A band built on mammoth friendship
Royal Tusk’s momentum is unstoppable on new album, writes Sandra Sperounes.
“Do you want to be in a band?”
Daniel Carriere popped the question to Sandy MacKinnon when they were still in elementary school. The two boys weren’t even friends at the time — Carriere just knew that MacKinnon’s older brothers owned guitars.
“I walked over to his house in Westmount and asked him if he wanted to be in a band,” remembers Carriere. “He’s like: ‘Yeah.’ Then I leave and he’s like: ‘Where’s practice?’ I’m like: ‘Your house!’ He says: ‘Perfect!’ That was our first band. We never played.”
Their second band, with Carriere on guitar and MacKinnon on bass, fared a lot better. For 13 years, the two were members of Ten Second Epic, one of Edmonton’s most celebrated pop-punk acts. In 2014, the Juno-nominated band decided to call it quits, allowing Carriere and MacKinnon to turn their side project, Royal Tusk, into their main concern.
Like a 7,000-kilogram beast, they quickly picked up momentum, releasing a pop-rock EP, Mountain, with hints of Americana and soul; earning national radio airplay for their first two singles, Shadow of Love and Smoke Rings; and touring with the likes of such reunited acts as the smalls and Big Wreck.
Royal Tusk’s latest effort, DealBreaker, is even heavier and shaggier. The 11-song album, due May 6, is full of meaty guitar hooks à la Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, Bryan Adams, and Deep Purple. Heck, Big Wreck frontman Ian Thornley even lends his axe skills to one of the tracks, So Long The Buildup.
But DealBreaker isn’t a ’70s or ’80s throwback album. It’s filled with layers of contemporary references, including organ twinkles and cellphone rings.
MacKinnon’s bass lines are refreshingly groovy, particularly on Curse The Weather and Fever, while Carriere’s sweet vocals boast a greater range — from the soaring heights of Cold On Me to the rasps of a certain Steve on Don’t Get Me Wrong.
“Steve Miller? Madden? Buscemi? Harper?” asks Carriere.
“Guttenberg?” laughs MacKinnon. Try Steven Tyler. “I’m actually having fun singing now,” says Carriere, who used to contribute occasional backup vocals as a member of Ten Second Epic. “When I started Royal Tusk, I was like: ‘I want to sing!’ Then I’d go do a show and feel like I was struggling. But everything seems to be just clicking now. We have new band members” — guitarist Quinn Cyrankiewicz and drummer Calen Stuckel — and we found out what we wanted to sound like and we executed it (on DealBreaker.)
“Every day, we’d leave the studio in Toronto and think: ‘Holy s---, I actually like this record!’ Often when you’re making art, you don’t necessarily get that feeling. It’s not always a win. So we’re very excited to put out the record.”
DealBreaker features one of Carriere’s oldest compositions: So Long The Buildup, a lonely number with a “bizarre” guitar solo, which documents the letdown of coming to an empty home after weeks of touring. (“I wrote it in my apartment 10 years ago,” he says. “For it to finally see the light of day with the help of Ian Thornley, a legendary guitar player, felt pretty cool.”) The title track, a blues-flavoured ditty, is one of Royal Tusk’s newest, inspired by an unexpected hiccup for the band. Despite the early success of their EP, they ended up parting ways with their manager and label.
DealBreaker, however, isn’t an angry kiss-off tune. It’s a love song — an ode to the rock ’n’ roll life.
“We had a pretty tumultuous 2015,” says MacKinnon, who sports a tattoo of a bass-playing mammoth on his arm. “We were basically back at square one after we had all this upward momentum. It was very demoralizing. I know that would be a breaking point for a lot of bands. But I think what we did was we just start writing more songs — and we had so much fun playing, it brought us this record.”
In other words, it’ll take more than a few setbacks to stop Carriere and MacKinnon from making music together. (And, as luck would have it, Royal Tusk ended up finding a new label, Cadence Music, formerly MapleMusic, and manager.) Now 31 years old, the longtime friends have shared jam spaces, vans, studios and stages for almost half their lives. (They now share a house in Inglewood, too.)
“Maybe we got the title (of the song and album) from the negative things that happened to us, but it was so vindicating to write DealBreaker as a love song,” says Carriere. “Instead of wasting time on the negative, we realized how much good s--- we did. For us, it’s like this happy ending.”