One minute you’re doing a session backing a pop-princess hopeful in the studio, the next you’ve got a kickass rock band. Well, that’s what kind of happened to Lee-La Baum (frontwoman/ guitarist), her partner Tom Schemer (lead guitarist) and drummer Dave Traina.
Rooted in Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane, Montreal quartet The Damn Truth (now completed by bassist PY Letellier) have just released their fourth album, a self-titled banger, with production legend Bob Rock at the controls. Baum and Schemer tell Classic Rock some lesser-known things about the band.
They started by playing together naked at a hippie festival
“That worked for us, man,” Baum says with a laugh, remembering the event where everyone was naked. Schemer heard someone playing CSN&Y’s Almost Cut My Hair on an acoustic guitar and was compelled to investigate.
“I loved that song, and I’d never heard it played in the open, by a bonfire. I sat down, we started jamming, and it turned out we knew a bunch of the same songs. At the end of the night Lee-La said: ‘Maybe we should start a band?’”
When their tour van burst into flames, the rock’n’roll community saved them
It was the first Damn Truth tour for new bassist Letellier, and Baum and Schemer had brought their young son Ben. The van and trailer were packed with merchandise, music gear, nappies…
“Driving in the middle of the night in North Ontario, someone flags us down,” Baum recalls. “At that same moment, I smell smoke.”
The van was already in flames as the band leapt from it, and another passer-by helped to hoist the trailer from the van, which eventually burned out. Before exhaustedly hitting the sack in a nearby motel, Baum reached out to family and friends online for help, hoping to make enough money to get home. By morning “the whole rock ’n’roll community had come together,” she says. “We had enough money for another van! We finished the tour, and this support made it extra special.”
Bob Rock produced 2021’s Now Or Nowhere, and was back on board for The Damn Truth.
“After the first album with him we went to dinner and bonded like family,” says Baum. When she sent Rock some new songs while on tour in the UK, he rang her to say these could be the best songs they’d written so far.
“Even though Bob did all those metal albums in the eighties and nineties that people know him for, he comes from the same place as us,” says Schemer. “He loves the late-sixties, early-seventies stuff, and you can’t hide any reference from him. ‘I know where you’re going with that,’ he’ll say, and he’ll help direct us.”
They hung out with Billy Gibbons – with him in his pyjamas
In 2018 the band were chosen to open for ZZ Top in the US and Europe. For The Damn Truth it was a huge – and scary – deal. “We were shitting our pants,” says Baum. “We were so in awe.”
After going down well on the first night, the band were having a drink in their dressing room when Gibbons popped his head in. “He was in a onesie pyjama with his leather jacket over it, and his fuzzy hat and glasses. He said: ‘Guys! Good job!’ and our jaws dropped.”
It’s essential to have a branded hot sauce
Thanks to their rhythm section, The Damn Truth have a vodka ’n’ Mexican spice blend aptly called Truth Serum. “That’s PY and Dave’s department,” says Schemer. “They are hot sauce fanatics. They teamed with a maker in Montreal.”
You are what you wear
Baum’s Instagram page is filled with wild, colourful vintage outfits, a visual theme that the whole band embrace.
“I love how it makes me feel. I don’t want to be humdrum,” she says.
“It also connects people to us,” says Schemer. “When we started around ten years ago we were hated in Montreal, we didn’t fit in with the dominant indie scene. So the way we play and dress is timeless, true to ourselves. And that’s the damn truth.”
The Damn Truth is out now via Spectra Musique.
