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Craig Garber:
All right. Hey everybody, this is Craig Garber. Welcome to Everyone Loves Guitar. And man, we got a great guest today with Dan Mongrain, of course, the guitar player from Voivod. Dan has been requested by a number of people over the years to come on the show. Most recently, Perry Gray. So I want to thank Perry for pushing the straw that broke the camel’s back. And I’m so glad I got a hold of Dan. He’s super intelligent. He’s incredibly musical and talented. And we’re going to have a great conversation. All right, Dan, Cliff Notes on Dan, most well known as a guitar player of Canadian Prague metal band Voivod. Voivod’s released 15 albums winning back to back Juno awards for their last two records, The Wake and Synchro Anarchy, which are great albums. I encourage you to listen to them. Both of those were Juno awards for best metal album of the year. And Dan’s writing was featured heavily on both of those records. Dan was asked to join the band after their original guitarist, Denise Piggy Damour. passed away in 2008. Dan’s also the co-founder, guitarist, and vocalist of the Prague Death Metal Band, Martyr, which he co-founded with his brother at age 14. And that band, Dan was in that band from 1990 to 2012. Dan’s also a well-respected session and touring player in Canada who’s worked with over 80 bands and artists in a wide variety of genres, including blues, rock, hip hop, classical, Prague, and metal. His latest cover band is a tribute to progressive music from the 70s. It’s called Jurassic rock. Uh, again, check out Dan’s got a great cover of him playing deep purple and the song focus, which is such a killer song on, uh, on YouTube and he playing a strat there too, man, that was nice to see. Uh, Dan graduated from university of Montreal with a degree in jazz interpretation and as if his schedule isn’t busy enough already, he also teaches jazz and pop guitar. in theory at a college in Quebec, which could you say the name because I’m going to destroy the whole French language.

Dan Mongrain:
It’s just an acronym, so it’s called Cégep, but basically it’s just a college before university between secondary school and it’s only in Quebec.

Craig Garber:
Okay, cool. Also, make sure, check, definitely check out a video of Dan playing City Nights by Alan Holdsworth on YouTube. It is really phenomenal. Let me tell you a quick story before we get started. So, Dan was a huge fan of Voivod as a kid before he joined the band. And I, when I said to him, I wasn’t 100% familiar with Voivod’s catalog. I’ve listened to an occasional song here and there And I said to him, Hey, can you give me some albums that I should listen to? And I was so impressed with his answer because he gave me three albums before he was even in the band. He goes, look, this is really important. And you know, it wasn’t about like, this is me, me, me. And I thought that was really cool. It showed his passion for the band and the music. And I, and I listened to it and I was able to see the progression and the changes of the band. And then he, you know, recommended. the last two records, The Wake and Synchro Anarchy. So I thought that was very impressive when you did that. So, you know, a lot of people are all about me. So yeah, you weren’t like that. Anyway, man, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you coming on the show. It’s good to connect

Dan Mongrain:
Thanks for

Craig Garber:
with

Dan Mongrain:
having

Craig Garber:
you.

Dan Mongrain:
me, it’s a real pleasure.

Craig Garber:
My pleasure. All right, let’s dig in, man. You started playing guitar at age 12 and this is mind blowing how talented you are. You founded Marter at 14 and you are really a pretty skilled player at that point. So, My question is how did you get so good so quickly?

Dan Mongrain:
Oh my God, thanks. I didn’t feel I was that good, but we learned music, piano lessons at a younger age, like around seven, eight, lasted a couple years. I said we because my brother was in the band as well. And so I wanted to do like him. He started before me. And my mother still at 80 year old, singing in the choir.

Craig Garber:
Ah,

Dan Mongrain:
and

Craig Garber:
that’s

Dan Mongrain:
classical

Craig Garber:
awesome.

Dan Mongrain:
music. So she was already into choir and she used to play the organ at masses when she was young, when the masses were everyday in Latin and obligatory in her village. And so music was always there from my mother’s side and we started to play the piano. And I would fool the told to learn but I could read some of the notes but then I bullshitted my way into the song and she didn’t notice until she put a music sheet in front of my eyes and I couldn’t really read it efficiently. So the ear was developed through singing with my mother and she will tell me if the note was wrong and all that and so

Craig Garber:
That’s awesome.

Dan Mongrain:
yeah at an early age And then I left the piano thing because I was not very disciplined to practice and the kind of music didn’t really appeal to me. So I stopped for a while. And when the video clips started to appear on TV on the equivalent of power hour or much music or, you know, when rock bands started to be more available through the TV, we didn’t have cable so there was a channel, distorted channel, we couldn’t see the image but we could hear the music so we tuned in on that channel and I could see bands like, you know, it was the beginning of Guns N’ Roses and Metallica video era and there were some Iron Maiden and Celtic Frost and bands from Europe and we really started to like that. that style of music. So we decided at some point to let go of our sculpted wooden fake guitars as a

Craig Garber:
Hahaha.

Dan Mongrain:
kid and stop pretending. And since we had a bit of knowledge, musical knowledge, we gathered some money and we could buy our own first instruments. My first guitar was very, very cheap, under $200. And it was a… But with my economy and I didn’t have enough money for a strap, you know,

Craig Garber:
Sure.

Dan Mongrain:
but that’s, that’s where we, we started to, uh, to fool around with it. And, uh, then I, I, that, you know, to answer the question more directly, uh, that became my main focus, you know, like eight, 12 hours a day.

Craig Garber:
Right.

Dan Mongrain:
And I would go to school and come back to dinner just to play one hour and then go back and come back and play and just. It became an obsession.

Craig Garber:
Right.

Dan Mongrain:
And that’s how I think at 14, we were able to play our first show as a original band with a few covers, but it was a dedication a hundred percent, you know, all the

Craig Garber:
And your

Dan Mongrain:
time.

Craig Garber:
brother was obviously as dedicated as you were.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah,

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
yeah, we were practicing separately in our own rooms and we didn’t have amps for the first year. So we would use the neck of the guitar, like the headstock, and put it on the wall because the wall has air between, you know, the cheap rock and the…

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
And it could amplify a little bit the sound or, you know, with the desk or a cardboard box.

Craig Garber:
That’s

Dan Mongrain:
So

Craig Garber:
wild.

Dan Mongrain:
we… used it and I discovered it by accident. Oh, if I put my headstock on the cardboard box, I can hear myself louder because of the vibration. And so after one year we could buy amps and it took a while to discover the distortion, how it worked, you know? I didn’t know it, you had to put the drive at 10 and then the volume at one. But when I discovered it, I annoyed everybody. Because I used to play the same lick over and over and over and over and over. He drive everybody mad in the place and until I got it, you know, and that’s, that was the kind of obsession I had to

Craig Garber:
That’s cool.

Dan Mongrain:
improve. And

Craig Garber:
Hey

Dan Mongrain:
we

Craig Garber:
man,

Dan Mongrain:
were.

Craig Garber:
how do you think that would go over today if you told some kid just getting started, hey man, I’m gonna get you a cardboard box. Ha ha ha.

Dan Mongrain:
Right, yeah,

Craig Garber:
Different time,

Dan Mongrain:
it’s

Craig Garber:
different era probably

Dan Mongrain:
different

Craig Garber:
would not be

Dan Mongrain:
times.

Craig Garber:
as well received. That’s awesome. Was your mom tough? Like, you know, like it was, was it like working for your parents? Cause you know, when you work for your parents, if they’re self-employed, like my, my I’ve been self-employed pretty long time and all my kids have worked for me and they did not enjoy it.

Dan Mongrain:
Mm.

Craig Garber:
Um, was it the same thing? Like, was your mom a tough teacher with you guys?

Dan Mongrain:
She was not a teacher, but she was not tough with us. She was not involved in the lessons that much. Maybe they were a bit tough about the time we had to practice piano. We had a timer machine.

Craig Garber:
I like the

Dan Mongrain:
And

Craig Garber:
egg timer.

Dan Mongrain:
I used to turn it, so it took 10 minutes less.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
play the piano but they were very straight on that but that’s it I guess. And when my mom noticed that we practiced so much around the age of 14 I started to have private lessons with a guitar teacher that opened my mind and really opened the to many kind of guitar playing that I didn’t know, like the shredding type, you know, Satriani and Vive and Monstein and I studied those guys and I learned the modes and the scales and oh wow, you know, it was all new and exciting. So I learned a lot of techniques and that’s around that age that we played our first show with the band.

Craig Garber:
What were some of the challenges early on as far as getting Marder moving? And my real question is how did you have the coping skills and how did you deal with these challenges at that young of an age? Like how did you work through all this?

Dan Mongrain:
It was a matter of context actually. The family life was not easy and I think music was a refuge. for us to survive, to cope with the situation. So that’s why I put so much of my focus and attention to it because it was a savior for me. And it was the only place I could be myself and good and constructive. It could have been drugs, it could have been going out with guys and do something stupid in the street. It was music, I was lucky enough it was music. And… That’s why we were always encouraged by our mother to, she knew where we were. We were practicing the guitar in the house. We were

Craig Garber:
Right.

Dan Mongrain:
not

Craig Garber:
You can’t get in trouble when you’re practicing guitar in your room. Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
exactly, I think it’s called resilience, you know, like when you take a bad situation and you try to make something good, but it was quite innocent and not conscious,

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
but I’m glad we were, my mother is really, really strong in you know, in that situation where it was really strong about keeping us out of trouble, but without us really knowing it, you know, at the same

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
time. So it was, it was that circumstances, those circumstances that brought us to really develop and focus on something constructive.

Craig Garber:
Now I know why you like my bio. So we have stuff in common.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

Craig Garber:
I’ll tell you a funny

Dan Mongrain:
Adversity.

Craig Garber:
story about that. Yeah, man. I’ll tell you a really funny story. My daughter who just none of my kids live at home anymore. My daughter’s 23 and she sent me

Dan Mongrain:
Mm-hmm.

Craig Garber:
a text the other night. She said something like, you know, dad, now that I’m an adult, I’m realizing all these things you told me were correct. And she said, one of them is, I never understood it. Yo’s used to tell me, nothing good ever happens outside after midnight. And she goes, I really get that now. And I was like, it’s just kind of like what you’re talking about. You try to like, you know, give some protection or whatever and they got to, you know, so.

Dan Mongrain:
And at the same time, she experienced it.

Craig Garber:
Right.

Dan Mongrain:
So you have to experience it, but if you

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
don’t have any advice before, maybe you can get lost. But if you have someone who told you in advance something that maybe at the time can sound like a, how do you say, a paternalist or

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
a… You know, you’re still seeing it. And then there’s this moment that, you know,

Craig Garber:
Yeah, no,

Dan Mongrain:
bring

Craig Garber:
it was very,

Dan Mongrain:
back those.

Craig Garber:
it was very rewarding for me to hear that because,

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
you know, you don’t you never know what’s going through their heads. So I was happy like, Oh, good. So maybe she’ll listen to me. I don’t know. She’s listening to me now about things she’s doing now. But you know, like you said, they got everybody’s got to experience stuff on their own.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, important.

Craig Garber:
What was your first break with Martyr and how did that break come about?

Dan Mongrain:
Um… I think we created The Break. It was not easy. Early 90s metal scene was the biggest and the weakest at the same time because you had Metallica, a black album, but then The Grunge took over.

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
And you had only a couple of bands that would be on top of the world in the metal scene but the rest of the scene was suffering a lot. I remember that there was no more local metal shows. The 80s was over, Grunge took over, and we arrived exactly in that, how do you call it, bottom of the wave, so to speak. And so we started to practice a lot and build our own world, you know, compositions and put some covers just to learn how to play as well. but we had to organize shows, organize events, be a entrepreneur really, but I didn’t think of it that way, just wanted to play.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
But it was like, okay, we have to talk to locals, venues and to organize a show, and I was not even 18, you know, so maybe 15, 16. So we rented a place and rented a sound like a PA system and asked a friend’s father of a friend who do sound to do the sound for the gig. And we could sell tickets enough to pay the stuff in advance. It was all secondary school kids that bought the tickets and we made sure that it was an all-age place. alcohol, no alcohol, and even the electrician of the place didn’t want to plug the PA electricity. So I said, I’ll do it, you know, 16 years old, I don’t know anything.

