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[Interview]: New Swears

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I interviewed New Swears at a BA Johnston show and Scrubar stopped the interview to sell a cigarette for $2

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In some circles, BA Johnston needs no introduction. He’s the hardest working musician anyone’s ever seen. He’s this fat bastard who plays tunes off of his discman with titles like “Hobo 4 Life”, “Dirt Mall”, and “Drinking on My Mom’s Dime”. He is the patron saint of Hamilton, Ontario.

The release party for his new album “Shit Sucks” at Guelph’s Jimmy Jazz, was no exception to his trademark Humpty-Dumpty-potato-chip fuelled insanity. BA opened up with DMX’s “Party Up (Up In Here)” waving sparklers around, and wasted no time making jokes about St. Catherines.

What’s the difference between St. Catherines and a baby?

A baby only smells like shit some of the time.

Kicking the show off with his classic “How Many T-Bone Steaks Can I Fit in My Pants?” BA Johnston is like the guy your dad hangs out with that your mom can’t stand. He’s like the weird uncle that wants to show you the awful song he just wrote. Go to one of his shows and you’ll see people screaming along the lyrics and cheering standing next to a bunch of other people who look confused as hell. Just be prepared when he comes over to you and rubs his face on your t-shirt.

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BA Johnston

New Swears, who opened for BA, have become my new favourite Canadian band over the course of the past month or so. I saw their video for “Midnight Lovers” loved it, found all their weird-ass Youtube videos and then listened to their album Junkfood Forever, Bedtime Whatever almost constantly. It’s grimy punk about having a bitchy girlfriend, getting fucked up, knowing your buddies have your back, and getting fucked up.

Though I had known that the band had an energetic live show, there was still no way I could have expected to see half of the dumbass acrobatics that they managed to pull off. I guess when you skate and party as much as they do, your body fortifies itself into a magical machine that can take any amount of physical abuse. Opening up with “Two Darts”, closing with a brazen version “No Fun”, and still throwing in an Allman Brothers cover in between the madness, New Swears are a wicked good punk band.

 

Singer and guitarist Scrubar let me talk to him about their European tour.

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Beej Eh

So you got your passport stolen?

Yeah, we were gettin’ ready to take off and I was about to meet the dudes. I was about to do Laundry at Sammy and Nick’s house, and I went home to pack and get all my shit and the last thing I was supposed to get was my passport. I always keep it in my bedside table, go to fuckin open it and it’s not there. My fuckin’ birth certificate’s gone, so I’m tearing my fuckin’ apartment apart which is like, tiny and it’s not there and I’m like, freaking the fuck out so I call them up “you guys have gotta get the fuck over here I gotta find my fuckin’ passport!” It’s gone. Anyways, I call my grandma. She fuckin’ drives me to the passport office, couldn’t get a passport, so they took off. I got my flight changed and everything. Then 5 or 600 dollars later I showed up three days later in Hamburg before our first show.

Wasn’t it like 15 minutes before you guys were supposed to go on.?

Oh, like barely even that. I showed up at the airport and it was half an hour before we played. Then I had to go through customs and it was just “fuckin’ get in here”. Ran into a cab, got into a can and there was a water main that broke on the way so we had to take a huge detour. Go there and the fuckin’ promoter opens my cab door: “Get the fuck in! You guys are going on!”. Get inside the bar and everyone’s already set up and shit and I was just like, sober and tired and full of Gravol and shit cause I get super motion sick and I was like fuckin’ losing it. I set up my amp and found all my stuff and my fuckin’ guitar case is taped together with all this crazy shit to keep it safe. It was really fucked up and then the dude who was booking the tour gave me a bottle of Sailor Jerry’s and we all started drinkin’ so I had enough time to get a little buzz on. It was crazy man.

So that was Germany, you guys went all over Europe?

Yeah we did like 6 countries but it was mostly like North Western sorta thing, so like we didn’t really hit France or Spain anything but it was crazy man, just wild.

I heard you met a bunch of weird ass skate kids in like Italy something like that?

