While some songwriters might look back on the music and lyrics of their youth and cringe, Shaun Verreault says he has to give credit to his younger self.
“When you’re so far removed from something, you start to appreciate all the things about it you just kind of took for granted, just figured that’s what you sounded like,” said Verreault, lead singer and guitarist for blues-rock group Wide Mouth Mason, formed in Saskatoon in the ’90s.
“So if I could send a message back in time to those relative kids, I’d say, ‘Well done guys, this works. It still works 20 years later.'”
Wide Mouth Mason – Verreault, drummer Safwan Javed and bassist Gordie Johnson – have been revisiting their early material over the past year, in recognition of their debut album recently reaching the two-decade mark.
But the band isn’t stuck in nostalgia mode. In a few months they’ll be releasing their first new album in seven years and this Friday Nanaimo fans are getting a sneak preview when Verreault performs a solo show at the Dinghy Dock Pub.
He said the upcoming record will feature a new style of guitar playing he’s been working on for the last few years and he wanted to give some of the new material a “test run” before an audience.
“I’ve stumbled on a way of playing the lap steel where I have three slides on my left hand,” he explained.
Traditionally, slide guitar is played with a single metal, glass or plastic tube worn on one of the guitarist’s fingers. Verreault said he felt limiting himself to one finger restricted his playing ability so he tried playing with three slides.
“It was just this epiphany,” he said.
“All of sudden I could play what I heard in my head and it was allowing me to do things I couldn’t do before. So that inspired a batch of new songs that are going to be on the next Masons record.”
Verreault said the band’s new album will be its bluesiest, informed by players from the ’30s and ’40s that he describes as “really stompy and going back to the era of the one guy and his guitar.” While he’ll be accompanied on record by Javed and Johnson, the guitarist said the music will be “stripped down to its essentials and the barest of bones.”
The record will be a bit of a comeback for Wide Mouth Mason, as the group took a break from recording to watch their children grow up.
“One of the inherent dangers in being a touring musician is that you can miss your children’s childhood or you can see it through a viewfinder or a FaceTime screen, and none of us wanted to do that,” said Verreault, who has a daughter.
“The prioritizing of our children and our families has meant that there’s been a gap in between, but the upside to that beyond time with our kids has been that it allowed me to develop this style of playing.”
WHAT’S ON … Shaun Verreault performs at the Dinghy Dock Pub on Friday, Aug. 24 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $28 in advance, including ferry fare, available at the venue, Lucid, Desire Tattoo, Sunrise Records or online.
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