After 10 years of playing shows across the country, The Trews have been nearly everywhere. But they haven’t been to Lac La Biche. That will change on April 30, when they play the Bold Center, and it’s a show singer/guitarist Colin MacDonald, as well as the rest of the band, is looking forward to.
“It’s very rare we find a town that we haven’t played,” said the Trews singer.
With something new comes something old, or at least something from their past, as The Trews share the stage with the Sam Roberts Band. Back when both both bands were just getting started, they played some clubs together, like the El Mocambo in Toronto, back in 2001, in the days when the bands played to bars with more staff than fans.
“We go back a ways,” said MacDonald of the two bands. But it’s been years since the bands shared a concert bill, and he is looking forward to the reunion show of sorts. While both bands have new albums coming out, and will be on tour this spring and summer, they aren’t touring together. The Bold Center show will be the only time they play together, making the show somewhat unique.
With their fourth studio album, Hope and Ruin, due to be released next week, the band decided to do shows the way used to, at small clubs in select cities across Canada. The idea was to offer an intimate experience to their fans, says MacDonald, and that meant searching out smaller venues, including Edmonton’s Pawn Shop, which the band is playing the night before their Lac La Biche show.
“We wanted to do something different to set-up the album,” he said of the series of shows that include a CD and t-shirt with each ticket purchased. The departure from playing larger venues has the band excited, partly because smaller clubs offer something that sometimes gets lost in larger venues.
“There’s a lot of energy in those rooms,” MacDonald says of places like the Pawn Shop.
They’ve already tested the songs live during their recent tour of Australia, and the reception from the Aussies was really positive. This was the second time The Trews have been down under, and this time they focused on building a following around Sydney and Melbourne, said McDonald.
“We started to build a substantial cult following.”
They also worked on their surfing skills, spending their days off on the beach. Although MacDonald is from the East Coast – Antigonish, Nova Scotia, to be precise – he hadn’t tried surfing before heading to Australia. He always figured it was too cold. And he may be right, since East Coast surfing means wearing full body wetsuits, although that didn’t stop a group of surfers one January day when it was minus 22 Celsius, with freezing rain. The Trews were shooting a video near Peggy’s Cove when MacDonald saw the surfers out in the waves while driving.
“I looked back, and there were like 15 guys surfing,” he says. The sight prompted further investigation, and MacDonald discovered they were from Australia. Maybe the next time someone stops to check out some surfing action, it will be MacDonald they spy paddling out to the surf.
Whether it’s surfing in Australia or cruising the highways on tour in Canada, The Trews always try to maintain a direct connection with their fans, something the rise of social media has allowed them to do with ease. The band are all regular users of Facebook and Twitter, allowing fans to keep up with the band no matter where they are. It’s something the band members do because they want to, not because of pressures from their record label or management.
The Trews have over 31,000 Facebook fans. They have over 8,000 twitter followers, and they follow just as many themselves. The band also has a presence on MySpace and Reverb Nation. For the band, the rise of social media has allowed them to maintain direct contact with their fans, and has led to a more direct connection with those who like their music.
“We’re all about the communication with the fans,” said MacDonald, who also sends out twitter messages of new bands they like in addition to keeping fans up to date on band activities.
“People like to feel they’re part of something,” he said, adding that staying connected with fans through social media allows the band a connection they wouldn’t otherwise have. The Trews will be looking to make that connection in Lac La Biche, too. After hearing about the Bold Center, and being told a bit about the town, MacDonald said he’s looking forward to the show, as well as the chance to play some new songs for a new audience.