Nowhere to go but up
Small town boys make plenty of noise with their fully realized sound
John Kendle



Located just 40 km south of Winnipeg, between Highways 59 and 75, Niverville, Man., seems like a typical small town on the prairies.

Agribusiness is the major economic activity. The 2,000 or so townsfolk are a mix of Mennonite, French-Canadian, Scottish and Irish. Local kids go to school at Niverville Collegiate Institute — “the home of the Panthers.” Many stay close to home well after graduation, never daring to go too far.

What may surprise some people, though, is that Niverville has long been home to thriving rock music scene. It even hosted a rock festival of its own in the late ’80s.

Bands form, break up and then reconstitute themselves all the time in Niverville, giving many aspiring musicians a chance to hone their chops.

“You’d be surprised,” says Jon Carr, keyboardist with The Morning After, a Niverville group that has become one of Winnipeg’s hottest acts in the space of just one year. “There are all kinds of people who play music in Niverville — and they play all different kinds of music.”

Carr’s bandmate Jean-Guy Roy concurs. The singer/songwriter/guitarist says music was a huge influence when he was a teenager.

“If you don’t have your driver’s (licence) or know somebody who does, you’re sort of stuck there,” Roy says. “There’s house parties on the weekend and I guess during the week you try to learn how to play guitar.

“In high school, just to make it to the city to a 7-Eleven to get a copy of Rolling Stone or Spin or Circus was an event,” he says.

Carr, 28, and Roy, 27, have known each other since childhood and have fuelled a mutual interest in music for as long as they can remember.

Carr’s father’s record collection was initially the source of their inspiration.

“He was the guy who knew all about music,” Roy says, motioning to his bandmate. “His dad was a DJ and did socials and what have you. I remember as a kid going to Jon’s house and seeing his dad’s record collection and putting on all kinds of stuff.

“I probably owe everything I know about music to Jon because he showed me all kinds of shit growing up.”

Though Roy was the first of the pair to acquire an instrument — a guitar at age 16 — Carr was definitely a teenage music geek. He soaked up sounds and learned as much about rock ’n’ roll as he could while Roy and others played hockey. When the hockey players began drifting to music, Carr was there, hanging around and helping out.

“I didn’t give a shit about hockey,” Carr says. “I think I played it once and said ‘that’s enough.’ There was a record collection at my house. I had to listen to it.”

Carr remembers being the bassist at the first gigs the pair played in their first band.

“Until we kicked him out because he was too shitty,” Roy laughs.

By the time he was 20, Carr was playing keyboards and piano and getting into bands of his own. He and Roy can reel off the names of a dozen groups that one, the other or both of them have been in, such as Mollycoddle, Wood People and Lucy’s Lying.

Because Niverville is small, it was natural that the town’s best musicians eventually coalesced, even if they were of different ages and tastes. Thus it was that guitarist/singer Stan Unrau, 33, and bassist Randal Kehler, 44, came to be in The Morning After.

“Stan probably played in four pages worth of metal bands before he played with us,” Roy says.

“And Randy is ‘the legend’ of the Niverville scene,” Carr adds. “He was in bands when we were just kids and he’s still playing.”

TMA’s core quartet first came together in April 2004, after the dissolution of Autumn 1970, a five-piece which had included Carr, Roy, Unrau and two other friends.

“Me, Jon and Stan decided to start something up almost in rebellion against Autumn 1970,” Roy recalls. “It was very technical and very restricting. We rebelled against that and tried to write stuff that was looser and more freeing — more rocking.”

With Unrau’s brother Wes on drums, the newly formed band got to work in Carr’s basement, jamming the tunes that became the core of their self-titled debut recording.

The 10-song album, produced at Unison by Scott Stewart (who is now the band’s third drummer), is the culmination of a year that has seen The Morning After take the city almost by storm.

The group first gained attention when it won the Pyramid Cabaret’s Search for Ra NRG contest last winter. Their notoriety was ratcheted up even further when TMA were was asked to fill in when another act cancelled out of a Juno Weekend showcase at Shannon’s.

That Juno gig — just eight songs long — led to the group being represented by Glen Willows, the former Harlequin guitarist who also handles Inward Eye, Tele and Quinzy.

Through last summer and fall, the quintet played show after show in the city, making friends with similar-sounding acts such as Telepathic Butterflies, Quinzy, Alverstone, The Waking Eyes and Novillero.

Like those of its Winnipeg contemporaries, the sound of The Morning After is a heady blend of Britpop, neo-psychedelia and North American indie rock. The band’s shows are high-energy, no-frills affairs distinguished by loads of energy and passion.

Roy throws himself about the stage like a dervish and his otherworldly scream can curdle blood when a song reaches its crescendo. Carr, all shades and hair, sits front and centre, looking for all the world like he’s somewhere else until the band kicks in, at which he comes alive with a presence not seen in a keyboard player since Bobby Wiseman trod the boards with Blue Rodeo.

The band’s album — initially begun with studio time won through Ra NRG — is probably one of the most fully realized debuts to emerge from Winnipeg in ages, but compliments such as this make the Niverville boys seem a little uneasy.

“I’m not sure we intentionally came out and said let’s sound like this or that — it just came out of the songs,” Roy says.

“It seems a bit ridiculous to be where we are now. When we started we played a couple of shows with other bands where we asked to open. Then we did Ra NRG and played there every week for that. Since we did the Junos we haven’t had to ask to book a show. The schedule has always been full,” Roy says.

“It’s been an unbelievable time and we’re incredibly lucky,” he continues. “But we did make a conscious decision when we started that we would try to play every show we got asked to play. Every weekend if we had to.

“Instead of sitting around the coffee shop wondering how great it would be to be a band that played shows and toured, we thought, ‘Let’s be a band that plays shows and tours.’”

Now The Morning After is a band that plays shows, tours — and has a new album to support.