Craig Garber:
Right.

Dan Mongrain:
And, and we had to create the posters and photocopy them and put them all over around the city with tape around the polls and around the businesses. So that’s how it happened, really. There was no help for anybody, maybe a couple bucks here and there from parents, but that’s how dedicated we were. I remember when we started with Martyr, at the very beginning, we couldn’t find a drummer. We didn’t know anybody having a drum set and some guy at school, the… pretend to be a drummer and he said that he could play the drums, but he didn’t have a drum set. So we gathered 60 bucks to rent a drum kit for a month. And I realized when he started to play that he didn’t know how to play.

Craig Garber:
Oh my

Dan Mongrain:
So

Craig Garber:
god.

Dan Mongrain:
I listened to some records and I’ve learned how to play to show him how to play in order to have a band. So I started to play like For Whom the Bell Tolls and stuff like that, early

Craig Garber:
Oh

Dan Mongrain:
Metallica

Craig Garber:
my god.

Dan Mongrain:
songs. And I, oh, the hi-hats doing this and the snare. Okay, because I knew about rhythm a little bit, but I discovered how it worked and I had to teach the guy the first beats and then we could play. So creating your own opportunities, really. That’s how we learned. There was no big break or first break. I think it was part of the process to create it, but it was very innocent at the same time. We just wanted to get out and play and do a band, you know, like that’s it. That was the motivation.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, so you didn’t realize how hard you were actually working because it was just, hey, I wanted to just do this gig and I got to just get this shit done to get that done.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah,

Craig Garber:
Wow,

Dan Mongrain:
yeah,

Craig Garber:
that’s

Dan Mongrain:
looking

Craig Garber:
awesome,

Dan Mongrain:
back

Craig Garber:
man.

Dan Mongrain:
at it, I don’t know if now I could do this, you know, but back then it

Craig Garber:
I

Dan Mongrain:
was

Craig Garber:
get

Dan Mongrain:
like,

Craig Garber:
it.

Dan Mongrain:
yeah.

Craig Garber:
That’s awesome. That would a great story. Uh, Voivod is known for Piggy’s use of dissonant chords, right? But I listened to some of the older martyr stuff and you were playing chords like that back then was that. Like Piggy’s influence on your playing, or is that just the commonality or

Dan Mongrain:
Definitely. Voivod is probably the band I’ve listened to the most in my entire life. All genre mixed, you know, like so it became kind of a musical part of my musical DNA, part of my musical journey, like my teachers. Piggy and Voivod are my musical teacher, songwriter teacher. Complimentary parts, you know, functioning, bass and guitar, talking to each other, dialogue, how to have a nice simple melody over a chaotic harmony underneath it. You know, Snake is a genius at writing or singing beautiful melodic lines over

Craig Garber:
He

Dan Mongrain:
strange

Craig Garber:
is, man.

Dan Mongrain:
and very strange chords. And he always, it was his only band. It’s his only band, so he’s always been in that environment. So his ear is used to that. And so it was a big, big influence on songwriting, dissonance, and twists and turns like unpredictability in music. That’s always something that up to this day, I’m looking for when I’m listening to new music, I discover new bands, I want to be surprised. That’s what Voivod gave to me. I want to have a big surprise in the middle of the song. I want to be destabilized by the music. That’s why I’m a big fan of Cardiax as well, a band from the UK that’s completely insane from the 70s, 80s. They existed until 2008. And yeah, and contemporary composer as well, you know. in classical music and so Voivode has been maybe the trigger of that kind of thought, that kind of perception of music and wanting to be surprised all the time and their influence was from the 70s prog and the punk movement

Craig Garber:
Yeah, who

Dan Mongrain:
and

Craig Garber:
is

Dan Mongrain:
the

Craig Garber:
there?

Dan Mongrain:
new wave

Craig Garber:
Who

Dan Mongrain:
of

Craig Garber:
is,

Dan Mongrain:
British heavy metal

Craig Garber:
yes,

Dan Mongrain:
as well.

Craig Garber:
the early, the punks. It was interesting listening to the progression of the changes to the band of the albums that you gave me, going from like real punk thrash, like, and then it was, it’s really amazing to see like evolutions of bands sometimes, you know, cause it’s, it must be so rewarding when you’re in the band to actually participate in this and then look back and, you know, see the growth, which is kind of cool.

Dan Mongrain:
It’s cool to be able to do this with the band in the time, you know, it must be something that you think of in the time versus the band. you know, Pink Floyd, Van Der Graaf Generator, Genesis. Emerson Lake and Palmer and Gentle Giant and stuff like that. And there was some electronic music involved as well. Craftwork and some other kind of music. All mixed together, it became this thing called Voivod, which was really even early on different than other metal bands from different sound from the Bay Area, different sound from Because in Quebec, progressive music was really big in the 70s. You had bands like Gentle Giant coming, playing around Montreal, but not going to the States, Genesis as well, and Pink Floyd and all those bands. Yes, was not that big in the U.S., you know? And we had our local progressive rock band as well, like Slush and Dionysos and bunch of great, great progressive bands from the 70s in Quebec. It’s all in French. So,

Craig Garber:
Oh, okay.

Dan Mongrain:
so maybe it didn’t cross some of the borders because of that, but it’s amazing how talented and great the bands are and I’m rediscovering it right now because I was born in 76. So I discovered Prague through Voivode and went back in time to discover more and more and more. and became a fan of those men as well. So I discovered what influenced the guys of Voivod afterwards.

Craig Garber:
Awesome story, man. Thank you. There’s a video view

Dan Mongrain:
and I’m going

Craig Garber:
on YouTube

Dan Mongrain:
to leave

Craig Garber:
and you’re

Dan Mongrain:
you

Craig Garber:
like

Dan Mongrain:
with a little

Craig Garber:
18

Dan Mongrain:
bit of a brief

Craig Garber:
or

Dan Mongrain:
introduction

Craig Garber:
19.

Dan Mongrain:
to the project. I’m going

Craig Garber:
And

Dan Mongrain:
to

Craig Garber:
first

Dan Mongrain:
leave

Craig Garber:
of

Dan Mongrain:
you

Craig Garber:
all,

Dan Mongrain:
with

Craig Garber:
it’s

Dan Mongrain:
a little

Craig Garber:
so

Dan Mongrain:
bit

Craig Garber:
weird

Dan Mongrain:
of

Craig Garber:
to

Dan Mongrain:
a

Craig Garber:
see

Dan Mongrain:
brief

Craig Garber:
you with

Dan Mongrain:
introduction

Craig Garber:
a telly,

Dan Mongrain:
to the project. I’m going to leave you with

Craig Garber:
uh,

Dan Mongrain:
a little bit of a brief introduction to the project. I’m going

Craig Garber:
but you’re

Dan Mongrain:
to

Craig Garber:
playing

Dan Mongrain:
leave you with

Craig Garber:
a telly

Dan Mongrain:
a little bit of a

Craig Garber:
and

Dan Mongrain:
brief

Craig Garber:
you

Dan Mongrain:
introduction

Craig Garber:
are fucking

Dan Mongrain:
to the

Craig Garber:
tearing

Dan Mongrain:
project. I’m

Craig Garber:
it up,

Dan Mongrain:
going to

Craig Garber:
man.

Dan Mongrain:
leave you with a little bit of a brief introduction

Craig Garber:
And

Dan Mongrain:
to the project.

Craig Garber:
it

Dan Mongrain:
I’m going

Craig Garber:
sounds

Dan Mongrain:
to leave you with

Craig Garber:
like,

Dan Mongrain:
a little bit of a brief introduction

Craig Garber:
like

Dan Mongrain:
to the project. I’m

Craig Garber:
kind of like Satriani sort of stuff, you know? And, uh, you know, it was like very, you know, I think you had a little. You’re like, listen, I’m really sorry. I just did this. So I’m like, sorry. I’m like, shit, I’d like to be able to like play that at my finest moment. And this guy just like rolled out of bed or something. He’s like, apologize. Um, and, and I watched a lot of the videos, uh, of you in general for this interview and your, uh, your work ethic and your commitment to excellence is clearly something that’s important to you and something I have a lot of respect for. And I actually think it’s. A good indicator. of defining the quality of a person. Like when you have a, when you meet someone with a good work ethic, they’re usually a really good person, you know, cause you know, they’re not, they’re not looking for shortcuts, you know, they’re, and you know, they, they’re just good people. Um, but I was curious, how did those values come about for you? And I know hearing some of the early story, I’m starting to put it together now, like you had no choice, but, um, talk about that for a minute if you can.

Dan Mongrain:
Well, just going back, the picture with the Tilly you saw was a recent picture in a store in Japan with a mini, mini child. guitar.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
So I didn’t really play that guitar. It was just the picture.

Craig Garber:
You know what’s funny? I don’t really interrupt you. I said, God, this guy must be seven feet tall because I was going to ask you that before we started. Hey, you’re a big, that thing looked like a little baby.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah,

Craig Garber:
Now

Dan Mongrain:
yeah, yeah,

Craig Garber:
it

Dan Mongrain:
yeah.

Craig Garber:
was

Dan Mongrain:
It

Craig Garber:
a

Dan Mongrain:
was

Craig Garber:
baby.

Dan Mongrain:
tiny.

Craig Garber:
I

Dan Mongrain:
Really?

Craig Garber:
was like, holy shit, this guy’s gigantic.

Dan Mongrain:
And I bought one a bit bigger than that for traveling, but then I gave it to a kid that started to play and all that. And, and, uh, yeah, that, that session was just a friend of mine, but he bought a console with a recording device. So I, I want to try it. Are you available that day? So I rented a drum kit. Uh, I played the drums and write the song in my head the same time. And then I played the bass, pretty much improvise, and then I played the guitar and that was it. It was really improvised that

Craig Garber:
phenomenal,

Dan Mongrain:
one. But

Craig Garber:
man. It was incredible.

Dan Mongrain:
so having a copy of it was, when I found it again in my computer, oh fuck, I did this. I didn’t remember, but thanks. It was fun to do. And I was listening to a lot of Satriani and Vi back then. So I’m sure it, you can hear the influence. For the work ethic, I don’t really know. It’s pretty, I think I’m organized, but I’m K-ethic at the same time. So I make lists of what I should do in a day and the lists are pretty much always too long. So I cannot finish them, but yeah, exactly

Craig Garber:
That’s my

Dan Mongrain:
like

Craig Garber:
short

Dan Mongrain:
this,

Craig Garber:
notebook.

Dan Mongrain:
yeah.

Craig Garber:
I’ve got another one in a big notebook.

Dan Mongrain:
But it’s a way to remember what’s our priority and what I have to do. But when it comes to practice, I practice a lot of years more organized and all that, even in university. But the time when you get older and older, it seems that the time is flying faster. And it’s hard to get a hold of time, really. You have to take it. You have to sit down and decide. I’m not waiting for when I have time. I take the time and that’s a never ending fight. And nowadays my practice are really towards more of a knowledge of the, deep knowledge of the instrument rather than technique. But I try to combine both like practice something which will make your finger move, but also think and learn and have a different perspective on the neck. And it’s a lot of back to basic kind of thinking. Sometimes I play, like I remember in 2020 or 21, during the apocalypse, like I

Craig Garber:
Yeah

Dan Mongrain:
say, many times, I played one year in C major.

Craig Garber:
Just that was your whole, that was your chord for the year.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, I played everything in C major, no modulation, and I’ve learned so much doing that.

Craig Garber:
So

Dan Mongrain:
I’ve

Craig Garber:
you

Dan Mongrain:
learned

Craig Garber:
really learn

Dan Mongrain:
so

Craig Garber:
how

Dan Mongrain:
much.

Craig Garber:
to work within individual, very tight individual positions on the neck, how to make something out of limited space.

Dan Mongrain:
limited space and then you transpose the limited space in different area of the neck and then you connect them together and you learn all your diatonic arpeggios and all the ways to do it and create voicings that you can go up and down the neck with choice of strings or choice of intervals and you know quartal harmony intervals all over the neck And when you know it in C major, it’s easier to know it in any other key because it’s the same neck on the guitar. That’s the beauty of the guitar. It’s that you can transpose anything, just moving your hand. It’s

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
not like the piano or a saxophone or a trumpet where every position is kind of different. So I’ve worked on that. And also I bought a few books from Carol K.

