Q&A With The Town Heroes
Bruce Gillis and Mike Ryan of The Town Heroes. Photo: Nathaniel Cole.
On June 21, 2024 The Town Heroes will release their seventh studio album, Singin’. We had the pleasure of sitting down with Mike Ryan to discuss the inspiration behind the album, their secret album release show, and the unwavering support of their loyal fans.
Is there any significance to the title Singin’?
The first song on the album is actually called Singin’ and that was written a couple of years back, and it kind of was floating around for a bit. I knew it was going to be on an album. I knew that it was a pretty good song. Once I started to write other songs for the album, they kind of all felt like they revolved around that in a way. Our band was originally called Holdin’ Up Grants with no ‘G’ in the Holdin’ so it was kind of a little bit of a tribute to that as well.
Can you share more about the themes that appear on the album and why you chose that feeling for the record?
Our last album was a concept album about the summer of 1999. Obviously, I didn't want to repeat the same concept there - and this isn't a concept album by any means. I was just writing a group of songs that kind of fell together to become an album and when I looked at them from an outside perspective, I kind of saw them as songs about the past in some way. Whether it's a good part of the past or a bad part of the past, or how you relate with those moments that happened to you. It just felt like it was a really relevant point in our life. I'm just over 40 now, so is Bruce. At this point in your life, you start to kind of look back at the moments that you experienced and see how they shaped you to be who you are. You have that beauty of being able to look back and have that time behind you, where you can look at it with fresh eyes. When you're 20, you can’t look at something that happened when you were 19 and really understand it, but when you're 41, you can look back at those moments and really look at who you became because of those and how they shaped you and how you grew from them, and what you learned.
You started working on the record about two years ago, correct?
We went into a studio in Cape Breton called Lake Wind, and we started the record there. We recorded a pretty good chunk of it up there with a good friend of ours named Mike Sheppey - Sheppey Shepherd. He’s a great engineer with this studio we really like. We like recording back home in Cape Breton when we can. Then I bring the rest to my own studio and track vocals and guitar and anything else that might need to go on it. We don't ever start an album like we're going to start here, it's going to be finished here, we're going to release it here. It's just kind of a process of how long does this take. Do the songs need more work? Do we need to bring in different instrumentation? Is there someone else who can add something to this? So it's kind of just a feeling out process and seeing where it takes us and however long that is, it's fine. Usually, it's about two years from start to finish.
The album features some of your favourite songs you’ve made to date. How will it feel to have those songs out to the world?
I think every album you release you feel is your best work yet. But I feel like I truly can look at it and say that because I've been working at this for a long time and try and improve all the time, and trying to learn along the way and soak in as much knowledge as I can in the recording world and the songwriting world and the guitar world, and put all those aspects of it forward onto this album. This is the summation of who we are at this point in time, and hopefully, we're better than we were two years ago, five years ago, and ten years ago. Sometimes, there are little bits of magic that you don't know when or why you hit upon it. Sometimes maybe the first song you write is going to be one of your best songs. But overall, I think the knowledge that we have now is just better than it was a year ago. So we put all that into our albums and just try to make the best versions they can be, and hopefully, the audience appreciates that.
You’ve already released some awesome singles and music videos from the album. Can you tell us about them?
The latest one we put out is called Hockey Fights. I wrote it last year, and it was just kind of sitting around, and I'm like, ‘This needs to be on the album,’ so we had to put on a mad rush to finish it because I wanted to release it for the hockey playoffs, which are happening now. So it was in between trips to LA where we went for a podcast and the ECMAs, and we were like, ‘okay, we have four hours of track trumpet here. I got to get this guy over to the house and in the studio to record, this day we can start mixing...” so it was very calculated and very strategic. Because we were under the gun to get that one done. That's a song about the past, about nostalgia, about looking back at moments in time, growing up and experiencing things that happened in small town Canadian arenas and first love. Things that most people have experienced. You don't have to have gone to a hockey game to understand the song. You know what it's like to be a 17-ish year old person who's just experiencing a lot of firsts, and that's what that song is about.
In Your Head is another single. That's a song about looking back at your life and looking down from that 30,000 ft perspective and really assessing what's going on in your life. Sometimes, the things that actually are bothering you when you take that step back and look at it, you think, ‘Okay, this isn't something I should even focus any energy on.’ It’s another song about looking at your past in a different way than Hockey Fights - very different. Hockey Fights celebrates these fun moments, and this is analyzing something in a deep, introspective way to figure out if it’s something that’s meaningful to you or not.
