GO Graham Rockingham
Screaming American billboards,
1-800 hotlines and strange Arkellian phone messages. What’s the meaning of all this?
There’s a new billboard attracting some attention in Buffalo, N.Y. It’s situated on Smith Street at the entrance of the I90 North, a few kilometres southeast of the Peace Bridge.
Blood red, uppercase and loud, printed over a faint backdrop of a flapping American flag, the billboard’s message offers a toll-free remedy to an increasingly prevalent ailment.
“CAN’T SLEEP OFF THOSE AMERICAN SCREAMS? CALL 1-888-426-8856.”
When you phone the number, a voice that sounds a lot like Arkells’ lead singer Max Kerman’s answers.
“Hey, you’ve reached the American Screams hotline. If you’d like to hear our new song, please press 1. If you’d like to leave a message for the Arkells, press 2.”
Screaming American billboards, 1-800 hotlines and strange Arkellian phone messages — what’s the meaning of all this?
The Spectator caught up with Kerman and Arkells’ bass player Nick Dika at Odds, the new sports bar they co-own on James Street South.
Kerman acknowledges that it’s his voice on the hotline tape and Dika admits the billboard was paid for by the band.
Both Kerman and Dika, however, place the blame for this billboard mystery squarely on the shoulders of lead guitarist Mike DeAngelis who isn’t there to defend himself. (DeAngelis recently moved to Toronto where his wife, Molly, works as a reporter for the Globe and Mail.)
“It was all Mike’s idea,” Kerman coughs up.
“Mike did all the work. He got the 1-800 number and put together the design.”
Kerman is explaining how the
band needed a publicity gimmick to help promote its new single “American Screams” and the new album — the Arkells’ fifth — called “Rally Cry,” which is being released Friday, Oct. 19.
“There’s a reference to a billboard in the song,” Kerman continues. “So Mike thought we
should put a billboard up and it had to be in the U.S.”
The song “American Screams,” like the band’s 2017 hit “Knocking at the Door,” is a commentary on American politics, something Kerman and crew come face-to-face with regularly while on tour in the U.S. A lot of
those ‘screams’ can be found on Interstate billboards, some mixing politics with a religious message.
“It’s about the state of the political dialogue that is happening right now in that country. There’s a lot of screaming. It’s very short-fused. No one seems to have much patience for each other.”
“My attitude is that to make progress, you really have to dig deep to understand the person you’re talking to,” explains Kerman, the band’s main lyricist. “The instinctive thing is to just lash out. But the qualities of patience, grace, compassion, love, and respect, require people to dig deeper. So that’s where the chorus comes from.
“If you want to do God’s work, it’s going to be hard work.”
The Buffalo billboard went up in mid-September and Kerman says the 1-800 line received about 5,000 calls in the first two weeks, mostly from fans who found out about it through social media.
“American Screams” is the latest of three single releases from “Rally Cry,” starting earlier this year with the anti-Trump rocker “People’s Champ,” followed by “Relentless,” a track inspired by Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip, and “Only for a Moment,” an upbeat song about putting aside personal troubles for a few moments of fun.
The release of “Rally Cry” caps a hugely successful year for Arkells that included multiple Juno nominations for “Knocking at the Door” and playing in front of a hometown crowd of 24,000 for their headlining concert at Tim Hortons Field.
Kerman and Dika say making music has gotten easier during the band’s 12-year career, which began while its founding members were still students at McMaster University.
“I think we trust our instincts more,” says Dika. “A lot of things were imagined in the studio. It was a real collective effort.”