Taking the high road
The High Dials hope to make every gig on current cross-country tour
John Kendle

Trevor Anderson is down for the count. Fighting a throat infection and high fever, the singer/songwriter with The High Dials is bedridden at home in Montreal, and his band has been forced to cancel three shows in southern Ontario.

But he’s determined to do an interview in advance of the Dials’ Winnipeg show, especially after the group was forced to cancel its last gig here, more than a year ago, due to troubles with ‘Bernadette,’ its temperamental band van, which Anderson says has now been completely overhauled.

“That was a nightmare, right at the beginning of our last big tour. We were stuck in Sault Ste. Marie on a long weekend with nothing open, and we missed all our shows except for Vancouver, and we ended up gunning it right across the country, straight, to make that show,” Anderson says, still sounding rueful.

Full details of that seemingly cursed 2004 tour can be found at www.thehighdials.com. The unbelievable odyssey ranks beside Dave Bidini’s On a Cold Road as essential reading for anyone looking to discover what life is really like for Canadian rock bands — or rock bands in general.

Illness aside, circumstance seems to be on the side of Anderson and his bandmates — bassist Rishi Dhir, new keyboardist Eric Dougherty, guitarist Robbie McArthur and drummer Robb Surridge — as they prepare to launch themselves cross-country this summer.

The band’s new album for Rainbow Quartz, War of the Wakening Phantoms, just hit stores on June 7, and it’s a stormer. Though not a concept album like its predecessor, 2003’s A New Devotion, the 14-song album is rich with songs of love and longing, idealistic bliss and shattered dreams.

“Maybe it’s mood thing. Beyond the sounds, I find that it’s linked in some thematic way. There are things that deal with illusions and fantasies and songs that deal with relationships. There are a lot of love songs,” Anderson says.

“Looking back now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think the sounds on the album almost came from trying to place the music — to evoke a quite desolate and windy place.”

‘Atmospheric’ would be one apt description of the recording. ‘Rich’ would be another, as these songs are rounded out with plenty of keyboards (hence the addition of Dougherty to the band this spring). A mandolin, banjo and flute also make appearances on War..., as do strings and horns. The tracks range from old-tymey acoustic folk (The Drum) to Small Faces-ish rock (Our Time is Coming Soon) and expressive neo-psychedelia (Strandhill Sands).

Though the group is a favourite of Little Steven Van Zandt, who has championed it on his Underground Garage radio show, Anderson says he now feels more affinity to bands such as The Flaming Lips, Wilco or The Doves than he does to the garage bands to which the Dials are often compared.

“I sort of identify them afterwards,” he says of these inflections. “I didn’t think it through when I started writing songs. I just started doing it — but there are new influences seeping in, sure.”

Asked what may seep in as the band traverses the country on its upcoming tour, Anderson laughs.

“Not much,” he says. “It’s so hard to do anything but zone out and stare at the Trans-Canada,” he says.

June 9th 2005