Are there any other standouts on the album for you?
The title track, Singin,’ is probably one of my favourites, for sure. That's another just fun, nostalgic song. It’s about finding a burnt CD, and you’re kind of like, ‘What the hell is on this?’ Then you go for a drive and put it on and you start to remember the songs and what they meant to you when you first heard them and also the funny order of songs on mix CDs from the early 2000s era. There's a line in the song explaining what songs were on the burnt CD - it’s Pearl Jam, Nirvana and the Counting Crows at one point, so just kind of a random assortment of music.
You also have a special and unique album release show happening the day after the album is out. What can you tell us about it?
June 22 is the album release show for Singin,’ and it's a secret show. The secret is that myself and my bandmate Bruce have no idea where the show is. The ticket buyers get all the information, they know all the details, but we're going to be blindfolded and driven to this show. All our gear will be set up and ready to go. I’m just going to pick up my guitar, see who's in front of us, and make a magical moment with some amazing people.
The band has been together for a while now. It started with you and Bruce, and you’ve since evolved to have more members. In what other ways has the band evolved over the years?
I think just getting better at our instruments helps a lot, and learning how to be a professional musician on stage. All those repetitions of being on stage, performing with different bands, learning from different artists and being around music for so long, you understand how to be a professional and in any scenario that we approach now other than our album release, we've been there and done that before. We can go into a tiny space and put on a great show, or we can be in a huge venue and put on a great show. In the past, we maybe didn't know how to approach things in the right way. We approach everything the same way. But I think it's just having those reps under our belt and playing every style show imaginable and knowing how to react to different audiences, how to build a setlist and how to make sure that you catch them right away with your songs. It’s just time… it’s putting in 10,000 hours and learning along the way.
You are also holding a pre-sale with perks for this album. Can you tell us about that and how it helps the band?
You can buy our products in advance, and we’ve created certain perks where maybe you purchased a house concert, and we’ll show up and play your house. We're not asking for anything for free…we want to create things that are worth their value and try to make it worth more than its value, too, so you feel like you're getting something awesome for it. At the end of the day, it's ultimately to help us pay for everything just because it is expensive and people don't necessarily know the costs that go into making something and the recording is one side of things, but to get to music in front of people around the world and find the audience that you feel the music deserves, there's a whole marketing part of it that needs to be explored. All the biggest bands you hear or bands you hear on the radio have hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions of dollars behind them getting that music out there. So for us, we try to just get a little push behind this, maybe nothing that big, but just have some people working for us that we trust and we know are going to help us find the ears that we want to hear our music.
In addition to the music, you’re also known for really funny skits. You have a podcast with your wife, Kristen. During COVID lockdowns, you hosted COVID bingo, giving us all something to do and even raising thousands of dollars for charity—the list really goes on. You’re very busy, but everything you do is so appreciated by your fans. How has that helped you evolve, and what does it mean to have fans like that?
That's the most important thing in the world: having fans who are supportive. We could make the greatest album of all time, but if no one is there to listen to it and appreciate it, it means nothing. We play our shows, and we have people in front of us who paid $30 to come to see us, and they know the lyrics to our songs, they buy our shirts and our hats and all the things we put out there. That is more inspiring than anything to me. That is why I want to create music and play shows - to meet these amazing people. If they like the music that I'm putting out there, then we have something in common. So, somewhere along the way, we appreciate the same things. We get to meet a lot of these awesome people and there are obviously fans we've never met, but it's very inspiring having these loyal fans out there who support us and found us in different ways. Some people may have grown up with me in my hometown, some people may have played online bingo. It doesn't matter; we just try to create a fun environment where people can appreciate our music, appreciate the fun things we do online and just in general; I think without having people like that in our fan base, we just couldn't do it all.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
The June 22nd show is going to be super cool, and the Curiosity Club is bringing all that together, and I want to give them a shout-out. I’m looking forward to that day and getting the album out because, again, we're just we're just proud of it, and whatever happens with it doesn't really matter. We just want to give something to the world and to the people out there. Maybe they'll find some common ground and be able to think back to their past and what shaped them to be who they are.
On Friday, June 21, the album Singin’ will be yours!
You can purchase it on the band’s Bandcamp or stream it anywhere you listen to music.
You can also purchase a physical copy of the record at the album release show on June 22. The band says this will likely be the last album they’ll release on CD.
There are still limited tickets available for the album release show. You can get all the details and buy tickets on the Curiosity Club website. It’s going to be an unforgettable and one-of-a-kind experience that you won’t want to miss.
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