SPILL + ECONOLINE CRUSH CONTEST  

WIN AN ECONOLINE CRUSH PRIZE PACK!

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WIN AN ECONOLINE CRUSH PRIZE PACK CONSISTING OF ONE HOODIE, ONE T-SHIRT, TOQUE, PACK OF ROLLING PAPERS, KEYCHAIN AND A PAIR OF PASSES TO THE NOVEMBER 9 SHOW AT LEE’S PALACE IN TORONTO!

SPILL CONTEST: WIN AN ECONOLINE CRUSH PRIZE PACK!

*CONTEST CLOSES: NOVEMBER 6, 2023 @ MIDNIGHT

Artist Bio

When The Devil Drives is the latest album from Canadian rock veterans Econoline Crush, formed some 30 years ago by frontman Trevor Hurst, now the sole original member. The band’s first full-length album in over a decade, and documentary film, Flatlander, about a rocker from Brandon, Manitoba’s second career as a psychiatric nurse, will be out later this year.

Produced by one-time Miniatures frontman Ian Alexander Smith (SATE, Cassie DaSilva) and mixed by the legendary Jack Joseph Puig, two of the nine songs feature David “Ziggy” Sigmund, who played guitar in Econoline Crush from 1997-2002 and rejoined in 2010. He passed away suddenly in March 2022, just as the album was getting mixed, nothing short of “a huge personal blow” for Trevor and the music world.

The two songs they wrote together, the empowering industrial-strength rocker “Invincible” and soaring 90s Brit-pop style “Smashing Optimistic,” are the first two singles. He also played bass and guitar on the tracks.

Even the album title is an homage to Ziggy, not just to Econoline Crush’s best-selling album (and song), 1997’s The Devil You Know. “Needs must when the devil drives” is a Shakespeare quote meaning do what’s necessary. “Ziggy used to say that all the time,” Trevor recalls. “When you’re in the throes of addiction, you do what you can to get through it.”

Trevor has had his own struggles with addiction and mental health throughout his life. Another single is the groovy rant “No Quitter.” “Goddam boy, you better get a move on / You can’t stay here / You can barely get your shoes on,” he sings on the motivational anthem, co-written with Ian. The mechanical spark “Going Under,” which is a reworked Hurst song, addresses his depression.

“The songs all connect lyrically,” says Trevor. “Some of the themes are universal and some became even more poignant after they were written, like ‘Smashing Optimism.’ I didn’t know when I wrote it that I had this diagnosis of ADHD and ADD, but there’s a lot of traits and behaviours that tend to be a defence mechanism. That song is interesting to revisit and see how it applies to my life today.”

Originally based in Vancouver, Econoline Crush formed in 1992 and signed with EMI Music Canada in ‘94, debuting that year with the EP, Purge. The ground breaking band, which fused industrial music with rock at a time when “keyboards” were typically used in pop music, followed it up with the full-length Affliction in 1996, and their ultimate breakthrough, the platinum-selling The Devil You Know. 2001’s Brand New History was their final studio album for EMI.

It looked like the band who had toured with Alice Cooper, opened for KISS at New York’s Madison Square Garden and Toronto’s SkyDome (now Rogers Centre), and headlined countless tours, might be done for good.

Trevor teamed up with ex Collective Soul guitarist Ross Childress for a one-off project called Hurst, a lighter sound heard on the 2005 EP, Wanderlust, via MapleMusic/UMC. But then the seven-year itch called him back. Econoline Crush returned with the album Ignite, in 2008, then an EP, The People Have Spoken, Vol. 1, in 2011, both independent.

Around this time, Trevor started to have clarity on his own mental health issues, particularly depression, which in retrospect had impacted his chances of fully achieving his original goals with music. The decade that followed was filled with change. The married father went through a divorce, lost both his parents, remarried, and enrolled at university to become a registered psychiatric nurse.

One of the courses required he read In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Hungarian-Canadian psychiatrist Gabor Maté (yes, who just diagnosed Prince Harry). “He was talking about his own battle with ADD and I was thinking that could be me,” Trevor says. When he received an official diagnosis, it all made sense.

“When you go back and you review your life, you go through a bit of grieving process and realize that that teenager, that young man, that young adult, that grown man was freaking out and having all these stupid things happen and not knowing why,” he says.

When Trevor graduated, he got a job over an hour away as a community care nurse and mental coordinator at Canupawakpa Dakota First Nation (pop. 300), in southwest Manitoba, tasked with looking after close to 40 Elders. The experience is documented in Flatlander, directed by Dave Mansell, a former club owner he met on one of Econoline Crush’s weekend gigs.

Isolated outside Winnipeg, working long hours, and grieving the loss of his mother then his dad, Trevor wasn’t writing much music. “It was the Elders and the community members that were looking at me sideways, ‘You have a gift, why don’t you use it?’ and it was there that I found my path back to music,” Trevor says.

That time at Canupawakpa was key. He says he had some “wild” experiences there, including a sweat lodge in which he called to his mother and felt her fingers go up his back. Similarly, he says he will find guitar picks in his pocket that weren’t there before, a message from Ziggy perhaps.

He wrote “Whisper” for the album, a “pinnacle moment for me for the record,” he says, because he imagined what it would be like to be dead, on the other side, talking to his kids. “So in that song, I say, ‘I’m standing right here. Can you hear me whisper in your ear.’ I’m not going anywhere. I’ll always be with you.”

“I went to Canupawakpa as an atheist or agnostic and left there having faith in the creator. It makes sense to me how the world works in their eyes, the idea of crossing over. It’s a continuation,” he says. “The biggest thing that’s changed in my life is to just be in the moment, not worrying about the future, not criticizing myself about the past, but just work on the process of art and the things that are important and love who you love.”

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