Just say yes to checking out Nomeansno drummer John Wright’s new solo project Dead Bob which comes to the Slice, Saturday, March 16.
The project was never intended to be a solo project at all. After NoMeansNo decided to call it quits after John’s brother Rob Wright decided to retire, John Wright decided to focus on his other passion, brewing beer and running a pub. When that closed down during Covid, Wright decided to go through his musical archives and listen to some old songs, completed and recorded some of them sand released his debut solo album “Life Like,” named after an old Nomeansno song, which Wright also rerecorded for the project.
“Well it started out a solo project. Nomeansno kind of tossed in the towel around 2015 or so officially, somewhere in there. My brother retired and I moved up the Sunshine Coast here in British Colombia and got involved with some other things,” said Wright during a Feb. 23 interview on his 62nd birthday.
Dead Bob has benefitted from a few fortunate circumstances.
Jason Lamb and Paul Prescott have just released a new book about Nomeansno called “ From Obscurity To Oblivion.” And Alternative Tentacles in in the process of rereleasing all of NoMeansNo’s old albums.
“It’s just very fortunate that Nomeansno, that Alternative Tentacles is now in full swing rereleasing all of Nomeansno’s back catalogue. They started out with a seven inch single but then they decided to start by rereleasing a full length album Wrong , which was our most popular album and the most obvious choice. So that’s getting going. And then my friend Jason Lamb wrote a book about No
meansno called From Obscurity to Oblivion and that just came out. And it’s been doing really well So Dead Bob got together and we played nine shows in British Columbia last November, December. So with all the stuff with Nomeansno cropping up now, everything is happening at once. A bunch of irons are hot right at the moment,” he said.
“It’s kind of interesting, having really put music away for so many years and not really expecting to be back at it ” said Wright, who just turned 62 on the day of the interview. I just turned 62 and I’m heading to Winnipeg in March. Kind of just diving right into it and of course, we’ll be coming through Lethbridge on our way home,” said Wright, who has been busy with several projects since Nomeansno called it quits.
“I did a record with A Band of Robots called Compressorhead. They had that launched in 2017. That was an amazing project. But I got involved with a pub up here in Powell River and that kind of consumed me for a few years., But it didn't survive unfortunately. I was hoping to be a professional brewer. Because that’s the other thing I do besides pounding on drums. But with Covid everything slowed down like it did for everyone and I started to revisit a lot of old songs and a lot of old demos , stuff I’d written myself. Just a whole backlog of material, in varying stages of completion so I took the time I had and started replacing loops and programmed drums with real drums and tried to make them into real songs,” he said.
“And I was enjoying what I was hearing and so I just kept doing it and when the pub was coming to an end last year, 2023 we had to close and I pretty much had a record and just wanted to put out a self released album of myself . I’m mostly doing everything on the record, but I had some help from some friends,” he said.
The album features his son Aiden Wright, Byron Slack (Invasives) Slack’s partner Kristy Lee Audette (Rong), Ford Pier (Ford Pier and the Vengeance Trio, DOA, Roots Round up, Junior Gone Wild, Rheostatics), Selina Martin added vocals and there are two old collaborations with his brother Rob.
Other than his brother, most of those friends are part of the live incarnation of Dead Bob.
“I got it done. There was really no plan on being Dead Bob really up until that point. But then it’s kind of like well I’m out of a job, so maybe I should see if I can’t put this together and make a band out of it which I did,” he chuckled, adding he enlisted Ford, Byron, Kristy and his partner from the pub, bassist Colin MacRae, who played in an old Victoria math rock band Pigment Vehicle, who were active on the Victoria scene from 1988 until the late ’90s.
“He really wanted to play again. He’s a great bass player. He lives up here and we’re friends of course, so he so he joined up. He picked up his bass after about 25 years and we started to make a band to play it all live. So it was kind of unplanned, but it sort of unfolded,” he continued.
The new album shows a lot of different influences.
“I had this big backlog of songs in various stages of completion. And one of them is a song Called White Stone Eyes, which actually Robbie and I started to work on for NoMeansNo I don’t know in the late ’90s , maybe 2000s. I can’t remember if it was demoing for ‘Dance of the Headless Bourgeoisie that came out in 1998. I don’t think so I think it was demoing and working up songs for Nomeansno 1 which came out in 2000. But like a lot of my collaborations with my brother, I would write music and have musical ideas and he would put a voice to them. He would write words and sing. Although I wrote some of my own words. And there was one or two songs in which I actually wrote music to some of his words. But generally it went in that order. I’d bring in songs and he would write lyrics. And that was one
Just for whatever reason it didn’t get off the ground but it had been hanging around in my pile of demos for so many years. And it was just one of the songs I revisited,” he said.
