Singer and guitarist Shaun Verreault might be looking forward to visiting the Comox Valley as much as Wide Mouth Mason fans are anticipating hearing the band.
“That area is real near and dear to me,” Verreault said in an interview with the Record. “I go on trips with my wife and family because we love that part of the Island so much.”
WMM performs Oct. 18 at the Avalanche Bar and Grill in Courtenay. Verreault, original drummer Safwan Javed and Gordie Johnson on bass began a 21-gig, 26-day tour Sept. 26 in Montreal.
“We went into it knowing it’s our first time doing a headlining tour for quite some time … It’s been awhile between records. It hadn’t come to a full stop; we had been focusing on other things, with the intention of focusing back on Wide Mouth Mason … at a certain point.”
Considering WMM’s quiet time, Verreault said the band “came into this tour with pretty realistic expectations.
“It’s exceeded all of them, from the number of people coming to the range of people showing up, some of whom would have been in kindergarten when our first record came out to the sort of Allman Brothers-looking old rocker guys who are there and the musicians in the crowd.
“Even the Sunday nights are sold out. Even the Monday nights are sold out. The people who have been coming have been conducive to a nice, free, improvisational and energetic loud night of music.
“It’s been nice to shake things up and blow a few minds.”
Already known for its hot live performances, WMM gets a boost on stage from Big Sugar guitarist Johnson, who’s playing bass in place of the departed Earl Pereira.
“There’s a weightiness to the low end,” Verreault said of Johnson’s onstage contribution.
Without recent surgery to repair serious carpal tunnel and circulation problems in his fret hand, the hard-working Johnson wouldn’t be playing at all.
“He’s been playing bass like a badass for awhile,” assesses Verreault.
The final two gigs on the tour, at the Commodore in Vancouver on the two nights after WMM performs at the Avalanche, are also the first two performances on a cross-Canada Big Sugar tour.
Verreault said Johnson brought a lot to WMM in the studio for its 2011 release No Bad Days, the band’s first album of original material in six years.
“As a producer, he encouraged us to do exactly what we do on stage … and not make any attempt to change it or post-produce it or airbrush it at all. It seems so unorthodox to consider now in an era of say the alphabet into a microphone and a computer will change it into the words you’re supposed to say, in the proper pitch.”
That means including warts and all, Verreault noted.
“Not only doesn’t it need to be perfect; it shouldn’t be perfect. It should have swagger and just be confident to be what it is.”
Verreault admitted it can be intimidating going into a studio knowing you won’t have a post-production safety net.
“The tour we did with ZZ Top a few months before we went to make the record we definitely looked at being preparation.
“During that tour, we were stripping things back. As a guitar player, I’ve always had a couple of pedals at my feet. I took those all away so I just had an amp and a guitar.”
Led by Verreault’s youthful singing and wicked playing, No Bad Days still sounds very much like Wide Mouth Mason. The Record asked Verreault how the band has evolved since its 1996 recording debut.
“What I hear on those (early) records is a band that had very eclectic musical taste … that manifested itself in, ‘Here’s a real bluesy song and here’s an R&B song and here’s a heavy rock song.’
“Now those things have percolated for long enough that all the songs have a more or less equal component of all those things. It feels like an album of songs that belong together sonically and musically.”
Verreault promised a set list that’s “a real mix of stuff from our first record to No Bad Days. There’s a lot of things that get made up on the fly.”
WMM is known to play live what are essentially medleys.
“We start with this song and then we quote from this Zeppelin song and then we go into this other Wide Mouth Mason song we haven’t played in years and then we go back to another song off No Bad Days, and that counts as one song on the set list.
“Anything we hear when we go out to dinner could potentially wind up being quoted from when we’re on stage. I guess they call them Easter eggs in video games. We plant a bunch of Easter eggs in the set.”
We’re past Thanksgiving, but if you’re at the Avalanche on Oct. 18, listen for some Wide Mouth Mason Easter eggs.
editor@comoxvalleyrecord.com
