Take a Walk.

What happens when two brothers from Nova Scotia trade the quiet of small town life for the roar of stadium crowds and the relentless pulse of the road.

On Buzznight and today on the Taken a Walk Podcast, we check out the world of Colin and John Angus MacDonald, founding members of The Trus, one of Canada's most electrifying rock bands.

From winning a radio contest that changed their lives overnight to crafting gold records and penning anthems that have become the soundtrack to a generation, Colin and John Angus have never taken the easy path.

Their journey is one of reinvention, resilience, and a stubborn refusal to play it safe.

A story written not just in the studio, but on the road and the chaos and camaraderie of life on tour.

So join us on this episode as we go beyond the stage lights and into the stories, struggles and triumphs that have shaped the truths.

Whether you're a lifelong fan or just discovering their music, get ready for a conversation as honest, dynamic, and unpredictable as the band itself.

Taking a walk.

All right, John Angus McDonald and Colin McDonald from the Trus Welcome to Taking a Walk, guys.

Hey, good to be here, man, Thank you.

So since we call this show taking a Walk, I do have to ask you the opening question here, which is, if you, gentlemen, could take a walk with someone living or dead, who would that person be and maybe where would you take a walk with him?

My answer is always going to be Bob Dylan, even though you know, I'd be kind of scared of what he might say because He's he could say something cryptic and twisted, like I hope you don't blame music the way you walk or something, and I wouldn't be able to not think about that for the rest of my life.

And I just take him for a walk around Hamilton, Ontario, and just see how many people notice that I'm walking with Bob Dylan.

And since my answer was also going to be Bob Dylan, I'm just going to throw it to the Canadian Bob Dylan and say Neil Young, because I think he'd be a really cool guy to have a chat with somewhere in a field outside o Mimi's hometown in Ontario, And.

Just you know, I mean, what's not to talk about.

I'd love to hear what's on his mind at any moment.

Yeah, two of my favorites.

Thank you so much.

We're going to get into a lot here.

We're going to talk about the new music, the Bloody Light and of course the Breakdown, which has going to number one as we speak.

So excited for you guys, But I do want to ask you first.

This band has gone through some different evolution over time.

There's been different different names and different sort of directions.

Can you share the.

Story behind, first of all the name changes and how you finally settled on the truths.

Well as Monty Python fans growing up and still to this day Python fans.

We originally recalled One Eyed Trouser Snake from the song from Meaning of Life, and then we became one Eyed Trouser and then we shortened it to Trouser.

And we're originally from any nishe Nova, Scotia on the east coast of Canada, and we decided to leave our small town and move to Ontario to kind of take a shot at making it in the Canadian music industry.

And we were about to release an EP in two thousand and two with four songs on it.

We had gotten management by then and a producer, and there was an acid jazz band out of Mississauga, which is just outside of Toronto, Ontario, with the name Trouser, and they sent us a cease in desist order, like we didn't even have ten fans, and we let alone, knowing what a cease and desist order was for using a name, and so it seemed a little bit dramatic to us at the time.

But then we had to change our name in twenty four hours and our bass player's mom are Basic player Jackman called us and said, you know, you can call yourselves the Truths because that means the same thing as Trousers and Trouser.

And we're like, okay, And we weren't thinking like this will be our name for the next twenty five years.

I mean, when you're young, you think, oh, I hope this lasts another summer.

And so we called ourselves the Trus and then we started getting hit singles, and that's the name.

I love that story.

I love I love how things are meant to be.

You know, that's an example, right.

So I know a little bit about Nova Scotia, and what I know about Nova Scotia is.

I had a fourth grade teacher by the name of Lilla Sterling, and she was most known for writing a book called Pipe Organ in the Parlor.

But so I learned a little bit about Nova Scotia through her and through her writing.

Tell me more about Nova Scotia and how it shaped your musical identity and approach.

Well, it's it's not a big place, you know, it's got I think it's got about a million people in it now, so it had less than that when we were growing up in the eighties, and we're like many generations into being Nova Scotians, like our grandparents and their parents and their parents were all Nova Scotians.

