IN CONCERT
What: Headstones with SNAKEandtheCHAIN featuring Bif Naked
When: Nov. 10 at 8 p.m.
Where: Capital Ballroom, 858 Yates St.
Tickets: Sold out
Hugh Dillon doesn’t search for reasons when it comes to the enduring popularity of the Headstones, because all he sees are results.
“You’d better have good songs and be good live,” Dillon said. “That seems to cut through time and space. We wouldn’t be successful now if we weren’t writing and playing on that level.”
The band’s reputation as a raucous live act has carried Dillon, guitarist Trent Carr and bassist Tim White — his co-founders in the Kingston, Ont., group — through countless ups and downs during their 28-year career.
It hasn’t always been easy. The Headstones came to a halt in 2003, after drug and alcohol abuse took their toll. Dillon pursued an acting and a solo career before the band reunited in 2011 for what was expected to be a short run of reunion dates.
When those went well, a full-scale reformation was inevitable. “The thing that was going to kill us was the narcotics and alcoholism. Being able to sidestep that huge pitfall bought us longevity. Now, we’ll do it until we’re too old to do it.”
The band’s performance at the Capital Ballroom tonight is just their third Vancouver Island performance since 2002, which has upped the anticipation considerably. Four cities on their month-long tour feature several dates, including two shows at Vancouver’s sizable Commodore Ballroom, and tonight’s show in Victoria — the biggest of their career in this market, from a sales perspective — sold out in advance.
None of this appears to surprise Dillon. With the Headstones’ rambunctious brand of guitar-based rock largely out of vogue in 2017, the Headstones are giving fans what they have apparently been missing.
“Authenticity is a rarity,” Dillon said. “It’s part of the appeal for fans, and that’s what appeals to us as a live band.”
The Headstones were known for their palpable sense of danger at their peak, with Dillon as the ultimate gob-spitting puppet master (in concerts during the early 1990s, when he was a spiky-haired punk, Dillon would leap into the audience, injuring either members of the crowd or himself). Headstones hits When Something Stands for Nothing, Smile & Wave and Unsound were as confrontational as they were catchy.
Time mellowed the four-time Juno Award nominees, but not so much that longtime fans will leave shows on the band’s current tour disappointed at the results. Dillon is 54, but he’ll put his abilities up against anyone.
“We don’t know what we’re going to do, or what level of inebriation our fans will be at, when we come on stage,” Dillon said. “People show up with an intention to rock. And that is in the air.”
In the early 1990s, putting money on the long-term viability of a group fronted by Dillon would have been a sucker bet. The controversial figure found himself in the eye of several storms around Kingston, both on and off stage. A move to Toronto didn’t quell the fires within, either.
“I don’t know just where I fit in yet,” he sang on the 2001 song Blowtorch, an odd statement given that it arrived more than a decade into the band’s successful run. But that’s Dillon. His maniacal magnetism was always part of the appeal.
It turned out that his crackling energy was perfect for an acting career. After dabbling in film in the mid-1990s, he pursued acting full time after the group’s initial split, landing key roles on TV shows Durham County and Flashpoint. He earned a Canadian Screen Award nomination for the latter.
When he returned to the Headstones in 2011, it was with a renewed passion. He was never a big believer in the traditional music industry, so Dillon began taking more of an interest in the band’s business dealings.
The band used a crowdfunding campaign to fund the release of its 2013 album Love + Fury, resulting in the Headstones’ first Top 10 album. They followed a similar path for 2014’s One in the Chamber Music, but signed with Cadence Music out of Toronto — in a surprise move — for their new effort, Little Army. Dillon was happy with the decision, and not simply because it gave them yet another chart hit.
The label has bridged gaps with audiences the Headstones couldn’t achieve on their own, he said.
“There’s a connection with the fans that we never had. It actually made us more accessible, which, in turns, made us more accountable, which in turn made us work even harder. When you see the folks who love you and believe in the band, it personalizes things. You see them on Twitter and you see them on Facebook, and then you see them at gigs. It becomes a community.”
Dillon likes to keeps social media at arm’s length when possible. Looking back, he’s glad it wasn’t prominent during the group’s earlier years.
“The social-media part of it wouldn’t have served us very well in the old days, because we were too debaucherous,” he said with a laugh. “It would have been caught on film. I’m very grateful that we bowed out at a particular point in time.”
Don’t expect the Headstones to bow out again, Dillon said. Not with their second chance humming along so nicely.
“We are doing it for ourselves, for our own deeply satisfying needs. But no matter what, you still have to claw your way through that wall of apathy, so it’s got to matter. It’s got to be meaningful. It’s got to be good. And you have to prove yourself every time.”
mdevlin@timescolonist
