Now that promotional efforts behind their sophomore record The Last Of The Free Men have wrapped up, there is some change afoot in the camp of Moncton country outlaw band The Divorcees.
While the changes are not personnel related, they do stand to impact the band for the better, Divorcees drummer Brock Gallant shares.
The group has hired management for the first time in their career, going with Halifax-based manager Bruce Morel who also guides the careers of Moncton artists Samantha Robichaud and Glamour Puss.
While Gallant himself had held down the role of manager in the past, hiring Morel will allow Gallant, vocalist-guitarist Alex Madsen, bassist Denis ‘Turtle’ Arsenault and guitarists Jason ‘J-Byrd’ Nicholson and Danny Roy the opportunity to focus on what is most important – creating music.
“I have a young child at home so given a choice between spending time with him or being on the computer doing band business, it is a really easy decision. We have had a number of people that have helped us along the way but for the first time, we really have someone working for us as a full-time job,” Gallant says.
“The fact is Bruce is the only guy that has jumped on board with us, willing to get his hands dirty. He is our kind of guy – he gets what we are about and we get him. That is all that really matters.”
No doubt, bringing management on board will help steer The Divorcees’ ship more steadily in the future. Although the group did its fair share of touring to support The Last of The Free Men, promotional efforts still weren’t quite as strong as Gallant and the group would have liked to have seen.
“The promotional effort for The Last Of The Free Men never really got off the ground the way we wanted it to,” he says. “We tend to look at obstacles as challenges to up our game and continue to deliver a style of music that has yet to truly find a home.
“Our sound is considered to be too rock-oriented for country radio yet we aren’t considered country music by today’s mass media definition of the word.
Ultimately though, it helps to fuel our ‘us against the world’ attitude and frees us to hold onto our artistic freedom that might otherwise be stifled if we tried to ensure that we fit in with one format or the other.”
Although there are no firm plans in place in regards to which label will release future Divorcees material, the group is no longer affiliated with Hay Sale Records, the label who released both of their records to date.
Regardless, Gallant says that the group is actively working on making a new record and hopes that it is one that will ultimately be made right here in New Brunswick.
“You would think that with the amount of flag waving that we do, all of our records would have been recorded in New Brunswick but that isn’t the case.
In light of the Hay Sale label going dormant, we feel free to make the record we have always wanted to make.
“That isn’t to say that we are not extremely proud of our other records but there has always been a timeline to stick to. With our next record, I anticipate that we will take the time to get it right and release the record when we are good and ready to release the record.”
Article published in September 20, 2010 edition of the Times & Transcript