Canadian cowpunks’ scorching sophomore album More Noise In An Already Noisy World is out now
Can a band really be deemed road warriors until they’ve survived a van crash? Not that they needed any further validation, but The Give ‘Em Hell Boys earned their stripes last New Year’s Eve when a patch of black ice nearly took them out on the way home from a gig in Valleyview, Alberta, northwest of their Edmonton home base.
Thankfully, the members walked away from their flipped ride, but it was a heck of a way to start off a year meant to celebrate their recently released sophomore album More Noise In An Already Noisy World. After dusting themselves off, the band is back in the saddle with a new video for the previously released single “All Said And Done,” an informal tour of unusual Alberta roadside attractions.
Fronted by primary songwriter Quinn Clark, the core of The Give ‘Em Hell Boys also includes Charles Biddiscombe on lead guitar, Lindsay Bueckert on bass and Evan Brown on drums. But with their sound augmented by fiddle and pedal steel, the twang quotient remains high on “All Said And Done,” and for listeners of a certain vintage it will call back to a time when the alt-country insurgency was gathering momentum.
“When the band started it was never meant to be a full-time gig,” Clark says. “Charlie and I had been in a garage-punk band called The B-Movies, and we would often have jam sessions with our punk and metal friends in our old living room. Our curiosity with country music would inevitably come out after a few drinks, and soon other musician friends would show up with banjos and fiddles. Everyone knew a few Johnny Cash songs and that led to exploring the deep classics of Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff and Hank Williams, while the speed of Bill Monroe really appealed to our punk and metal instincts. Sometime around then Hank 3 released Straight To Hell and that sealed the deal. Country could be Punk As Fuck.”
One of the standouts on More Noise is a cover of Waylon Jennings’ “Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line,” and his spirit permeates the album more than any of the band’s other musical touchstones. Waylon is particularly present in the title track, as Clark explains.
“I had been complaining to a friend about the music industry and he said, ‘It’s like we’re just making noise in an already noisy world.’ Hearing that floored me because I’ve always thought of myself as an optimist, and it made me wonder if what he’d said had to be a resignation. Could it instead be a mission statement for the whole record? Is there triumph in making art in spite of every hurdle, distraction and all the indifference? To me, that was the attitude that fueled the Outlaw movement of the ‘70s. So I set out to write a song that might feel at home in Waylon’s catalogue, but with a touch of my personal optimism.”
Indeed, The Give ‘Em Hell Boys have made a country record unlike any you’re likely to hear these days, a point further driven home by the stunning cover art by Katy Wicks depicting a psychedelic cock fight between two mutant rooster-dragons. If you can wrap your head around that image, then The Give ‘Em Hell Boys might just be your new favourite band.
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