Craig Garber:
The bass player? Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
alive and working and she’s on socials and I had a few uh uh that conversation but comment exchange with with her and she is taking care of sending the the books by herself and sending emails and all that but she made some books in the 50s I think when she was a guitar teacher and uh it’s still available with audio and there are some exercises in those books that are really That’s what you need in order to understand the verticality of the music. You know, thinking about harmony more than lines. In rock, we think linear. You know, we use one scale and we shred, you know, there’s not much chord involved. But in jazz or in music that has a lot of different substitution. different kind of harmony and modulating music like jazz, you need to know your chord tones, to approach them, to think in substitution over a certain harmony. And the way she explained it in those books is so simple, it’s almost boring, but that’s the genius of it.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
I think, you know, when you like… In Tai Chi, you can repeat the same 26 or 24 movements for a lifetime. And I’ve seen women in Japan, 86 year old, better in better shape than you and me.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
Even though we’re not so bad, but repeating the same movement for a lifetime and discovering new things.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
So back to basic for me is really important. That’s where you, you solidify everything else.

Craig Garber:
Does she have this on a website, Carol K website?

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah,

Craig Garber:
Okay, I’m gonna go check that.

Dan Mongrain:
karaoke.com

Craig Garber:
Great.

Dan Mongrain:
and on a Facebook page as well that will lead you to the website.

Craig Garber:
Thanks.

Dan Mongrain:
There’s a DVD too and of course when you’re in music and into teaching and I went to university, I study, so sometimes the whole book is just the one page inside the book that you need.

Craig Garber:
Right.

Dan Mongrain:
The rest of the book you know, you understand, but sometimes it’s just two music staff and that’s the two music staff that you needed to learn.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, yeah. Well, you’re also at the level where, I mean, you’ve got a lot of knowledge already. So getting that one little nugget, you know, realistically, that’s all you can sort of expect with as long as you’ve been at this. But it’s so valuable. I know exactly what you’re saying because I’m always studying marketing stuff and it’s the same thing. It’s like,

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
you know, people say, why are you studying that? You kind of know it. I’m like, yeah, I’m just looking for what I don’t know, you know.

Dan Mongrain:
Exactly,

Craig Garber:
That’s what’s

Dan Mongrain:
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Craig Garber:
important to me.

Dan Mongrain:
And a perspective sometimes, a different perspective of what you already know,

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
and it opens to another world. It’s good for the brain. You can almost feel your brain cell getting excited, you

Craig Garber:
Yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
know.

Craig Garber:
yeah, that’s how it works. I agree with you. Um, tell me about a time, Dan. No, let’s talk about Japan. Cause you mentioned it already. You’ve been to Japan eight times. I know you speak some Japanese as well. And I, and you mentioned in some interviews, you’re an admirer of the culture there. What specifically is so different there and why do you have so much admiration for it?

Dan Mongrain:
Well, it started when we went to Japan the first time. It was my second show with Voivod, believe it or not.

Craig Garber:
Oh my god,

Dan Mongrain:
And

Craig Garber:
how cool is that?

Dan Mongrain:
first time out of America, North America.

Craig Garber:
Sure.

Dan Mongrain:
And so we arrived there and we arrived in Tokyo, first of all. Tokyo is not Japan. Japan is not Tokyo, but Tokyo is a different planet really. And I was so impressed. So… So many differences and the jet lag is 12 hours and it

Craig Garber:
Oh my

Dan Mongrain:
hits

Craig Garber:
god.

Dan Mongrain:
you like a baseball bat in the afternoon. So all those elements and die hard fans waiting at the hotel to sign stuff and just walking into the city, going to Akihabara, the electronic city, and then the Tokyo Tower and then… You know, we took the metro system and, but what struck me the most was the language, the musicality of the language, the sound of the language. And I haven’t heard Japanese before because when we grew up as kid, we had the Japanese manga shows or the early grandizer and stuff like that. And Ultraman, the superhero. And so we were fascinated by all this. But, and I. I did Judo when I was a kid as well, and some of the name of projections and we’re all in Japanese but the language and the intonation really struck my ear, my musical ear I guess, and so I wanted to learn the language. And when I got back I bought a book at the airport, basic, and I started to read it going back home. It’s all started there and I wanted to go back, you know, and it took five years. Five years later, we went back to Japan and then I wanted to go back again. And I started studying more and asking question and buy more books on tour and started to write and to learn the writing of the alphabets and then the Chinese character, the kanji I’ve learned like 300. It’s not much because you need 2000 to read the newspaper.

Craig Garber:
Wow.

Dan Mongrain:
But I learned the Hiragana and Katakana which are the two different sound alphabet there is for foreign sounds and for Japanese sound words. So you can see when you read when the word is foreigner because the way you write it is different alphabet. Yeah,

Craig Garber:
Interesting.

Dan Mongrain:
so I really enjoyed learning that as well. And the pronunciation of Japanese is not so far from the pronunciation in French. You know, the

Craig Garber:
Really?

Dan Mongrain:
U, all the… yeah.

Craig Garber:
Interesting.

Dan Mongrain:
And the consonants and the vowels are really close sounding. So for me, it was not so hard as for the pronunciation, but it’s really hard for the writing and the logical of the language. It’s different than French. And also the words, you have to remember, there’s no relation between words, you know. So it’s a very, very interesting thing to do, learn a completely different language. And then I went back there, spent more time, three, four weeks, and traveled into smaller cities and really have a deeper taste of Japan, meeting fishermen and… uh going to small small family restaurants sometimes and walking and doing doing bicycle and uh so it was uh more like uh the real Japan really and uh the politeness and the way they live and the the fact that they are they are always threatened by earthquake or tsunami or volcano or always natural disaster uh they they need each other to survive and they’re really, really organized and there’s a lot to learn.

Craig Garber:
the civility of the people is really impressive. Like there’s no, it’s almost like they realize, hey man, we, we got to do this together. And they just, there’s a level of respect. It seems my perception, I have not been there just from watching documentaries. It seems the level of respect for other humans is pretty high.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah,

Craig Garber:
You know, there’s less judgment or I don’t know what it is, but it just seems

Dan Mongrain:
you

Craig Garber:
like.

Dan Mongrain:
never know when you’re gonna need your neighbor.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
You never know.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
So you better. Even if you. would not be friends with your neighbor. You don’t like the attitude or it’s not the kind of person you would be friends with. You never know when you’re gonna need each

Craig Garber:
You can

Dan Mongrain:
other’s

Craig Garber:
still be

Dan Mongrain:
help.

Craig Garber:
civil.

Dan Mongrain:
Exactly.

Craig Garber:
Yeah. And that’s always, and I’ve also seen like, it’s amazing. So I’m grew up in New York city. So you think of a New York city subway station, then I see a subway station in Japan where you could like probably eat off the floor. It’s so clean.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
It just like the level of response, the level of self responsibility that people are all willing to take to say, Hey, I’m not going to, I’m not going to litter this thing up. because some guys cleaning it up later at night.

Dan Mongrain:
Exactly.

Craig Garber:
You know, and that is really impressive. The

Dan Mongrain:
Yes.

Craig Garber:
level of personal responsibility that people take and should take. So that’s really cool. Did you ever read Murakami, Haruki Murakami?

Dan Mongrain:
Actually, that’s one of my problems. I start books, I don’t finish

Craig Garber:
Why his books are.

Dan Mongrain:
them. But I have a few books, I still have to read though.

Craig Garber:
Are you trying to read them in Japanese?

Dan Mongrain:
No, it’s too complex for

Craig Garber:
Oh my

Dan Mongrain:
me,

Craig Garber:
God.

Dan Mongrain:
but I have children’s books and some of their books that I can read in Japanese. I have many actually and I’ve read some. The children’s language is different. sometimes there’s different expressions so I have to be careful but I have two books of the same author you mentioned

Craig Garber:
Murakami.

Dan Mongrain:
I have to read them

Craig Garber:
He’s

Dan Mongrain:
yeah

Craig Garber:
phenomenal, man. He’s an incredible,

Dan Mongrain:
yeah

Craig Garber:
I mean, incredible author and just amazing. I love his stuff. And you ever see that movie Totoro?

Dan Mongrain:
it means it rings a bell

Craig Garber:
It’s a lovely movie, man. It’s like I watched it with my daughter when she was a little girl. We randomly stumbled across. It’s a just a great it’s Japanese manga.

Dan Mongrain:
I don’t know much about Japanese manga except from the one I grew up with when I was younger but I remember the character now. I

Craig Garber:
Yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
didn’t see it.

Craig Garber:
it’s, uh, it was funny. And then when she moved out about six months ago, which I was devastated, but she was around the other day and I said, Hey, I saw Totoro’s back on TV. Would you come over and watch it? So

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, awesome.

Craig Garber:
we got to relive a moment from when she was a little girl. It was kind of cool. It’s a lovely,

Dan Mongrain:
That’s cool.

Craig Garber:
lovely, gentle movie, man.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
Um, I really liked some of the things you said about playing. You said about we’re all connected and sometimes you feel like you’re on stage. and in the audience at the same time. And I’d love to hear you elaborate on.

Dan Mongrain:
Well, especially with Voivod of course, because I’ve been the guy in the audience. I saw them three or four times. I met Piggy before he was sick. These guys are my heroes, you know. So when we started to write music together… I had the perception of being in a band for five years and knowing the language even deeper and the chemistry was there, but also had the perception from outside the band, the fan wanting this kind of sound to happen, you know, preconceived perception of mind about what the band was supposed to sound like.

Craig Garber:
Interesting.

Dan Mongrain:
So it’s kind of a… bit mind-boggling because you want to write in a style but at the same time you want to keep your own personality and you don’t want to deceive the fans but you don’t also don’t want to think about that much because it’s gonna influence in a you know it’s gonna distort your distract you from

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
from what you do and so same when we play live gigs I mean I wish I was there and Piggy was on stage still, you know. I wish I

Craig Garber:
That’s

Dan Mongrain:
was

Craig Garber:
nice.

Dan Mongrain:
the kid who’s like watching the show, but at the same time, you know, I connect with the audience because I’m from the same place.

Craig Garber:
You’re one of them.

Dan Mongrain:
Yes. And so we

Craig Garber:
That’s

Dan Mongrain:
have this

Craig Garber:
cool.

Dan Mongrain:
special connection, I think. Just recently we played in the UK. I arrived two days ago. And the crowd was crazy. I mean, it was packed every night and you could feel the appreciation after almost five years of not playing there. It was very intense, more than usual. And people showed their appreciation and we always take time to go at the merch booth after the show and meet the fans and sign their stuff. And they appreciate it. And there’s a lot of confidence, how do you say, confide, you know, stories from them and their stories about getting to be a fan of Voivod a bit. And we shared the same story and most of them now knows when I went to the music store at 12 year old with my bicycle and paperboy money to buy the first cassette I own still and it was a Voivod Killing Technology album.

Craig Garber:
That’s wild.

Dan Mongrain:
And I just started to play the guitar. I didn’t play the guitar yet. I was 11 actually. But you know, we share these kinds of stories. And so I feel like I’m in the crowd as well.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, that was great. That was a really one of the nicest thing I heard of musicians say and artists say, Dan, what were some of the low points or dark periods you’ve had to deal with in life and how’d you get through them?

Dan Mongrain:
Um… Well, the first dark period would be when I bought my first guitar, then my, my parent divorced and I survived basically with, like I said earlier, with playing the guitar and being out of trouble by focusing on music. But then again, when there’s some violence in your environment, you kind of a misfit in the social community in secondary school and you became a bit apart from the mass, which is not a bad thing in the end, but it’s hard to experience as a human being to because your reality is really, really different than majority.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, and you don’t have the coping skills at that age to process any of that shit.

Dan Mongrain:
Exactly. And there’s probably a lot of kids like me in the same environment back then, but you know, you only know your own reality and

Craig Garber:
course.

Dan Mongrain:
you know, and your drama is not the drama of anyone and vice versa. And it doesn’t compare, it can’t compare. But that was like music saved me from really bad things and it’s always been the case when something bad happened in my life or when I felt terrible about myself and you know ending relationships, friendships. I think that’s the most difficult thing for me like to let go of a relationship. It’s this thing that hurts me the most in friendship or in you know any kind of relationship. And when that happened, I have the reflex of focusing on music and it always worked for me pretty much. And it can have a darker side, like it can become a protection. It can become a wall to not get involved because you’ve been hurt.