And the music culturally is very influenced by like trad music, like a traditional Celtic jig and real fiddle music, fiddle and piano, fiddling, guitar, tim whistle bagpipes.

That was the sort of music of the culture.

But we were rock kids.

We liked rock and roll.

But I think that the thing that seeped in was the very communal element of music down there where music was meant to be enjoyed in the kitchen or in the living room in a circle.

Nobody's performing and being and nobody's the audience.

It's all one and the same.

And you know, some people would pass the guitar to the right, and the fiddle will get passed to their right, and the tim whistle will get passed, and then somebody be sitting at the piano and somebody would scooch them out of the way.

And it was a very communal experience music on the East Coast, and so I think we took some of that forward with us.

And also our grandmother was like a classically trained concert pianist also played that Celtic style of piano.

So music was always in our house and in our home, and my dad was an amateur kind of folk artist, and our folk musician, you know, aimed to be that in his youth.

And so music which is always in us around us, and I think Nova Scotia was a big part of that.

So was there ever a Plan B for you guys or was this always Plan A and no plan B?

It was it was always plan A.

We when we started playing, and like we grew up, we started out in a very small town called Anti guin Ish, which is our where we were born.

And even though we jenagis and I moved away a bunch when we were younger.

We kind of came back there in the in the mid nineties and we started the band and kind of got instantly popular amongst the kids in town.

Like we could sell out bars when we weren't even old enough to be in the bars.

We have to get permission slips and have our parents come in.

So it was a tremendous uh buzz for us, like right away to be this cover band.

We were all young, and all the kids were trying to sneak into the bar, and even the adults would come in because we were playing like kind of classic rock covers.

So we always kind of felt like, oh, we're in a successful band right out of the gates because because everybody in town was coming to see us.

So I think when that started to hit us, we were like, we're doing this.

We got to keep doing this.

So I think it was always planning.

And there had to have been a first concert of some type that truly impacted you, whether it be from somebody that was you know, one of your neighbors playing, or whether it was a national act.

Can you tell us about.

That it was the for I think for me probably for Janinas two.

We went to see the Tragically Hip, you know, Canada's greatest band or one of the greatest bands in the world, and we saw them on their nineteen ninety eight Phantom Powered tour at the Halifax Arena which was called what was it called back Metro Center Metro Center used to be now it's called like a Scotia Bank thing.

But we went to see that show and they came out and they were mind blowingly incredible, and I was just like, this is this is it?

And and the thing is because we're in like a rural part at Canada, Antiginish is very small.

It's like a two hour drive to the city, which is Halifax, and so we didn't get a lot of big national acts or international acts coming around.

We just didn't.

But going to see the Hip because they would always come to the East Coast on every album tour.

I mean, that had a really big impact on us.

We're just like, this is They're just extraordinary.

And they played a key role in later in your in your career in terms of sort of you know, mentoring and helping you through things right very much.

So, I mean we always looked up to them.

We loved their approach, We loved their ethos, loved their music, loved their They were great live band, they were road warriors, and they wrote great songs.

They didn't seem to be too you know, like egotistical, and you know it was I hate to say, like very Canadian, but kind of very Canadian, and that would like be really good, you know, don't be too much of a jackass.

Do your show be great and and uh and then later on we ended up because we started having success of our own, we ended up on some bills with them, and we ended up getting a record produced by their bass player, Gords, and Clay was still a really good friend to the band and ended up doing a bunch of more shows with them and becoming really close.

And they were always like these really really really cool older brothers that were always going to be better than us.

But we just loved them and respected them so much that we were always like they were just a great well we got to keep aiming high to even just try to catch up with these guys, and and that's they were always that kind of that north star for us.

And have you guys in turn paid it forward and returned that to some folks that you've been mentoring.

Especially jam Hangus.

You want to take that, I think, so, yeah, Like, I don't know if you've heard of a band called the Glorious Suns, But when I first started branching out and producing other artists, they were pretty much the second artist, a second band that I sort of took a stab at producing, and they went on to have tremendous success even with some of the stuff that I that I had worked on.