“So that quite obviously has quite a NoMeansNo tone to it for sure. His writing style is obvious . Although I sing it and play everything and I’ve arranged in my own way now having reworked it, it is very much NoMeansNo. And the title track ‘Life Like,’ is indeed actually a NoMeansNo song that was released on ‘ Dance Of the Headless Bourgeoisie in 1998. But it was one of my favourites
actually. I always really like that collaboration but it just died in obscurity rather quickly . We never really played it live. It was like a bonus track on a double vinyl. I don’t even think it’s on the CD. I might be wrong about that. So it really was relegated to the shelves early. But I found the old demo of it and I really liked it. It was written as more of a pop song and felt NoMeansNo was kind of the wrong band to do that song. So I just did up again just really a pet project. A lot of this was just for my own fun doing these songs up so I did. In the end, that’s the one Selina Martin sings on. I had this idea of mixed gender vocals and she did an awesome job. And I thought I got to put this out. So when I put the album out that was the song and we just calling the album after it,” he said adding the Dead Bob version is close to the original demo of the song.
“Well it is the same song. It’s virtually a cover. But I changed a it a little bit and gave it a broader arrangement tone to it,” he said.
He had to pick and choose which songs to put on the album.
“ I have literally got two more albums worth of stuff, again not all finished. The next album is pretty finished. These were the songs, when I was forming songs and thinking of what would go well with each other, those are the ones that came together first,” he said.
“The next album has a lot of finished stuff on it, but these were the first ones and the ones I felt would make a good record. So that’s why they’re there,” he said, adding response has been great.
“I released it April 21. (Former Nomeansno member) Tom Holliston’s birthday actually. And my father’s birthday and the Queen’s, although she isn’t with us anymore. I had no plan, I just put it out, self released it. A lot of fans were excited so I thought I’d just do this. The forming of the band and everything was all kind of an afterthought. It’s a year old and we’re just kind of getting things rolling,” he said.
He noted the live show is loud, but will also include some Nomeansno, Perhaps some songs from Nomeansmo’s Hockey themed alter-egos The Hanson Brothers and some surprises.
“It’s the five of us, so we’re just as loud, only now there’s there’s five of us being just as loud. So loud being the key word there. Bring your earplugs. Ford Pier is pretty much on keyboards and synths. And he has picked up the trombone. When he was a kid he actually started out in school I think in orchestra as a French horn player and his father was a trombone player and music teacher. And a lot of stuff I write on my own have creeped in Nomeansno here are horn arrangements. I love horns. I was always a huge big band fan in the ’70s when I was a kid playing in jazz band. So I’m really excited to have horns.Also Kristy who’s on guitar, she’s a really good trumpet player. She teaches trumpet actually at the academy in Vancouver. So she’s on trumpet and guitar and plays a little keyboards. So it’s really awesome to have a horn section.
When you’re playing punk rock especially or anything , when horns kick in, it just changes everything It’s really, really fun. So you can expect to hear a little of that. Dead Bob is only nine songs on the record so the sets we’re playing a few Nomeansno songs, We’re playing a few of Byron’s and Ford’s and Kristy’s songs as well. So there’s quite a wide variety of different music that’s going to happen. And we are are unveiling two songs actually from the second album. We’re just kind of getting started. With all of this writing I’ve been doing and I’m now working with another three, four prolific writers. And we haven’t even begun to see what Dead Bob can be in a more collaborative way . Right at the moment it’s just a clearing house of a bunch of my old songs. Well not old to the world. Songs I’ve accumulated, he said, adding they’re also tossing a Hanson Brothers song into the set.
A few years ago, Wright released a Hanson brothers Punk Rauch ale.
“ It’s the German word for smoke . It’s a traditional Bavarian smoked beer style. I collaborated with some good friends of mine out in Quebec over 10 years ago doing a beer. They were also big fans. We played at the brewery a couple times, the Hanson Brothers as well.He knew I was a brewer, so we collaborated on that. They did it as a seasonal for about six years. Trou Du Diable. They’ve since sold. And another Brewery here on the coast in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast. Another friend of mine brewing for 101 Brewery. He did a version . That was just recently. And I’ve got a good friend in Germany. He’s actually in Franken which is basically Bavaria but don’t tell the Franks that. He’s a a wonderful brewer and makes great beer. So he did it too for fun,” he said.
I got involved with this pub and the idea was to make it a brew pub and that If things had gone in a different direction, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now, I’d be brewing beer in Powell River,” he said, adding there are no plans no for a ‘Life Like ” beer.
They are playing a few brew pubs in Regina, High River and Prince Albert.
“People know I like beer and brew beer, so that’s another nice sidebar that’s fun for me,” he said.
“The plan is we’re heading out to Winnipeg. So We’ve got 14 shows in March and we’ve got a tour forming to go don to the States in May June. We‘re going to play at Punk Rock Bowling in las Vegas and tour our way down there down to San Diego and come home. So that will be interesting playing south of the border again. We’re excited Alternative Tentacles is getting the back catalogue rerelease. I think next on the docket is NoMeansNo Album ‘Sex Mad.” So that’s exciting. I’ll be bringing some books along, so lots of cross-pollination. I’m looking forward to Lethbridge. Lethbridge was always a fun stop with Nomeansno and of course the Coaldale Hotel will live in infamy as where Hanson brother’s live album was recorded. We had fun there. I think we played Coaldale twice. I’m not sure we’ve played the Slice,” he said.
Dead Bob plays the Slice. March 16 with The Motherfuckers and Queen of the Worms . Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door.
— By Richard Amery, L.A. beat Editor
