Scarlet Men

With a new album and a summer tour, the rock brothers of Threads of Scarlet are riding a wave of success. For almost four years, Nick Ward, 26, Jesse Foster, 27, Mark Glinka, 24, and Stu Damm, 39, have been rocking the bars and clubs in Barbados.

This year, they took their signature sound to the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival in downtown Austin, Texas —an event that is a unique blend of music, film and technology, featuring hundreds of musical acts from around the globe. On their return to Barbados, the boys threw themselves into producing an epic rock concert at Olympus Theatres. They performed selections from their debut album, Katharsis, and also produced a thrilling visual and lights show. The band has launched its website and this summer, expects to take part in the NXNW tour, the Canadian equivalent of the SXSW event.

For this interview, they are off duty, but they still look like rock stars. Nick’s wearing flip flops with guitars on the sole. Jesse, with his hair tied back, is exuding confidence even without his signature sensurround cry, “RAWWWWK!’’ Mark’s sunglasses stay on the whole time and Stu, who got his first drums at age eight because he was too energetic for piano, is just wearing a permanent grin.

But these guys only look the part of the wild bunch—they are more likely to accidentally flood a hotel room by forgetting a tap open than to trash one with groupie parties. Here, they reveal what matters most —on and off stage.

MACO: How did you guys meet?

Nick (singer, songwriter, guitarist): Jesse and I have known each other forever, we’ve been playing together for years and just always been friends but it’s quite funny because it really was a matter of circumstance how Stu and Mark got involved. In fact, so much so, that for a while that’s what the band was called – Matter of Circumstance. 

Stu (drummer): I was actually in another band at the time but it wasn’t quite working out and Nick and Jesse happened to be in New York and saw us play and asked me if I wanted to come by and listen to some of their music.

Nick: Amazingly, he didn’t think it was such a bad idea.

Stu: (laughing) No and I really liked what I heard, we got together, cooked some dinner, played a bit and it was really cool. The guy I was in the other band with had told me about this bassist he had his eye on, he happened to be in New York that week as well and so I went to see him.

Mark (bassist): It was too funny, Stu was like, “Dude, I’m in a band and we’re looking for a bassist, but I actually have these other two guys in a totally different band I’d really like you to meet.”

Stu: Yeah, I got a pretty nasty phone call about that.

Nick: But, yeah, that’s it and we met up and the first two songs we played together were “Baby Blue’’ and “Crazy Girl’’ and it just clicked, never looked back.

MACO: Tell us about the SXSW festival.

Nick: SXSW was a very intense but amazing experience. It’s a chance to get your music out to a very large audience. There was a Barbadian night on the Friday and another night we played right outside the conference centre so anyone could walk past and see the band.

Jesse (singer, songwriter, guitarist): It was really nice to connect with other Bajan artists, because they’re familiar with the things that we go through and we all just pulled together as a team. Nexyx was there, Philip7, Indrani, Kite. Kite ended up being our guitar techs for the show here, actually, which really was a privilege for us.

Mark: It really felt like a kind of brotherhood of musicians, you know, everyone kind of pushed together as one force when we were up there. Which is really unique because when you think about it, internationally, it’s such a cutthroat industry but with the Barbadian contingent there with us it felt like a real family.

MACO: Tell us about your debut album, Katharsis.

Mark: You know Nick and Jesse have known each other for so long that really when we formed the band, there was already this huge back catalogue of songs. But we also worked on a lot of newer material and actually most of that made the album and we reworked a lot of the songs to make them more radio friendly.

Nick: We always write on a song to song basis and as a band we really collaborate closely for each song. We all write, I mean lyrics are personal but we work within the knowledge that each person’s individual part is what makes the whole. So for the album we’ve re-done and re-released “Baby Blue’’ and “Issues’’, which were Jesse’s and my first singles, to update the sound and bring them more in line with the band. The thing with music is that it’s a delicate balance between art and business. It is an art form but we obviously play to a certain audience and we have to keep that in mind. We’ve always shied away from doing covers, which truthfully had kicked us in the ass in many ways, certainly when playing live, but we really pride ourselves on our originality and the album is a great mix of various themes.

MACO: And you produced the album in Barbados?

Nick: We recorded the album here at Eddie Grant Studios with a lot of help from Canefield Studios and then Commercial Studios Inc helped us do the final touches with the vocals. But we were really fortunate to receive a grant from Invest Barbados that financed us so we could have the album mixed and master in Canada. We worked with a really well-known sound engineer Eric Ratz who has done a lot of work with some current rock and roll talent like Three Days Grace and Our Lady Peace.

Jesse: He’s a great engineer and the studio we worked in with him has seen some amazing acts like Guns N Roses and Bruce Springsteen.

Nick: Yeah, when we were there, Drake came in which was very cool. And one day I was making coffee and this guy walked up and was like “Hi,” you know, waiting, so he could get some coffee and Stu was like “Dude do you know who that was!” and I didn’t, but it was Geddy Lee, the base player for Rush, one of our all-time favourite groups and a real rock veteran! That’s what it was like, just talent all over the place.?

MACO: How would you guys inspire another generation of rock stars?

Nick: Actually, we had some major setbacks earlier on before Threads was formed. Jesse and I were working on a video for “Issues’’ and after thousands of dollars and time and effort, it all fell through and we were burned quite badly. But remarkably we came out stronger from the experience. So I think I would tell kids to believe in themselves, their work and the music.

Jesse: A wise man once told me, there are no problems, only solutions. Quote me on that.

Nick: And you can quote me that Jesse’s solutions are the root of all my problems in life.

Stu: You’re always going to have pitfalls and conflicts in any business but something good can come out of those too.

Mark: Family is really important, that kind of support system. My parents actually came down to the concert and that was really special for me.

A version of this story by Julie Murphy was published in MPeople Barbados issue 5