TORONTO — Canadian rock band Moist wrapped up its first bonafide cross-country tour in more than a decade with a show last week at the Hard Rock Casino in Coquitlam, B.C.
The group — minus original drummer Paul Wilcox and bassist Jeff Pearce — hit the road in early November in support of Glory Under Dangerous Skies, its first collection of new songs since 1999’s Mercedes 5 and Dime.
Singer David Usher, who now calls Montreal home, said reuniting after so many years just felt natural.
“When we first decided to get back together we had really just decided to commit to a few shows, so last year we did six shows,” he told Global News. “But from those shows, it became really apparent to all of us — almost without speaking about it — that we were going to continue and make music.
“It was a very strange thing where suddenly we hit the stage and it all sort of made sense.”
The tour came 20 years after Moist released its debut album Silver, which went four-times platinum in Canada.
Toronto-based guitarist Mark Makoway said regrouping was made easier by the fact that the members of Moist had remained friends and collaborated on various projects over the years.
“If we were all enemies for the last 10 years this would be a completely different experience,” said Makoway. “It was a bit surreal when we got back together but it’s sort of like getting together with a really old friend and after five minutes it seems like there hasn’t been any time apart.”
Usher, who released eight solo albums between 1998 and 2012, said he has a greater appreciation for Moist.
“The first time through there was this whirlwind element to it where it was all new, and it was so intense and so fast all the time that it was really difficult to take stock in everything,” he recalled.
“Now, because we’ve got a lot more experience and partly because we’re older and more chilled out about a lot of things, you have more time to take stock of different things in the band and value them differently.”
Usher said he learned “a million things” during his solo career but felt the time was right to be part of Moist again.
“It was something that I’d be far enough away from that I felt like it was going to be really fun to experiment with us again, what we do again.”
The new Moist decided to go back to its roots for Glory Under Dangerous Skies and eschewed the slick production of its last album.
“Perhaps this record is a reaction to that,” Makoway explained. “Going back to more of the way we approached records initially: A band sets up, a band plays songs, a band pushes record.”
Usher added: “We’d written the songs but we hadn’t over-rehearsed the songs. We didn’t know the songs inside and out. When we went in to record them the energy and the excitement was still there. Not every word is written, not every note is beaten to death.”
Still, they weren’t sure the new album would connect with Moist fans.
“I tend to get sort of bitchy the night before the release,” Usher admitted.
“You pour yourself into a record and there’s a lot of time and a lot of everything that goes into making the record.”
Usher and Makoway conceded that how people access music has changed significantly since Mercedes 5 and Dime. Fewer people are buying whole albums and some aren’t paying for the music at all.
“At the end of the day you can’t change it,” said Makoway. “Hopefully somebody who does illegally download the music will really like it and tell a few friends who do end up going out to buy the record.”
Usher is philosophical.
“You can’t control those things,” he said. “You shouldn’t really worry about them.”
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