Editor’s Note: Ready for some “fatal four way” rock and roll? On April 13, London Ontario four-piece rockers Pro Wrestling The Band will release their latest EP Weanling via Thick Freakness.
You can watch the Jackie Borrie-created lyric music video for “Tarps”, which was recently shared by the band, below:
“‘Tarps’ is all parts origins of emo in its intro/bridge, borrowing from ‘Girl From The North Country’ in its verse, and boasting a sing-a-long chorus that rivals the best of its kind,” vocalist/lyricist/guitarist Danny Kidd tells SWT. “While musically upbeat, ‘Tarps’ speaks of the tent living community of the Forest City from the perspective of one of its own. The lyrics plead with the listener to look for humanity in the desperation of modern-day houselessness.”
The EP’s tour precedes a May UK tour with best friends and fellow Canadians Dealbreaker.
Below, Kidd wrote an exclusive essay for SWT about how the band has defied initial expectations and discovered their identity. Pro Wrestling The Band are ready for the the main event.
There are only so many places to practice in our hometown of London, Ontario. The one that most bands find is the same place we found, a storage locker in the heart of the city. We are Pro Wrestling The Band, a four-piece of countrified power pop with the spirit of punk and handbook of hardcore.
We had released our first vinyl record on Grooves Records, the label of the store that has employed three members of this band. It was a collection: one side the EP “Falling In Love With,” and the other a compilation of singles we had amassed and slowly released over the years. The record was partly inspired by Black Flag’s “First Four Years”, partly inspired by Lemuria’s “First Collection”. It was, and is, a representation of what we were discovering about ourselves in those first couple of years as a band, without really knowing what we were doing. Were we going to get full Nudie suits and do the Gram Parsons thing? Were we going to wear all denim and act like Neil Young? Were we the Replacements? Could we get that drunk? We tried everything. It was the pandemic. It was weird.
It was unclear at the time of our band’s inception whether we would ever even play a show. It was unclear if anyone was going to. It was all live streams and people meeting on different video apps. I, for one, got very drunk and paraded around my apartment trying to write country or power pop songs. Most of these ended up as our first singles.
Fast forward 5 years.
When it came time to write Weanling, we did what we always do: Go into our room at the Storage Center and bash away on our instruments until something feels good to us. I might have a verse or a chorus, sometimes both, but if a song doesn’t move us in the practice room, it never leaves it. Most of these songs were written and rewritten lyrically, trying to find a balance.
“Tarps” and “Don’t Mind Me” were an exception to this rule. Craig came to us with “Don’t Mind Me” essentially completed, and it quickly became a live staple. The way it feels to play that song is indescribable; it takes me to a new place emotionally each time we play it. It’s sort of a love song, sort of putting to bed who he used to be. It’s the perfect song to encapsulate all we were and where we were headed.
“Tarps” is a song that we’ve tried many times and have never gotten right. It’s something that I’d written, recorded and buried for a long time. I was unsure whether we could appropriately communicate the content. In the end, we found a little inspiration from the likes of Rites Of Spring on the bridges and guitar solo (triple-tracked). Lyrically, it’s about the tent communities near where I was living at the time from the perspective of one of its own.
The decision to record Weanling live off the floor was easy; we had gotten really good at playing together. When we first started performing around London, everyone had spent the last year or two at home. We were the new kids on the scene, and the community gravitated toward us. If people showed up, we needed to give them a reason to, and that’s been our MO ever since. As long as the show is booked, we are going to show up and play the best live show we have in us. We learned that watching the Sadies.
Recording live also saved us a lot of money. If you’re recording the drums, you might as well throw in a bass track, and if you’re doing that, you might as well throw in some guitars. Recording is expensive, no matter who you are. We are a band that has eaten shit more than once and will probably continue to do so (please, please, if you’ve got any money, we will take it), so anything to save a buck without compromising the vision is a thing we do.
To help us craft our songs and engineer the project, we hired Kyle Ashbourne at the Sugar Shack in London, ON, a person we trust and have collaborated with before. It was a simple choice. Kyle has grown with this band, catching sounds along the way and making sense of our notes or lack thereof. We had the sense to get a few good quality demos of the songs through our friend Dennis Anderson and his studio. With those demos sent to Kyle in a message, we booked and recorded.
Long ago, I made up my mind: I was doing this band thing for life. In the last year and a half, I’ve found sobriety and had a new epiphany; I could try. Pro Wrestling the Band and Weanling, in particular, have been the testing ground. We started doing the videos last year, before even having the finished version of the songs. We’ve had so much art created by Jackie Borrie. So many reels made by Craig. So much social media. We sent out so many emails, and the train keeps rolling. There are more emails to send out, more reels to be made, and videos to be teased and posted. I haven’t even mentioned the UK tour, Rock In The Name Of Eternal Love, that we booked with Dealbreaker out of Welland, ON.
Maybe all of this is fake, maybe the internet isn’t real, but a temporary place we’ve hung our hats for now. We’re doing all we can, and we’re doing it all DIY, hoping that someone will take notice. If they don’t, fuck ’em. We know we’re good. We will do anything for our art, no matter what anyone says is the way. The more I’m learning about this, the more I’m starting to think there is no right way, just keep trying and don’t break up.
Danny Kidd
Contributor
Danny Kidd is one of the guitar players, vocalist and lyricists of Pro Wrestling the Band. Having worked with Wasted Potential, Single Mothers, Drew Thomson etc he is always busy. Currently he lives in London, Ontario with two tuxedo cats and Jackie Borrie.
