Trevor Morelli (Songfacts): When you guys first moved from Saskatoon to Vancouver, what was it about your sound and your music that caught the attention of 604 Records?

Shane Volk: I can't really speak for the label, but the sense that we really got from them was they'd been handling a lot of pop acts, like Carly Rae Jepsen and a lot of bands like that. And as far as even the rock bands that they had, they were more in the vein of Marianas Trench. They're a rock band, but very much like teenage-based poppy rock. And the thing they liked about us is that we were a straight up '70s rock band. Chad Kroeger is part owner of the label, and it was a little weird that they didn't have a rock and roll band on it.

So we were very much outside of what they typically were signing, and we're still really the only rock band on the label. They knew they needed a rock band on the label, like an affiliation with Danny Craig from Default - he had a good relationship with the label. They listened to us and saw us, and were like, Yeah, if we're going to put a rock band on the label, these are the guys.

Songfacts: For your self titled album that came out in September, did the label have a lot of input into that? Perhaps trying to steer you to a specific sound?

Shane: Man, that's a great question. Actually, the very cool thing about the label is that because we're very much outside of what they have and had going on, they basically took an approach with us where they were like, Look, you guys know your sound, you know what you're writing, so just keep doing it. And they really stepped back and gave us complete creative control, which was something we demanded, anyway. Our idols are guys like The Who, Led Zeppelin, bands that wrote their own music, performed it all, no backing tracks. Just guys that get together, write, and play their music.

Songfacts: It's really cool right now, because in the Canadian scene, it seems...

Shane: We're in the minority when it comes to that.

Songfacts: Maybe labels are recognizing that they've got too much pop up there. You're even seeing bands like The Sheepdogs and Japandroids getting bigger. It's crazy.

Shane: Bands like Monster Truck, as well. It might as well be 1976, and that's what we love, right. You're totally right. So going back to your question, that was the thing, they were like, "Look, don't broke what isn't fixed," to throw a cliché. They were like, "You guys know what you're doing. We don't need to fix you. Just keep going." So there were no outside writers, there was nobody to give us any direction as to what they wanted the record to sound like. They were just like, look, you guys go record your record and make it sound exactly how you want it to sound. So that was really it.

Songfacts: Awesome when they give you that creative control.

Shane: Yeah. It's sort of this double edged sword with the label, because they don't really know what to do with us at times, because we don't operate like the rest of their bands do. And they've been open with us, which I like. They've been like, Look, we're taking a huge chance on you guys. We don't know if you're going to sell, we don't know if we're going to lose a bunch of money on you or what. But you guys, for whatever reason, have a hold on your fan base and are doing something that's kind of different. So you guys just do it, and we're going to let you do it. And let you guys keep creative control.

So because of that it's been good. They've kind of relied on us. They're like, If it doesn't work, you're out. But if it works...

So now that things are really happening for us, it's a great place, because no one's getting in our face as to what our next record should sound like or what we should do. They're just like, you guys know what you're doing, just keep going.

Songfacts: Talk about your fans. Which songs on the record have fans connected to the most?

Shane: You know what, I'm sure all bands say this, but a thing that really pumped us up is that every song on the record has really struck a chord with our fan base. Universally, definitely "Scarecrows," which is our single and is doing really well. That song really, I think it hits a lot of people. It's a message in that song that people can gravitate to, so that song's really kind of stood out, which is why I picked it as a single. And we've always had really good feedback on "Rustbucket" and "Retribution Blues," probably even above "Scarecrows," to some degree.

And then we've had a lot of great feedback on "True Grit." There's just something on there for everybody. We've had a lot of people say "She's on Fire" is their favorite song, or "I'm Still Here." So it's been really satisfying that nobody is just gravitating to one or two songs. The whole record is being embraced as a really good record.

Songfacts: You mentioned "True Grit." at the beginning of that song, there's a clip, I'm guessing it's from the movie.

