Interview with The Ruddy Ruckus: ‘We go for something you’d want to hear in a tiny, sweaty club – I want to make those 25 people lose their minds!’

Hamilton, Ontario, garage rock band The Ruddy Ruckus, will bring out their gritty, raucous and thoroughly energizing debut album Wentworth And Main next week (10 September).

Starting out as a folk-punk alter ego for frontman Rob Brown, they have evolved into an alt-rock powerhouse with the gradual additions of lead guitar player Jackson Dorie, bassist Giordano Modesto and drummer Patrick Brown. Brown met Dorie and Brown at rock band classes at a music academy when he was 14 and met Modesto later via friend James Gould, who went to school with him.

I say that I love their name: ‘I feel that people in the UK understand the name and what it is,’ he grinned. ‘We don’t really say “ruddy” and the word “ruckus” is specifically contextualized, haha! I grew up in Dundas, it’s a very green, luscious place. I was on the “Rail Trail”, it’s beautiful, walking on the cusp of winter turning into spring. I came up with two dozen names but went with this one, I think we’re the only Ruddy Ruckus so far!’

Wentworth And Main comprises 12 tracks, including previously released singles such as ‘Hold On My Love’, ‘You And Me’ and ‘Boston Lager’ as well as new tracks including ‘Aggie’ and re-recorded songs from their back catalogue: ‘The bass and drums are one take with a few punch ins,’ Brown said. ‘That’s the foundation of the record, it makes the songs what they are.’

He describes Wentworth and Main as ‘two arteries that run through Hamilton, a city that was previously driven by the steel industry, which collapsed during the 80’s’: ‘Where Wentworth and Main cross is not a nice area, there are some social issues but five minutes south, you have million dollar homes. My first apartment was there – I saw people ride two bikes at the same time! We named the album after these streets because the interplay between the environment and the people that live there is a story that can be found in cities all across the world. We felt that the brand of systemic bleakness that defines the area exists universally across geography and culture.’ I ask if the Victorian style haunted house on the album cover actually exists and he laughs: ‘It’s more of a motif, really, although that style of housing is everywhere here. On the back cover, there’s a bus like the one I used to take to get around.’

‘Some people want to control their emotional state on stage but I’d rather show mine’

‘Aggie’ is about his Scottish grandmother who emigrated to Canada, and is the ‘sister’ song to ‘Roy’, their earlier track about her husband, Brown’s grandfather, which also features on the album. It is a moving tribute to her, following her death from cancer a couple of years ago and is written from her perspective. It kicks off as an emotional ballad before morphing into a powerhouse of a rock song around 50 seconds in, complete with a pounding bass line that builds and builds towards Brown’s scream: ”Aggie’ pulls on your emotional heartstrings,’ he admitted. ‘The chorus is about her learning about having cancer, I can’t play it without crying. Some people want to control their emotional state on stage but I’d rather show mine.’

I say that it actually sounds very cathartic. ‘It’s extremely cathartic,’ he said. ‘I’ve played ‘Roy’ on my own, slowly, and I’ve seen people in the audience break, there’s something baked into it, they think it’s the saddest thing. That’s what you’re going after as a songwriter, you want the audience to apply your story to their lives. There have been different versions of ‘Roy’ that have been released so far, we’ve got a fast one on the album. It’s fast and bombastic, whereas ‘Aggie’ is slower and sludgier, that contrast makes them more powerful, which is why they sit together on the album.’

The lyrics are extremely poignant: ‘There’s a freight train runnin’ up and down my mind, I got this funny feeling deep inside. My body’s telling me I won’t survive. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.’

In July, they released ‘You And Me’, which opens with a gloriously fuzzy, crunchy riff: ‘The song was, in part, a reaction to a wishy-washy relationship I was in, there was a lot of drama and stress,’ Brown said. ‘I was at home and wanted to write a song about it. I started with an 80’s inspired folky rock riff on the acoustic guitar and the words kinda came out. I recorded and released a demo with horns and synthesizers before we re-recorded the version that is on the record. It’s very loud and proud, very guitar heavy and very different to the original. We go for something you’d want to hear in a tiny, sweaty club – I want to make those 25 people lose their minds! We’d play the same in a big stadium. I think the thing I’m most proud of is our ability to capture the attention of people who don’t know who we are when we play live with other bands. You have to push people as far as you can but not so much that you’ll lose them.’

As the song goes: ‘All of the things that I wish I said bouncing around this big old head. There’s too many people in the room right now. I gotta get you away, some way, somehow.’

Brown relinquished control on this album, marking a first for him: ‘When we were making this record, I tried to take my hands off the reins – I was less of an overlord, haha! We’ve been told we’re old school a lot recently. When you’ve got big guitars and bass and the occasional scream, you gotta put the volume on 10! Once you hear the walls rattling, you know you’ve got it right!’

‘It was written for the same person as ‘You And Me’ but at a different period in time’

Another track on the album and the first single they released from it is ‘Hold On My Love’ and I say that I love it when it really kicks off almost a minute it with frenetic drums and heavy guitars: ‘It’s funny you mention the kick off point, the song was a LOT longer before,’ he grinned. ‘We cut it to its bare essentials before recording it. It was written for the same person as ‘You And Me’ but at a different period in time. I was talking to her in my mom’s car during a thunderstorm, it grew from a tender folk ballad into a loud, attention seeking rock number!’ The track ‘Boston Lager’ wasn’t specifically inspired by drinking in Boston, although he has been there: ‘The song’s about drinking with your friends and getting carried away,’ he said. ‘I had written the riff in the chorus but I didn’t know how to finish it, so I took it to the band. We practice at Patrick’s and his dad has a neon ‘Sam Adams Brewery’ sign and I said, “Let’s call it after that”.’

