Big John Bates

Big John Bates is a well known Canadian artist, who spent the past decade bringing the world his own brand of blues infused rockabilly music and burlesque beauties via Big John Bates and the Voodoo Dolls. Now, with a new band, a new name, a new wife and a new sound Big John Bates returns with force. While working on their debut album as Big John Bates, the band will be playing a few shows in British Columbia, including New Years Eve in Victoria. Once the new album comes out though, the group plans on hitting the road and touring hard across Canada, Europe and the US. You can check out a couple of rough mixes of their haunting new sound on their website at bigjohnbates.com.

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Dustin: First off, you have a new album coming out soon. What do you have to say about that?

John: That is one that I am really looking forward to. We were in the studio putting the final touches on it yesterday. It is a completely direction for us. It is pretty fun to play, but it is definitely a different scene. I think that people who were into our old stuff are going to like it. We just did some shows down in the States with guys like Joe Buck and they went over good. It is just a matter getting the news out here in Canada. We don’t do the burlesque anymore. It’s John Bates with extra fiber or something.

Dustin: Was the change in sound the reason that you dropped the burlesque show?

John: The burlesque was definitely more of the rockabilly scene. This is a lot darker, a lot heavier. My bass player Brandy Bones is singing half of it now. We are still playing some of the old songs for sure. Our last tour we were playing maybe 4 old songs, 10 new ones and some covers. We just wanted to see how it would go with audiences and rate the songs in different cities. So far people are like, well, it’s different, but we like it just as good as we did the burlesque thing. It is definitely a whole new animal.

Dustin: Was it scary to step into something new?

John: It was kind of terrifying after 10 years. I went through like 40 different dancers, 3 female bass players and 9 drummers or something like that. I was used to doing that, we had our thing going on, but I thought it was time. I didn’t know how much farther we could go with what we were doing. We have to do something different. People aren’t going to keep going out and seeing the same show over and over again.

Dustin: I haven’t been able to hear any of the new stuff yet, but it sounds exciting.

John: We have a couple of rough demos up on the website now. We put them up to see what people think and give them an idea of what they are in for.

Dustin: I tried, but it wasn’t working on my computer. But from what it sounds like, it will be quite a change. Playing with someone like Joe Buck… to me that is kind of still in the same area as the bluesy rockabilly you were playing, but darker.

>John: It is definitely still in the same area. It’s not rockabilly, but I would still say its Americana. There is a big group of guys doing this sound now; it’s more of a gothic sound. It is a new path for us, but a band like 16 Horsepower is a huge influence on us. They are friends of ours. We went down there to Denver. We had the album mixed by the guy who did the last Woven Hand record. We are talking to him anyway; we will see how expensive it gets.

Dustin: You are based out of British Columbia, on the west coast. That sort of location doesn’t necessarily align itself with gothic country music; you would expect to hear mellow sunny surf music or something. You would expect that sort of dark sound to come from a hard scrabble rural place like east Tennessee or even the remote areas of Alberta.

John: Our bass player is from Montana actually. She brought a lot of the influence on the new sound. Right now, the guy drumming with us is a metal guy. So combine her influence and his with my sound and we decided to move it over. The rockabilly scene is fun, but we kind of did it all everywhere we could. The only place I think we didn’t play is in Japan.

Dustin: I enjoy rockabilly. It has a rich history and it is a great sound, but I can see how the genre can be limiting, especially over a long time. I can see how it could get frustrating playing the same sound for a long period of time, especially since any attempts at innovation are met with anger from the purists.

John: Well, the purists gave up on us a long time ago. The people that are into bands like Social D and still listen to psychobilly and rockabilly are the majority of the crowd. The Reverend Horton Heat’s audience. That crowd is sort of like what we are doing here. The Reverend has always had metal guys playing with him.

Dustin: The second to last time I saw him play he was with Motorhead and Nashville Pussy and the metal crowd loved his set.

John: We are just kind of playing the rock and roll sound. We just gravitated to that sound over time. Especially with Brandy singing half of the songs now and she has written half of the songs on the new album. Her personality has a lot of impact. That is something that a lot of these guys are not doing, with the exception of the Horrorpops or Creepshow. Brandy has her own sound, she is a lot more ballsy.

Dustin: Did she play with another band before joining up with you?