Craig Garber:
Dude,

Dan Mongrain:
You

Craig Garber:
I

Dan Mongrain:
go

Craig Garber:
understand

Dan Mongrain:
focus on

Craig Garber:
everything

Dan Mongrain:
you. Yeah.

Craig Garber:
you’re saying right now. Yeah, totally.

Dan Mongrain:
And it’s a, your tool can become your, your weakness.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
So, uh, you, I’ve learned that later in life and I still struggle, you know, it’s, I think when you experience something in a young age that will mark your whole life, uh, it’s part of your identity and the more I grew old, the more I don’t want to fight with it. And I think one of the best way to deal with it is accept it. Accept that some event change the way you are and the more you can adapt to it and find tools and not struggle with it and not try to fight it. When you… It’s maybe a simple example, but when you have a scar and you’re still scratching the scar, it’s just gonna…

Craig Garber:
Yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
You know…

Craig Garber:
get inflamed.

Dan Mongrain:
Exactly.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
So it’s there. I know it’s there. It’s there forever. So what do I do with it? You know…

Craig Garber:
Well, the problem is when you have this as a kid, you develop certain survival skills to get through that.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
The problem is nobody comes to you at a certain point in time and explains to you, Hey, listen, these survival skills that you had, like disconnecting emotionally or protecting yourself, you don’t need to have them anymore.

Dan Mongrain:
Hmm.

Craig Garber:
Nobody comes and tells you that. So you go into your adulthood with the same survival skills that actually wind up alienating you because the rest of the world isn’t trying to destroy your life and kick your ass. And so this is the problem. This is the problem that I’ve had to work through my whole life and figure out get these things together. And they, uh, you know, I’ve studied a lot about childhood trauma. It’s typically three things happen. Number one, you become an addict of drugs, gambling, alcohol, sex, whatever. Number two, you become a people pleaser. And number three, which was me, you become a bit of a workaholic because you say,

Dan Mongrain:
Hehehehehehe

Craig Garber:
well, I’m going to, I’ll prove how good I am. You know, some, somebody will recognize, cause you’re just trying to get an attaboy. You just trying to get a pat on the back from somebody, you know?

Dan Mongrain:
That’s 100% my case too.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, yeah. So I was, and it’s only now in the last five years of my life where I’ve, I’ve backed off and I’ve learned to take and get playing guitar was a big part of that for me because I love it so much. I’m like, man, you know what? I got to do stuff. I enjoy life. Isn’t about struggle. It’s about being happy, but I didn’t realize that until like I said, I’m 59, probably my early to mid fifties. And

Dan Mongrain:
Mmm.

Craig Garber:
so I understand everything you’re saying that totally. Exactly.

Dan Mongrain:
That can be an engine, it’s a drive that we have that maybe people like us have and I recognize it in some people and sometimes I go, oh, this person is like me, he can’t tough 14 hours in the studio, he would be focused and not eat and not sleep but get things done.

Craig Garber:
Right.

Dan Mongrain:
And I have a pride in that too.

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
But it comes from a trauma.

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
It comes from a wound.

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
So you have to make something good out of it, but it’s sometimes a health, health risk or mental health and overall. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s the balance between both that it’s, it’s hard to, to find, I guess, but times heals

Craig Garber:
Yeah, totally.

Dan Mongrain:
as cliche as it sounds.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, it does. It’s interesting. I, this is the first time in my life, maybe about eight months, about a year ago, I stopped setting my alarm because I never slept all these years. I’d be up 5 a.m. every day. And I’m

Dan Mongrain:
Thanks for watching!

Craig Garber:
like, man, you know what? Uh, and then I started studying, you know, as you get older, you start, you know, paying more. I’ve always taken care of myself, but really digging into what makes, you know, good health and bad health. And sleep is like literally the number one most important thing you need. And I’m like, shit, I, My mentality was always, man, I’ll, I’ll rest when I’m dead. Right.

Dan Mongrain:
Mm-hmm.

Craig Garber:
But it turns out sleep is incredibly healthy for you, man. So I now sleep eight or nine hours every night, which is amazing.

Dan Mongrain:
That’s great. You asked me about dark times. At 24 years old, I did a burnout because I was working 40 hours in a music store. I was playing in 12 different bands and on weekends that I didn’t have gigs, I would do sound gigs as a sound engineer.

Craig Garber:
Oh my god.

Dan Mongrain:
And I trained myself to sleep only 3 hours a day for 2 years in a row. That was how I could do all of this. But then I crashed really hard and, uh, and it took me about a year to get back on my feet completely, but during that year I decided to move to Montreal and play in a band called Gorgots, write an album with them and go on tour. That was my

Craig Garber:
So that was your

Dan Mongrain:
relax

Craig Garber:
vacation.

Dan Mongrain:
year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I had no money. Uh, we didn’t eat every day, you know, we would go, uh, pick up some cans and sell it at the, uh, convenience store to get a hot dog at the, at the, at the Ronald’s hot dog. But we, I was, it was one of the most happy and strange time, uh, because I was free.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
I was free. I was playing music and there was a tour coming and an album. So all the money struggle and all the burnout thing, of course it was not perfect. I struggled in many ways, but I was doing what I liked. So again, music saved me.

Craig Garber:
Saviour, yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
And last year I did, last year I did another burnout,

Craig Garber:
Oh, I know,

Dan Mongrain:
20 years later.

Craig Garber:
tell this story because I heard, yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
And so I wrote with the band, we wrote Synchro Anarchy and we recorded it in 2022. And not long after that, I started to, I was teaching at the same time, full time, going to the studio teaching, playing gigs with other bands, blah, blah, blah, going to Christmas. And then I crashed again for the second time in my life. But I knew the signs.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
in advance. I recognized them so I went to the doctor and the doctor said you have to stop right now working. So I had to take care of because insomnia is part of it of course. Insomnia because your hamster is going spinning the wheels non-stop you

Craig Garber:
Right,

Dan Mongrain:
know.

Craig Garber:
you get more ideas and more ideas and more ideas. Yeah, it’s hard to.

Dan Mongrain:
and you know anxiety about how am I gonna do this and blah blah blah and and so I started to to drink to sleep. You know, drink a bottle of wine so I could sleep three hours and go back to work, you know, stuff like that. So it was really going bad. But I recovered faster even though I was older and because I saw the signs

Craig Garber:
Good.

Dan Mongrain:
and and now I’m OK. And we went on tour like just. when I got a bit better and when I got on tour, I got fully fully fully recovered

Craig Garber:
That’s

Dan Mongrain:
because

Craig Garber:
great,

Dan Mongrain:
even

Craig Garber:
man.

Dan Mongrain:
though it’s very tiring mentally, it’s, you know, and emotionally touring and meeting with people and playing shows. That’s what I like.

Craig Garber:
Right.

Dan Mongrain:
So, uh, but now I’m, I’m really, you know, it was not a big, deep dive into total darkness and I was able to read the signs and I’m, I’m do more sports than I used to do when

Craig Garber:
Good.

Dan Mongrain:
I was 20, you know, bicycle and I do many different things that interest me and I try to balance everything so it doesn’t happen again.

Craig Garber:
That’s great.

Dan Mongrain:
I watch myself not to cross some lines that are irreversible.

Craig Garber:
I think like one of the things with me because when you grow up with that stress, that’s for me anyway, that was my norm. So I realized

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
over my life, not intentionally, I would make decisions that would ultimately create stress. But in my mind, it was like, hey, I’m Craig Garber. I can get through anything. And then like when I was in my 50s, I said I got to a point I’m like, you know what? I think a lot of this stress in my life. It’s my fault. Like if life throws you a curve ball, you can’t do anything. But you don’t have to make stressful decisions on top of that. So now like my first question when someone says, hey, do you wanna get involved in a project or just anything, do you wanna do this? I say, is it the path of least stress? And

Dan Mongrain:
Hmm.

Craig Garber:
if it’s not, I don’t do it as I just don’t wanna deal with that. I dealt with it for a lifetime. And so

Dan Mongrain:
Because

Craig Garber:
I,

Dan Mongrain:
it’s normality, that’s what you

Craig Garber:
yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
know.

Craig Garber:
chaos, right. That’s what I know.

Dan Mongrain:
Yes.

Craig Garber:
That’s what my norm is chaos. So I had to like, like literally reprogram my whole thought process over a several year period. You know,

Dan Mongrain:
It’s hard.

Craig Garber:
it’s very

Dan Mongrain:
It’s

Craig Garber:
hard,

Dan Mongrain:
really

Craig Garber:
but

Dan Mongrain:
hard.

Craig Garber:
I’ll tell you something nice. My, my, um, my wife, my middle child, my younger son went to go buy a car. The day I think my wife went to take him for a ride because his car, his old car got in an accident. Anyway, he said to her,

Dan Mongrain:
Hmm.

Craig Garber:
uh, he’s been out of the house. They’ve been out of the house five years at least. And he said, mom, you know, I noticed dad got a lot nicer when we all moved out. And she said, it’s not anything to do with you. He just worked on a lot of things to clear up the stress of his own life from his own past. And I was

Dan Mongrain:
Hmm

Craig Garber:
so happy. They said that, that he said that I was like, I mean, not that I don’t think I was an asshole before that, but I was not as relaxed as I am now, you know, and, um,

Dan Mongrain:
We are not always the best version of ourselves.

Craig Garber:
Yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
That’s

Craig Garber:
man, I wasn’t that’s

Dan Mongrain:
for

Craig Garber:
a

Dan Mongrain:
sure.

Craig Garber:
thank you. I was not the best version of myself. So I was

Dan Mongrain:
Mm.

Craig Garber:
really happy that that he said that to her. And so, you know, man, thank you for sharing all that. I appreciate it, man.

Dan Mongrain:
Thanks. Appreciate it too.

Craig Garber:
Uh, musically, is there anything you haven’t done yet that you’d like to?

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, a lot.

Craig Garber:
I know I figured

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah,

Craig Garber:
that.

Dan Mongrain:
I wrote something that I studied a bit at university was orchestration, writing for strings, writing for big bands, brass section. So I did that in Voiva when we did the end of dormancy. when we were invited to the Jazz International Jazz Festival Montreal to perform, I figured something special, you know, for the event would be great. So I wrote this brass quintet arrangement for the end of Dormancy, which is on vinyl now. And we played it live during the Jazz Fest. And there was an open section for a saxophone solo on diminished… harmony, symmetrical harmony, and people went totally nuts. And so for people that was not attending the show, most of the fans everywhere in the world, we recorded the version for the video, official video. And I also on the same album for the song, Sonic Mycelium, at

Craig Garber:
Love

Dan Mongrain:
the

Craig Garber:
that

Dan Mongrain:
end

Craig Garber:
track.

Dan Mongrain:
of the. Thanks. At the end of that track, there’s a string quartet. So I wrote an arrangement for strings at the end, which is the band fades out and the string quartet fades in and it finishes with the string quartet. So that’s the kind of stuff that I would like to do more and being able to write for a bigger piece of orchestra. And so if there’s time, if there’s something that I would do… really dig more into that would be composition and arrangement for writing for bigger ensemble. It may be conducting because I realize I don’t have any experiences. I mean I did, I do, but it’s not at the level that I would want to. And I would like to dig more into playing in a jazz trio or jazz quartet as well,

Craig Garber:
Wow.

Dan Mongrain:
improvising and Maybe for a couple years, you know, and maybe I’m interested in music for video games as well, but I’m not a gamer, so that’s another thing.

Craig Garber:
No, but if you’re doing orchestrations like that, what was going through my head is that you should, I know you’ve done some licensing. I would pursue that more because that’s an arena for you to do stuff like that, if that’s what you wanna do.

Dan Mongrain:
I mean, if something that I’m interested in for sure, I have to find a way with touring and teaching and maybe I have to drop some stuff to make it happen. But it’s something that I was always curious about. Yeah.

Craig Garber:
That dirty

Dan Mongrain:
There’s

Craig Garber:
four

Dan Mongrain:
many.

Craig Garber:
letter word time, right?

