From humble beginnings in the Canadian music scene to international acclaim, The Commoners have struck a chord with fans worldwide. Their latest release, 'Live in the UK,' captures the raw energy and passion that have become their trademark, driving a massive surge in popularity over the last few years. With their forthcoming return to the UK for the Ghosts On The Highway tour, were keen to explore the love the band has for our shores. We catch up with lead singer Chris Medhurst at the band’s rehearsal space in Toronto, a stunning environment which can’t help but drive a hugely creative ambiance. Wearing a Gibson T shirt, Chris greets us with a warm smile. We make ourselves comfortable and our conversation begins...

Well I’d like to start with the Live In The UK album which features nine incredible tracks recorded on The Commoners 2024 UK tour. I’ve seen firsthand the love that the UK has for The Commoners – it’s absolutely incredible and to have witnessed the band’s growth has been a real privilege. I think what’s really special is that for those fans who caught you on this tour, no there’s no better souvenir than to be able to take home the gig itself. To have an actual recording of what it meant to be at one of those shows is wonderful. But you’ve toured extensively worldwide so what made you choose the UK as the host for this amazing live album?

Well, you know what, it’s funny because of all of the reasons that you bring up, that you’ve watched it happen, is a lot of the reason why we keep coming back. It’s because of the audiences in the UK have just shown us so much support and so much love. Radio over in the UK has played a lot of our music and we’ve had a few people take some pretty big chances on us over there, so we come back as often as we do because we are very appreciative of the audience that we have over there. As musicians, we all started doing this because we just love music. It’s our lives, right? There’s easier ways to try and make a living! (Laughs!) So if you’re doing it, it had better be for the music! To know that there are people across the ocean that listen to the music that we’ve done and have sung words back to me that I wrote in my bedroom, it’s humbling and we’re really, extremely appreciative of it. So we will keep coming back to the UK as long as you guys keep showing us the love that you have.

Absolutely, and when you talk about amount of radio play you get here in the UK, it must be wonderful to know that stations such as Planet Rock are absolutely behind the band cheerleading you on.

Absolutely, man. It’s tough out there as an artist of any kind right now with the kind of climate that’s going on in the arts industries and there’s a lot of people that don’t want to take chances on new things and don’t want to stick their necks out on something new. There’s a lot of people out there that just go with the safe route and they just play with a sure thing, because it’s an easy source of income and they don’t have to take risks. So for the people in the UK to take the risk that they have with us and to stand behind our music, we really appreciate that as musicians. As a music individual and just a listener, I appreciate the fact that there’s stations out there willing to take chances on the curation they have. You guys do a really good job of radio over there. There’s a lot of really good independent radio stations like Planet Rock that are curating their playlists not just based on what they think people want to hear but based on what they like and what they want to show people, and there’s so much integrity in that.

Listening back to Live In The UK, you must be so hugely proud of what the band achieved on this tour. What are your reflections and highlights from that tour?

It was an amazing time! We were touring with The Sheepdogs at the time and it was great being overseas with some fellow Canadians. There was a lot of camaraderie and they’re great musicians as well, just really cool guys, so it was a lot of fun. We didn’t go into it seriously as far as recording the live record was concerned. It was kind of like Ross (Hayes, lead guitar) going “Do you know what? Let’s record some of these shows and maybe we’ll find something really cool, right?”. Then as we started listening to it, we talked about it more and we just decided to make a live record. There were some really good performances that were captured and it was really cool to see them in that moment in time. In a lot of ways, I kind of like that record better than the studio recorded records because it feels like a captured moment, you know? We do things live that we don’t do on the records. So moving forward, there’s going to be things that happened in those shows that will probably never happen again and it’s kind of cool to be able to listen to.

Absolutely! And I’m really pleased you said that because one of the wonderful things about Live In The UK is that it wonderfully showcases what it means to actually be at a show from The Commoners. Fans don’t just get a reproduction of the studio records. What we see are added parts and extended sections that really show how organic the band is, presenting surprises and twists and turns back to the fans in the most wonderful way. It’s a great quality to this live record, and only a really special connection and level of communication within the band could possibly create such outstanding results where the music and performance come together. And this just made me wonder to what extent are those added parts and extended sections fully rehearsed ahead of a tour and how much Is it about being open in the moment to wherever the song or the environment may take you?

I would say that it’s a little bit of both. We kind of approach a live set when we’re going on tour in a similar way to how we approach a record. When we are recording a record, we have a lot of music and we look at it all and we pick the 10 or 11 tracks that we think fit together the best and are going to create the best curated listening experience for the listener. And we put that track selection in an order with the thought of listening to the album from front to back in mind. A lot of my favourite records are very cohesive, there is a flow, there is a story through them. It’s a listener’s experience from beginning to end. So we curate our albums like that and we kind of do the same thing when we’re going into a live set. So we spend a lot of time not just on what songs we think people want to hear, or writing specific sections for songs, but also the order in which the set is presented and the transitions. Now there’s definitely stuff that is rehearsed and thought out – that’s part of it and I’m sure you could probably pick them out listening to the record. They are very musical and very nuanced and had to be pretty well thought out as far as the transitions, and then there’s aspects of the structure that you’re playing within that changes from show to show. You know, when you’re talking about how Miles (Evans-Branagh – keys) and Ross are going to go back-and-forth and jam on this guitar/organ section, the device itself may be rehearsed but the execution of it is different every night.

I think what’s really interesting is the approach you took in the sense that there was something quite natural about recording the live album because this wasn’t a decision made ahead of time but something that just evolved. Did the fact that it naturally evolved mean there was less pressure and does less pressure lead to stronger results?

