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Trevor Hargreaves
Culture Maven

On a recent tour in support of the new album Source
Tags & Codes, Neil Busch from And You Will Know Us
By The Trail Of Deadsat down with our illustrious cul-
ture maven Trevor Hargreaves who attempted to
unravel the secrets and majesty surrounding the band.

So are you still where you want to be? Waking up
every day being in “Trail Of Dead”?

It's better than being a construction worker or painting
houses for a living or something.

Is it hard to avoid giving stock answers during
interviews since you have been getting so much
press?

Well, we kind of keep it interesting by lying a lot.

Should | bother to fact check after the interview?
| wouldn't do that.

How have the shows been on this tour?

Well, pretty good! There’s been a lot of blood-letting
and sacrificial lambs and people have been starting
fires in the middle of the audience.

! hear that you bring a lot of dressing room props
with you?

We travel with our separate little suitcase full of ritual-
istic artifacts. We like to make the dressing room seem

 

Walking Along the Trail of Dead

kind of homey, since some dressing rooms can be
really austere and office-like. We like to be comfortable
so we bring in things like a skull chalice to drink our
blood from and scented candles and whatnot.

The first time | saw you was at The Starfish Room
in Vancouver, followed by a show a few months
later at Richards on Richards. Within days of play-
ing the Starfish it got knocked down. I’m curious
if this is some sort of curse and if Richard’s will be
on the block next?

| don’t know...it’s quite possible. Ever since | bought
this Alistar Crowley book, really bad things have been
happening to us. The first place we played in
Vancouver was The Brickyard. The club itself is not
bad but it seems to be in a really strange part of town.

True enough, the nefarious “Gastown!”

As we were pulling up and the van was still rolling,
people were running along the side of the van knock-
ing on the windows saying, “want some crack?” and we
were like...yeah...but not now!”

| heard the Brickyard had to stop doing live shows
because the neighbours complained about the
noise!

Ha! Because it was disturbing their crack habit!

| noticed that on the website Amazon.com, your
band is listed under “Madonna”, what's the situa-
tion there?

Wow, that happened so long ago. Basically what hap-
pened is that we titled one of our early albums
“Madonna”. Some poor girl bought our record thinking
it was the new Madonna release and posted under the
fan feedback section of the site something like (with a
funny voice) “this record sucks, Madonna would never
do anything like this, | am really upset because blah
blah blah” and we got a big kick out of that.

So where is the bulk of your fan-base these days?
Well, originally Europe was where we did best, but
now it seems like recent tours especially in North
America have been really going well.

Do you have different distribution in Europe?
No..they just call it different things. It’s basically
Polydor overseas, which is Universal over here.

Domestically you’re signed to Interscope, a label
with a track record of several high profile artists
who have become unhappy with them. How have
you found them to deal with as opposed to the var-
ious indie labels you were previously associated
with?

| haven’t seen too much negativity. It’s still a lot like

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