Having just released their invigorating third album, Still Believe In Rock And Roll, The Wild! frontman Dylan Villain and producer Mike Fraser (AC/DC, Aerosmith, Chickenfoot, Jackyl) sat down with BraveWords scribe Aaron Small for an exclusive song by song analysis.

For those unfamiliar, Mike clarifies the role of a producer. “A producer is sort of like a quarterback of a football team. My job is to integrate Dylan’s ideas and songwriting; how he wants his songs perceived and to sound. As well as production, I’m doing the engineering. The engineering is the physical recording of the music. But a producer grabs Dylan’s vision and tries to make it into a reality. He’s got all the songs and melodies written. I just give him opinions on the tempos of the songs… let’s try this or maybe do that. I’m sort of his support team to get his vision out there to the masses.”

“Bad News” – Awesome way to start the album with really up-front lyrics: “Ain’t payin’ my rent, but I’m payin’ my dues,” followed later on by, “Got the cops on my ass and I don’t care.”

Dylan: “It was the one that really set the tone for the record, and I think that’s one reason why I chose it to open the record. Lyrically, it paints a picture in itself. It almost creates a story in your head, like a movie or something. There’s only certain people that can attach themselves to that feeling – you’ve done a lot of things wrong in your life, but it’s made you who you are. You just accept it. I’m bad news, but you couldn’t walk a mile in my shoes. It’s like praise for being the bad guy, and I’ve sort of lived by that my whole life, and I know a lot of other people have, and that’s okay.”

Mike: “For me, there’s always been sort of a punky side to The Wild! and we always want to retain that. One thing Dylan brought a lot of to this album is his melodies, they’re so killer! And he comes up with some great lyrics. It’s got that dangerous element to it; rock’s not supposed to be nice.”

“Crazy (For You)” – It’s surprising to hear a breakdown this early in the album.

Dylan: “I knew that song would follow ‘Bad News’ really well; it’s a great 1-2 punch. But I wasn’t concerning myself with there being a breakdown, I just knew it was a really cool song. The song’s under four minutes, so even though there is a breakdown – actually, ‘Bad News’ has a breakdown in it. I don’t think people realize it because it’s so relentless as a song. We were just going for what felt right. And lyrically, I wrote it off a feeling, a rhythm, which was new for me. Typically, I go riff, riff, riff, rhythm, and then words. We were in rehearsal after we got back from tour, and I just had it in my head. The pre and the chorus on it became this explosion from that energy of the rhythm. Next, I put words on it. I don’t know how the chorus came to me, but it did. Most of my words just come into my brain. I was just writing a song about absolutely dysfunctional relationships. Everybody’s had one! You can’t see it when you’re in it. All your friends and family can, but you can’t. And generally, I find that’s when you have the best sex, and that’s what keeps you there. Everybody’s been in one of those relationships, and I’ve had several, so I wrote a fucking song about it!”

“Nothing Good Comes Easy” – This song has an Airbourne feel to it; a band that Mike’s worked with in the studio, and The Wild! has toured with.

Dylan: “I actually wrote that song with Keith Nelson, who’s a founding member of Buckcherry. Keith and I have been really close friends for a number of years. He’s always sort of acted like an older brother figure. The way I look at Keith is the older, more sober version of me. He’s been really great for me in my career at different times for different reasons. I went out to L.A. and we hung out, just jammed and tried to write some shit. I walked into the studio that day… I’d got off the plane from Europe, and got on another plane to go to L.A. Keith said, ‘How you doing man?’ I said, ‘I’m fucking beat. But hey, nothing good comes easy.’ We went in and we tried to write, we were fucking around. I said, ‘What did I say to you when I was coming through the door?’ He had a look like, yeah! So, we started to write that song. It’s funny, cause all the other ideas that Keith and I came up with on that session – we didn’t keep any of it. But that one, we did. I will say that it sort of got forgotten about in the whole pool of songs for the record. I remembered it before we went in to track, and we tried it as a band. We all went, ‘Yep, we’re doing it.’ It was that easy.”

Mike: “The other thing with this song, it’s sort of been the theme of this whole record. We ran into these various roadblocks, and it was kind of our mantra – nothing good comes easy. We’ve got to work for it.”

“High Speed” – That’s a real Harley Davidson motorcycle revving its engine.

