Lauren Chan
Since coming together in January of 2010, Skag Barons has been working around the clock to establish themselves as a notable Canadian rock band. The band consists of four members: Dan Schultz on lead guitar, Kris Pageau on lead vocals, Nevada Brown on drums, and Sean Farwell on bass. The boys are based out of London, Ontario but after only two years in the works have been getting radio play from Barrie to Sarnia. Here at home, Mark Cameron, the Music Director of London’s Best Rock FM 96 said, “Really as a young band [Skag Barons] is doing everything right, right now.”
Aside from air-play, Skag Barons has been busy on stage opening for other bands like Danko Jones, Priestess, C’mon, Melissa Auf De Maur, The Hounds Below (Jason Stollsteimer/Von Bondies), Mini Mansions (Michael Shuman/Queens Of The Stoneage), and White Cowbell Oklahoma.
Recently, I had the privilege of seeing the band play at Call the Office, where the owner, Tony Lima, said they were, “London’s best new rock band!”
After the boys’ performance, I candidly asked drummer Nevada Brown to chat about Skag Barons for Premierlife.ca, and to my (somewhat) surprise, he couldn’t have been more on board. After grabbing a couple of drinks and tossing me a complimentary EP, Brown, Dan Shultz, and I found a quiet place to get some answers on tape. If there’s one thing immediately recognizable about Brown and Shultz, it’s that they’re calm, confident, and soft-spoken in the way rock stars should be, but they’re hard-working and extremely eager to promote the band—they just aren’t going to kiss anyone’s ass to make it. See for yourselves:
LC: So [Brown], you’re the dummer, the muscle of the rock band.
NB: Yes, a stand-up drummer, most of the time.
LC: How do you describe Skag Barons’ sound?
NB: What do you think, Dan [Shultz]?
DS: Dirty, sexy, rock ‘n roll. An explosion of fuck.
LC: [Laughs]. You understand that anything you say can and will be used against you in the art of an interview, right?
DS: Yeah, that’s why I said it. It’s an explosion of fuck, but I think we’re misunderstood. We come across hard as fuck, but we do have a sweet side and I think people that listen to what we’re saying get that.
LC: I’ll have to listen to the new EP to understand that. How did it come together?
NB: It’s the 4th of July EP. We were down in Chicago with a producer by the name of Steve Albini—he did Nirvana’s last album, In Utero. It was something we needed to do; it was really good for the boys to go down to Chicago and work really hard but also have some fun in the town and tear it up a bit, Skag style.
LC: What did Albini teach you that you didn’t expect to learn on the trip?
DS: He taught us about being professional with tone. I’ve always been searching for the perfect tone—I look up to bands like Failure and guitarists like Troy Van Leeuwen and how he uses delay. Another band that I really get a lot from is a band called the French Kicks. The guitar player used a pedal and I was always wondering where he got his echo and delay—I always thought it was an analog delay, but it was in the digital reverb. I try and emulate some of my favourite guitar tones like those. I’m almost at where I need to be with it and [Albini] taught me a lot.
NB: Dan also runs two different amps, and Steve showed him how to patch the two together to get the sound that we desired. With me, I had used different drums, but finally got to use an old Ludwig Vistalite kit which [John] Bonham from Led Zeppelin used. We found our tone and used some awesome gear and it set a new standard. As a band we want to be known for using gear that emulates our sound. So working with Steve really brought us there.
DS: Fuck that, we had already done our first EP at the Tragically Hip’s studio, the Bathouse.
LC: Do you see the shock value in the list of your work after only having been together for two years?
DS: I think…For us, we’ve seen the potential in this project versus our previous bands. This is where it’s going to happen. [Brown] is the guy that keeps everybody together. He hates it, but he’s Dad. He’s the back bone of this band.
NB: I just want this band to do something, because I recognize that we’ve got potential, but we’ve got to really work hard.
LC: So, where do you see yourselves in a couple years?
NB: We’re going to be writing good music that we’re happy with. We always have integrity about what we write and what we record. We’re gonna go down to the states at the end of March [2012] and do a tour of the college towns and eventually, the game plan is to play all the time.
DS: I think one thing that sets us apart is that we do what do and we’re not worried about fucking trying to conform to a specific sound. We have two sides to us—we have a really sweet, sexy, pretty sound but we can still fuck your head. We can still fuck-start your face.
NB: [Laughs]. We can rock.
LC: I think I’m going to stop [the interview] at, “Fuck-start your face.” That’s a perfect outro. [Laughs].
Check out the band’s new video for “Come On”, directed by fellow Londoner Chris Hachey, who will also be shooting the upcoming video for “Nothing Remains”.
Also check out the band’s free music downloads at http://soundcloud.com/skag-
If you like what you hear, make note of Skag Barons’ upcoming shows:
APK Live- London: February 3rd at 11:00 p.m.
The Horseshoe Tavern- Toronto: February 21st at 11:00 p.m. (Free Edge 102.1 New Music Night)
Call The Office – London: February 23rd at 9:30 p.m. (Opening for Priestess)
