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APRIL WINE
AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN GREENWAY
Canada's legendary April Wine is now nearing their 30th Anniversary as a band. The band, still lead by original member Myles Goodwyn, has been hard at work on their as yet untitled latest studio album, their 3rd since their comeback in 1992, and first in 5 years. They're also presently on a major tour of Canada and the North-West States, and hope to have the album done between this tour and year's end.
I recently spoke with guitarist Brian Greenway about the band's current happenings, bandmembers, and the forthcoming album.
For more on April Wine, and up to date news and tour dates - check out their web site >
Q: What's up with Jerry (Mercer) , his health and that?
BG: he played with us last weekend, as you know. I think the end of May he finishes his radiation therapy, it's going good, they've toned it down a bit, and then he has 3 weeks of monitoring. He'd be available to play with us, about 10 dates before the tour's over and we decided it's just not worth it, for him to come out. It's just too expensive because we're out west at that time, and getting his drums out there, Neal's drums home, Neal home, Jerry out, the different immigration stuff - it's just too much, so Jerry said "yeah - i can use the time at home".
How do you adjust with Neal?
BG: well we've been playing with him since November. It's a different style 'cause Neal's kind of laid back on the beat where Jerry's up front on the beat. It's been educational for us in seeing how we play the music differently, and what works and what doesn't. We've gotten Neal to speed up, and Jerry to slow down.
Seeing the band live, everyone knows that Jerry is a bit of a highlight himself with his solo and that.
BG: Yeah, Neal is not a Jerry, and Jerry has been there for years. He's a great drummer , but a different drummer, ya know! It's nice to work with Neal, I like the different input he has, and we all miss Jerry too. He's had quite the hiatus away from the road, and I imagine when he gets back like (big voice) "I'm back again!" , he's just going to have a whole bunch of energy. He looks great.
Barry Stock, he's your technician, but he plays as well!?
BG: Yeah, he does.
I haven't seen him on stage with you guys, so i don't know - how much he plays, or if he's like a 5th member or what the situation is!?
BG: Barry's the 5th member in the way, that we only have a couple of crew guys and they are so interlocked in what we're doing with Mike Filsinger, Barry Stock, and Ken Shultz. Kenny's got all the business side of it locked in, and Barry's equipment and playing with us. He plays some keyboards off-stage, some guitar off-stage, and lately it's been on stage. With the new material we learned for this tour, there's nothing really there for him, we wanted to try and stick with 4 if we could, so that's what's been happening there. There's the band and the crew, and the way we operate - more than one person has pointed this out - "it's kinda like you guys are a family", and that's pretty much what we are.
You guys aren't ever going to go back to a 5th person I assume, are you?
BG: If we could find the right person, or if Gary Moffett wanted to come back. With Gary - I'd say "when?".
I'd love to have Gary back in the band!
What ever happened with Steve (Segal), because I never knew, the next time i went and saw you guys - he wasn't there!
BG: He wanted to pursue other adventures. His buying and selling of Vintage guitars, he was very good at doing that, he was making a lot of money doing that, he was very successful at it. He seemed to have a knack for tracking old Vintage Gibson - Les Paul - Sunbursts. And his idea of the band didn't seem to agree with what we wanted, so it was just a parting of ways in the end. In the beginning he was really into it, but then things change.
New album - is there a release date yet?
BG: We keep on trying, ha ha ha . We keep on trying and picking titles. We decided not to go with "Deal With It". We're fooling around with titles again, I came up with one the other day and Myles is "might as well write that down - it sounds good". So, we were hoping we were going to spend the entire month of April on it, but it didn't work out, Myles was sick for 10 days with what i had in February, and then getting this tour set up, and Kenny couldn't make it down to the studio, and before you know it - 'boom' - the months over! So, now we're out for 52 days. We're working pretty much weekends in July and August, so I'm sure - well,
we gotta get it done!
How much is left to do actually?
BG: Not a whole lot! Just maybe 2 or 3 more songs to record, there's maybe 3 songs to finish some vocal stuff on, and then review, and then mix. There's a lot done!
Is Myles producing?
BG: we all are.
So it's going to be more of a band album?
BG: I think so, yeah. Because everybody, I mean Barry's playing on it, Kenny's engineering it along with Jeff Nystrom. Jeff was in the beginning, and lately it's been just Kenny. And it's fun because it's the same people on stage as it is in the studio, so there's a real family familiarity to it all. And no one's afraid to say ya know "oh that sucks".
