“We love Johnny Brenda’s! Of course, if we could sell more tickets and sell giant rooms, that would be great, but we love playing Johnny Brenda’s. It really is a room with such a vibe and a feel; you couldn’t build a room like that now, so I’m glad it’s going strong,” says Luke Lalonde, vocalist/guitarist/frontman of Canadian indie rockers Born Ruffians, who are gearing up to play their umpteenth show at Fishtown’s mini rock n’ roll ballroom on the third night of a month-and-a-half-long North American tour that kicks off this week and features the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection’s own Queen of Jeans handling opening duties.
The October 4th show will be Born Ruffians’ first local gig since multi-instrumentalist Maddy Wilde has become an official recording member of the group… although she’s not exactly “new,” joining the group prior to their 2022 stop at Johnny Brenda’s and their slot opening Brooklyn Bowl for Tokyo Police Club last November (Wilde’s former outfit, Moon King, also opened JB’s for Born Ruffians in 2013.) “A prerequisite to joining a band is, ‘Do I like hanging out with these people?’ For us, it was a mutual, ‘Yes, we enjoy hanging out with each other!’ We were like, ‘We like to jam with you and write with you!’ Plus, she just has so many ideas to throw out there,” Luke Lalonde tells me during a summer phone chat that came about a month after the June 6th release of Beauty’s Pride, Born Ruffians’ ninth studio album.
I ask Luke if he’s had any favorite reactions to the LP, and he tells me that there were a few, before admitting that it can be difficult to gauge before taking an album on the road: “The most meaningful are either from fans or friends or family. Any time someone goes out of their way to send those little messages, those are the most validating things, but it’s hard to feel it until you play it live.” However, the quartet did play a handful of festivals prior to our chat (and a few more after), which Lalonde says were quite fun: “With the new songs, it’s kind of like clothes. You buy this new hat and you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I can pull that off.’ There are some songs that we were like, ‘Maybe we should pull that out of the set until we can practice more [laughs], but I almost like it when things could fall apart.”
This May, Born Ruffians released a visual companion to their ninth LP, “Beauty’s Pride: A Film by Jared Raab & Born Ruffians.” “It’s this sort of doc, sort of music video, and sort of trailer for the record,” Lalonde explains of the short film, which has the four members reflecting on two decades of making music. He admits that he’s a big fan of the film, although doesn’t think he deserves a ton of credit for it: “It’s so good, and I can sing its praises because it really is Jared Raab’s brainchild in so many ways, and [producer] Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay Goldstein from July Talk worked on it, and Mitch [DeRosier, Born Ruffians bassist] did the archival footage, but I didn’t really have a whole lot to do with it… The lyrics are from my brain, but the movie very much is not, it was a collaborative effort.” He also says that the film would seem to further develop a lot of his lyrical content: “It managed to bring out themes in the record that were there, but maybe not fully galvanized. It brought out a lot of emotions in the songs and made them more poignant.”
Lalonde tells me that, despite Born Ruffians being indie rock veterans, his approach to the songs has remained largely the same. “The essence of writing has always been a pretty natural evolution, and the things that change are really things that change about yourself. It’s always been just me sitting down with a guitar,” he explains, going on to say, “Writing has always been a happy place for me. I’ll always be doing that, even if I’m not releasing music.” But he admits that there are some aspects of releasing music that have definitely changed during the band’s tenure: “The landscape in which we put out music has totally changed. When we started there was no MySpace. We had to put things in the mail or in someone’s actual inbox… and then there was the rise of MySpace, and streaming…” However, he also confesses that, like songwriting, touring feels basically the same as it ever did: “Even in the smartphone era, you’re sort of off the grid when you’re on tour. You’re sort of on the grid, but you’re never more off the grid than when you’re on tour. We always maintain that the mission is that we’re on a road trip with friends.”
Opening night of Born Ruffians’ upcoming run (October 2nd) actually coincides with the 10th anniversary of RUFF. “I love that record! But the anniversary thing… there’s so many now, 10 kinda feels like, ‘Eh… [laughs],’” jokes Lalonde of the band’s fourth LP, before admitting that he just found the session files, so he may consider some remixes… But in terms of what you can expect to hear (and see) at Born Ruffians’ return to Johnny Brenda’s this Saturday, he tells me that having about twenty years under their belt actually makes things a bit complicated, but in a good way…
“It’s hard when we have so many records now. It’s a champagne problem, I guess you’d say. We have so many songs we want to play and so many songs fans want to hear. We don’t have like massive hits, which is kind of a nice problem to have, but it’s about what does the average Born Ruffians fan want to hear and, as a band, we obviously want to play the new music… We just want to make everybody happy [laughs]. Other than that, it’ll basically just be a Born Ruffians show, no flamethrowers or pyro, we’ll just get sweaty at Johnny Brenda’s and jump around a lot.”
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**Listen for a Born Ruffians classic on the latest edition of Philthy Radio, now streaming via Y-Not Radio.
