and his bandmates, including bassist Dove Brown and drummer Larry Shelast, will hit the stage Thursday and Friday at the Mercury Room. And yes, Jr. will perform two, possibly three, new tunes — including Fool’s Errand, inspired by McDonald’s failed record store; and Barricades (The Hockey Riot Song), Loree’s fiery ode to two departed friends, musician Joe Bird and former Journal freelancer Darren Zenko, set amid the Oilers’ 2006 Cup run.
McDonald says the band might pull out another new ditty, Old & Ugly — if he can memorize the lyrics. Down the road, he hopes to record five more Jr. tunes at Loree’s studio over the next few months.
“We’re in a pretty good creative mode at the moment,” says the frontman. “I’m very grateful to have the band back. After we reunited, I was like: ‘I love being in the band, we’re a really good band, I can’t believe we ever broke up in the first place.’ I feel lucky to get it back; not everybody gets it back and we’re determined not to blow anything.
“I know how to write songs for this band, I have a sense of what we need to have in the set and I’m very in tune with the canon, so flexing them muscles again has been pretty great, and satisfying and successful.”
And yet, when it came time to push Jr.’s first new recording since the band’s 1995 album, Simple Little Wish, the foursome opted to go with a countrified cover of S.N.F.U.’s 30-year-old thrash gem, Cannibal Cafe. McDonald and his bandmates even shot a video for their version, directed by Marc J. Chalifoux, and starring actors Mark Meer and Kristi Hansen, as part of a contest sponsored by Telus Optik. (Chalifoux also worked on the clips for Barricades and the soon-to-be-released Fool’s Errand.)
Cannibal Cafe is now part of Jr.’s set, as are two old covers resurrected from the band’s glory years, but that’s all we’re allowed to reveal. “One of them is something that always went over gangbusters,” says McDonald. “And the other is a song we’ve all loved and we all remembered (how to play) it without having heard it in years.”
In recent weeks, Jr. has been on the receiving end of the cover treatment. Cosmos, a fast-talkin’ groovy number from the band’s 1986 debut, Less Art More Pop, was recently recorded by Calgary rockers Napalmpom.
“I love the way they did the song,” says McDonald. “I like it when ANYBODY does our songs, actually. It’s still kind of novel to me. It’s great to hear other people, not me, singing these songs.” ssperounes@edmontonjournal.com twitter.com/Sperounes