I got the impression especially with Frigate that Myles did a lot more. I know as far as the writing goes.
BG: Myles does a lot more of the writing, absolutely. It's always been that way. Myles is a prolific writer. I don't think that Myles would like it if i walked in with 10 songs, and said "i want them all on the album!" Then again he might say "great", but i don't think so.
As far as the song selection from Frigate, i thought there was some stuff on there that was a little more suited to a solo album or a few things as opposed to ya know, where Attitude was very direct.
BG: Yeah Attitude was more of a band album, Frigate was more of a , i don't know, it kind of lost it's direction, and I thought Myles was more involved in it than he really was. I don't know what was going on there. It was the transition of going from someone else's studio to Myles' studio, and I guess it depended too much on the engineer/co-producer Hughe Cooper, that expected to be more like a Noel Golin I guess, the way Noel worked with Myles, or the way Mike Stone had worked with Myles, and that just didn't happen at that time. By the time it was all over, it was too late, by the time we realized it. There was other ideas too, there was the school of thought that "Attitude's too heavy - you got to tone it down." So there was a lot of 2nd guessing yourself, and what happened with Attitude - Attitude did OK! It did Gold in Canada.
Frigate was good, but i thought it was a little uneven in parts, and you could take certain songs off...
BG: I agree with you. There was, I thought there was too many cover tunes, and i thought we could've been a lot more original. But maybe that's a little normal after coming back after 8 years off and doing Attitude, then hearing the feedback from that - "oh, maybe we should've tried it this way" - no.
Now were you already having problems with FRE when that came out?
BG: Yeah, we were just starting with that! That was a big problem too, ...put it this way - it was hard to get air-play in a lot of places.
Yeah, because I only heard the "I'm A Man" cover on a few stations around here.
BG: Yeah, there was a few bills that went unpaid apparently.
I understood there was supposed to be a video in the beginning but that apparently didn't happen!?
BG: No it didn't.
As far as the songwriting on the new album Jim's writing , and your writing as well!?
BG: Jimmy's got nothing in yet, I've got 2 that are recorded, and 99% complete.
What type of songs are they?
BG: Well, (ha ha) - they're typically me. It's not "Before The Dawn", the one's a ballad with a little Beatley flavor, and the other one I don't know how to describe it - it sort of came out of left field. I can't say if it sounds like this or that - I don't know. It's got a life of it's own. It's a mid-tempo....I like it.
Any song titles?
BG: One of my tunes is called "In Your World", and the other one I was just mentioning is called "Holiday".
Does Jim still write at all?
BG: I haven't heard anything new from Jimmy in quite a long time. He just bought himself a whole new recording system, so maybe it's not too late maybe he'll bring in something inspired by new equipment -
i don't know!? But, maybe he's got "writer's block", he doesn't really talk about it, you know. He says he's working on stuff, and for all i know he wants to bring in something that's super, finished, and go "Here!" -
and that'd be great.
So are you using any outside tracks?
BG: The only outside track we're using (that i can think of) is the one Simon & Garfunkle tune - "I Am A Rock".
Really?
BG: Yeah. And it is a rock!
How is that, a pretty much heavier version I assume!?
BG: Oh yeah - it sounds like T-REX! And we all sing a verse, Myles, Jim and Me. It's pretty damn heavy!
Is that a possibility for a single?
BG: Oh God no idea yet! Once it's all mixed something will come to the foreground as being apparent, what's they say 'the cream rises to the top'.
Who's idea was that song?
BG: I think it was Myles. He had a neat arrangement of it, and I went "yeah - that sounds cool!"
Although we fool around with the chorus ya know where it goes "I am a rock" (Brian sings it), and Barry Stock would go "God!". And I said we should do that - it'd be funny.
What are you guys doing as far as a label goes?
BG: We don't know yet, we're looking at distribution worldwide. CMC could be an option - every other band that seems to be of our caliber and age is on CMC. There's some Canadian distributors, and there's a possibility of going with different distributors for different countries. There's all kinds of things to talk about and the more we meet other bands we ask them how they're doing it, and go from there. There's all kinds of ways, we do have our "Civilian Records" which we'd like to have it on, but who knows what will happen!?
As far as the 90s, you've talked about having an updated sound. What differently can you be doing to make it more 'up to date'?
