While John Paul Smith is best known for being the frontman of popular pop/ punk band, Sleeping With Tuesday, his country roots run deep in his Lethbridge based roots/ country/ folk group the Coal Creek Boys. They play Average Joes with Big River — the Johnny Cash Tribute, April 5.
“My mom and dad’s first date was in June 1970 with Johnny Cash and June Carter in 1970 at the Montreal Forum. When I was three, my dad took me to see Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson,” said Smith, who sports a Grateful Dead tattoo on his right forearm.
“My first professional bands were jam bands,” he continued.
“Sleeping With Tuesday was my first rock band and the first time I ever owned a distortion pedal,” said the Elkford, B.C. born and raised musician, who grew up in a coal mining community, has family who work in the mines and even did a stint as a miner himself. So the move to country music was a natural one. He formed the Coal Creek Boys just about a year ago.
“It’s blue collar music. We’re close to working people and we sing stories about that,” he said.
The band, including multi-instrumentalist and bassist Dino Scavo, rhythm guitarist Devin Gergel, drummer Dustin Gergel and new pedal steel guitarist Ryan Dyck, released their debut CD, “Hard At It In Old Town,” in January. The 18-track CD has already done well, getting radio airplay all over the United States and in Canada. You can hear the Coal Creek Boys on CKUA regularly and they are even starting to get some Top 40 radio airplay with their songs “Snow” and “Old Number Seven”
“We were starting to work on the new Sleeping with Tuesday album in the studio (Ghostwood Studio, the Lethbridge recording studio which Smith owns) and I played “Snow” Aaron Bay and Quint Viskup (Ghostwoods’ recording engineers) said ‘That’s what you should be doing,” he said.
“My mother always said this is what I should be doing too.”
But while he grew up listening to country music, he noted it has been a learning curve learning how to play it.
“ Drummer Dustin Gergel taught me a lot of tricks like putting a hundred dollar bill into your guitar, for the rattling sound. And country music is all about the rhythm, so he arranged all of the drum parts. He’s the backbone of the band, ” he said.
“Dino Scavo is so good on so many different instruments. And he’s my best friend. I can hear it all in my head and he can play it,” he said.