And they were really green when I met them, as I said, like, you know, I'm interested in producing.

You like that sounds great.

What's the producer?

And I was like, you guys could really use a manager, like what a managers do.

So they're really still quite green when I met them.

But they had great songs, and they had a great work ethic, and they had a great spirit about them.

And so we did a couple of records together and took them out on tour and then they very quickly were just off to the races and having, you know, this amazing career of their own.

So uh, and there's been many many other examples you know too, like that that's sort of the biggest one.

But uh, we've called both Colin and I've worked with a lot of artists outside of our band, and you just try to, you know, whether it be by trying to write them the best song you think they need, or to try to produce a good recording for them, or just give them, you know, decent advice.

You know, it's sort of something we're always sort of mindful of.

Which is which is a perfect transition because the new album, The Bloody Light was produced by B and Jay from The Glorious Suns.

Well talk about what they brought to the process and how they pushed you guys creatively.

They're just getting they just get there getting back at me for all those all that all that bullying back.

In the THEA.

They brought excitement and they brought us back to a place.

It's almost like it felt like our first record again.

And they grew up fans of the band, you know, and obviously they have a really a long, illustrious history with Jenangis and it was an interesting power dynamic because Janis was always their mentor producer and now they're the guys in charge, and they definitely pushed us to come up with our best material.

I know, I know, leading up to this record.

It was a long time.

We went through a couple of different iterations of producers and songwriting arrangements, and it was just it took.

It was just this record took a long time, and I'm it all started to where we are now.

It started with a conversation between Jenangis and Brett in Toronto in twenty twenty three.

Brett had heard all of our demos and Brett's a very frank, honest, earnest guy, and he just thought, you know, we weren't hitting it.

It wasn't there yet, and he just asked Jenis almost like almost kind of sheepishly, if like, would you mind if I produced just one true song?

And we were at a point where, you know, we were like, yeah, let's let's do it.

Let's just see what happens.

And it was the first song we did was the song of the Bloody Light, and we were all like, Okay, this is it, we know it, you know it.

Let's let's keep going.

And then that led to the rest of the record.

They brought a real enthusiasm to it and again they they have experienced our band from the outside looking in, like they had been to our shows before.

They knew us.

They had been to our shows as fans, and then we became fast friends, close friends, collaborators, and so, but I think they still brought that like outside looking in opinion of the band, like this is what I want to hear when you guys take the stage.

You know, that was like the that was the real valuable viewpoint.

I think it's almost like they that classic.

They call it the beginner's mindset, having the fresh start approach with someone's view, which you guys seem to take that quite a bit.

You'd like to shake it up and and try different different things.

So is there a.

Typical songwriting process that you have and specifically for the new music, what was the songwriting process that you used.

It's always been the same.

It's like it starts with little bits and pieces of tunes and like I'm pretty much compulsive in my writing habits.

All write every day, and oftentimes it'll be something that I've come up with, something that might be it's never finished.

I always kind of leave it open ended.

I leave it because I know that when I bring it to Jen Angus and Jack, it's going to get better.

And then when we bring it to a producer plus that it's going to get better, I kind of leave it open.

And that's always kind of been the way, and we have all because we've been doing it so long, and I think the only reason we want to keep doing it is to keep it fresh and exciting for us.

Otherwise it's like we don't want to just be touring around as some band that we want to keep it like vital for us, and and I think that's always been the priority.

So when we get together with a really fruitful partnership, and that's kind of happened on every one of our records, we kind of just let we bring in our little bits and pieces and then let that thing take over and it becomes very cooperative and everybody's kind of throwing in and then it leads to, in our case, the best version of these songs.

We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk Podcast.

Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.

So take us further behind the scenes of this new music.

I'm going to ask about one song in particular that I really absolutely like, just to start off, the one Don't Get Lost in the Dark.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's cool.

That was one that I just had when I was working in on my sitting on my couch one night and just strumming.

I had I had the lyric You're off Beaten Path, and I had Don't Get Lost in the Dark, and I had a couple of other ones, and we knew it was good and we got together and started demoing it and it was like kind of a slow Ballady halftime thing and it was good, and you know, it wasn't like jumping out of the speakers and then the glorious suns guys.

