Matt Mays Defends Kid Rock

Matt Mays & El Torpedo worked with producer Don Smith on their self-titled 2005 album. For the new Terminal Romance, which comes out on July 8 through Sonic Records, they enlisted another studio veteran (who, like Smith, had also produced The Tragically Hip), Chris Tsangarides.

"We wanted this record to be less rootsy and a little more guitar rock," says Mays in explaining the choice. "Chris Tsangarides is really good at recording instruments.

"He worked the tape machine and was there on all the early Black Sabbath records as a kid, standing at the tape machine and watching everything go down. Then he started engineering Judas Priest records and high-fidelity heavy metal and Thin Lizzy. We're huge Thin Lizzy fans and Phil Lynott fans."

The band recorded 14 songs at the tiny The Ecology Room studio with Tsangarides in the remote southern England village of Kingsdown, but only nine of them made it on to Terminal Romance.

"We did a lot more hard rock, real balls to the wall stuff, and we couldn't get it sounding right as far as sequence goes," says Mays of the decision to shelve some of the material. "There were songs like 'Rock Ranger Record' that were very poppy, and (likely singles) 'Digital Eyes' and 'Northern Belle' are very poppy.

"I love that stuff. I love Teenage Fanclub and really melodically-driven stuff, but with heavy guitars. I've always wanted to do a record like that. But at the same time, we love Thin Lizzy and ZZ Top and bands like that. Thin Lizzy was a melodic hard rock band, but I'm thinking more along the lines of ZZ Top and Motorhead and hard rock. So we recorded some songs like that in England with Chris because that's his forte. We ended up canning some of those from the album and we're going to put out an EP — hopefully within a year — called Get Lucky. It will be all of that more blues-rock-driven stuff."

Terminal Romance was mixed by two-time Juno Award winner Mike Fraser at Vancouver's The Warehouse. That's where Mays says he came up with the vision for what he wanted the album to become.

"The record felt really unfinished for a while, and it kind of worried me. When we were in Vancouver mixing, the whole album cover concept came to me along with the name and what we should do song-wise to cut it right down. The song 'Get Lucky' that we did was supposed to be the first single. All the guys at Warner were like, 'This is the one. This is the single.' My manager and everybody was like, 'This is the one.' But I pulled the plug on it and I wasn't really a popular guy on campus for a while. But it just wasn't right. It turned out to be a more poppy guitar record."

Matt Mays & El Torpedo (the 2005 album) was released in the U.S. by the Sony BMG-distributed 00:02:59 label, which Mays says will also likely issue Terminal Romance south of the border. While El Torpedo guitarist Jay Smith lives in Sydney, N.S. and bassist Andy Patil and drummer Tim Jim Baker live in the Halifax/Dartmouth, N.S. region where Mays grew up, the group leader now lives closer to the American record company in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"It's great," says Mays of life in the Big Apple. "I have a life down there now with friends, and a little studio set-up."

Mays is using that studio to begin work on a new album.

"I'm going to do something a little more acoustic-driven — something upbeat, but a little more acoustic," he says of the project. "I've been recording so many songs these days, but I kind of found this thread with about 10 of them that I think will fit together. I think this album has presented itself and I'm going to get to work on it ASAP."

There's also the matter of touring in support of Terminal Romance, which will include an opening slot on Kid Rock's western Canada trek in July.

"We're taking some heat for it, which I think is ridiculous," admits Mays. "I don't think people really know Kid Rock.

"He spent a long time working hard and he broke through and then faded away again. Kid Rock can sit down with an acoustic guitar and play you, word-for-word, every Hank Williams song ever written. He's mainstream, but he's original as hell. I've talked to a lot of people who have talked to him or interviewed him, and they say he's the nicest guy in the world. I think he's just happy to be where he is, and he's done it his way. If he wants us to come on tour with him, I take that as a huge compliment and we're going to go. We don't need to explain ourselves.

"Trust me, we've had a lot of tours offered to us from bands who I won't mention who we're not really into their music and we've turned them down. There's been a lot of money offered to us that we need really bad right now, and we've turned it down because we didn't think it was right for the band. But Kid Rock has done his thing and worked hard and has driven around in a lot of tour vans and loaded gear into a lot of clubs. That's where we're coming from, too, and I think it's going to be a good thing. It just felt right. If my gut says 'Yes,' we're doing it."

If you'd like to see Matt Mays & El Torpedo without having to hear "Bawitdaba" or "Cowboy" afterward, the band are planning a cross-Canada headlining tour for November.

Here are Matt Mays & El Torpedo's Canadian dates:

July 2 Quebec City, QC @ Chez Dagobert
July 3 Ottawa, ON @ Le Breton Flats' Rogers Stage (Ottawa Bluesfest)
July 5 Victoria, BC @ Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre w/Kid Rock
July 6 Vancouver, BC @ Pacific Coliseum w/Kid Rock
July 8 Whistler, BC @ Garibaldi Lift Co. Bar & Grill
July 9 Kelowna, BC @ Prospera Place w/Kid Rock
July 10 Grande Prairie, AB @ South Bear Park w/Sam Roberts Band
July 11 Edmonton, AB @ Rexall Place w/Kid Rock
July 12 Calgary, AB @ Pengrowth Saddledome w/Kid Rock
July 14 Banff, AB @ Wild Bill's Saloon
July 15 Saskatoon, SK @ Saskatoon Credit Union Centre w/Kid Rock
July 16 Winnipeg, MB @ MTS Centre w/Kid Rock
Aug. 2 New Glasgow, NS @ New Glasgow Music Jubilee