MUSIC
Small Town Artillery gives rock a funky injection
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by Steve Newton
om van Deursen figures he’s been playing music with his kid brother Derek for about 20 years now. They grew up near the small town of Kaslo, B.C., and had caught the music bug by the time they hit double digits. “We liked a lot of rock ’n’ roll,” van Deursen says on the line from Ucluelet, where he’s enjoying a few days of relaxation. “We were listening to all the pop punk and the pop rock—Green Day and Billy Talent and Rage Against the Machine. But we also had my parents’ record collection, so Asleep at the Wheel and the Blues Brothers soundtrack and Supertramp, and then it all just started to mash together.” Over time, those early influences led to the formation of Small Town Artillery, a band that thrives on the DIY approach the brothers developed early on when it came to finding gigs. As teenagers, they would put on their own shows in the high-school gym, at the skatepark, and for friends’ weddings and birthdays. “There was only one music venue in Kaslo that ran year-round,” van Deursen says, referring to the historic Langham theatre. “There was a healthy sort of love for the arts, but there wasn’t a lot of venues, so we had to kind of make our own venues as kids, and that totally reflects what we do now. That mentality really stuck around.” One example of the van Deursens working hard to make music happen was the East Van Block Party, which they organized and hosted in September of 2019. “Our old jam space was a place called the Rockery, and it had an alley behind it that was just perfect—like mostly businesses that were closed on a Saturday and one residence that we actually were able to pay them some money and tap into their stove outlet to run power. So we were able to throw a
The core members of Small Town Artillery are Tom van Deursen (centre), Derek van Deursen (left), and Carson Webber (right); the B.C. band is working on its third album. Photo by Mary Matheson.
free festival. I went around and got sponsors, and we had about a thousand people in the alley, a bunch of bands, a licensed beer garden, and raised money for Big Brothers of Greater Vancouver. It was just great.” One of the local acts that took part in the East Van Block Party was teenaged singersongwriter Aza Nabuko. She opened for Small Town Artillery last week when they performed as part of the Firehall Arts Centre’s Music in the Courtyard series. “She started out as sort of like a folk-pop starlet,” van Deursen relates, “and she has morphed into a punk rock ’n’ roll queen. Her last album, Indigo, just came out a couple months ago, and she’s got a great voice and stage presence and writes really interesting, heavier music, so it fits really well with our band.” Van Deursen, 32, handles lead vocals and guitars for Small Town Artillery, with 30-year-old Derek on drums and vocals. Other current band members include bassist Carson Webber, guitarist Kyle Vaughan,
saxophonist Jen Davidson, trumpeter Jocelyn Waugh, and background vocalist Chelsea Webber. The group has released two albums and two EPs and is currently working on a third LP. Van Deursen describes the music as “anthemic rock ’n’ roll with a brass section”. “It piques curiosity,” he says, “because anthemic rock ’n’ roll’s nothing new, but with horns it’s pretty unique. We have sort of an all-ages or world-music element just because of the brass, but it’s definitely funky rock ’n’ roll.” One way Small Town Artillery finds the funk is through a mash-up of Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” and Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You”, which it performed last year as part of the online Kaslo Jazz Etc Festival. Van Deursen says the song combination just kinda happened. “We were cooking up in the jam space,” he recalls, “and we just started putting down the ‘Billy Jean’ bassline and then singing, ‘Well, I don’t know why I came here tonight,’
over that. It felt so good that we just starting mashing the two songs together.” Fooling around with other people’s material is fine, but Small Town Artillery’s main focus is its original music. Van Deursen’s songwriting skills are on display in the introspective 2019 tune “The Birds up North Are Braver”, which was written at a transitional time in his life. “I was staying out with some friends on the Island and I just had an important person from my past sort of reappear in my life and I was asking myself, you know, ‘Can I let this love back in, in a safer and more gentle way?’ So I was trying to listen to my heart at the time, and the line, ‘I don’t need nobody, no saviour, but the birds up North are braver’ just kind of came. I have such a fascination and respect for the birds that live nearby, the ravens and the crows, and I just thought of their intuition and trying to run it against—or with—my own.” Small Town Artillery has several B.C. shows lined up in August—including gigs in Lillooet, Tofino, Golden, and their old hometown of Kaslo—then for most of the fall and winter, they will work on finishing the new record. “The pandemic really gave us all perspective on how we approach life on the road,” he explains. “I spent a decade between this band and another band, touring incessantly, filling up my energy tanks and then running them right to zero and becoming totally depleted and exhausted and broke and ending up back at home. So a more holistic, careful, and gentle approach to life on the road—especially as we’re all getting older—is on my mind now.” g Small Town Artillery is currently touring B.C. with guest Aza Nabuko. You can check their concert schedule at www.smalltownartillery.com/shows.
Mauvey leaves his disciples wanting more with “9”
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by Mike Usinger
While it’s possible, when it comes to Mauvey it’s unlikely that the carpet matches the drapes. Photo by Bree Ross Laryea.
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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
AUGUST 12 – 19 / 2021
f there’s any truth to the saying “the best is yet to come”, then goddamn if we don’t have something to look forward to in the coming months. At the end of Mauvey’s video for “9” one of the last things we see before things fade to a, um, purplish black is the words “to be continued”. There’s a lot to build on. The joy of pedalling down a deserted road in a soft-violet jumpsuit while carrying a bouquet of flowers in a fancy print-adorned can. A straight-from-left-field ascent to heaven where the angels look like they’ve just returned from a shopping spree at Blossom Market on Commercial Drive. A pickup truck sequence where the greasepainted ADHDafflicted thing riding in the flatbed looks like the vaguely disturbing protegé of Pennywise, Pogo, and Art the Clown. And, after a near-miss on the road between most of the parties involved, flying pizza slices, tortilla chips, lettuce, soda pop, and watermelon—even though there’s been zero
indication that someone’s been holding an impromptu picnic. In the dark. Yes, somehow in about less than a nanosecond, day to turns to night, after which our purple-’frod clown in question finds itself covered in what’s either sawed-in-half donuts or a completely demolished angel’s food cake. As chaotic as this all sounds, “9” works a gorgeously smooth vibe that falls somewhere between soft-thump R&B and funky-indie, with a bit of Jamaican dancehall thrown in to keep things interesting. Give props to Mauvey on the multitalented front—in audition to writing “9” and starring in the video, he also acted as co-director. This is the first installment in a multipart film series called “The Florist”, and that things are to be continued suggests that the Vancouver-via-England artist will be busy in the months ahead. Given what he’s already accomplished, we’ve got something to look forward to. g
