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PRESS REVIEWS 2003
THE TRUCKS
View Weekly #396 May 2003
After nearly two decades as sidemen, The Trucks are stepping into the driver's seat and reinventing themselves
as the main act. They played as the Cranky Brats with Jane Hawley in the early '90s and with Laura Vinson as Free
Spirit, all the while rolling along as The Trucks playing originals and covers and everything in between to make
ends meet. Bassist Fred LaRose says they started their long-awaited self-titled CD as a demo in the garage as a
tool to get more gigs. But the project soon evolved into something much deeper.
"We have tons of recording experience," says LaRose. "I mean, collectively we've probably done 50
albums for other people. So we went to just knock off six or eight songs to demo and boom, within two days we figured
'Why don't we add four more songs and we'll have ourselves a CD if we want it?' The album is hopefully gonna open
up some new doors for us. Now we can go after some festivals and rooms we never went after because we never had
anything we could sell ourselves with."
All those years of playing clubs and bars across Canada and Europe taught them the ins and outs of making a living
in the unpredictable music worl. But now the Trucks (LaRose, pianist/accordionist Gary Bowman, guitarist David
Martineau and drummer Paul Martineau) want to be known for their impressive songwriting talents as well as their
huge musical library of more than 250 covers.
"Now we can look at this and say, 'Okay, now let's approach this like should have approached it 25 years ago
and stuck to our guns,'" says LaRose. "But the thing is, we wanted to be musicians. We didn't want to
be stuck working full-time or part-time, trying to have a job to keep ourselves alive. We wanted to keep ourselves
alive playing music and in order to do that, you were forced to go where they were paying you. We were playing
alt-country when alt-countrty wasn't cool. I go to see bands now that are playing our set list of 15 years ago.
All of a sudden, David Wilcox is cool and the Band is cool. That was the stuff we were playing 15 years ago. Back
then everyone went, 'What? What are you guys doing?' "
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