National Post Article- February 7, 2001

Oldest boy band on the block

Vancouver's soulDecision finds popularity in pop

Cori Howard

National Post

Jeff Vinnick, National Post

A VERITABLE MT. RUSHMORE: Trevor Guthrie, Ken Lewko, Dave Bowman.

VANCOUVER - Exactly a year ago, soulDecision opened for Prozzak at Vancouver's mid-size Vogue Theatre. Tonight, the local pop trio returns to the Vogue. This time they're headlining, but that is one of their smaller accomplishments of the last year.

Just back from touring the United States with Christina Aguilera, 'NSync and Destiny's Child, where the average audience was 60,000, the Vancouver boys of soulDecision are giddy with success.

The band -- Trevor Guthrie, Ken Lewko and Dave Bowman--stumble into a downtown restaurant at noon a few days before their show and slide into the booth singing a Michael Jackson tune. "You gotta be startin' something," croons Guthrie. Then he explains that he and Bowman sang that song the previous night at a local nightclub with their bass player's old group.

"It was awesome," says Guthrie, whose spiked blond hair makes him look far younger than his 27 years. The three can't stop talking, discussing the merits of Michael Jackson's music and who exactly was at the club last night.

"I can't believe how good I feel today," says Bowman, 28. (Lewko is 29.) Perhaps part of the reason is that they're back home, at least for a few more days, to catch up with friends and family and start their cross-Canada headlining tour that will end at the Juno Awards on March 4. The other part, of course, is their success in the States, which included touring with the country's top acts and the fact that their hit single, Faded, from their debut album, No One Does It Better, has entered the charts in the United States in the top five.

"We're just three Canadian kids who got to go across the States with three of the hottest music acts," says Guthrie. "But it was our proving ground to see if we could handle it, and I think we did quite well."

One of the bigger tests for the band came in Atlanta, where an assassination plot against members of 'NSync had been revealed to the police by the mother of a young boy just before the concert. "The security was crazy," recalls Lewko.

"I was freaking out," adds Guthrie. "I thought, what if they did something to the opening act."

"When you reach that kind of fame and stardom, it's a different world," says Bowman. "But you adapt and deal with it. It comes hand in hand with trying to be successful in the music industry, and if you can't handle it, you better get the hell out now."

The members of soulDecision say they learned on tour that they can handle it, even if they haven't yet been the targets of teen violence themselves. But other than that incident, they say they didn't learn anything about the music industry they didn't know before.

"We've been working at this for seven years," says Guthrie. "We proved ourselves in Canada first, and last year was our set-up. I don't consider us a major success yet. We haven't broken yet. We're at half a million records, and for this to be a success, it would need to be three to 10 million worldwide."

Bowman looks sheepishly down at his plate of pasta and says, "I'd take a couple million."

Touted as Canada's answer to 'NSync and the Backstreet Boys, they say they wouldn't mind the comparisons if they were accurate. But they insist they're not a boy band for reasons other than their age; they play their own instruments, write their own songs, and refrain from dance routines on stage. "'NSync performs differently than we do," says Bowman. "They put on this crazy, Vegas-style show with dancing and singing and things blowing up. We approach pop in the classical sense."

Guthrie, Lewko and Bowman are all alumni of Capilano College's music program in Vancouver, which is where they met and joined forces, and they take the creation of music seriously. When they first started playing pop together in the early '90s, it was the height of grunge, and bands like Nirvana were centre stage. Knowing that pop would return to popularity, they persisted with the pop style, earning comparisons to George Michaels and Wham!

Later, the success of the Backstreet Boys gave the trio their entree into the music scene and a deal with Universal. It's an interesting paradox for the trio: Boy bands opened the doors for them, but they don't want to be part of that movement.

"We're on the front end of a wave where pop music is going," says Bowman. "There is so much pre-fabricated stuff out there right now. People want something more real, and we come from the old school where writing and playing your own music is more important than marketing."

Yet, they admit they are still willing to use the boy band craze to their advantage, even if it means having to play the image game. "If we were doing pop and were ugly dudes, we would not be having this conversation," he says. "But we want to be remembered for our music, not our faces on the cover of a magazine."

Many music critics and radio producers agree soulDecision have talent and are well placed to outlast the boy band craze because of their strong musical background.

"I wouldn't call these guys a boy band," says Rob Mise, programming director at Z95.3, the Vancouver Top 40 station that gave soulDecision their start. "They're vocalists and songwriters and they know they can't rest on their laurels. Their next record will be everything in determining their long-term success."

soulDecision perform in Ottawa (Feb. 11), Hamilton (Feb. 13), London (Feb. 14), Toronto (Feb 15,) Lindsay (Feb. 17), Kingston (Feb. 18), St. Catharines (Feb. 19) and Windsor (Feb. 20). On March 4, they will perform in Hamilton at the Juno Awards, where the band has been nominated for best single, best album and best group.