On our Zoom, Brown has a wall of guitars in the background and I ask him about an unusual brown one hanging there: ‘I built that guitar,’ he said very animatedly. ‘I got all the parts and put it together myself. It took around three-to-four months because I was waiting for parts. It’s one of my faves. I named it Mackinaw after our local football team, the Hamilton Tiger Cats. The chant goes “Oskee Wee Wee, Oskee Waa Waa, Holy Mackinaw, Tigers Eat ‘Em Raw!”‘

One of their first tracks I heard was ‘It’s A Shithole That We Call Home’ – the first track on their upcoming album – and I tell him that it remains one of my favourites. ‘It’s a really interesting song, I wrote it in a satirical way, Dundas is not a shithole (laughs). I was thinking about downtown and prescribing this nastiness to it. It’s about when you leave home, you want to go back but when you’re there, you hate it. It has this line ‘Distance makes the heart grow, at least that’s what they say”.’ The lyrics are very evocative: ‘The sidewalks and storefronts that line the main strip, the working class ghosts who’ve had enough of it. I gaze upon boys who are covered in dirt and sweet little girls who look like they’ve been hurt.’

Brown describes the Hamilton music scene as small, so I ask him if he knows another band there that I’ll be interviewing soon, Coda Facto, and it turns out that he does. ‘Hamilton’s very loyal to its artists,’ he said. ‘A lot of venues have closed since COVID but we have a new one, Bridgeworks, which looks gorgeous inside. The fact that new venues are opening is very encouraging.’

‘Hamilton has its own touch points and sonic character’

Locally, he is a big fan of country singer Mackenzie Meyer, his friend James Alphonse and rock bands Dirty Rick, The Barrel Rejects and Bad Communication. ‘I love all of those bands. The Arkells are from here and once you reach that echelon, the city will love you forever. Being a Hamilton band is different to being a Toronto band, Hamilton has its own touch points and sonic character. If you’re from Canada, one of two things happen to you: you’re either really popular in Canada or everywhere else but not both. The more you lean on Canada, maybe the less relevant your music becomes everywhere else in the world. I think you need to have a monopoly on your sound and tap into universalities across different communities, so in terms of lyrical context, I try to make it as accessible as possible.’

It turns out that he’s also a massive Green Day fan: ‘My band mates make fun of me pretty relentlessly! My mom bought me American Idiot (2004) in middle school and said “I’m giving this to you as a present but I need to listen to it first to see if it’s suitable”. I waited several months, she still hadn’t given it to me, so I got it and took it back to my room. I put it on and I didn’t get it. About a week went by – it was my only CD – and I listened to it over and over, realising that it was very unique. It cemented my love of Green Day. Billie Joe has talked about the pressure to follow it up and the stress of trying to recreate something iconic like that. The great thing is that American Idiot wasn’t trying to be anything comparable, it just was what it was. That’s why I was disappointed with their album Father of All (2020). Starting in 2016 with Donald Trump being elected as president, there was a fertile environment to create something anti-establishment. I wanted something with that same sincere connection that American Idiot had, where everyone’s voice was reflected in the songs. I remember listening to ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ in suburbia and thinking “That’s me!” (laughs).’ They also cover a number of Green Day songs, including ‘Good Riddance’ and ‘When I Come Around’: ‘I get told that I sound like Billie Joe a lot,’ he said, sounding delighted. ‘I heard this story that Bob Dylan used to sound like Woody Guthrie (an American folk singer) but when he met him, Woody Guthrie told him “You have to stop sounding like me”. I wonder if it’s true?!’

Brown is also a big fan of Liverpool: ‘When I graduated school, I did a European tour. I went to Liverpool and I was supposed to go to Manchester but I cancelled it because I was having such a good time in Liverpool, haha! I went to The Cavern Club and at the bar across the street, a band was playing a cover of ‘Mr. Brightside’. The infrastructure of Liverpool and its long musical history promotes live music.’

I ask him who he’d most like to tour with: ‘Ooooh, that’s a big, big question! Recently, we got our Spotify to show us bands our listeners like – it was a lot of older bands like The Stooges, Tom Petty, Nirvana, The Kinks, so I’ve been trying to figure out the place of our band but it was a nice surprise and it gives me a lot of confidence for the future. I love The Strokes, Nirvana, Weezer and Dinosaur Jr., so I’d love to tour with any of them. I have a lot of respect for Iggy Pop because for him, the performance is the only thing that matters. He’d be great to tour with. He demands he has a mic in his hand at the studio and he performs as if he’s on stage. Do you know much about recording?’ I confess that I don’t. ‘Ok, so normally, you’re in a vocal booth or a big room but they tell you to stand two fists from the mic and not move! Iggy Pop throws all of that out of the window. I should do that, let the performance come through. I’ve changed my mind on a lot of things, I used to worry about things being perfect but rock ‘n’ roll is just amped up blues music, it relies on the imperfect spaces in between to get the emotions. You need to be a little sharp if you want it to be sad. Those imperfections make it listenable and make it stand out. We learned a lot in the process of making this record. Maybe we don’t have to get everything perfect but just to do the best we can.’

(Photo from left to right: Jackson, Pat, Giordano and Rob. Photo credit: Krystel Hedden.)