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, yeah.

Craig Garber:
Yeah. I hear you, man. Uh, so I’ve seen you play your bond. Damn on grain guitar, a couple of Les Paul’s. I said

Dan Mongrain:
Mm-hmm.

Craig Garber:
a telly, but that’s not correct now. And I, and a red strat on Jurassic rock. What is your go-to guitar right now? And what other two guitars round out your top three?

Dan Mongrain:
Well, now working with Bond Instrument Guitars, he was tired of seeing me playing a Les Paul and a Strat, so he made me one. He made me a Tele, he made me a Strat, he made me a Les

Craig Garber:
Oh cool.

Dan Mongrain:
Paul, and I have two Voivod models, Chewy, Pointy, Syfy models,

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
and so I’m all Bond Instrument now. So I really like the Les Paul, the Tele, every one of them really. So when I have pop gigs or rock gigs, This weekend I’m going to play an acoustic show with the formation and then the next day I play with the four piece rock band in the bar.

Craig Garber:
Oh cool.

Dan Mongrain:
So it’s going to be the Stratton, the Les Paul that I bring and maybe the Telly for playing the slide on one song’s open E for a blues song. And, and yeah, I’m a full bond instrument endorsed

Craig Garber:
Very cool. Is that a 335

Dan Mongrain:
even though I pay for

Craig Garber:
behind

Dan Mongrain:
the…

Craig Garber:
you?

Dan Mongrain:
What’s that?

Craig Garber:
Is that a 335

Dan Mongrain:
Oh,

Craig Garber:
behind?

Dan Mongrain:
this one is, you know,

Craig Garber:
Like, is that an Ibanez? What is that?

Dan Mongrain:
this one is the one I practice jazz with. And it’s always near me. It’s a, it’s an Ibanez

Craig Garber:
Artcore?

Dan Mongrain:
artist,

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
A200 like John Schofield.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, I love those.

Dan Mongrain:
It’s a 84.

Craig Garber:
Beautiful guitar, man.

Dan Mongrain:
I love it. The action, the neck, everything is great. Sounds good as well. And yeah, that’s when I play some… It’s a hollow body but not a big one. So

Craig Garber:
Mm.

Dan Mongrain:
I can play jazz, I can play rock, I can play fusion, I can play funk with it, I can play a lot of things. It’s always there.

Craig Garber:
That’s cool, man.

Dan Mongrain:
So I just grab it and jam with it.

Craig Garber:
Tell me the best guitar and the best amp you’ve ever owned or played.

Dan Mongrain:
I must say this amp here,

Craig Garber:
Mm-hmm.

Dan Mongrain:
it’s a Lapoint amp, this one here.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
It was, it’s made in Montreal by a friend of mine, Lapoint amplification, it’s a Backbones and I made a modification to it. I asked him to make a modification. So it’s two exactly identical channel, channel one and channel two are totally identical. I really liked the channel one. So I said, can you make me two channel one? And there’s the only difference is that there’s coloration on the amp on the channel two, which are not available on the channel one. But I used it on the last record that’s going to be out in July with Voivod and I used it on the previous records as well Synchro Anarchy and The Wake. It’s very versatile. So I’m going to play with it for the acoustic gig. I’m going to play with it for the rock. gig I have during the weekend. I play with this with Jurassic Rock and I use it in studio for Voivode. Obviously I cannot bring heavy stuff when we go to Europe because it’s costly and when we fly to the States but when we have a tour bus to pick us up in Montreal I bring it.

Craig Garber:
Spell that,

Dan Mongrain:
So

Craig Garber:
L-A.

Dan Mongrain:
La Pointe. L-A-P-O-I-N-T-E.

Craig Garber:
Okay, thanks. That’s awesome, man.

Dan Mongrain:
very versatile, it can rock, it can melt your face with distortion and gain, but you can play the blues with it as well.

Craig Garber:
That’s incredible.

Dan Mongrain:
The funk sound, the clean sound is very very very

Craig Garber:
I love

Dan Mongrain:
clean.

Craig Garber:
funk, man. I love hearing

Dan Mongrain:
Oh, I

Craig Garber:
funk

Dan Mongrain:
love it

Craig Garber:
music.

Dan Mongrain:
too.

Craig Garber:
Yeah. It’s so cool. Uh, so as I mentioned earlier, as I went through the progression of the Voivod Voivod albums, you recommended, it was really interesting to hear the, the change from like thrash and punk metal to less punk and then becoming more melodic and groove oriented. And then once you became more active in writing more structured prog and metal songs, longer songs and And even on synchro anarchy where it was metal, the music really grooved, you know, and

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
it was really cool. And so I’d like to ask you about a couple of, uh, Voivod songs from the wake, uh, Sonic mycelium. What an amazing track. I, when I listened to that and I listened to it several times, I can almost see that like, it’s like an adventure, man. I could see that being the background music to like a, like a sci-fi car chase or something. It was.

Dan Mongrain:
Thanks so much. I’m very proud of that track.

Craig Garber:
It’s great track.

Dan Mongrain:
I’m going to explain to you how it was built because if you listen to the whole The Wake album, there are the songs and the main themes or the part of songs that I consider important, I modified them, disguised them, rearranged them to put them in chronological musical order in Sonic Mycelium but in disguise. So maybe in Sonic Mycelium there’s one or two riffs that are original from this very song Sonic Mycelium but the rest comes from the whole album. So it creates, it recreates, it’s rewriting the story of the album connecting the strong musical part and sometimes you surimpose two different musical parts from two different songs together. and it works. So I was digging into that because the album was all recorded, but I thought it’s not long enough. It’s missing one song. And I started this song already. But I was working in college while the guys were in studio, the drums were done. I was like, fuck it, because the way the drummer is a one-taker, you know, he’s going through the songs. We do some click tracks, which respect is… natural flow fluctuating tempos and all that’s not a straight line never. I actually record the jams at the jam space and I do the click track with the natural waves of the version that we like so it’s organic it keeps the natural tempo change you know and so he goes to ghost track he could record the drums and they were waiting for me for the last song and almost saying maybe we don’t need it you know. So during one weekend in three days, I wrote this song, bass, arrangement, layers of guitars, and I send it with the click track and so they could record it. And the string quartet came later, but basically it’s that information from other songs that are rearranged in this guy’s sure imposed that tells the whole album story in chronological order and Snake heard that. and he decided to take lyrics from previous songs on other parts of different songs. So it’s really a puzzle

Craig Garber:
That’s so cool!

Dan Mongrain:
and it’s, mycelium is the underground network of mushrooms

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
where mushroom grows, right? And so sonic mycelium, it’s all intertwined, it’s all connected and it’s all related to the song. So sometimes you have a melody from a song over a riff in the sky from another song. with the bass part of the other songs. So if you listen to the album very carefully, which a lot of fans do, you know, the Die Hard fans will listen to it over and over again and they’ll discover, oh, this idea recognized from this song and it’s over. So it’s a very interactive song at the same time.

Craig Garber:
That’s phenomenal.

Dan Mongrain:
And then we were done with that track and the album was over. And I think that was Francis Perron at Radicard Studio, the guy who mixed the record and recorded it. He said, maybe some strings will be nice here. I can hear some strings and I was like, oh I know exactly what you mean.

Craig Garber:
Hahaha!

Dan Mongrain:
And then I went, fuck, because it would need more work.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
You know,

Craig Garber:
Oh,

Dan Mongrain:
so

Craig Garber:
that’s

Dan Mongrain:
I started,

Craig Garber:
a

Dan Mongrain:
I

Craig Garber:
tough one.

Dan Mongrain:
opened my music sheet and my pencil, and I started to write this string arrangement. And I have a friend who’s a great violin player. So I submitted the arrangement. Is anything okay? You know, like I didn’t write for strings since university. So. I wanted to make sure it was, so she gave me a little bit of advice and arranging it. And so we hired a string quartet and I conducted

Craig Garber:
Oh, that’s so

Dan Mongrain:
without

Craig Garber:
cool, man.

Dan Mongrain:
any experience. But yeah, so that’s the, that’s that song. That’s why it’s a journey. And if you listen to it and you think the thing you said to me is exactly what it is, even though maybe you didn’t listen to the whole album or, you know, but if It means to me that it works and I really appreciate it.

Craig Garber:
Oh, it’s a great

Dan Mongrain:
Thanks

Craig Garber:
track.

Dan Mongrain:
for your words.

Craig Garber:
Really great track. Um, on synchroanarchy, the title track, uh, this is what I wrote. All I could say is, wow, the musicianship here is phenomenal across the board. That was not, you know,

Dan Mongrain:
I’m going to do a little bit of a

Craig Garber:
you talk about the syncopation and the changing

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
tempos. Uh, that was not

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
an easy track with the pauses, the

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
accents, the syncopation.

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
It was interesting.

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
I listened to the track, but then I watched

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
the video and

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
to watch you guys

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
play this, that’s

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
when I realized, holy shit,

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
this is really fricking

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
difficult. And

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
just the

Dan Mongrain:
little bit of a

Craig Garber:
mechanics, the mechanics of the song. So what was the, like, how did you guys collectively, because when you’re watching on the video, everybody is like spot on on everything. I mean, in every part was complex. It was not an easy song. What was like the biggest challenge that put that together.

Dan Mongrain:
Well, the song came about when the drummers had a drum beat idea in the jam space and he figured I’m going to remove 1 16th every every two bars or something.

Craig Garber:
How do you think

Dan Mongrain:
And

Craig Garber:
of

Dan Mongrain:
I

Craig Garber:
that?

Dan Mongrain:
wanted

Craig Garber:
Ha

Dan Mongrain:
to

Craig Garber:
ha

Dan Mongrain:
try

Craig Garber:
ha

Dan Mongrain:
it.

Craig Garber:
ha.

Dan Mongrain:
So, yeah. So we went to his drum riser and he almost killed himself because there, his shoe was on tie.

Craig Garber:
Oh my god.

Dan Mongrain:
And so we almost impaled himself with the hi-hat stand. And so it became like, uh, we, we called it the shoelace incident. I wrote the shoelace incident on the demo.

Craig Garber:
That’s great, the shoelace

Dan Mongrain:
And so

Craig Garber:
incident.

Dan Mongrain:
we started to play the beat and, uh, we started to have ideas. And I. work on the song on my side. And of course, this just was before everything shut down and we could jam together. So after that, it was file sharing. And I had the syncopated part at the middle of the song was an idea of the bass player who sent me just one layer of syncopated rhythm. And I figured I’m going to reverse it and put it on the guitar. So at the same time than the normal one. So you have all the answer because I reversed the part A and B like this, but also inverted the rhythm. So it reads like this, but plays like this,

Craig Garber:
Holy

Dan Mongrain:
you know?

Craig Garber:
f-

Dan Mongrain:
So it was, donkakonkak, donkakonkak. So it’s all answering to one another like a dialogue of syncopation and a way in his genius groove, went like, okay, I’m gonna simplify everything so it can groove. We can feel it.

Craig Garber:
was trying

Dan Mongrain:
Like that,

Craig Garber:
to,

Dan Mongrain:
you

Craig Garber:
I

Dan Mongrain:
know?

Craig Garber:
kept trying to listen to the, the, like what, what tempo is this man? And I just,

Dan Mongrain:
It’s just 4-4.

Craig Garber:
I said, it feels

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
like four four, but like it, I, I can’t, it just was so difficult. I was like.

Dan Mongrain:
The guitar and bass part keeps you away from seeing the 4-4, but the drums keep you straight on it.

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
It’s like the opposite of, I guess, Meshuggah does that kind of stuff quite a lot, but in a total different way. And I think even though it’s complicated, you kind of… can tap your feet anyway, you know?

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
And you said there’s groove, a way the drummer is really, really groovy and that’s pretty rare in metal,

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
you know? And he plays a little bit laid back. And at first when I came into the band, I was pushing time a little bit because I played in martyr, was very, very technical death metal and stuff. And the drummer was pushing the time a little bit, but a way… plays a little bit behind the beat and it gives a kind of a beef sound to the band and a groovy sound that you can hear in different style of music like blues or you know 70s I guess it comes from the 70s and so it keeps the thing more organic and his beat with the 16th note and you know morning alarm riff. So I keep doing that but the 16th note is reversing so I go up all the way so it’s that that that that and it feels the second bar is all the ups

Craig Garber:
It’s

Dan Mongrain:
you know

Craig Garber:
tough

Dan Mongrain:
because he’s

Craig Garber:
to

Dan Mongrain:
skipping

Craig Garber:
stay on

Dan Mongrain:
a

Craig Garber:
top

Dan Mongrain:
beat.