Yeah it was fuckin’ in Switzerland but right on the border in Italy [I’m pretty sure he means Lugano], so everyone spoke Italian Where the fuck was it. It was was so sick those dudes are the best. They have this crazy booking agency called, they had these shirts: fuckin’ “Get Wasted or Die Trying”, Broken Sailor. It’s this amazing beautiful paradise in Switzerland, there’s this amazing blue, beautiful lake with like, swans swimming in it and shit…. [he looks behind him] A Toonie?!

[At this point a guy was leaning out of the passenger side of a car asking us if he could buy a smoke for a toonie. Scrubar was happy to oblige. Gotta love downtown Guelph]

So what’s the scene in Ottawa like right now? I didn’t know there was a real scene until I started checking your stuff out.

It’s fuckin’ incredible. It’s conitnually growing like, exponential, every year there’s more and more bands and shit. Tt’s fair to say that there was no real strong scene there in the past decade, it’s the past decade it’s been kind of weak. At least 4-5 years it’s been getting better and better more bands are getting stoked and bigger bands are coming through cause they realize people are actually going to come out to shows and shit.

Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of stuff on Youtube about the Fun Boy Club House, was that like the epicenter of what was going on? It seemed like a lot of people were gravitating towards that spot

It was a real fun place it definitely helped with the house show scene, but I don’t konw it was more a party mecca if anything but we had a lot of house shows there and we had a lot of great bandsplaying from far away. Mean Jeans played there [Portland], Tyvek [Detroit], Ketamines when they were still playing show. Peach Kelli Pop [California via Ottawa] played and it was fuckin’ packed. All the shows were over a hundred people and it was a small fuckin’ house.

Yeah it seems small…

Yeah it’s a tiny split house with like, 3 bedrooms like tiny, fuckin, piece of shit house.

Were all you dudes living there?

Yeah at one point it was all of us living there, it started off just me BJ and Sammy and this other dude Brobud who lives out in Vancouver now. Eventually nick moved in we got a bunkbed in my room then eventually rats showed up and I left then everyone left and we got sort of evicted but not really and then we just kinda peaced out.

Yeah I showed everyone that Two Darts video man, it’s crazy.

That was every weekend man, yeah 52 weeks plus whatever else after that, so like 80 weeks of just chaos and shit. We had this crazy fuckin’ Canada Day party that was just like… We had a half pipe in the back yard when we moved in and then we made buds with the dudes who moved in there and they own this skateshop in Ottawa. Now we’re buds with those guys so they left the halfpipe for us. The landlord came and chainsawed it into three pieces and we brought out front, and we got a street permit out and we had like 300 people show up on Canada Day and we had a boxing ring set up in the middle and people were skatin’ over couches and like broken TVs and shit and a bunch a bands were playing. It was the best. A good one.

You guys aren’t living there anymore? Just different pockets and Ottawa…

We all live like, blocks aways from each other. Sammy and Nick have a house that has a half pipe in their living room that people come to skate every weekend so that’s pretty sick.

What’s a good spot to hit up in Ottawa?

It all depends what shows are going on, House of Targ is a fuckin’ awesome space. It’s got all these pinball machines set up in it, it’s kind of like buddy’s house [He’s referring to Pinball Sessions]. I think we’re partyin’ there tonight.

Do you guys have anything planned for the rest of the year?

Yeah we’re headed back to Europe again in August and we’re doing a west coast thing in the winter during the school break. There’s a week we’re just gonna fly out to San Pedro, California and head up the west coast to Vancouver.

Are you doing anything in Canada before August?

Oh yeah, we want to do like more Toronto, Peterborough, Guelph, and shit like that too…. All the fuckin’ not Toronto places. There’s just so much going on at once. I like Toronto, I just want to play smaller places like Guelph because, you know, tonight was fuckin’ sick.

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Tagged: BA Johnston, Canada, Canadian Music, guelph, Hamilton, indie, Interview, live, music, New Swears, Ontario, Ottawa, punk, rock, Soundbird

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