(Belleville, ON) – Since their early days in Halifax back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, April Wine has been a staple on the Canadian rock and roll scene.
After relocating to Montreal, throughout the 1970s and 1980s the band churned out hit albums and singles with impressive regularity and continue to be a popular draw on the concert circuit, with two and sometimes three generations of fans turning up to hear such classic tunes as I Like To Rock, You Could’ve Been a Lady, Say Hello, Roller, Fast Train and Rock and Roll Is A Vicious Game.
The group, which features founder/guitarist/vocalist/primary songwriter Myles Goodwyn, long-time lead guitarist/vocalist Brian Greenway (a member of the band since 1977) and relative newcomers Richard Lanthier on bass, who joined in 2011, and drummer Nip Nichol, who signed on a year later, will be rockin’ the Empire Theatre in Belleville this coming Friday, May 29.
Greenway told Music Life Magazine that the band always enjoys playing the Empire because they know they will be treated exceptionally well by owner/promoter Mark Rashotte.
“He’s a great guy and has that great guitar collection upstairs at the theatre. We absolutely love playing there because he’s a guy who has played a lot of shows himself and put on a lot of shows and he just gets it. There are a lot of promoters out there who just don’t understand. I remember a couple of places we played where the people thought because they buy us for a show that they owned us for the day. The guy said he planned a big family dinner and told us we were coming. Excuse me? I don’t think so. He learned pretty fast. He got pissed off too and called the agent to complain – he was laughed at, but he still complained,” said Greenway, who actually was a little late for our phone interview because he was doing his karmic good deed for the day.
“I stopped the car for a second to rescue a little bird that I guess had fallen out of its nest. I drove by and saw it there and figured it was going to get run over. So I stopped, went back and put it up on the lawn. But I ended up blocking traffic at one point and all these people were beeping their horns at me, and I also had the bird’s parents clucking away at me. It was kinda funny.”
Few rock bands have the sort of legacy that April Wine can trot out for every show they perform. Greenway said the band does about 50 shows a year, but that’s down from 90 to 100 of a few years ago, mostly because 66-year-old Goodwyn wants to slow down the touring and also work a little more with his new blues band.
There was talk a couple of years ago that Goodwyn would ‘retire’ from April Wine, and play only select shows with the band, while other shows would feature a different vocalist. But folks (including concert promoters and their clients) continued to want to see April Wine with Goodwyn so he will continue to rock concert halls and festivals across Canada and the United States for the foreseeable future.
“Myles doesn’t like to travel in the winter any more. But I know we could play a lot more shows and a lot more of them in the United States if we wanted. I know that everywhere we go these days we are very well received,” he said, adding that the band recently completed a successful 10-day stint in Western Canada. One thing that Greenway continues to be impressed with is the varied age range of the audiences at April Wine shows.
“There always seems to be a pretty good breakdown of the generations – younger, older and in between. We are a guitar-based band and I think lots of people still like to see a good guitar band, especially younger people and younger musicians. And our songs are still played a lot on the radio so that helps. But I think a lot of it is word of mouth because so many younger people don’t listen to the radio any more. I guess kids are also discovering their parents’ LPs or they grew up with the music in the house because their parents played it all the time.”
As stated earlier, Greenway has been with April Wine since the band’s salad days of the 1970s and into the 1980s, and he still gets a kick out of playing the band’s repertoire of hits night after night.
“I like to play and I like to play a lot. I don’t know if it’s because deep down inside I am an egotistical person who is a showman and wants to show off to the people constantly. All I know is I practice a lot to hone my craft and get better, get a little faster and more accurate. So I don’t think it’s ego. I just love to play,” he said.
The challenge for a band such as April Wine is creating a set list each night that makes as many people in the audience as happy as possible. What this means is certain songs have to be played every night, limiting the number of variables and changes Goodwyn and company can make for a given show.
“For our shows we are hired for 90 minutes, not the two or three hours that Paul McCartney, Springsteen or Rush play and we don’t do intermissions. So we have to cram a lot into that hour and a half. So we do have a lot of songs that we’re expected to play at every show or we end up disappointing a large portion of the audience who come expecting to hear the big hits from the radio,” he explained.
“We try to bring in some deeper cuts from time to time. And it’s also difficult because there are almost two April Wines: there’s the one that did You Won’t Dance With Me and those types of ballads and then there’s the one that did I Like to Rock and Roller. We don’t play the ballad-y stuff so much. I think we just do a couple of slow-tempo numbers – Rock and Roll Is A Vicious Game and Just Between You and Me, the rest are the rockers that people want to hear.”
With April Wine playing a less hectic schedule, Greenway is looking to explore some other avenues to keep busy and stay creative. He already plays some shows with former April Wine bassist Breen LeBoeuf, and does incorporate some April Wine numbers.
“They don’t have to always be Goodwyn compositions because we have a lot of cover songs that were hits for us too, and there were also songs that I wrote for various albums that never got performed live. I would love to produce other people’s music too but nowadays it’s all done at home and digitally and I am not up to speed on a lot of the new technology. I would love to do a lot of things but it’s funny, I think people think I am unavailable because I have been so long with one band. I just need to let people know that I am open to doing some new and different things,” he said.
“As for April Wine, we’ve always said we’re going to work until we couldn’t any more, whether it’s because there’s no longer an audience or for health reasons. Right now, we’re still out there and putting on great shows.”
And one of those shows will undoubtedly be this Friday, May 29 at the Empire Theatre in Belleville at 8 p.m. For tickets or information, visit http://www.theempiretheatre.com/april-wine/. For information on the band, visit http://www.aprilwine.ca.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: April Wine is also playing the Regent Theatre in Oshawa, ON on Thursday May 29 and Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, ON on Saturday May 30. For complete tour schedule visit http://www.aprilwine.ca/shows/
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
