Dubé brothers grow up, rebrand
Ottawa trio moves away from being novelty act to a touring rock band
Ah, literacy. We send our children to school with the vague hope that, after 12 years or so, they might emerge at least somewhat acquainted with the concept and its practical applications. But what happens when the kids become a little too literate? Or a little too media-literate, anyway.
Ottawa band of brothers Dubé got an unexpected “viral” jolt in popularity amongst Ontario high-school students last month through the most unlikely of promotional means when a 2013 Toronto Star story about their gig that summer opening for the Beach Boys at the Canadian National Exhibition — when brothers Quinn, Jig and Liam, then going by the band name the Brothers Dubé and respectively aged 12, 14 and 17 at the time, were all still in high school themselves — wound up incorporated into this year’s Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test and more than a few curious Grade10 kids subjected to that very test subsequently decided to Google what the lads are up to today.
Teenagers being teenagers, they immediately honed in on the six-month-old video for Dubé’s decidedly catchy (and grungy) single “Alien,” which in addition to flashes of graffititagging and public urination that would turn Principal Seymour Skinner’s flesh white with horror, also features the band rolling and smoking a joint from a page ripped from the Bible. Gasp!
Exactly the sort of delighted social-media firestorm you would expect immediately ensued — a Twitter user named Anthony’s post, “When you find out the brothers Dubé rolled a blunt with a Bible page in a video & you learned about them in a Catholic school,” is emblematic of the celebratory whole — and something called the Ontario Education Quality and Accountability Office hastily issued a statement saying that Dubé’s “rebranding” in recent years had caught it off guard and that the new material would “not have cleared EQAO’s vetting process” to weed out “offensive material” and blah, blah, blah.
It’s really not that big a deal and extra-amusing when you consider the brothers Dubé first cut their teeth as a band 12 years ago by posting covers of classic-rock songs their late mother, Michele, loved to YouTube to cheer her up while she was struggling against breast cancer and subsequently raised mega-bucks for charity on the streets of Ottawa — they staged a drive that sent a whopping $150,000 to Haitian orphans after the 2010 earthquake — but it’s always fun to see bureaucrats squirm at their own unintentional self-subversion.
And, hey, all you kids should probably check out Dubé’s new single, “Stoned Love,” before scoring fake IDs and going to see them at Hard Luck on Friday, April 27.
Bassist/vocalist Jig Dubé and I had an email exchange while he and his siblings shuttled between gigs in Texas and Michigan earlier this week. Enjoy. Obviously, a lot has happened since the last time you spoke to the Star. It’s gotta be hard growing up in public, so has it been a challenge overcoming all that early “youngest band in Canada” press to rise above whatever “novelty” value that might have been applied to a teenaged family band on the way to becoming the ass-kickin’ rock ’n’ roll outfit that Dubé is today?
First of all, I’ve never heard someone in your line of work perceive our situation like that. You’re 100 per cent accurate about us wanting to move away from being a novelty act and “Canada’s youngest rock band” and all that stuff. You use the exact words we use when we talk about the reasons for our rebranding. It hasn’t been that challenging for us to do, it was simply a question of taking down our social-media links, writing, developing as band members and then reintroducing ourselves as Dubé. In all honesty, it was natural for this to happen. We see it as a maturing process more so than escaping our past. Let’s talk about this Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test business. I think what happened is kind of hilarious, but what was your reaction when you first heard about what was going on? Have you seen any immediate benefits from the free publicity?
Agreed on the hilariousness of the situation! We weren’t expecting at all to have our article included in the OSSLT, which had us scratching our heads when our social networks were filled with messages from literacy test-takers across the prov- ince. We quickly discovered trending memes about the subject and were soon approached by media outlets looking to cover the story. With a tour just days away, we saw this as a good opportunity to spread the word about our newest accomplishment, becoming an “American” touring rock band. But as you probably know, the emphasis wasn’t placed on our tour as much as we had hoped. We thought the whole “Ottawa potsmoking band” thing was quite exaggerated and out of context but, boy, did we have a good laugh. We noticed a lot of beneficial publicity when it came to that article because for a punkrock band, any press is good press! This band’s roots are directly traceable to being human and caring about people and trying to make a difference so fill me in on any and all recent developments on the “charitable” front. Is it important to you guys to maintain that side of the operation as diligently as you have in the past even as you climb ever higher up the rock ‘n’ roll ladder?
Absolutely. Helping people is and always will be a significant part of what we do. We believe that young people should be taken seriously. This is a message we have directly endorsed ever since we started busking in the streets of Ottawa. I think that since those days we have transitioned into a band that gives kids that sense of seriousness, but now it’s being done through our live shows and our music. We want people to come to our show knowing that they can be whoever they wanna be, without being labelled or judged by institutions or authorities. I think a lot of influential figures don’t see the value of nourishing passion at a young age. But those who do are, in my opinion, some of the most giving and helping people society has to offer. Record coming? What’s up? Tell me as much as you can about the music I haven’t heard yet. When do we get a proper “nu-skool” Dubé fulllength?
So, Ben, we’ve spent the past four years in our basement writing music and recording demos.
This collection of songs has been written around the unpopular, but very real notions of youth culture — we wanna bring to light things that people don’t wanna know about themselves, but show them how we’re able to see those things as endearing, natural and part of being a kid. We’re really excited to launch it, as we have invested a lot of time into songwriting, practising and collecting feedback to make this project as representative of Dubé as possible.