Digging deep with Marianas Trench
Wild weather has crashed every Niagara gig to date, but like true rockers they’ve just rolled with it
Niagara has proven to be a fruitful place for Mike Ayley and his band Marianas Trench, but there’s one trend he can’t help but notice: every time they play here, frightful weather follows.
An early appearance at SCENE Music Festival a decade ago featured “lightning and thunder,” recalls Ayley.
Their set was cancelled, so they did a “completely unrehearsed” acoustic set indoors. They returned in 2014 — same deal: a heavy downpour for their show at Montebello Park.
“We managed to get half a set in before people were going to die from electricity,” he says. “But it was so exciting. Like, ‘Look at the sky! Is it going to happen?’”
Three years later they played the free New Year’s Eve show in Niagara Falls on one of the coldest nights in the event’s history.
So, what kind of weather calamity awaits when Marianas Trench rolls into Meridian Centre on March 15?
“Not this time,” says Ayley. “Well, I’m not going to jinx it.”
Either way, Niagara remains a special place for the band. That first SCENE appearance, disrupted as it was, came just as the band’s second album (“Masterpiece Theatre”) was picking up steam. They launched the subsequent tour in St. Catharines that autumn.
“That was when it just started happening,” says Ayley. “That whole summer was really interesting. You could feel the momentum starting to come along. I remember that whole summer I was like, ‘Where are these people coming from?’ At all these festivals we were playing, it was like ‘Do they know it’s us? Do they think it’s somebody else playing today?’”
Expect a slew of new songs and a Gothic stage design as the band — bassist Ayley, guitarist Matt Webb, drummer Ian Casselman and singer Josh Ramsay — launches their Suspending Gravity tour, in support of their fifth album, “Phantoms.” It keeps with their habit of tinkering with their look and sound on every album — t2015’s “Astoria” was a cheeky homage to “The Goonies,” including the Hey You Guys!! Tour.
“We do our best to make sure the music is fresh, every album has a new vibe. Obviously it’s Marianas Trench but it’s a new perspective, a new theme, a new writing world. I mean, not many bands can pull off the AC/ DC thing — do the exact same thing for 30 years and it somehow kicks ass.”
“Phantoms” and the subsequent tour bring an Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King mood to the table, allowing for some fun interplay on stage. “The styling is really cool. Retro, kind of Gothic and Victorian to go with that haunted kind of vibe. I get to be a new character again. I can’t wait.”
The new tour kicks off in Windsor on March 6. St. Catharines will be the seventh stop, following a date at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto. Those will be their first shows together since September.
“We’re rehearsing a couple times a week to shake off as much of the rust as possible,” says Ayley. “Then we have two days with the full stage, full production, before the first show to iron out any kinks we haven’t foreseen.
“Usually by the first show, ideally, we’re pretty much there. By the end of the tour it’s like auto pilot because we’ve done them so much.”