Shane: Yeah. It's from the original True Grit.

Songfacts: Did you have any problems with clearance with that?

Shane: We did our diligence on it. Kurt, our drummer, he does a lot of stuff like that. He's an entertainment lawyer when he has to be. He reached out to the people he had to reach out to, and we never got a response. But he just kept at people, saying, "Hey, look, we want to use this." And if they won't respond to you, it's like, well, okay, then we're just going to use it. So at this point we haven't had any trouble with it. But if anybody ever comes knocking at our door, Kurt has got all the emails and everything documented.

I was so stoked that the boys wanted to use that, because I love old westerns and stuff like that.

Songfacts: That's a cool touch. Did you find that your love of western movies influenced any of the other songs on the album?

Shane: I try to limit it per record to one song. I love movies and cinema. I have a love of music, obviously, but it transcends that. And I really, really love a lot of the westerns out of the '60s, just the style, the music that they were doing at that time, it was just really inspiring to me. So I've got a couple of things cooked up for the next record that are going to touch on a couple of my other favorite classic westerns.

But another song on the record that is an homage to cinema is "London Kills," which is sort of an homage to my favorite British gangster movies, and there are some classic British gangster movies. I drew on a lot of early Guy Ritchie films and stuff like that. So yeah, definitely a few tie ins to some classic cinema. Stuff that when I watch, it inspires me to write.

Songfacts: Yeah. It sounds like you're the type of songwriter that constantly writes, would that be fair to say?

Shane: Yeah. It's fair to say for the entire band. The four of us, we write nonstop. And being a band that collaborates, it's great. Because everybody writes music. I do all the lyrics, and as far as songwriting goes, I love writing music and messing around with my guitar. But my absolute favorite part of songwriting is writing melodies and writing lyrics. I slave over that stuff more now than I ever have, especially if we jam on a song, like if Kurt or if Adam comes up with a piece of music and I love that music, I just want to pair it with lyrics that really bring out more in the music. So I really do slave over lyrics and stuff.

And I don't expect people to understand everything that I'm singing about. But I know what it means to me, and if they get something out of it, you can't really ask much more.

Songfacts: Let's talk about more songs off the record. You mentioned already "Retribution Blues." What exactly is that song about?

Shane: I very rarely blatantly write about an experience, especially with girls. And I've moved away a little bit from relationship songs. But with that song, that's very much a literal transcript of this event that happened to me years ago where I was a kid dating a girl in high school, going through that whole first love kind of thing. She was beautiful and she just used me. She was manipulative because she was beautiful and she knew she could.

Songfacts: She could get her way.

Shane: Or she just had me under her thumb. Classic Stones, right? I was under her thumb. Just totally subservient. One day I woke up and it just went off in my head like a light bulb. Like, you know what, this is brutal. I'm bending to this girl's will because she's gorgeous. And it was like, from this point on, I will never do this again. This is brutal.

So we broke up. And as a lot of artists do, I have a fairly self destructive streak in me at times. And I was like, Nope, it's not finished. I'm like, No one treats me like this. So in a very juvenile way, I got back together with her with the intention the entire time to make her life a living hell. So we dated again, we got back together, and I spent an entire summer just completely terrorizing this girl. Just hitting on women in front of her, making dates and making big plans and not showing up, or showing up completely shit faced drunk.

And the funny thing is that I learned out of that experience: as soon as I turned on her, she never paid more attention to me in my life. It was just terrible. Horrible social experiment for me to do. I was like 19 or 20 at the time, and I would never do that to a person again. It was very, very juvenile. Very immature. But at the time, really liberating, also. Just gaining a bunch of self confidence to be like, you know what, you don't need anybody to ever steamroll over you just because she's beautiful.

So "Retribution Blues" is a vivid take of me telling a girl to go fuck herself in a really horrible, horrible way. (Laughing) So that one is a little piece of history. For the record, that girl doesn't know who it's about. So I'll keep that under wraps.