John: She played in another band in America called the Whiskey Wailers. She was down there doing a degree in biocultural anthropology and she took up with the stand up bass. They opened up for us one day and I was like wow. I knew Scareoline was leaving my band, so I was like somebody get me that girl’s number.

Dustin: With the members of the band living in different places, does that prove challenging for the band?

John: It’s pretty good. She has a visitor visa for Canada. It is fine. She is going to become a Canadian soon, since I got married to her. It will eventually be smooth sailing.

Dustin: As smooth as marriage can be I guess.

John: Totally! It isn’t the first one for me, but hopefully it is the best one.

Dustin: That is a good attitude. You are playing a few shows in B.C. to kick off the new year, so you will be getting your new sound out there.

John: We did the whole tour in October and November in Canada and the US. We did 30 shows in 5 weeks or something like that, just as the trio. It wasn’t super publicized on the Canadian dates, which kind of made me sad. They just kind of threw the name out there and let it flow. The US dates were publicized really well, that is where I was getting most of the crowd feedback.

Dustin: I missed your last show in Edmonton, I had to work, but I wasn’t at all aware of the change in sound. I can imagine that it may have been a shock for some show goers to come in expecting the “classic” Big John Bates sound and hearing the new sound.

John: Yeah, I think people were sort of not aware. For the release of the album, which will come out in March, we have hired a publicist in Canada so that people know.

Dustin: Melanie Kaye?

John: Yeah, she has just started working with us and she is going to keep working with us for the release of the album. We worked with her on a couple of shows on the last tour, in Toronto and Montreal and we decided that we should keep on working together towards the future.

Dustin: In my work, I have to deal with a ton of different PR people and I have to say that Melanie is hands down the most amazing person to work with.

John: That is great to hear. She is super professional and great to work with.

Dustin: What else do you have to add here?

John: Other than that, what else are we doing? We are going to be touring. I think we are going to be doing a tour with one of the bands like White Cowbell Oklahoma or Flatliners or Mahones or something in the spring. Then do a European tour, a US tour and just push the hell out of the record. We are trying to get on a decent sized label in Canada as well. We are playing Canadian Music Week and SXSW. We played it last year and it was super fun, so we thought we would do it again.

Dustin: I know that a lot of Canadian bands have a hard time breaking through in the States. Many of them seem to get stuck in the rut of only playing at home, where they know they can draw a crowd, while others struggle to constantly play the US and breakthrough. You play a lot of shows all over the place. Do you find that you have different followings in different areas?

John: Definitely. Western Canada is usually really good and fun to play for us. Especially Alberta and Manitoba. Saskatchewan is hit and miss. Ontario is weird, the mid western US is great, but the coast is weird. We play lots of shows down in Florida and they go well. In Europe we play lots of shows everywhere, Helsinki to Slovania to Italy, Portugal, Spain… Germany is probably our biggest market. Switzerland is really good to us and so it Austria and Italy. It’s weird. I want to say it is regional, but I guess it’s national. What’s regional over here is national in Europe.

Dustin: So you say Germany is your best market? Do they have a big underground rockabilly sound there?

John: No, it’s one of the places where everyone across the board came out to see us. There were university students, it wasn’t just the rockabillies. There were people into rock, people into metal, people into all sorts of things were showing up at the shows. They would all just be partying together. It wasn’t so much about a scene really. That helped. We headlined to 10000 people at festivals over there. We have done some pretty big shows for people just wanting to listen to live music.

Dustin: Which I hear a lot about the European scene. I imagine it must be frustrating to come back home after one of those shows and play in Ontario where it is hit or miss for you.

John: Yeah. To play in Sudbury on a Saturday night can be difficult. It depends. It can go one way or the other. It depends on the specific crowd there, whereas the focus in Europe is on live music in general. I don’t know if it is the quality of the sound system, but I played a basement in France which was tight, I don’t know how they got 80 people in there. It was insanely dangerous. The sound system fell over while we were playing and they just didn’t care, they just wanted to listen to live music. They just wanted the energy. That is something that you don’t get with DJs, which is where the drugs come in.

Dustin: Thanks for taking some time to talk to me. 
John: Right on. What do you think of the moniker that Brandy came up with for our new sound, rustic punk?

Dustin: Rustic punk? I do like it. Like I say, I haven’t heard the new stuff yet, but it definitely puts an image in my head, like Drive By Truckers or even Hank 3.

John: Good, check out the new stuff and let me know what you think. Have a good one.