I mean, we must have sent Jay and Brett one hundred songs demos, and that was one of the songs.

I remember Jay Brett's brothers said, I really like that, but I think in me, I don't know whose idea it was to bring it up to full time, but that was definitely something that happened in the in the pre production stage.

And then when we did that, like, oh, this is this rules now, this is good, you know, and it was just about putting into full time.

And I remember Brett was like, I feel like I know what you're talking about, but I want to know more of what you're talking about.

And that's it definitely made the lyrics just closer to the then they were a little bit further away, and then we brought them closer and closer.

And that's just up to like changing it to like let me keep you close to what you've known, like more conversational, more like you're talking right to the person.

And yeah, it's one of my favorite songs.

Who just played it the other night at one of our shows, and and I just I really enjoy it.

Anything you want to ADDE nine Oh No, I like that song a lot.

It's it's a different kind of song for us.

It's got unique production quality, and it's a great live song, and any song with that, you know, BPM is a good live song.

And yeah, I'm glad it made the.

Metamorphosis that it did because I think it would have ended up on the cutting room floor otherwise because it was just another pretty song and the Suns guys did a few key things to really make it pop.

Do you tend to when you're taking these songs out before an album release sort of feel like it's a little bit of a focus group to see what stuff is gaining, you know, immediate commers focus group, so like you know, you watch those those guys making TV shows and movies and then they have to watch people watch the movie like I don't get this and don't get that.

We don't really do that.

We just go out and play it live.

And that's when you know, the audience knows everything.

They're not always right, but they know everything.

And fortunately with these new these new songs, like the four we've released up in staples in the sets, so we're like, thank you, but the audience will let you know pretty quick.

And we've definitely learned that over years.

I remember, like our second record, which you know, was a big success and did really well, but there was a lot of jams that didn't translate quite as well live.

And I remember feeling that on our second record, like, oh, so this is what happens, Like they weren't and then we just had to like kind of cut some out, keep some in, rearrange things.

It's it's it can't be press, you know, it's like it and it's happening in front of a lot of people.

It's going down, and I don't like seeing people walk to the bar, so I want to keep them, you know what I mean.

So yeah, but we've gotten good at that and it's real and sometimes they're not always right, like I was just reading this thing on led Zeppelin.

Like the first time they played Stairway to Heaven, the people were like, mah whatever, like Stairway to Heaven led Zeppelin.

They'd just written Stairway to Heaven and they played it for a crowd and people were a little bit like play oh, I love you know, so like I mean, it doesn't mean you should stop making your great art or your art whatever it is.

It just it's it just can be very it's it's always like the test.

You go and play it in front of people, and that's the focus group.

And more, you know, my wife Jenny has been listening to our albums before they've come out, since our third record, and she so I'll always play it for her and she's always she she's not critical.

She'd just be like, that's my favorite.

She'll always point out to one or two that and she said those are my favorites.

And that's always interesting.

And now now more and more with my kids, you know who, like they'll be listening like, oh, this is your new music, dad, cool, I like that one.

I don't like this one.

I like that one.

You know that kind of thing.

So it's kind of funny and that like, we are so involved in the process and we have all these nuanced opinions of why should the bridge have been that long?

And maybe this isn't the wrong key and it's slightly too fast, and all these nuanced opinions.

People are just I like it or I don't like it.

You know.

That's like that's about as much as they think about it, and it's kind of we're in the business of this is awesome or this sucks.

Well.

Tell us about the other songs that are from the new album that are being well received.

I mean, the Breakdowns our first time atop the rock charts in quite a number of years.

So we're very happy with that.

Since we wrote it and recorded it with the Glorious Sounds two years ago, so that's been in our set ever since, because that song is amazing and everybody just absolutely loves it and Downtown again, which I'm kind of surprised because it's kind of a little bit of a a little bit of a bop and it's and people are really resonating with it.

I just in a live setting, I know that.

And my girlfriend like loves that song so much, but I had to get her to stop playing it because I'm like, she was playing it like fifteen times a day, and I was like, Caroly, Carolyn is her name.