Songfacts: How about "Rustbucket," what is that about?

Shane: "Rustbucket," the music was written probably four years ago, almost five years ago. That song took a little while to develop. It was a song we'd been jamming for a while and lyrics came out when we were still living in Saskatoon. Things were going pretty good, but we had this feeling of like, man, we need to hit the next level. What do we do to get there, where do we go? It's really what led to us making the choice to move out to Vancouver and to get our career to go to the next level.

Songfacts: I think a lot of bands get to that point. Like, they're pretty big locally, and then they really have to make that decision. Either get bigger or break up, really.

Shane: You're 100 percent right. That's very blatantly what those lyrics are about. I mean, the chorus is really straightforward. It's like, How long do I have to sit around here? I need to see something else. It's not good enough. Even at that time, we were packing bars on weekends in Saskatoon, but it was not enough. This isn't enough for us. I want to do the real thing. It was that nagging feeling of, How do we get to where we want to go?

As a lyricist, I really love picturing something and then writing about that picture, really visualizing something. I was thinking of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz and just being rusted. Where you're trying to move and you want to break free, but it seems like the longer we sit around, the more we rust.

I'm a farm kid, myself. And you would see these old pieces of machinery and old vehicles, and I was thinking of this one old truck that we have on our farm that's really rusted and really grown into the ground, almost. And you get that feeling of like, man, if I sit here any longer, I'm going to just be a part of this place and I'll be forgotten.

So that's really the driving thing, it was like it's now or never. So that title came out as "Rustbucket," just being, I'm going to be just an old truck in somebody's yard.

Songfacts: That's an interesting take on it. You guys are opening up for Buckcherry in January. What is it about their music that makes you want to go on tour with them and how did that all come about?

Shane: Well, I've been a Buckcherry fan for years. I remember in the '90s when they really hit big, I listened to them and got that feeling of like, Holy shit, here's a rock band. I love Alice in Chains and Soundgarden and all of that, but Buckcherry had that whole Aerosmith thing.

Songfacts: I found when they first came out, they really struck a chord.

Shane: Yeah, definitely. Really off the bat they had the vibe of being like early Aerosmith. For me, it fueled that fire, because now I'm the biggest Zep Head there is. I love early Zeppelin, I like Aerosmith, all of that stuff. Buckcherry still has that to a degree, even though they've gone maybe a little more commercial. But it's really cool to just be able to tour with a band that we've been listening to for 15 years. Now all of a sudden - I won't say we're on the same level, but we're peers now. We're both grinding it out in the rock scene.

But as far as how the tour came down, it was pretty mundane as far as we just signed on with the agency group here in Canada as our booking agent. And they've been looking for a way to get us across Canada and a good band for us to go out with. So they were like, "You know, Buckcherry's going out across Canada. What do you think of hitting the road with them?" And we're like, definitely.

And the great thing is, we don't sound exactly like those guys. This tour is going to be a bunch of big rock. We're seeing now the indie scene in North America, but rock & roll - a really good true blue honest rock & roll - is really making a huge comeback again with bands like The Sheepdogs, Monster Truck. It's a tough thing to say, but I think in the last 10 years there's been a lot of not very good rock & roll out of North America. And now there's this crop of new bands, like the Rival Suns, bands like that that are bringing this very big '70s rock & roll experience to people again.

And audiences are totally responding to it. Because they're like Wow, we haven't seen bands like this in years. Or with our younger fans, they've never seen a band play like this. So that's why our Monster Truck tour that we did was hugely successful. We're finding this really wicked group of rock bands. Especially in Canada, there are just so many good bands up here. So it's cool to be part of this whole... I won't even call it a resurgence, because rock & roll, it goes into the mainstream, it goes underground, it goes up and down, but it never goes away. So I feel like it's really coming back on the upswing again. We're just pumped to be riding the wave.

January 17, 2013. Get more at onebadson.com.

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