Dylan: “Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think I could ever do a record with Mike and not do anything real, it’s just not his style. The song was already tracked, we were into mixing when we did that. Where we rehearse in Kelowna (British Columbia) is around the corner from my friend’s motorcycle shop. They’re really big into rock and roll, they do a motorcycle party every year with bands. We’ve played it, Danko Jones has played it, the list goes on. It’s a lot of fun! I was driving by there, and I knew I had that riff for ‘High Speed’, and it was like, what am I going to write this song about? I thought, hey man, I like motorcycles, I ride a motorcycle. But really what came out of it is the feeling of going fast – on a motorcycle, in a car, on a boat, any of that is the same thing as when you’re playing fast music. Your heart gets racing and you feel free. There’s something about fast tempos where it’s hard, it’s hard to lock in with each other when you’re playing as a band, but it’s also freeing in a way because it’s so fast that you’re just fucking holding on. And I love that! I love that feeling of chaos. And I think a lot of people understand that. It’s like, you bring a girl on a rollercoaster – that’s how you break the ice! That’s how it happened lyrically. For the motorcycle, we were in the studio, and I said, we’ve got to put a motorcycle on this. It was not motorcycle weather at all, and I called another buddy’s bike shop, asking if he could get a bike down to the studio. Honestly, between myself, Mike, and the assistant, we didn’t expect anything to happen. And my buddy says, ‘Yep, see you in an hour,” and hangs up. It wasn’t long before he showed up with a Harley in the back of his truck. We miced it up and put it on the record.”

Mike: “It was in the middle of January. It was down to minus 20; the coldest it’s ever been there. And Dylan comes up with this idea, ‘We need to record a bike.’ I said, are you crazy? But sure enough, his buddy was there in an hour, it was awesome.”

“King Of This Town” – Destined to be a great live song with its ‘Whoa oh oh’ sing-along section, that’s slightly reminiscent of The Misfits.

Mike: “Again, Dylan’s the mastermind of all this. It was always in the song, right from when the riffs really started coming together; we need to put some gang vocals on this. And they had to sing the gangs, it couldn’t be just a bunch of drunk guys. So that becomes tricky, because if you get all musicians, it’ll sound too nice and it’s not a gang anymore; it’ll sound like a choir. Even with hand claps, people think they have to be in time, no they don’t. Cause then they sound horrible. It’s got to sound real, if it’s too precise, it sounds like a machine. And it’s the same with gang vocals. They’re actually pretty hard to record because you want them good enough so the melody comes across, but if it gets too good, it’s no longer mean and dangerous.”

Dylan: “When you go to a rock show, not everybody in the crowd who’s singing along can sing. In order for it to sound like a crowd, like Mike’s saying, you need to have some people who can’t sing at all. But let me tell you how the writing of that happened. It was actually really interesting; we were on tour in Europe with Rose Tattoo during the World Cup. And the World Cup in Europe is no fucking joke! In the foyers of the venues they put up crazy big projection screen TVs. If you can imagine, we’d go on first. It’s ten minutes ‘til the stage and there’s nobody in the room. Everybody’s in the foyer watching World Cup soccer, this is how seriously they take it. They’d file in five minutes before the show would start. They’d cheer, they’d drink; they’re the craziest crowds. And then they’d all go back to the foyer to watch soccer. Rose Tattoo would come on, they’d do the same thing. I was thinking about how soccer chants go in Europe. We’d been playing that riff at soundcheck a lot; I knew there was something there. I thought, if I could get these soccer nuts who also like rock and roll, singing this chant in the middle of the song during our show, that would be fucking killer!”

“Still Believe In Rock And Roll” – The title track features the most uplifting chorus of the album.

Dylan: “I wrote it from the standpoint of how it looked for us when we first started out, to the next stage of where we got to, to where we are now. The more things change in your career, whether you get money or you lose money, all of us in music have gone through highs and lows, but there’s always a constant with it. I wanted it to show how priorities can shift when you’re in a band that’s playing real traditional rock and roll music, but the priorities can also stay the same. In 2020, when you’re a band like us, playing music like there is on this record and our previous records, there is a feeling of… I don’t want to say isolation, but you tend to know that you are one of the few. Despite the fucking passing trends, despite the flavours of the week, this is who we are. This is what we know, and this is the constant in it - this music, this feeling, this authenticity. And that’s really good enough for guys like us.”

Mike: “One thing I give this record, Dylan worked really hard and we talked a lot about getting more melody on this record. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Dylan’s changed his singing style a little bit. He’s singing in a different part and different range of his voice; he’s really found where it is. Early on, even on the last record, he’s always come out with his foot on the gas, up high constantly. That takes a toll on your voice. You start the song high, there’s no where to go but higher or louder. There was a period in the last record where he scarily lost his voice for a while, fortunately he got it back. But it got him thinking and us thinking, we’ve got to approach things a little differently. He found where his voice sits naturally, and he’s got full power to it. He’s got control, it’s not killing him. In writing all these songs, he had that in his tool kit so to speak. When their songs come out foot on the gas, now we can go easier on the vocal, but it doesn’t sound like it’s easier cause he can get some good growl and emotion into it, and now these melodies are starting to pop out of him, cause he’s not always on high, screaming it out like Brian Johnson. It’s created this whole new palette for him.”

“Playing With Fire” – The video for this song was released six months ago in September 2019.