I love that you love this, but I can't listen to the Trews all day while I'm also on tour with the Trews, you know what I mean.

So so it was one of those things.

But you know, in our live sets, there's been no people walking to the bar during the new, maybe unfamiliar songs, so I'll take that as a sign of a good sign.

There's also the next one to be released is called Manifest.

It's coming next month, and that's we've also life tested that quite a few times and it's it goes down well, yeah.

Oh I love I love that one as well.

I love everything that I've heard.

It's so infectious and it makes me want to see you guys live.

Are you down in Boston Boston area?

Yah, We'll have to let you know we're next time we're in Boston.

I'd love it.

I'd absolutely I'd love it.

And I love the fact that you guys kind of twist between you know, acoustic and you got the.

You know, the rock side.

I meanhow it's just is so diverse, but I want to I want to close going back a bit to the beginning of the interview.

So if you guys were to cover a Bob Dylan's song, what song would you cover?

And why?

Jokerman?

We always cover Jokerman.

That's my personal favorite Bob Dylan song, even though he's been on record as to say he doesn't like that songs that took him too long to write it, and he's wrong.

It's the best song licensed to kill Infidel's record.

I'd love to do Visions of Johannah, but that would be like impossible.

Yeah, I mean I could.

I could sit here forever.

And I mean, if I'm going to his classic period, it's almost too many to like approximately Queen Jane anything like that.

I mean, if we could make it as a buy Dylan tribute band, I would just do that.

And I also when we saw him in Buffalo two years ago or last year with Willie Nelson, Yeah, I can get paid to just follow him around and tour and watch his shows.

Now, I just do that.

I mean, like there's also I mean, buzz I'm gonna talk your ear off now, but there's like if you see her say hello or You're gonna make me lonesome when you go, or you know what, sugar Baby off Love and Theft, or even Murder Most Foul, which was like his last big single.

It's like a beautiful song.

I mean, I Do, I Do, I Do, no time, no time to think from Street Legal like those songs, like there's every period.

He's always genius.

You're you're from Boston, So what might explain our sound is we're like Dylan nuts on the one hand, and we love Aerosmith, So yeah, maybe that explains our band.

Oh well, I think there's got to be some affection that you guys have towards the band as well.

I have to think absolutely.

I mean, we actually got to record with the late great Garth Hutson.

We did a song on a tribute record for so Garth put together a tribute record for the band with him playing with every band and it's he's Neil young Is on that record.

You're young too.

But the funny thing is, so we were in Tokyo, Japan doing a band cover for the delegates that the Canadian Embassy in Japan, and we were doing the weight because that's like kind of a Canadian national anthem song you know.

And Garth Hudson's manager was there and he filmed us and he goes, I want this band on my upcoming Garth Hudson presents the songs of the band record.

I'm like, great, he's gonna get us to do the weight.

He's like, Nope, because you were in Japan.

I want you guys to do our song Move to Japan.

I'm like, okay, whatever you say, whatever you want, will do it.

But it wasn't exactly the classic period of the band, you know what I mean.

It was fun, it was a fun recorder.

It was super fun, but it wasn't like chess fever.

Yeah, and it wasn't.

It wasn't.

Still I'm still just happy to be there.

I would have just brought coffee for those sessions.

I'm fine.

But we ended up doing Move to Japan because Garth had it in his mind.

I saw this bamber farming in Japan.

Therefore they're doing the song.

Oh that's wonderful.

My god.

I'm gonna throw a plug for the new Richard Manual biography written by Steve Stephen t Lewis.

Which is fabulous.

You'll is that out?

Now?

It's out and it's terrific.

It is intensely researched, and you'll love You'll love it to death, you really will.

I am I am going to get that like now.

Yeah, you will love it.

But I love talking to you guys.

It's it's a blast.

Congratulations on the new music Colin John Angus.

It's a pleasure having you on.

See the truths, listen to the truths.

Love the truths.

Thank you guys for being on.

Thanks Buzz, really appreciate your time.

Man, Thank you buds, Take care.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a Walk podcast.

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