Through the ups and downs, through good times and bad, Canadian rock band Honeymoon Suite has soldiered on, enduring many lineup changes, alterations in the tastes of live audiences, and the shattering of the music business paradigm as it once was.
But, anchored by the creative heartbeat of the group, guitarist Derry Grehan and vocalist Johnnie Dee, Honeymoon Suite continues to be a staple on the live music scene (remember when we had live music?!?!) and also continued to be creative, releasing new music even when many of their 1980s contemporizes languished on the ‘retro’ circuit. Proving that perseverance pays off, the band’s most recent single, Find What You’re Looking For, which was released over the summer, burst into the top-40 charts across Canada – the first time the band had seen such popular and critical acclaim for nearly two decades, and an unheard of proposition for what is deemed to be a ‘classic rock’ act by modern radio programmers.
The song is the second the band has released in the last year, including 2019’s, Tell Me What You Want, which also garnered significant airplay, and both are leading up to a new studio album. Prior to the dislocation and disappointments created by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent ‘lockdown; measures, Dee said the as yet untitled album was well on its way to completion, with a hoped-for release by the end of 2020 or early 2021.
Alas, due to the fact that the band’s producer Mike Krompass had relocated to the United Kingston, there was no way for Dee, Grehan, and long-time bandmates Gary Lalonde (bass) drummer Dave Betts and keyboardist Peter Nunn, to finish the recording, let alone do any mixing or mastering.
“Covid has definitely put a damper on things. We’re almost finished the new record. I think there’s another three tracks that I still have to sing on, and we’re actually still finishing off a bit of the writing. We’re doing the recording with Mike in his studio just outside Birmingham and we can’t be there. So when you ask how we’re doing with everything, there’s loads of excitement because I think this is some of the best stuff we’ve ever done, but there’s a lot of frustration at the same time,” Dee said from his home on the shores of Lake Erie, not far from the band’s hometown of Niagara Falls.
“And of course, playing shows is also out of the question. As for the timeline for the new record, that’s a good question. Let’s see what happens. I do know we’re starting to book shows into next year. There’s a lockdown in effect so we can’t fly to England, and even if we did, we’d have to stay in quarantine for 14 days, which makes it no sense to even bother. So, there is really no timeline right now. I think just like with every other musician, it’s the same frustrating experience.
“We’re doing the best we can with doing things virtually and trying to promote the new songs as much as we can, since we can’t do anything else. All this stuff like Zoom is new to me, but I am trying to stick with it. As soon as we can get out of the country, we’re going to go over and finish the record.”
The loss of shows is particularly galling since 2020 was shaping up to be a busy year, with a fair bit of international touring happening, including the chance to open for one of the biggest rock bands of all time.
“It’s actually kind of hard to talk about it. We’ve done a lot of touring in the UK, but we’ve never really been back to go play there for a number of years. We hooked up with an agent over there who got us some shows, and he also booked us one in Sweden. And this is no word of a lie, we were going to play with Guns ‘n Roses. I honestly can’t picture Honeymoon Suite and Guns ‘n Roses, but there would have been like 40,000 or 50,000 people. So that kind of sucks,” Dee said.
“Anyways, it would have been a good year, but that’s just the way it is. I don’t want to whine because it’s not just me, it’s a lot of people who are suffering greatly over everything that’s going on. But we’re getting through it the best we can and compared to what I am hearing going on around the world, I think Canada has done a good job of keeping this thing under control.”
Krompass was recommended to Dee by Grehan, and in a sense is a bit of a departure from the sorts of big name producers Honeymoon Suite used in their late 1980s heyday. The band’s self-titled debut, which featured the hits New Girl Now, Wave Babies, Burning in Love and Stay in the Light was produced by Tom Tremuth. Their sophomore release, The Big Prize was produced by the legendary Bruce Fairbairn, and was highlighted by songs such as Bad Attitude, Feel It Again, What Does it Take and All Along You Knew. The third album, Racing After Midnight, which saw the band record the title song for the Mel Gibson smash hit movie Lethal Weapon, was produced by long-time Van Halen and Doobie Brothers producer Ted Templeman, and had the radio/video hits, Love Changes Everything and Looking Out for Number One.
Changes in lineups and record labels began the aforementioned rocky rock and roll road for the band, but with the solid foundation of Dee and Grehan, Honeymoon Suite never stopped doing shows or writing, recording and releasing new music. The album Monsters Under the Bed came out in 1991, followed a decade later by Lemon Tongue in 2001, Dreamland in 2002 and Clifton Hill in 2008. An EP, Hands Up, came out in 2016.
Dee said that the new songs are not a huge departure from what fans have been used to since the days of New Girl Now and Stay in the Light, circa 1984, but they are also not conscious replications of that past formula or even creative derivations of the same. What you hear now is music by the same people, filtered and molded by 35 more years of living and performing experiences.
“These things come naturally for us; we don’t think about it too much. We just want to make great songs. We listen to what we’ve done in the past and this is just an extension of that. There’s no hidden agenda or anything like that. There’s no one saying, ‘we’ve got to try this or try that to sound current,’ or whatever. It’s just what comes out naturally. It’s what we’ve learned over the years and I think it shows,” said Dee.
“Find What You’re Looking For, I think, is an inspirational song. I think it’s also kind of a wake up song. I think it’s saying, get up off your ass and get going. The lyrics pretty much say that in a very direct way. Every word that is in that song has been well thought out; it’s not just a ramble on thing. At the end of the day, we want to do positive, inspirational songs. The love songs, or the songs about my girl leaving – we’ve done that. And we will probably do songs like that again, but this one is a little different and I think the message and the tone has caught on, maybe because of everything that’s going on the world.
“Other than that, I really don’t know why the song caught on and got us back into the charts after almost 20 years. All I can tell you is that the song charted in the west in the mid-20s and it’s hitting the top 40 and better all across Canada. The weirdest things is we have talked to people in the business and they’re saying what we have done is unheard of because we’re in the classic rock category, which means we’re played on classic rock radio, but putting out new songs normally doesn’t help us because those stations don’t play new music from classic rock bands.”
Dee has a theory that because the song is not too heavy or not too soft, it fits a lot of formats a perhaps that’s giving it the opportunity to squeak back onto the airwaves – again, not of which had been planned out ahead of time.
“I have spoken to people at both AM and FM radio who are playing it. I think it’s because it doesn’t have the crazy loud guitars of Bad Attitude, and it’s got a crossover appeal because with my voice, I am not screaming at anybody. I think it’s a friendly, accessible song, but one that still rocks. It’s just the way it goes sometime, and there is some momentum now, and we’re going to try to keep that going,” he said.
For more information, visit the band’s social media channels, or www.honeymoonsuite.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for nearly 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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