Isaac Tremblay (front left) with Nomeansno’s John Wright (front right) and Le Trou du Diable co-owners Andre Trudel and Dany Payette
Interview by Megan Cole
Who doesn’t love a delicious, cold craft beer with some great music, particularly punk music? When Shawinigan, Quebec’s Le Trou du Diable brewery partnered with John Wright of Nomeansno to create their Punk Rauch beer, it was clear there was a love of beer and music here that ran deeper than we may have thought. According to Isaac Tremblay, one of the brewery’s owners, it turns out that Le Trou du Diable is run and founded by punks who managed to make a job for themselves, and now they are inviting more punks to join them along the way.
How did you find yourself in the brewery business?
Tremblay: Well, you know, it always starts with a brewer, is what I say. A great friend of mine from school, Andre Trudel, decided at one point in his life that brewing is what he wanted to do. At that time there was not really any schools in Canada for beer. He went to Europe to get some knowledge, and when he came back his beer was way better and he was brewing pure grain, but he was brewing beer in his basement, and I thought his beer was so good he had to rise and shine.
When you guys opened your brewery there weren’t as many craft breweries as there are now. So what did you guys have in mind in terms of what you wanted to be?
We opened about 10 years ago, but we started working on the project about 15 years ago. The business plan was done 15 years ago, and when you go back in those days Shawinigan, our hometown, was really hitting the lowest point of its life. It used to be the most industrialized city in North America, and in those days almost all of the industries were gone. It was pretty sad to be a 25-year-old guy in the city. We travelled a little bit to Europe and the United States, and at that point I was living in Montreal, and we saw the rise and opportunity, and need for a place where people could gather and feel better, and exchange ideas, and the city needed a place like a catalyst where people could come together. We wanted to be a place where anyone between 20 and 75 could gather. When we were doing our business plan and I had to say who our target customers were, I wrote “anyone between 20 and 75 and has good taste.” That’s what we’re looking for and that’s what we had in mind. The day we opened there were two grannies chatting together and right next to them were punks with mohawks and, after a couple pints, they were talking to each other and I thought, “Yeah man, we made it.”
You mentioned punks, and we know a punk who worked with you, John Wright from Nomeansno, and he told us that the band had an influence on the early days of Le Trou du Diable. Could you tell me a bit about that?
Absolutely. Like I was saying, me and Andre are two of the five owners. Andre is the master brewer and the person I started the whole idea with. We were friends in high school, and you know I don’t even know how we knew who Nomeansno was, because in those days there was no internet, no streaming or whatever. I guess someone brought a tape one day and we all copied it. Nomeansno was super big in Shawinigan, I’ll tell you; their music influenced us along, including the Hanson Brothers. To us, these guys were older and kind of like our parents, who were squares, so to see these guys that we admired a lot were rocking it out… We listened to their music a lot, and when Andre was early in his brewing he was living in Montreal, so I used to pick up grain and stuff for him to brew. We would get out of the big city and Andre used to live in a chalet next to the lake, and we would go there to try his beer. I used to pick up ingredients for him to brew, and that store was owned by an old punk that used to be a real hardcore punk, and he reinvented himself to sell brewing ingredients and equipment. When I was there I saw an old VHS tape of How to Brew Beer with Johnny Hanson and I knew it was Andre’s birthday, so I got him that. He watched it and learned quite a few things from there. It went full circle when five years later Nomeansno came and played at the bar [the brewery owners also opened a brewpub], and Andrew and I dreamed when we were teenagers that when we were older we would like to drink beer, talk to people, listen to music and discover music, and that we should own a bar and get some Nomeansno playing. They actually came and played live in our bar.
Music had an influence on the early days of the brewery. Does it continue to influence what you guys do now?
Music is part of everything. Everybody listens to music while they work in the office. Sometimes it gets pretty noisy. I’d say like 20 percent of the staff we hire are musicians in bands. We have a concert room that we built for the production brewery, and we’ve always listened and admired the DIY aspect of punk rock. The independence, freedom of actions, thought and everything is something we kept on doing. Like pretty much all craft brewers, we’re all punks that gave ourselves jobs. I know it’s the same with many brewers; we all listened to the same stuff when we were young and we went against the odds, and against the grain, and did our own stuff.
There seems to be this underlying relationship between music and beer, and I guess there has been for centuries, where people get together, drink beer, dance and party. But that’s more obvious these days with the beer like the one you did with John Wright, and the CBC music beers that were done with craft brewers here in BC. What do you think of that crossover between music and beer?
I think it’s all natural. Some people could call it marketing; I would just say it’s fun. It’s a natural thing. John is an actual brewer, so the collaboration with him was his recipe and we brought him into the brewery. We changed it a little bit, but mainly it’s his recipe. We sponsor some bands that we think deserve some support because we think they are great and independent and do it for the love of it. They make great ambassadors, or “badass-adors,” I say. Like you were saying, people have been listening to music and drinking beer for ages, so music and beer are food for the soul. Really, it’s a natural thing; most of the rock bands out there are fans of beer. The funny thing is we’re fans of rock bands that are also fans of our beer. Every time I talk to people in great bands, they’re all beer nerds.
Le Trou du Diable is located at 412 Willow in Shawinigan, Quebec.
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