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Mary Dickie May 10, 2005 Toronto Sun EDMONTON'S Old Reliable have been walking the country-rock tightrope for 10 years, steadfastly resisting attempts to stick them in either camp. So let's just call their latest release, The Burning Truth, a rock 'n' roll album with country flourishes and avoid raising their ire. "The Burning Truth was recorded with our old drummer, a rock drummer," explains singer-guitarist Shuyler Jansen. "The band evolved because of him and the fact that we were playing bars, where you have to play loud to get attention. "Our new drummer, Mike Silverman, is more versatile, and ultimately that's what we wanted. We want to be able to do a dark and spooky and quiet song with mallets and brushes, then a four-on-the-floor AC/DC thing. We want to be able to do it all." With its big drums, keyboards and harder-edged guitars, I want to call The Burning Truth rock, but there's something undeniably country about their sound, not to mention the dark and lonely lyrics. "Two things I always keep in mind are that there is no one way to write a song, and to be totally honest when you're writing words," says Jansen. "I think if you're willing to look deep inside yourself and write about things that aren't necessarily pleasant, you'll never have writer's block." Another reason the band has lasted so long is that three of its five members have side projects -- Jansen's Hobotron, fellow singer-guitarist Mark Davis' Young Bucks and guitarist Shawn Jonasson's Swiftys (the other member is bassist Tom Murray) -- that give them some breathing room. "First of all, you can go and hang out with a different bunch of guys or girls and learn a new way to play, because every bassist and drummer plays differently," Jansen says. "And maybe we're a little more in charge, too. Whereas in Old Reliable it's five strong personalities, in our own projects we get to control the music more, make it specifically our own sound rather than everybody's." After being rejected by satellite radio as too country for one show and too rock for another, Jansen has finally figured out what to call that sound. "We're Adult Alternative now -- I just want to let the world know," he says. "That's where they shove Ron Sexsmith and Kathleen Edwards and all those people they can't pin down. We've always wanted to be in the same genre as Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Band, Tom Petty -- people that just make records, maybe country, maybe with synthesizers, maybe with a reggae rhythm section. But it's hard. As time goes on it'll be easier, because once we have 20 records and they're all different, people can say we're a band who can do what we want." Fish Griwkowsky May 2, 2005 Exclaim The Truth and Old Reliable Shuyler Jansen gophers up last from the tight basement of the 100-year-old house Old Reliable have bargained their practices into. He looks more like an interstate trucker than ever, but in this topography of feedback-fuzzy country rock, that's better than sweating out the air of a responsible dad - which it turns out he actually is, even putting his new baby girl on gig posters around faraway Ontario during an "educational" solo tour. Maybe so he'd see her occasionally on strange streets that way. "Being on the road is way harder now," he says. "Just emotionally." Old Reliable recently turned ten on the stage of Edmonton's practically TM'd "greatest live venue" - an annual indoor bush party - as always enjoying a packed house of seriously beautiful girls in rural dresses spinning non-ironic loops while real country bars across town play Kid Rock duets. It seems a strange thing to celebrate your band's age so publicly." Because people can make fun of you?" Jansen smiles. "Whatever. We don't play that often, so we like to have a reason when we do. Four of us are Scorpios and the band started on my birthday, so we celebrate it all in one. Not to sound too callous, but it's a good angle." If you think of music ten years back, one of the latter things to pop up is country, even in Alberta. Jansen explains the band's inception: "Edmonton's the only city I know where the metal guys hang out with the country and jazz guys. You get a lot of second chances here. It started from the ashes of the Naked and the Dead. Mike [Silverman, drums] and I were practising as a two-piece and Mark [Davis, vocals, guitar] had been writing some songs, so we offered to back him up. Scott Lingley joined us after Mike left - he just wanted to get the fuck away from us at that point. It's not that we weren't being productive, we were just a bunch of drunken assholes. "I kinda liked it back then. There wasn't a lot going on in Alberta with the whole electric country thing. It was basically Corb [Lund] and us playing sorta cute little gigs in these weird little places. It took us five or six years to make our first record." Old Reliable's productivity since isn't bad: four solid albums. The latest of which, The Burning Truth, is a return to "your move" form after each of their two vocalists enjoyed mic-exclusivity on each of the last two albums. Both those discs were tremendous works: The Gradual Moment, about how the death of his girlfriend made singer Davis feel (with help from Howe Gelb); Shuyler's Pulse of Light/Dark Landscape finally nailed down the floor-polishing hits we'd been craving for years. And new songs are already evolving in the musty basement. Walking along the same picket fence as Corb Lund's outfit, a decade has made OR this city's primo country band, a tremendous elemental mix of Sonic Youth, Gordon Lightfoot, Bill Monroe and whatever music smarter chickens might peck into the dirt if they weren't so busy playing tic-tac-toe over at the AgriCom. It's a time of great upheaval for the band. After nine years, Lingley was vaporised to bring founder Silverman back in time for SXSW. But there is a greater phase shift. Because both Jansen and keyboardist Shawn Jonasson (also lead singer of the Swiftys) have young babies, as Shuyler puts it, "it's definitely shit or get off the pot at this point. We've always maintained making music is the main thing, even before Swifty joined. Now that we're chasing the dollar a bit more... it kinda sucks in a way. You do the odd thing for money because you need it. "I used to get the horror stories from my family, jokes about writing the 'Legend of the Chevy Farm' commercial. But after seeing a million great bands playing at SXSW, it makes me want to get out and play even more. No matter what happens." Antoine Tedesco May 2005 Scene and Heard Relying on Old Reliable Creating sounds, not just music, permeates each track, each member If you've ever tasted the dusty fruit of old-style country music then you know it's easy to get hooked. The deep earthy music replete with joyful sorrow might be the last bastion of truly raw music not filtered by commercial popularity. You can hear this approach