Yesterday's Ring Show Other Side Of
The Sainte Catherines

By Steve McLean

Yesterday's Ring

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Yesterday's Ring began in the Summer of 2000, but has largely taken a back seat to The Sainte Catherines, the Montreal punk band that singer/lyricist Hugo Mudie and guitarist/vocalist Fred Jacques were in at the time and continue to be a part of today.

"We were just tired of playing loud and fast punk songs," says Mudie. "We were listening to a lot of country music in the van and we wanted to do something similar, but coming from the punk scene, the music was really dirty, rough and...punk."

The two men played around their hometown and recorded an EP of songs influenced by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Rancid's Tim Armstrong, The Clash's Joe Strummer and The Pogues' Shane MacGowan. They added The Sainte Catherines' bassist/vocalist Marc-Andre Beaudet and guitarist/vocalist Louis Valiquette in 2003 for a bilingual acoustic punk-folk album titled Onze Chansons Pour Faire Pleurer Les Morts Vivants (loosely translated into English as Eleven Songs To Make The Living Dead Cry).

Yesterday's Ring toured across Canada, the U.S. and Europe before releasing a 2005 album titled El Rancho that featured a fuller, more dynamic and more energetic sound with drums, electric guitars, keyboards, harmonica, banjo, mandolin and horns.

"Every song was written in a different town on tour and then, once they got those songs back to Montreal, the album was done very quickly," says guitar, pedal steel and banjo player Ryan Battistuzzi. "It really captured a moment in time and the spirit of touring and coming back home."

Battistuzzi and The Sainte Catherines' drummer Rich Bouthillier and bassist Pablo Boerr are now full-time members of Yesterday's Ring, and they invited a number of talented musical friends into the studio to help them on the self-produced and newly released Diamonds In The Ditch, an album which blends folk, country, rock, pop, punk and Celtic styles.

"This one was more of a collective effort and was more or less written in Montreal," says Battistuzzi. "We had grown enormously musically and we started playing the songs a little differently and getting a little heavier at the end of some of them to give them a bit of an epic quality.

"We took what we did live and applied it to the songs right away and went with it."

Diamonds In The Ditch is somewhat of a concept album with a loose narrative involving a protagonist who moves from Montreal to Florida and back, according to Battistuzzi.

"The album takes place on a road trip down to Florida and, once he gets to Florida later on in the album, he realizes that nothing has really changed since he's been confronted with new problems. It has sort of a 'there's nothing like home' ending to it in coming back to Montreal. You can escape the cold but you can't escape reality."

You also can't escape the reality that the biggest market in the world for the type of music that Yesterday's Ring makes is the U.S. So their French songs of the past will remain there, says Battistuzzi.

"The thing about singing in French is that you'll be able to reach a larger audience in Quebec. There are some really good bands in Montreal that just sing in French and have enormous audiences across Quebec, but getting out of Quebec is a little more difficult."

On the strength of Diamonds In The Ditch, Yesterday's Ring should shine brightly wherever they go.