Derek Wall
Gern performs at the United Steel Workers' CD release concert earlier this year in Montreal. Photo by Flickr by Tristanbrand.
Recently, I was fortunate enough to sit down and chat over the phone with Gern from the touring United Steel Workers of Montreal. The Steelworkers have just released their third studio album, Three on the Tree, and are scheduled to bring their rootsy, bluesy, country sound to the Apollo on April 16.
For those reading that are thinking, “I hate country! Forget it!” then I encourage you, read on!
Q: There’s a strong emphasis towards the working class in your music, especially in tracks like “Shot Tower” and “Union Man.” Why is that?
A: Most of the guys in the band come out of a blue-collar background. All our folks, […] our dads, were welders and truck drivers and carpenters and […] these were things we sort of followed them into over the years. I certainly did my fair share of blue-collar work over the years. I was a truck driver, I worked as a carpenter for a while and a farm worker.
As well, most of us all live down in the southwestern area of Montreal; down in the neighbourhoods like Saint-Henri, The Point, and Verdun and they are all real blue-collar gritty neighbourhoods. You hear the guys telling stories and […] it just sort of permeates the songwriting I guess.
Q: Judging by the reaction to your tours across North America and Europe, your music seems to resound with many people internationally. Does this surprise you in any way?
A: No. I don’t think so. These are sort of common threads, the stuff we sing about and the stuff we’re doing. Certainly Americana has been pretty big in North America and Europe for the last seven or eight years. It’s all similar to what we do, a sort of messy style of folk. I think it’s common. We play music that most people can get into. Most people have lost jobs, even if you work in an office. Our style of music sort of rings true with people.
Q: When USWM gets together to write material does one person bring most of the new stuff to the table or is it more of a collaborative process?
A: Very collaborative, actually. We have four songwriters in the band at this point. We’ve always hovered around two to four. The one songwriter will bring a song to the band and then we all start jamming it out and that’s where it starts to be less of a “song” and more of a Steelworkers’ song.
The subject matter usually comes out of the songwriter but then we start tossing it around and the solos and the harmonies and the shape of the song all sort of comes out of the band. That’s how we make all of the songs, no matter whether they’re slow or fast or sweet little songs or songs about murdering people.
Q: I’ve heard it said more than once by people that, “I hate country music… except for the USWM,” so I find it interesting that you, Gern, on your webpage bio also confess to being a ‘Country Music Hater.’
A: (Laughs) It’s true! Country music’s like that. There’s what […] should probably be classified as “New-Country” or, “Garth Brooks Country” or what has become “Nashville Country” and I think that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. And certainly now, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a country band or an “alt-country” band or something like that and it having very little to do with the “Nashville” sound or “New-Country” or hasn’t been inspired by Garth Brooks.
My own issue is that I grew up in a small town and there were the rocker kids and there were the country kids. I was on the rocker kid side of things. It’s sort of weird that it came full circle years later. I did sort of come back to country, which was a big part of my life when I was growing up. I happen to be on the other side of the fence about it being a big part of my life but it was certainly there.
It has its grounding quality; it’s part of what ground rock and roll. Country can be omnipresent a lot of the time and like I said, it’s easy to write it off like I said in my own damn bio! But it really has a lot to do, especially in alt-country, with what’s going on today.