Craig Garber:
of, man. I

Dan Mongrain:
It

Craig Garber:
was

Dan Mongrain:
is.

Craig Garber:
just so impressed by everybody’s musicianship in there. It was, that was a difficult, you know, beat to maintain. And everybody just nailed it on that video, man. And the song is great.

Dan Mongrain:
And the funny part is that we had to learn it for the video because the album, this album we recorded, we composed remotely and we recorded like very like a studio project. Usually we jam, we improvise, we record, we work on things but this one was a laboratory and we didn’t have, we did it in four months, like very, very compressed. Wrote the music in two months and recorded and mixed in two months. So

Craig Garber:
That’s

Dan Mongrain:
when we

Craig Garber:
actually

Dan Mongrain:
arrived,

Craig Garber:
amazing that you were able to do that in four months. I mean, that’s a

Dan Mongrain:
That’s why I had to burn out

Craig Garber:
Yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
just after.

Craig Garber:
no, I mean, it makes total sense because that’s a that’s an incredible amount of work. Just the compositions

Dan Mongrain:
Oh

Craig Garber:
and the

Dan Mongrain:
yeah.

Craig Garber:
arrangements there are not easy at all.

Dan Mongrain:
I remember when we decided to go for it, we were all around the fire, bonfire, beside the studio, eating hot dogs. Okay, we have an album to write. Okay, do we do it? What’s the deadline? September? Oh my God.

Craig Garber:
Hahaha!

Dan Mongrain:
It was like July or something or June.

Craig Garber:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Dan Mongrain:
And we’re like, oh yeah, do we do it? We have to. We knew it was gonna be super hard, but we wanted Juno for God’s

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
sake.

Craig Garber:
And well-deserved

Dan Mongrain:
It’s

Craig Garber:
well-deserved

Dan Mongrain:
thank

Craig Garber:
man.

Dan Mongrain:
you.

Craig Garber:
It’s an awesome record. And then a quest for nothing and planet eaters, both of those tracks, first of all, the graphics in those videos, pretty intense, really good. And,

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
um, the lyrics for planet years are pretty intense, you know, buildings and buildings and more buildings. And basically it’s about how consumption and this desire for more, for everything to have everybody to have more. is destroying the planet. And I was curious how that track came about. And did you have Snake’s lyrics in mind before you wrote the music? Or did he?

Dan Mongrain:
That’s a good question.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
Usually, Snake always writes his lyrics after the music is written because the music gives him the vibe. And then he can, how do you say, singing just a melody, like just humming over the songs while we’re jamming. And then the melody lines come out and creates itself. And then the lyrics comes from the melody line, the rhythm, and he starts to hear words and the mood of the song, and then he knows the subject. That’s how we write. So the lyrics were from the music, as always with Snake. But the title, the temporary title that I put there was, I think, Planet Grinder or Planet Eater because of the music riff. which is not existent in the song anymore, it was modified to become the song, but reminded me of a giant planet crusher, you know, in space that would destroy planets,

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
like, you know, and so the title inspired him as well, the temporary title, and we kept it, and he started to write. And then the guy who did the video is Pierre Menettrier from France. He was a fan of, he’s still a fan of Voivode. He was a fan in the nineties. And he did a fan video of the song, Nothing Faced for his class of graphic that he was learning. And he became a graphist, a professional graphist artist. And we saw his video because he found it back during the same period. And wow, what an amazing work, you know, computer work back then was not as simple as today.

Craig Garber:
No.

Dan Mongrain:
And so we wondered maybe he would be in to participate in doing the video. So the black and white video comes from all the drawings from away, the drummer who does all the artwork for the band since the beginning. So all the drawings, but he animated it in the video and the created more graphics so it fits with the lyrics. And I think it was amazing.

Craig Garber:
Phenomenal, phenomenal

Dan Mongrain:
And.

Craig Garber:
man.

Dan Mongrain:
during the guitar solo, there’s a kind of plongée in a field with the scarecrow and all that. I thought it was brilliant. And for Quest for Nothing, I think it was one of the first AI video out there. It’s our Luc Leclerc who did it with this new technology and I think it was influenced by the drawing of the drummer as well. but it developed itself with some parameters. I don’t know how it works, but

Craig Garber:
So

Dan Mongrain:
it’s,

Craig Garber:
the video is done by artificial intelligence.

Dan Mongrain:
yes,

Craig Garber:
Wow, that’s

Dan Mongrain:
one of

Craig Garber:
pretty

Dan Mongrain:
the first,

Craig Garber:
cool.

Dan Mongrain:
yeah, he’s always ahead looking for new technology, that guy. And so it was great because I think the AI fits with the sci-fi

Craig Garber:
Oh, totally, yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
vibe of Voivod. So

Craig Garber:
Totally.

Dan Mongrain:
it’s a bit controversial, but you know, as long as it, you know, the vibe is there, I mean.

Craig Garber:
It was great. Those tracks were both phenomenal. That’s so cool

Dan Mongrain:
Thanks.

Craig Garber:
that this guy, he was kind of like you in that he did this, he was a big fan of Voivod, was influenced by them in his career, which was not music, but graphic design. And then he got to work with them and that must have been, so you guys like kind of had some, probably had some good chemistry together I’d imagine. Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
Oh yeah, I mean we were blown away by his work.

Craig Garber:
That’s cool.

Dan Mongrain:
And dedication as well, it’s all about the, for the love, you know, when you feel it’s genuine and we’re working for the same goal. It’s not about the money, the fame or anything. It’s just about the art and expression.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
Anyway, it’s really hard to make a living as a band. It’s almost impossible now

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
to be a… successful enough to be able to pay all the bills for many many years. It’s like being a hockey player in the national hockey league. There’s many many players for it but not much that end up in the national hockey league.

Craig Garber:
Yes, absolutely. Dan, tell me your top three musical experiences you’ve had.

Dan Mongrain:
That’s very hard.

Craig Garber:
I know.

Dan Mongrain:
One of the great musical experiences I remember is being a freelance guitarist for a band in Montreal called Cryptopsy for one year. They needed a guitar player so I figured I would do it around 2005. I was studying at a university at the same time my homework on tour for six weeks.

Craig Garber:
That’s funny.

Dan Mongrain:
And there was a jazz jam. There was a bar, we played on the one side and on the other side, there was a jazz jam with students of university. I don’t remember the city. That might’ve been Pittsburgh, I don’t know. And we did the show. The guys from the jazz side saw many people with long hair and gore shirt

Craig Garber:
Ha ha.

Dan Mongrain:
and death metal attitude outside the venue and we played. just one of the most extreme metal music there is. And then I go, I brought a telecaster with me to practice in the bus and nobody knows me here on the jazz side. And I’m very shy of going jamming usually. So I brought my guitar and I said, well, maybe there’s an opportunity to play incognito. So I went there and there was some jazz playing with a double bass, a small drum kit saxophone. And they asked me if I wanted to play. So, okay, I’m gonna sit in. So I choose a song in the fake book, just I think there’s no greater love or something like that. And they started to play a rock and roll because they saw my look and they started to play rock and roll. And no, no, no, I don’t wanna play rock and roll. I want to try a jazz standard. So we started to play and I did my best. And after it, they look at me, let’s play another one

Craig Garber:
Ah, that’s

Dan Mongrain:
like

Craig Garber:
cool. Yeah. Cause they’re looking

Dan Mongrain:
that.

Craig Garber:
at you

Dan Mongrain:
It went

Craig Garber:
and like

Dan Mongrain:
well.

Craig Garber:
the words and the music doesn’t match here. You know, like,

Dan Mongrain:
Exactly!

Craig Garber:
yeah, right. I

Dan Mongrain:
It

Craig Garber:
get

Dan Mongrain:
was

Craig Garber:
that.

Dan Mongrain:
like,

Craig Garber:
I get that.

Dan Mongrain:
what’s going on? And they wanted me to play. So I played another one and then the teacher talked to me and it was kind of a wow, okay, maybe I learned something at university I could apply.

Craig Garber:
That’s cool, man. That’s funny.

Dan Mongrain:
That was fun. Another moment was playing in Quebec City, opening for Metallica and like five years ago and it’s… the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And it was home too. So it was kind of a dream for me, especially to play opening for the biggest band in metal ever, but as well as at home

Craig Garber:
Yeah, that’s really special.

Dan Mongrain:
on a big open fields outside filled with a hundred thousand people. It was very, very, very impressive.

Craig Garber:
That’s awesome, man. And they probably

Dan Mongrain:
And…

Craig Garber:
loved you guys, because it’s a good fit. Sometimes you hear these weird fits, I don’t know, like Jefferson Starship opening from Metallica. It’s just something, but this is a really good fit for you guys.

Dan Mongrain:
I think so.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
I think so. Both bands are from the same era, same year, same kind of influence. And the bass player of Metallica played in Voivod

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
after he left,

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
played in Voivod and Ozzy at the same time.

Craig Garber:
Yes, yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
He played with Ozzy at the same time. So there was a connection there. But I was impressed by their work. Ethics actually, they were playing for an hour before going on stage and played for three hours on stage. I was really,

Craig Garber:
Wow.

Dan Mongrain:
really impressed with them.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, that’s.

Dan Mongrain:
And I met Hetfield during the afternoon. And later after the show, we met with Kirk and he recognized the guys from Voivod, of course. He’s very friendly. So

Craig Garber:
Very cool.

Dan Mongrain:
it was a good day, yeah.

Craig Garber:
And number three.

Dan Mongrain:
Number three, musical experiences. Hmm. Hey, there’s, I mean, it’s hard to pick. pick one but what comes to mind I mean maybe one of the best show I’ve seen in my entire life two shows the comeback of Bruce Dickinson in Iron Maiden in a 98 first show of the tour Quebec City outdoor and I was super impressed with their stage presence and I’m a big fan of I mean I’m I don’t have the whole discography and know all the songs of Maidens, but seeing them live a few times, I’m very impressed with the front man, Bruce Dickinson and his voice and the way he can talk to the last person in the audience and the way that he’s a scream champion and he can write novels and he speaks French and he pilot planes and he does… everything that he wants in life. He’s got a huge drive for making things happen and all the running on stage, they’re in good shape still and they’re rocking. And also another show that I went to see was a great show was Stevie Wonder in Quebec City at the Outdoor Festival. It was quite a musical experience. It was almost like a mass,

Craig Garber:
Wow.

Dan Mongrain:
almost spiritual. and musically it was insane and his voice was just perfect and you could feel to be part of something special even though it was outdoor and I was far from the stage I felt like I was in this bubble for two hours and it was amazing.

Craig Garber:
What year was that? Ballpark.

Dan Mongrain:
2012

Craig Garber:
That’s awesome.

Dan Mongrain:
And he played a Michael Jackson song. The way you make me feel or something like

Craig Garber:
Sure,

Dan Mongrain:
that.

Craig Garber:
yeah, yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
It was amazing.

Craig Garber:
an old one. Tell me another top three, sorry, top three desert island disks in no particular order just

Dan Mongrain:
Uh,

Craig Garber:
for

Dan Mongrain:
Seaside.

Craig Garber:
now. Was that

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah. Seaside of Cardiax. The Seaside. Cardiax is a band from the UK.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, you’d.

Dan Mongrain:
It’s not super well known, but it’s totally insane. It’s like… And… Pondies. Cardiax fans are called Pondies, but they don’t like comparison, but I have to explain. So it’s kind of Frank Zappa meets the Sex Pistols. It’s two

Craig Garber:
That’s

Dan Mongrain:
opposite

Craig Garber:
pretty chaotic.

Dan Mongrain:
complete things. But Tim and he passed away last year, I think last year, Tim, the main composer, Tim Smith, genius, self-thought, musical genius and a great band, his brother on the bass. They had different lineups, but all the albums are insanely good and always surprising, always unpredictable. And that’s what I really like into. discovering new bands but the band doesn’t exist and it’s not a new band. It started in the late 70s I think or early 80s but great music you have to check it out it’s it’s insane.