BG: That's a hard question. Sometimes it's sounds, sometimes it's vocals, the style of vocal - is the vocal high in the register or is the vocal low. how much guitar is there, is bass heavy; is it effects heavy. Is there a lot of keyboards. that's what makes a sound, I guess, where you can place it into a year or in a time-line.
Is there anything you guys are listening to.....
BG: Well, Myles became a big fan of Julian Austin, and Myles got into country. I got into country years ago, but i like all kinds of music. What do i listen to now? Around here, and anywhere - I'm so fed up with listening to radio because you like a song and unless you know the artist - they're not going to tell you for 40 or 50 minutes. And you're listening to it in the car. I don't listen to much radio in the house, the kids have control of the media here other than the computer. And i don't listen to much radio, and if i do it's public radio because I like information and i find public radio more informative that way, there's not the ads, I hate advertising, although i do admit it has it's place for commercial value.
Do you buy a lot of music?
BG: Not really, maybe once a year I'll go out and buy a bunch of CDs, and that'll be it for the year. I'm not the record store's favorite customer. The last album this family bought was the new Faith Hill album, because my daughters like that song "This Kiss". I listen to more radio on the computer, i think, than i do in the car or through a regular radio. And the stuff i listen to, i go to different countries to see what the format is - what are people listening to? where's the normal here? you know! You take Toronto and Montreal, you'd swear they're different planets with the different songs they're playing apart from the obvious hits. But the in-between cuts, the radio controls what people hear. You'd think Supertramp was brought up and born and died here sometimes with one radio station - because that's all they used to play a lot of! Other stations hardly play any Supertramp! That's just as an example.
Keyboards - will there be any on the new album?
BG: Oh yeah, there's a fair amount of it.
You guys never used a lot of it in the past, probably up until Frigate actually.
BG: Yeah, well all my stuff has got keyboards. I had fun doing one B3 track on it. I'd say almost every song has something like that.
Did you use an actual Hammond?
BG: Yeah, we had an actual Hammond, we had a variety of stuff. The Hammond and the Leslie boy, you can't get away from that sound and that feel if that's what you're after.
Are you guys going out on tour with anybody else?
BG: Well, on this tour we're headlining, so whatever the opening act is, is going to be local because there's nobody picked out to do any set amount of dates with us. We'll be doing some Festival shows, like Rockford, Illinois on the 15th. So we go from Bonniville Alberta to Rockford overnight! It's a fly-in thing, and then back to Prince Albert Saskatchewan! We're headlining in Rockford, but there'll be other bands there too.
Cardwell, Montana in August at the "Rockin the Rockies" - there'll be a bunch of acts there too.
Set list - any of that changed?
BG: Oh yeah - this particular tour we're calling the "Greatest Hits Tour", (and you might get a kick out of this) - we're doing a few tunes from the Live 73 (74!?) album - "Mama You Know It's True" and "Druthers", which were never released on any other album apparently.
Yeah, they were just b-sides!
BG: yeah, they're in the show. "Just Like That" is in the show, "I'm On Fire For You Baby", "Drop Your Guns" is back in the show, and Myles is doing "Hour Of Need", and we put "Like A Lover Like A Song" back in the show.
Are you going to do the full version of that or....
BG: Well, what do we call the full version?
Well the full album version would be complete with the guitar solo. But usually you do it as part of the medley.
BG: We're just doing it on it's own, but I'm not doing a solo in it.
Anything from Frigate or Attitude?
BG: We put "If You Believe In Me" back in the show. There's nothing from Frigate I guess.
Well it's interesting that you're doing 3 B sides!
BG: yeah, Myles wanted to do them, and let me tell you he's singing them pretty good.
How do you like them?
BG: They rock! Because you know I've never played them. And it's like 'wow' - this stuff's 25-30 years old and I've never played it before.
Anything else that's being considered?
BG: Oh we were messing around with "Child's Garden" and "Lady Run Lady Hide", but we didn't have the time we wanted to put them together, and Lady Run Lady Hide turned out to be quite a production with all the voices and everything, the same with Child's Garden, so we said "neh, let's just go with this stuff."
Anything else about the new album, any song titles, or any plans!?
BG: Well, we're going to finish it this year if it's the last thing we do! Of course, i hate saying "last thing's" these days.
Interview May 1999
Copyright Kevin J. Julie.