Dylan: “And it just hit the top of the charts in Europe! Now that we’ve been doing so much internationally, it’s interesting to see how different markets react to different things. For example, that song didn’t even chart in Canada. Kid, the other guitarist in the band, wrote the riff. We changed it up slightly, just to the way you hear it now; and I sat with it for a while. I wrote it into this structure that had the chorus, I was playing it really slow on an acoustic guitar – and it was a country thing, like Hank Williams. I love that sort of music, it’s some of the best storytelling and it totally lends itself to rock and roll if you know what you’re listening for. I thought, can I do that with this song, sped up to 200 BPM (beats per minute)? Will it work? And it did. I remember telling Mike, I’m doing the whole song with country melodies. It took a while to get it right in the studio, it’s like country meets punk rock and roll. I’m a big fan of The Smalls. They’re one of the only other bands I know that have really delved into that territory.”

Mike: “We call it punkabilly rock. We always loved the riff, but it was hard to find where the vocal was going with it. That was the thing I was sort of unsure of. It took us a bit to get the vocal fitting to where we wanted it to be, but as soon as that clicked in, it was like, oh yeah, there we go! I love it.”

“Young Rebels” – There’s a feeling of passing the torch to the next generation on this tune.

Dylan: “That’s an interesting one. I just had a son, he’s 11 months, going to be a year in a couple weeks, and his name is Rebel. I’ve been playing guitar to him since he was born. I was singing his name, just singing, ‘Hey, hey, young Rebel.’ I remember feeling good about it, and I started thinking about this second version of me. Thinking about how I was when I was young – not that young – and not having a care in the fucking world, and how amazing that felt! A lot of us in life lose that over time, cause shit gets in the way. You get stress, money, problems in your relationship, you name it. It’s life, it’s hard. I’ve always felt I’ve retained a lot of that youthful, not carelessness, but freedom. I’ve really made it a point in my life to build a foundation around feeling free. It’s something I’ve always gravitated towards, and it’s stuck with me. So, I wanted to write a song for, not only my son, but anybody who’s young out there; there is another generation that’s listening to rock music. There’s less of them, but there is, and to let them know that you don’t have to grow up and get boring. You don’t have to grow up and get a real job and cut your hair, it’s bullshit! You’ve got to remember, it’s your choice. Life, happiness, freedom – all of these things are a choice. It’s really up to you. I wanted to write a song that encapsulated all of those feelings I had when I was a kid. And looking to the next generation; remember to hang onto these moments you’re living as a kid, cause they are the best. Also, when you get older, don’t forget those feelings. You can still feel as good as you do now when you get older.”

Mike: “Dylan called me up late one night and said, ‘I’ve got this idea for a great song, I’ll play it to you.’ He whisper-sang it to me on his acoustic because his family was fast asleep and he didn’t want to wake anybody up. We were saying wait ‘til we get this Wild-ified.”

“Goin’ To Hell” – Another reflective song looking back at the past while still enjoying the present.

Dylan: “I went to Catholic school for ten years, and when I was in kindergarten, the Priest told me that the Devil was in me. That’s a true story. There’s no rock and roll fiction to this. I went home and I went to bed, I woke my parents up in the middle of the night screaming, having a night terror, just freaking out. They came in asking what’s wrong? All I could say was, the Devil’s in me! If you can imagine a kid in kindergarten letting that be the basis of his existence, from that time moving forward… and then I got into rock and roll. And then I got into punk rock. And then I got into drinking. And then I got into trouble. Basically, what I was doing with that song was recalling that story, thinking about how it affected me in my life, and writing it based off of a standpoint against these things they taught me in school, these things they tell you in the Bible. In this day and age, you straight-up cannot even get out of bed without going to hell. It’s fucking impossible. I just wanted to take a huge jab and a big middle finger at the whole thing and have a laugh at it in a cool way. Literally, by their standards, you cannot do anything without being a sinner. I find that whole thing laughable.”

Mike: “The Reverend probably did the world a great favour by doing that to Dylan, cause who knows how he would have turned out if that hadn’t happened?”

“Gasoline” – Truly a compelling song that grips you. A very strong ending to a super cool rock and roll album, that gets rather serious.

Dylan: “We always like to have one on every record. One song that’s really personal to me, but also has a deeper feel. It shows a little bit of character and depth. We chose it to end the record because it felt like it was the right feeling to close on. It took me two years to write the lyrics to that song. It’s a really personal song about everything I’ve been through and seen. I’ve lived through a lot of experiences that most people will never have to endure. Quite frankly, some people don’t get to live through these experiences, they die. That’s very fucking real. It’s something I recognize. I wanted to get it off my chest. Again, just because I lived through these things, doesn’t mean everybody else has. But there’s a feeling in the whole song that I think a lot of people can relate to, and that’s acceptance. That’s what it comes down to – being okay with no matter what you’ve been through, no matter what you’re going through. Sometimes you’ve got to step back from it and go, it’s okay. It doesn’t have to end your life or change you. Or, if it does affect you, let it be in a positive way that makes you a stronger person. I think it was therapeutic for me to do it. It was actually really hard to track. I really struggled with singing this one. The words were there, and the melody was there, it was the delivery of it all. It was challenging.”

Mike: “It was hard not to choke up, there’s many a wet eye during this song. When you live as long as we have, you’ve lost a lot of friends to this shit. It was an emotional one to work on.”