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Music Review BY TOM MURRAY The Brothers Creeggan with Julie Doiron Thursday, Jan. 27 at the Sidetrack Café Jim Creeggan, bassist for the Barenaked Ladies and current co-leader of the Brothers Creeggan, is typically irreverent when confronted with that old warhorse of a music journalism question: How Would You Describe Your Music? "Since this is a phone interview, I can’t really do my interpretive dance to describe our music. You’d have to imagine the choreography and moves I would be doing." But this kind of answer can’t possibly surprise, coming from a musician who plays in a band noted for their high good humor and self-effacement. For the uninitiated, the Brothers Creeggan (who also include co-leader and vocalist/guitarist/pianist/brother Andy, with non-brother Ian McLauchlan on drums) sound a fair distance from the Ladies, foregoing their explicit pop sensibility for an implied jazz feel, but moving away from this when the situation demands – sometimes funky, sometimes folkish, and often all over the musical map. Trunks is their third album now, and reflective of their changes and interests, quite different from the first two. "While making the record, we were jammed in a studio during a snowstorm in Toronto, so it was kind of a cold, cold mood. Instrumentally, it’s double bass, drums and piano, with Andy fooling around occasionally on acoustic guitar." The Many Moods of the Brothers Creegan? A candlelit dinner, that special someone and the Brothers on the stereo? "It’s not necessarily a candlelit dinner," rejoins Creeggan, "it’s more like an afternoon sort of playing scrabble kind of music." And damned if it isn’t just that, the sort of gentle, warm music to be played while the sun streams through the window and mom bakes cookies. It’s – surprise surprise – actually quite a personal album, layered with all sorts of Creeggan family mythology. But for all the jazz leanings, it’s not actually the J word. "We’re not really jazzy, we borrow jazz flavors. It’s more pop music with jazz colors and sometimes classical colors." Flogging that angle, talking jazz a little, I remind Creeggan of Miles Davis’s propensity for using the word "motherfucker" as both positive and negative connotation in his notorious autobiography. I read off a list of motherfuckers: John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams . . . "I’d just drop dead happy if Miles Davis called us a motherfucker," says Creeggan, in a verbal deadpan. The Creegans are a motherfucker of a band and also workhorses, with Jim moving from the endless tour/album cycle with the Barenaked Ladies and Andy (who played keyboards on the first two Barenaked Ladies albums) taking time off from his advanced musical studies to go back to touring small clubs again. "It’s interesting, the role reversal. To be up at the front of the stage doing your own stuff. And to be touring with these two, who I would normally hang out with anyway. It’s been fun. For the first time in years I’ve been saving postcards, keeping receipts. It’s like a big road trip. "I don’t think I could have done this years ago when I was burnt out from the road, but it seems like now I’m ready to embrace it. Luckily I got into yoga when I developed tendinitis about a year and a half ago and it’s given me a bit more time, a bit more energy. It works out. Steve and Ed (of Barenaked Ladies) are writing for the next album and here I am putting all my time into this," Creegan jokes with a mock sigh, "when I should be relaxing at home."

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