Kids today

SPECIAL CONNECTION: Billy Talent

by ERIK LEIJON

Sometime in between that one song bemoaning how teachers don’t listen to them, and that other number lamenting how their parents don’t understand them, Toronto-based pop punkers for the disenfranchised youth, Billy Talent, became one of the biggest acts in Canada. Although it’s fun to deride the finely-coiffed thirty-somethings and their formulaic brand of catchy, crunchy riffs, Billy Talent toiled in obscurity for a decade before hitting the arena circuit, and possess thick-enough skin to withstand blows from the elitist rock press.

“You can’t get away from being categorized,” says drummer Aaron Solowoniuk from his home in Toronto, preparing for their upcoming Canadian tour, including a first visit to the Bell Centre. “We’ve been called emo, pop-punk and everything else, but I say we just play rock music, and we don’t try to get away from classifications. One time, I remember, we were called skater screamo, and I’m not even sure what that is, but we’re not trying to get away from what people think of us.”

The 31-year-old is still in awe over Billy Talent’s Pulp-like ascension to prominence after years of being ignored. Eleven years after forming (initially under the name Pezz), they were given their first record deal in 2002. At the time, Solowoniuk recalls still being so skeptical of fame that he held on to his assembly-line job at the DaimlerChrysler plant. Eventually, he and the others quit their jobs and moved from Toronto to Vancouver to begin work on their eponymous debut.

It’s your typical middle-class-to-riches story, but it’s those lean years that have allowed them to look at their rise with levity. Not every band would relish the opportunity to play as live background music for a dirt-bike trick show in front of 25,000 people in Munich, but they enjoyed the experience.

Solowoniuk and the band are also learning to live as mouthpieces of the MySpace generation. With a wife and child of his own, it’s been a humbling, and often confusing experience to hear from fans half his age how relatable Talent’s tales of woe are to their own lives. “It’s strange to have someone tell you that your music has had a special connection with them. Usually, when someone tells me how our music helped them, I ask, ‘Are you sure?’ or ‘Really?’”

Solowoniuk admits that becoming family men has changed them, but the youth angst that propels their songs hadn’t become mechanical when it came time to write their second big-label release, II. “It’s not like we went into the studio thinking, well, ‘Ben wrote a great song about suicide on the last album so let’s try to do that again.’”

Solowoniuk cites Rage Against the Machine and Tool as bands that inspired them to play music back in the early ’90s. “I don’t think those times can be recreated, and there’s nothing wrong with music today. If I were a teenager today, I’d be just as excited about new bands. But it was a great time to be a teenager, in 1993.”