Craig Garber:
Is it cardiacs like C-A-R-D-I-A-C-S?

Dan Mongrain:
Cardiacs.

Craig Garber:
Like a cardiac,

Dan Mongrain:
Yes

Craig Garber:
okay, cardiacs, just like it sounds.

Dan Mongrain:
yeah

Craig Garber:
Okay, all right.

Dan Mongrain:
there’s a few videos out there too.

Craig Garber:
All right, what would be number two and three?

Dan Mongrain:
16 men obtained by Alan Holdsworth. That’s his last studio record. He couldn’t finish the last one. He passed away in 2017 I guess. I think one of my guitar hero, not only for his playing but for his reinventing of music harmony in his own way and music composition. He created his own world. You can call it fusion, I call it Alan Olsworth.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
It’s just something else. And this album is very mature. The sound, the production is one of his best. The songs are deep and more jazz oriented with a double bass trumpet sometimes, rather than fusion in his early years. And I think it sings great and it’s just one of his best album. I don’t get tired of it.

Craig Garber:
Awesome.

Dan Mongrain:
So,

Craig Garber:
And last

Dan Mongrain:
and

Craig Garber:
one, this is always the toughest.

Dan Mongrain:
last one. Oh yeah. Hmm. Well, I guess I would go with a Voivod album that I don’t play on.

Craig Garber:
Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Dan Mongrain:
Okay, I have to say it. It’s part of what made me the musician I am today. So I would go with Dimension Haters. Maybe tomorrow I would say another name, but Dimension Haters is the fourth album of the band. It came out in eight I think, pretty sure. And it’s very progressive. There’s themes that appear in one song that reappear in another song. There’s some Easter egg and it’s very, very proggy. It’s when they were able to combine their speed metal thrash sound with more progressive sound and more developed language. And you can really hear that that is where they found they found their ultimate voice that would bring them further afterwards.

Craig Garber:
on man. I read that you’re a vegetarian. I was curious when did you switch to eating like that and what’s been the biggest benefit to you from that?

Dan Mongrain:
Maybe 13 years ago, I was already cutting a lot on meat and choosing bio and biological stuff and farmer

Craig Garber:
Mm-hmm.

Dan Mongrain:
meat from local farmers and all that. And all of a sudden I realized I don’t really eat that much anymore. I was kind of trying to figure out myself at that point in my life and started to do a lot of bicycle exercise. I lost 50 pounds.

Craig Garber:
Oh my god, wow.

Dan Mongrain:
I took my… Yeah, that was the year I decided to take care of myself

Craig Garber:
Good

Dan Mongrain:
really.

Craig Garber:
for you.

Dan Mongrain:
And thanks. I was like, I don’t know if you… Is it in pounds

Craig Garber:
Yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
in the

Craig Garber:
if you’re

Dan Mongrain:
US?

Craig Garber:
gonna tell me kilograms,

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah?

Craig Garber:
I have to get out my calculator. Ha ha ha.

Dan Mongrain:
I don’t… It’s weird in Quebec because we, some stuff we use pounds and some stuff we use kilos and some stuff, it’s all strange

Craig Garber:
It’s the same

Dan Mongrain:
here.

Craig Garber:
in England because my wife’s from

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
there. And so her mom, sometimes it’s like they use Celsius, but they use pounds.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, exactly. Same here. It’s like in between. But so I was like 270 pounds and I dropped to 210,

Craig Garber:
Oh my god,

Dan Mongrain:
something like that.

Craig Garber:
you must feel

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah. And

Craig Garber:
great.

Dan Mongrain:
oh yeah. Yeah. Never.

Craig Garber:
Good for you.

Dan Mongrain:
I mean, I couldn’t believe it. And so since then I maintain my weight pretty much the same. And so I started to, to be careful more about eating and I’m not a true 100% vegetarian because I’ll have fish once in a while,

Craig Garber:
Mm-hmm.

Dan Mongrain:
I eat eggs once in a while, and maybe once a year I’ll eat meat.

Craig Garber:
Sure.

Dan Mongrain:
I’m not against meat. It’s not a religion for me.

Craig Garber:
It’s just for you, it’s a choice you made.

Dan Mongrain:
It’s a choice. Of course, there’s all the industry involved and the treatments of animals, and I’m sensitive to that. But I think if every human on the planet could eat, I don’t know, 30, 40, 50% less meat or fish, everything would be more balanced. But that’s my opinion and it’s not imposing on anybody, it’s just

Craig Garber:
Sure.

Dan Mongrain:
the way I see it.

Craig Garber:
It’s interesting. I just switched over to pescatarian literally three months ago and

Dan Mongrain:
Wow.

Craig Garber:
I don’t, and I, and I did it and I wasn’t like, I said let me just try this experiment and see how it goes. I’m not married to it and I can’t tell you how much better I feel. I mean, it’s phenomenal. It’s like, I have more energy when I’m going to the gym. Uh, my cholesterol, which was not high, it was like two Oh six. It dropped 30 points in one month. And, and I was like,

Dan Mongrain:
I believe you.

Craig Garber:
Holy shit, so something must be working right. And I don’t miss meat. I do miss ribs. I’m gonna have ribs on my birthday. I miss

Dan Mongrain:
And

Craig Garber:
some good

Dan Mongrain:
that’s

Craig Garber:
ribs.

Dan Mongrain:
perfect. I mean, you find your own way to do it and it’s not like a straight line.

Craig Garber:
Yeah!

Dan Mongrain:
I think it’s, you know, and me too, I feel better since then

Craig Garber:
Ah.

Dan Mongrain:
my saliva changed. You know, like it’s strange the things that you notice in your body after a while. And you’re more body conscious, so to speak. And it’s… you’re more listening to what your body needs in order to function well.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
So since I do more exercise and I eat better, I feel like my radar to know what I need as for food in order to achieve certain things in my day are more in tune and more clear than if I eat crap and fast food and… soft drinks and stuff like that. It seems like it’s a blurry vision. The connection

Craig Garber:
Yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
is less clear.

Craig Garber:
I would imagine it was, it was interesting. I, I find I’m not as hungry, oddly enough. I’m eating less, but I’m not as hungry. So like I used to eat because I, I lift weights. I’ve been, yeah, I’m like old school. I eat five, I for 30 years, I ate five times a day. Two of those meals were usually chicken. And now I eat three times a day. Maybe I’m just don’t find myself hungry for dinner sometimes.

Dan Mongrain:
That’s something I noticed

Craig Garber:
It’s

Dan Mongrain:
too.

Craig Garber:
very

Dan Mongrain:
The

Craig Garber:
weird.

Dan Mongrain:
craving

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
is not there and the impatience that comes with

Craig Garber:
Yep.

Dan Mongrain:
it disappears.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, I’m not right. I’ll just have like an apple if I’m and I, you know, hungry or it’s but it’s not you’re right that intense of shit. I’m ravenous. I’ve got to, you know, tear into an animal immediately, you know.

Dan Mongrain:
I remember

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
times on tour where I was like very grumpy because I was hungry and I was becoming an asshole with my bandmates because I was hungry.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
And maybe it happens again to be an asshole with my bandmates but it’s not for

Craig Garber:
But

Dan Mongrain:
the

Craig Garber:
not

Dan Mongrain:
same

Craig Garber:
for the

Dan Mongrain:
reason

Craig Garber:
same reason, right?

Dan Mongrain:
anymore.

Craig Garber:
You’ve eliminated hunger as a reason.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, I mean, I don’t remember now because it’s been 13

Craig Garber:
That’s

Dan Mongrain:
years

Craig Garber:
a long

Dan Mongrain:
but

Craig Garber:
time.

Dan Mongrain:
you talking about it.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
I was like, yes, that’s true. That’s totally true.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, I’m just, and I don’t understand

Dan Mongrain:
Same here.

Craig Garber:
why, because I’m eating so much less. So you’d think I’d be hungrier, but I’m not. It’s just strange. And I’m eating, you know, like I said, I eat fish almost every day. And I’m, I’m,

Dan Mongrain:
Hmm.

Craig Garber:
I’m not like you too. I’m not like, it’s not a religion. I don’t care. And I don’t, you know, I think it’s better for the planet, but that’s not why I did it. And like everybody do your own thing, but I agree with you. If people backed off on me, there’d be a lot more oxygen around and blah, blah, blah.

Dan Mongrain:
Maybe we were be all less grumpy and invasions too. You

Craig Garber:
Who

Dan Mongrain:
know.

Craig Garber:
the hell knows I can only speak for myself and it’s I’m really pleased, surprisingly, shockingly surprised how, how many benefits I’ve gotten. So,

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
um, It’s most important lessons you’ve learned from getting older.

Dan Mongrain:
Ah, I like getting older.

Craig Garber:
Haha, right on.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah,

Craig Garber:
Except the

Dan Mongrain:
I

Craig Garber:
physical,

Dan Mongrain:
like it a lot.

Craig Garber:
you like the mental, right? But the physical, maybe not

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
the aches and pains that actually you could do without.

Dan Mongrain:
Of course, for me, maybe it’s, I’m turning 47 this summer.

Craig Garber:
Right.

Dan Mongrain:
It starts, you know, I start to feel sometimes that, yeah,

Craig Garber:
It really

Dan Mongrain:
physically.

Craig Garber:
hits like when you’re like 51, 52, all of a sudden you’re like, what the hell’s going on? It’s like your check

Dan Mongrain:
Mm-hmm.

Craig Garber:
engine light just comes on more than it needs to, man, more than you want

Dan Mongrain:
That

Craig Garber:
it to.

Dan Mongrain:
I think that gives me the obligation to take more care, to make more exercise, to do more stretches. So it imposed a kind of a routine

Craig Garber:
Hmm.

Dan Mongrain:
for me to get to stay in good shape. And then and grow old in an healthy way. And I’m looking at, sometimes I do quite long bicycle rides and I see people in their seventies doing bicycle and they’re great shape. And I was like, it’s very inspiring

Craig Garber:
Totally.

Dan Mongrain:
to see it. And I hope I will do the same. So there’s a, because I thought when you hit 50, when I was a kid, I saw everybody in my family super fat. I thought it was inevitable, but it is not.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, if you take care of yourself.

Dan Mongrain:
It’s in your hands and you decide the way you want to grow

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
old. You decide if you want to eat crap or you cook. I cook a lot. I cook everything. I do my own butter, my own mayo, my sprouts,

Craig Garber:
Wow.

Dan Mongrain:
fermentation. I love that stuff and it takes my mind off music as well.

Craig Garber:
That’s the number one hobby for musicians, by the way. Cooking.

Dan Mongrain:
What? Cooking?

Craig Garber:
Yeah, yeah, I mean,

Dan Mongrain:
I

Craig Garber:
I’ve

Dan Mongrain:
can’t

Craig Garber:
had

Dan Mongrain:
believe

Craig Garber:
over

Dan Mongrain:
it.

Craig Garber:
900 guests and by far, cooking’s number one.

Dan Mongrain:
And so, yeah, and, you know, getting older, I think it’s good at better habits like that and exercise and stuff. But as well as mentally and emotionally, I think we grow. We try to get to be better and, you know, like we said earlier, deal with our own. wound and not scratching the scar over and over and over but grow and you know it’s not perfect and there’s some old ghost appearing from time to time but

Craig Garber:
Absolutely man.

Dan Mongrain:
I think there’s a beauty of getting older and you become wiser I guess you make better choice for yourself and yes it feels good so far.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, no, I agree. So I’m happy getting older. I’ve had, it’s been a lot. My, my older life is a lot more relaxed and fun than my younger life for sure, man.

Dan Mongrain:
You would not go back.

Craig Garber:
Oh, not for a minute. No,

Dan Mongrain:
Exactly.

Craig Garber:
I certainly wouldn’t go back. I heard you mentioned that you enjoy foraging for mushrooms.

Dan Mongrain:
Yes.

Craig Garber:
And you know,

Dan Mongrain:
Yes.

Craig Garber:
mushrooms is now becoming a really big topic. You know, there was a big documentary, which I’m probably sure I don’t know the name, but I’m all over the internet.

Dan Mongrain:
Fungi

Craig Garber:
Yes.