to storytelling in the voices of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, and Merle Haggard, to name a few. Western Canada's indie staple Old Reliable is the kind of country band that propels country music many years into the future, mining for gold with other genres including rock n' roll, bluegrass and electronica. Don't confuse this with Top 40 New Country. Old Reliable dishes out a completely different meal; theirs is something addictive, like spicy food. Using sound(s) rather than just musical notes they create soundscapes for each track, not just simple three-cord progressions. "We always seem to make one big sound at the end of the day," wrote Shuyler Jansen from his home on the south side of Edmonton. "I think that we choose a lot of sounds on the fly, but the parts that each individual has composed mesh well with the overall sound; this particular album has some of the finest vintage inventions of the electric age, Hammonds, Leslies, old amps, several rare guitars, old tape machine and pre amps, old mics, I personally try and emulate the sound of natural disasters!" The sound of "natural disasters" is easy to hear throughout Old Reliable's latest release, the burning truth. The album has a hard edge most country music does not have - tons of distortion for one, and some wickedly groovy hooks. Perhaps the word "groovy" seems out of place, but it is not. Old Reliable make country music intimately accessible. Their lyrics are filled with the dark standards that country music was recognized for in the past, not the softened pop found on the various country music stations these days. Track 7, 'standing on the earth tonight' starts off with sounds reminiscent of bottles being tapped by a metal rod - a wonderful way to start such a desperate-sounding track. Old Reliable's ambient sounds truly set them apart from other country-influenced bands, although Jansen is the first to admit their influences are all the same, "at least the good stuff. I have listened intently to Country for years and now I have turned away and listen to Rock and Bluegrass and weird whatever." You can hear the music rise from the dusty floor and rip through you like a drunken wild man in an old saloon. It's an absolutely different experience than anything you might think you're going to get when you buy a country album - or rock album for that matter. It would be easy to lump Old Reliable into some kind of genre or another - country, rock, bluegrass, etc. but that wouldn't even scratch the surface. For a bunch of relatively young guys, who have been playing the indie scene for over a decade, country music doesn't seem like the most modern of music to pick when starting a band. That might be the case, but Jansen believes that somehow, "...real songwriting and that giant deep dark wave of sound got kicked out of the country mainstream sometime in the mid 70s, minus Dwight and Lyle and Steve Earle who brought along a brief mainstream resurgence in the 80s. "I was raised on Waylon and Willie and Neil Young, The Band, The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and even The Clash, my father was an obsessed LP buyer for a long time and educated me well throughout the transitions of Rockabilly, through Psychedelic through Outlaw, Punk etc. Pretty much everything that came out of Reg Jansen's (my dad) mouth was true and same goes for Shawn's dad and Mark and his Bro and Tom, Mike's Dad, we have all been exposed to the finer points of music, I feel very lucky for that. I take Willie and all the great country songwriters very literally and seriously, I think a lot of people play the genre for novelty and we don't." Kristin McVeigh April 14, 2005 The Gauntlet Steady like a rock, but not old Your worst day ever would go something like this: getting dumped by the love of your life. Take the dog for a walk to ease the pain. Somehow, he slips away and gets run over by a truck. Jump on a horse, you know, just to get away from it all. But the horse breaks his leg by tripping on a gopher hole, so you need to shoot him with your trusty rifle. Well, darn good thing you have Jesus and your cowboy boots. Oh, country music--the pain and agony of it all. Or so goes the stereotype and much of the mainstream country music. The alt-country band, Old Reliable, disagrees with what people assume is the true meaning of country music. "I want [people] to realize that country music is changing, that it's not just what you see on CMT. It's so much more than that," says frontman Schuyler Jansen. Old Reliable formed about 10 years ago in a place called Edmonton. Their sound may be characterized as alt-country, but Jansen sees their music becoming more rockier than country. Their most recent and fourth album, has strong Calgary ties, recorded here by Sundae Sound. The planned CD release will be a dance party complete with barbecue, reasonably priced drinks and other acts such as The Swiftys and The D. Rangers. Old Reliable having perfected their sound for the aforementioned 10 years and Shuyler himself has written songs since 13, the band's ready to release their new album."That first year I wrote hundreds of songs, you know, but they're all crap," he recalls of the songbooks he's kept all these years. [But] lyrics are really important to me and Mark, and we keep getting better at it."No dead dogs in these lyrics, as Jansen strives for honesty in his attempt to dispel the cowboy myth. "A lot of people just think it's supposed to be sentimental and ballady and cowboys hats and stuff, but it's really just about living free, and trying to live an honest life. At the same time there's a real positive and hopeful resolution to all of that it's not always a bleak ending," he says of the darkness, yet again proving there's more to country than people think. "The cool thing about roots music in general or folk is you can add any element to it. Metal influence or reggae. There's lots of elements you can put into a country song," Jansen explains. "Like the Sadies are really quite psychedelic and surfie, so between us and all the other great bands in the states and Canada that are doing their own interpretation on it, its just creating a new era." The constantly changing sound of country and Old Reliable shouldn't be underestimated. The addition of a new drummer to the band, Mike Silverman, adds yet another element to their ever-changing sound. "That's the ultimate goal, we just really like records and putting them out and moving forward musically." So stop crying about your dog, he's dead. Old Reliable says it's so Check out the artist's website: http://www.oldreliableband.com Track List: 1. The Burning Truth 2. Face The Day 3. Before U C Me Explode 4. Autumn Leaf 5. For The Unforgiven 6. Thoroughfare 7. Standing On The Earth Tonight 8. Out On The Line 9. Trembling Hand 10. Fool For Her 11. Bride 12. Dying 4 Love Suggested CDs:Other Genres:
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