Monster Truck talks touring and music

author: ethan butterfield | a&c editor

A literal monster sized truck / Pixabay

This band knows what’s up

Hey all, I hope the reading week has treated you well as we start to get back into the swing of things. Speaking of which, I was very fortunate to land another band interview with famed Canadian rock group, Monster Truck and their guitarist Jeremy Wilderman. 

First question. How did the group come up the name Monster Truck? 

It was just the nickname we had for our garage band at the time, like ten years ago. And when we kind of came up with the idea of doing the band, we just decided that would be a funny thing to name the band since we weren’t planning on taking the band very seriously. It was going to be kind of a bar band in Hamilton. 

So, in regard to the bands updated schedule, the group is going to be doing a tour of Europe and Canada coming up here. What is the feeling like heading into those events? 

Ah, it’s great. We’ve been off for a long time, and with the record just coming out, it’s great to get back on the road. We’re excited to get back to Europe and the U.K. We’ve had a lot of success there. It’s a great feeling and we can’t wait to get going. 

Nice. How are you guys responding to the success of the new record? 

I mean, it’s really early and we don’t know where we’re at with it. We’re really proud and excited to have it out, but yeah, we haven’t been on the road yet, we haven’t played the songs live for anybody yet, we’re not really sure whether it’s been a really successful release or not, it’s just really early. But we’re just excited to get back on the road. 

Now, in regard to past albums like Furiousity and Sittin’ Heavy, do you feel it’s on the same level as those records? 

Yeah, I think we’ve taken a pretty big step forward as far as diversity on the album. A lot of the ways that we wanted to kind of improve upon those last two records was that we thought that maybe there was too much of the same vibe on those albums. So, we really tried to break it up and really kind of throw a few curve balls on this album, and I feel we really succeed in doing that. In addition to that, we really took a departure with the production side of things and really tried to make it sound a lot more live and bright, and make it feel like it was really kind of in the room there with us. So, we tried to change things up a little bit with this record and I think we succeed on that, you know, we pushed the boundaries in a couple different directions with a couple songs. 

So, would you say it’s not so much a hard–rock sound now, or that it’s still that same Monster Truck hard–rock sound? 

I think that’s still really apparent on there that that is still the case. But, we’ve also brought in lots of other ideas and styles as well, trying to kind of meld it in with that original sound. And I feel like we were really successful in a lot of ways and even, maybe, pushed it a bit too far in a couple of ways. So, it’s really about the nature of experimenting and trying to push things a bit. You know, you’re going to succeed in ways you never imagined, and you’re going to have a few things that you maybe wish you could take back. But I think that’s a more advantageous way to go about recording an album than playing it safe all the time, which is what we kind of did with Sittin’ Heavy. So, you take the good with the bad. In this case, we surprised ourselves in a lot of ways. 

That’s awesome. Now, looking back on everything the band’s accomplished with three albums and two EP’s, do you sort of look back on it grinning, or are you looking to the future? 

It’s sort of both. When we were in the thick of recording Furiousity, I really had this feeling like, “If we could only just get this one album done and out that I’d be really proud for, like, the rest of my life, to just get that one album out into the world.”  Then, of course, as soon as that’s done, you think, “Well, I love to get a second one out and just have that exist.” So, it’s alw“ays just kind of like, you are never satisfied, but at the end of the day, I’ve really been able to strike that balance… So, at the end of the day, I’m extremely proud of what we’ve done in the past and, at the same time, you know, I’m also kind of thinking about what we might be able to do in the future. At this point, though, after being in a band ten years, you don’t know how long you’re going to be able to keep things together, and I’ve always been proud to say that if it ended tomorrow, I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish in the time that we were given.