Dan Mongrain:
or something.

Craig Garber:
Yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
it was really interesting

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
about the mycelium and how every I was fascinated by that. But how did you get into picking mushrooms? And like, when you go out? I guess it’s like anything else, you gotta study what to eat, what not to eat.

Dan Mongrain:
Oh yeah,

Craig Garber:
Yeah, because

Dan Mongrain:
he

Craig Garber:
some of them are poisonous.

Dan Mongrain:
picked up. Oh, he’s deadly.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
And I started a long time ago, more than 10 years ago. I have a friend who’s always in the woods with his dog and he started to be interested in plants and mushrooms. And so I went with him and I got hooked with the mushroom and I bought some books and read a lot about it. I still buy. I just bought a book in the UK about mushrooms. and I have like 10 books about them and encyclopedia and I studied them for a while. Now I slowed down a little bit but it’s spring here and the morals are out and I know the which kind of mushroom grow in which season and which tree they are communicating with so to speak and which are edible which are not and The one that I don’t know which is the majority because there’s thousands

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
and tens of thousands of them. I don’t, I can study, pick up and see the color of the spore. I don’t know the

Craig Garber:
Pores.

Dan Mongrain:
word in English. Spores,

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
yeah, the color of spores and identify them and to make sure you can either eat them or just identify for the pleasure of it. And some Facebook. group

Craig Garber:
Oh yeah, I’m sure, yeah, that’s

Dan Mongrain:
about

Craig Garber:
cool.

Dan Mongrain:
mushrooms and sharing and stuff. So and when you find, I found last year a spot where there’s a Matsutake mushroom. It’s super rare here and it’s a Japanese kind of mushroom. It’s it tastes and smells like cinnamon or spice bread.

Craig Garber:
God, that sounds

Dan Mongrain:
It’s

Craig Garber:
delicious.

Dan Mongrain:
an amazingly aromatic mushroom and it’s big. It’s one of the biggest and yeah, it’s something that I think is good for the brain. Going to walk in the woods in nature, you see birds, squirrels, some animal traces. You go in different seasons just because you have a motivation other than just walking in the wood. But you can

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
pick up stuff and study plants and it’s very good. It’s a healthy thing to do and it’s… It’s more… I don’t know, I like to learn,

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
I like to study.

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
It’s a passion.

Craig Garber:
How do you cook that mushroom that smells like cinnamon? What do you do with that?

Dan Mongrain:
The best is… Well, Japanese use it in soups sometimes and also when they cook rice, they put the mushroom in the rice cooker

Craig Garber:
That sounds

Dan Mongrain:
with

Craig Garber:
great.

Dan Mongrain:
a bit of soy sauce and a bit of mirin. And it’s amazing.

Craig Garber:
God, that sounds,

Dan Mongrain:
It tastes

Craig Garber:
I’m like salivating

Dan Mongrain:
so

Craig Garber:
right

Dan Mongrain:
great.

Craig Garber:
now. It sounds delicious, man.

Dan Mongrain:
Also, there’s a recipe with a kind of teriyaki sauce mixed. I didn’t believe in it at first because there was too many flavors at the same time, but it enhanced the flavor of the mushroom. It’s crazy. There’s ginger and soy sauce and I think mirin and a little bit of sake in the pan. with a bit of oil to cook the mushrooms. So you wait for the water to get out and the flavor to get in and you eat it. It’s insane. It’s insane.

Craig Garber:
Dude, that sounds so delicious. Wow. Couple more questions, Dan. Most fun thing you’ve ever done.

Dan Mongrain:
The most fun thing, going on stage for me is like the one hour, one hour and a half of pure pleasure, of let go of everything and live the moment which I have a big hard time to achieve elsewhere in my life.

Craig Garber:
You know what? I was the same until I started playing guitar. And because I realized I can’t I can’t play guitar as a, as a relatively still new guitarist after six years. I can’t play guitar and think about anything else. And it was funny because that opened the door for me to being able to be present in other things. And I’m so grateful for that. And it’s funny because now I’m the easy going guy in the house and, you know, when someone’s worrying about something like, Hey man, you mean that This is the future. You have just as much probability of things working out as not working out, deal with it then. And it’s funny for me to hear myself saying that to others because I was always the guy up in my head, like boom, boom, boom, boom, planning, blah, blah, blah. And playing guitar really helped me to do that. So I understand.

Dan Mongrain:
Planning what could go wrong.

Craig Garber:
Planning, well, that’s a childhood trauma thing too because it’s these expectations of you’re always in survival mode. Right.

Dan Mongrain:
Yep.

Craig Garber:
And so you’re always like, well, I know this is going to fuck up and I need to have a, you know, but I’ve learned to tell myself after years and years of working on it, Hey Craig, you know, you have as much, and I literally talked to myself, you have as much likelihood as things working out your way as not working out your way. So deal with it then. And I have able to got, get a lot more inner peace from that. And it all started with a playing guitar for me. So I know.

Dan Mongrain:
That’s great.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, it’s really nice and I feel very lucky that things kind of worked out like.

Dan Mongrain:
I love that story.

Craig Garber:
Um, and the last question, biggest change in your personality over the last 10 years and have the changes been intentional or just a natural part of aging?

Dan Mongrain:
I try to be more mellow, more let go, more confident in not trust others. I’m struggling still, but I think I’m easier to be around than I was 10 years

Craig Garber:
Yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
ago or 20 years ago. thing because it made me unhappy in the end and others of course at first but the others were the mirror of what I projected to them. So yeah it’s still hard sometimes. There’s triggers you know that triggers behaviors that you don’t really like to have but it can happen maybe on maybe less than before when it happens. I think more easy going. I try anyway.

Craig Garber:
Man, I can’t thank you enough for having this conversation with me. It was a real pleasure and a real joy. And I thank you so much. And I’m glad to have met you. Um, and thanks.

Dan Mongrain:
Me

Craig Garber:
Thanks

Dan Mongrain:
too.

Craig Garber:
very much. Let me tell people where to find you. You mentioned there’s a new record coming out. Talk about that.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah this year is the 40th anniversary of the band Voivode. So we recorded in last January at Radecard studio with Francis Perron. uh the same studio we recorded the last two albums. We recorded a collection of old songs from pretty much all the albums, all the era of the band actually, because all the album wouldn’t fit on one vinyl.

Craig Garber:
God no.

Dan Mongrain:
But all the eras of the band, we have guests on the record, we have Eric Forrest who sang and played bass in the bands for an era of the band, and also

Craig Garber:
Oh, that’s so cool.

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, he accepted to play and was thrilled to play a track that he wrote with Denis Piguet-Damour during his time in the Voivode and we wrote a new song on that record as well and a cover of PIL, Public Image Limited, which is the song Home. We did a cover of that, which will be only on the CD version though, not on the vinyl. And it’s going to come out on July 21st. And it’s on pre-sale, I think right now. And we’re really excited about this because there one song on that album, which is the first, very first song Voivod ever recorded.

Craig Garber:
Oh.

Dan Mongrain:
And it was on Metal Massacre with Metallica

Craig Garber:
That’s so cool.

Dan Mongrain:
in 82 or 83. And when we recorded it, And then when Snake had to lay down his vocal tracks on it, he realized, well, there’s no lyrics sheet anywhere. And back then, you know, coming from up North Quebec, French, French only everywhere here, you know, we do learn English on tour, not, not home. And, uh, so we, we heard the lyrics and we couldn’t. figure it out at all. It was German, it was not English, you know, it was with the big axe French accent and strange lyrics, badly translated, you know.

Craig Garber:
So what did you wind up doing?

Dan Mongrain:
So, so we tried to figure it out. But even with AI, you know, as a isolated, isolated track, it didn’t work out. We asked some English speaking person and they said, sounds like German to me. So After a while, Snake thought, maybe my mom has it because she’s collecting all the Voivod

Craig Garber:
That

Dan Mongrain:
stuff.

Craig Garber:
is hilarious.

Dan Mongrain:
And so he called her sister to go to her mom at their hometown, Jonquière up North Quebec, and she had the file in a drawer. Oh yeah, that’s

Craig Garber:
Oh

Dan Mongrain:
it,

Craig Garber:
my

Dan Mongrain:
that’s

Craig Garber:
God,

Dan Mongrain:
the one.

Craig Garber:
how funny is that? That is great, his mom

Dan Mongrain:
And

Craig Garber:
had the lyrics.

Dan Mongrain:
mom had

Craig Garber:
That’s

Dan Mongrain:
the lyrics.

Craig Garber:
great, man, that’s a good story. What’s

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
the record

Dan Mongrain:
So we,

Craig Garber:
called?

Dan Mongrain:
the record is called more, uh, more God tales, which is a reference from more Goth was the imagery imaginary, uh, land or planet that a way, uh, imagine created at the beginning of the band to create the Voivode character, which is a nuclear vampire that defense planet. And, um, and the morgott tales also is referring to marbid tales which is an album from the band celtic frost in switzerland they toured together back in the 80s in america and so it’s a kind of a reference to that as well

Craig Garber:
Very cool.

Dan Mongrain:
and the new song is called morgot tails and it has I don’t know how many songs actually, but like songs from all the eras plus a new

Craig Garber:
That’s

Dan Mongrain:
one

Craig Garber:
really

Dan Mongrain:
and

Craig Garber:
cool.

Dan Mongrain:
a

Craig Garber:
Must’ve

Dan Mongrain:
Kogger.

Craig Garber:
been fun to go back and record all those old songs.

Dan Mongrain:
Oh, it was so much fun after the Synchro Anarchy sessions that were very stressful. We just went there and jam and it was all some of the songs we never played together or they never played again. So there’s a song NUAGE FRACTAL from the Angel Rat album, which is probably the less heavy they did. floating ether, ethereal,

Craig Garber:
Ethereal. Ethereal. Yeah,

Dan Mongrain:
yeah.

Craig Garber:
yeah.

Dan Mongrain:
And some of the stuff are really trash speed metal from the early years, like Trashing Rage on the Roar album, which sounded kind of, it sounded hard. I mean, the mix was kind of aggressive. So the new sound in the studio makes it more audible, the elements, the little details, we try to keep the, you know, the young vibe so to speak

Craig Garber:
Good.

Dan Mongrain:
as well. I think it sounds really, really good. I can’t wait for fans to comment on it.

Craig Garber:
That’s awesome. And it comes out July 21st. So go to a voivod.com to pre-order it. Also check out Dan online, danmongrain.com. There is also Dan’s first band, Martyr everything

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
they did is up on bandcamp. So

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
go check that out. There’s a bio of Voivod bio coming out in a in a biography book, Jeff Wagner,

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah.

Craig Garber:
any date, any idea when

Dan Mongrain:
Not, no idea, but it could be early 2024 or maybe late this year. I’m not sure. There’s a book, it’s being written though.

Craig Garber:
And the Voivod documentary, what’s the status of that?

Dan Mongrain:
Yeah, there’s a documentary that’s been in works for years. And of course the pandemic slowed it down, but it’s getting edited and more footage being added and more interviews still. So it’s gonna come out eventually and it’s better that we wait a little bit more because it’s gonna get the thing more interested and more structured and all that. So. It’s very exciting. I saw just snippets of it and it’s going to be a good watch, I’m sure, for the fans and even for people that don’t know the band. They could discover something like a very interesting story.

Craig Garber:
Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. That’s awesome. All right, man, well hang on a second. I’m gonna sign off. Any final words of wisdom?

Dan Mongrain:
Perseverance.

Craig Garber:
Perseverance right on, man.

Dan Mongrain:
That’s all. That’s the

Craig Garber:
Well

Dan Mongrain:
word.

Craig Garber:
said. Well, hang on a minute, Dan, and then I’ll wrap up. Everybody, thank you, and thanks for all your time. Thanks for everything, being so open and cool and sharing everything and all your stories, man. Thank you very much. Everybody, thanks

Dan Mongrain:
Thanks.

Craig Garber:
so much for listening. If you enjoyed this, share it on your social channels. We appreciate your support. Thanks very much to Dan Mongre for spending time with us, coming on the show. And most important, remember that happiness is a choice, so choose wisely. Be nice, go play your guitar and have fun. Until next time, peace and love everybody. I am out. Dan, thanks for everything brother.