I think if we’d gone into it with the intention that we had to get a live album, and that if we didn’t it would be a bad thing, it would definitely have created more stress than necessary, and I don’t think you necessarily want to put too many pressures on yourself in that way. But it just added some complications to things, just the logistics of recording every show, but luckily we have Ross as a producer and he is very, very good at what he does and he’s very proficient in those ways. So it added some stress to his life each night before the show to try to make that happen but I think it’s a very good experience live though as well because for all of us we got to learn a lot from that. Now we have an even better system that we use where we can easily record shows anywhere we go, as well as recording during our rehearsal and our writing process like what we do in this room. So you struggle a little bit to get something and usually you also learn a few things along the way.

I think one of the wonderful things about your live shows is how the emotion within the songs really translates and connects deeply with the audience. As a band you allow yourself to be vulnerable and I think the audience really embraces this. To give one specific example with the track Restless where you warmly shared the passion and your commitment of the band to touring and playing shows, but how it is of course hard work and that you miss the things at home. Tell me about how hard it is to leave family behind and also to what extent you find comfort from the closeness of fans when you’re on tour.

The fans in the UK, what they mean to us when we’re on tour, we’re just incredibly thankful. When we do leave home, it is hard. I’ve got my fiance back here and I’ve got my dog and we all spend every day with each other doing stuff in the outdoors in Canada like camping, hiking – just living. They are the most important things in the world to me and I miss them dearly when I leave. I know everyone in the band has some version of that in their lives, and when you’re on tour, life is really stressful and very hard in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of grind in being a touring musician and it’s not what a lot of people think it is. It’s a tough job. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I’ve worked some pretty shitty jobs! (Laughs!) But at the same time, when you do all the work and you get past the travel for the day and are checking into the hotel and past the sound check, you get people who are there that appreciate you, that love what you’re doing, and you share energy with those people and you have this flash of magic in the day. And that makes it all worth it because otherwise it just wouldn’t be sustainable, and that’s why I think when you hear people say ‘if you want to make it in the music industry, you need to want it more than anything, more than air’. And I think that’s true! You need to want it more than other people, it’s because it’s going to be extremely difficult and you really do have to love the music to an extent that all that difficulty is worth it every night, and it certainly is for us. I love our fans, I love playing like music and sharing music with people. Every day on tour you go ‘Oh my God, this is insane!’ and then you play the show and you go ‘Oh my God, this is amazing!

The Commoners are a relentless touring band and this summer you came back to the UK. I mentioned earlier how you present surprises to your fans with the twists and turns that you bring to the music within your live shows. But in May, you presented another surprise when you did a secret free show at The Gibson Garage In London (27th). You will have played gigs in some very interesting places in your time, but did this show come about, and also, how much did you enjoy doing a show at the Gibson Garage with all those incredible guitars around you?

I mean, that place is amazing! It’s quite good that it’s an ocean away from me because if it wasn’t there would be some serious financial things happening! (Laughs!) But we love the guys over at Gibson. They’ve been super helpful and very supportive of the band. The last time we were there before that performance, we were talking to them about how we really should do a performance there. They’ve really helped us out with guitars when we’ve come overseas in the past and just recently saved our butts at a live music festival. So we’ve got a good relationship with them and they’ve been awesome, and the Gibson Garage in London is the coolest place ever. They have some of the nicest guitars I have ever seen and the rotating guitar rack is next level!

Of course, we must talk about the forthcoming December UK tour where you will be playing 10 dates, straight after what will have been 8 dates across mainland Europe. The tour is called the Ghosts On The Highway Tour. Where did this title come from?

The title is come from a song that we’ve just been sort of playing recently at shows. We started writing some new material and we’ve been testing some out when touring on the last couple of tours. We were actually just in here yesterday working on another song so we will probably have some new material for everybody to hear in those sets when we come back in December, and it just seemed fitting. The song is very much fitting to the life on tour and, as you said, we are a hard rocking band and we come over to the UK real often. It just seems like a fitting summarisation for what we are which is just ‘always out there’, man! (Laughs!)

Well it’s great to know that there’s new music bubbling away. You use the term ‘testing songs’. Do the band have a recognised rule or process where you will road rest songs to make sure that he makes the grade?

Wholly! We really like to test out new songs on our audiences. It gives us a lot of information. A lot of the songs that people know from Find A Better Way and Restless are songs that we played live for quite some time, testing with our audiences. They evolved quite a bit over that time and changed again in preproduction and the actual studio. It’s good to live with a song. I think when you’re in the writing process itself you don’t want to overthink things. Let the song go where the song goes. But then when it comes to finding out where that song fits in a set and how it relates to your other material or some of the other new songs that you’ve written and how audiences react to it is very important for learning how to perform that song to the best of your ability and learning how that song may or may not need to change in order for it to be ready for a record and for audiences to listen to. I think there’s a lot of people who worry a little bit about doing stuff like that because when we do an album we’ll write like 20 something songs and not all of them make it onto the record. But you know, we’re not afraid to show that to people. It might be on the record and it might not! Who knows?! Anything can go but people get to hear it right now if they come to a show. 

I think that’s another example of how the fans will get something unique and special, that another show or another tour might not see. You are of course coming back to the UK again for what will be your 6th UK tour, and it’s great to hear you talk about the prospect of new music in the set. What else can fans expect?

They can just expect a different experience altogether. We are playing bigger rooms and bigger stages with longer set times than we have been allotted on most recent tours. We’ve got a full 90 minutes that we will get to play, and a bunch of new material is being worked into the set. There will be new transitions and just a new experience for people. I actually really do feel like with this next tour that we’re kind of turning the page on the last era of The Commoners and moving forward into the next era.