Dave Brosha recently spoke with Wide Mouth Mason's Shaun Verreault, a small town Saskatchewan boy plaing with a large Canadian band, about pretty much everything.
DB: Well, we may as well start you off with the most serious of questions. What remains to this day as the best thing that you have ever eaten that comes out of a mason jar?
SV: I would have to say borscht, made from beets. That would have to be my favourite, made by my great-grandma. Now it's passed down through the family, and I wonder if subliminally that's where the name of the band came from. It may just have been, from having so much good soup.
DB: What was the moment growing up that you knew that you wanted to be a rock star?
SV: I had took up guitar when I was about ten and had been playing it for awhile and it made me feel stupid because I didn't know how to do it the right way. It made my fingers hurt, and I was almost going to give it up but then one day I got sick and had to stay home from school - which I hated (laughs) - and I didn't look at the guitar as this "lesson" that I had to take, like school. The guitar was there all day and I was there all day and I just sort of banged on it; I would strum on it and then listen to how it would sound without any fingers on it. Something happened then where it was really interesting to me. Ever since that day, there hasn't been too many days that go by where I don't sit down and play. I also noticed that when you play, it young ladies notice you. That pretty much set me off in my direction (laughs). It was really that first day of going "wow, this is something where you can take all of those little parts of your brain that you have no idea what words to use to express yourself, you can use music to do it".
DB: Did you ever get tired of playing? Did you ever find that learning to play the guitar was more of a chore than an enjoyment?
SV: There comes a point where you have to work to get better or to get out of the rut. When you see what the reward is for the work it eliminates the chore part; you work your way through it to get to the next place. The first time you are able to hear something and then sit down and play it I think you're pretty much hooked for life.
DB: On the same track, at what moment did you feel that becoming a rock star might just be a reality?
SV: Safwan and I met when we were quite young, like grade five or something. We started playing together, and soon played at a school assembly with our school's jazz band. Do you remember that television show The Greatest American Hero? It had that really cheesy theme song… (sings) "believe it or not, I'm walking on air". There is a guitar solo in it that I did, and I had a really cheap guitar at the time. The guitar just fell apart during the song; fell out of tune. I was humiliated and didn't want to get on stage ever again. But as the crowd of pre-schoolers was walking out, we wielded my guitar out (and his drums) and started playing a version of "Wipeout" for about two minutes before we got shut down. Everyone kind of turned around and noticed…just moved around and stuff. We felt huge! That was probably the defining moment, when Saf and I played "Wipeout" at our school assembly.
DB: What do you think has been the strongest influence that Wide Mouth Mason has carried with them from growing up on the Prairies?
SV: The Prairies is an area that often gets new music much later than elsewhere. There are a lot of tours that do only Edmonton and then Winnipeg. On one hand, that's really too bad because you don't get to see as many shows. On the other hand, there's not a lot of focus on that area, so you get a chance to develop and really hone your skills before a lot of people get a chance to see it and make up their minds about you. We developed quite a bit before we were seen and there was no one saying to us "hey, just be a rock band, only do rock songs". As a result we became pretty eclectic and pretty diverse, and tried many different styles of music and tried to make them 'our own'. I think that came from being in a place where we thought we had complete freedom.
What do you think has been Wide Mouth Mason's biggest hurdle in getting to where you are today?
SV: I think that when you do decide to be a band that doesn't necessarily fit into the image of what people think the band is, the first time they hear it, it's a little bit harder. We've really been all over the place. If we made a record with fourteen "Midnight Rains" on it I'm sure we would have made way more money. I think the biggest hurdle has been…when you go through a creative career there are times when a lot of people will get what you do and there will be other times when it's harder to get your stuff out in front of people. It's all about recovery, just doing things and then figuring out what to do after that. It is important that every time we go to make a new record that we keep ourselves interested and surprised; that it shows a different side of the band that has never been shown before. At the same time, we can't escape sounding like we're going to sound. I guess that's it…just getting onwards and upwards.
DB: With you guys having a different style, mixing many different styles of music, each attracting a different breed of fan, how would you describe the average Wide Mouth Mason fan?
SV: Wow, I don't really know! There have been the ones that have 'been in' since the first record and then there's fans who saw us on the AC/DC tour and also fans who saw us on The Moffatts tour. They're all over the place! Judging from the e-mails we have gotten, it's them same thing…all over the place. There's a lot of musicians in our audience and a lot of people who expect different things out of music and use music for different things. Some people just like to have a sort of nursery rhyme that they know all the words to, playing in the background. Other people like social-setting music, and other people yet like music to reach in, grab them and shake them around at bit. If anything, our fans have been in the last category: they almost expect from us now to keep changing and to hopefully keep them along for the ride.
DB: What do you think Stew offers to these fans?
SV: Stew was made with the intentions of getting the funkiness of our live sound on a record. Where as Where I Started was aimed at people's heads and our first record was maybe aimed somewhere in their chest, this one was aimed at their bootys and their groins. It's more of a sexual record; it has that kind of rhythm to it. That translates very well into being played live.
DB: How did you find the experience of working with Gordie Johnson (from the Canadian band Big Sugar)?
SV: It was, for a lot of reasons, perfect. He's the producer that we have worked with that has seen us the most live, so he really knew how to tap into that. Apart from being a close friend of ours for a long time - and therefore understanding our personalities - he's an encyclopedia of music. You can't stump the guy! With the three of our listening tastes, anyone of us could walk up to him an go "hey, do you know that early, early reggae-roots record" and he would go "oh yeah, I have it…here, check this out". Him and I could talk very intuitively about guitars and music and what kind of sounds we wanted…everyone in the band (could do this). It was like working with a fourth member of the band who had a bit on an outside look at it.
Continue reading the interview here
