Sum 41 narrowly escaped from a Congolese hot zone with their spiky-haired heads attached to their bodies. Now they’re all grown up and they’ve got a new album, Chuck, to prove it.
“Oh, man, look at this fucking place we’re playing!”
Peering out from the tinted window of his band’s tour bus, Sum 41 drummer Steve Jocz can’t quite believe his eyes. The Toronto-based group has just arrived in the Laurentian mountains, a skier’s paradise 45 minutes outside of Montreal, only to find that the scene of tonight’s Sum 41 show is some strange restaurant/nightclub/motel complex called Bourbon Street. Think of the titular establishment from the Patrick Swayze film Roadhouse, done up with cheesy, New Orleans–by-way-of-Disneyland décor and staffed by French-Canadian lumberjacks, and you’ll understand why the place doesn’t exactly scream “great rock venue.”
“Nice!” Bassist Cone McCaslin smirks as he gets an eyeful of the place’s unpaved parking lot. “I can’t believe we’re actually pulling up here with two tour buses!”
Still, as oddball places go, Bourbon Street seems about as generic as Wal-Mart compared to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the volatile and war-torn African nation where Jocz, McCaslin, and their bandmates, Deryck Whibley (vocals, guitar) and Dave Baksh (guitar), nearly lost their lives earlier this year. Working in conjunction with the War Child charity organization, the band traveled to the Congo in May to film a documentary about the horrific effects the country’s devastating civil war has had upon its children, many of whom have been forced into military service, raped, or even jailed for practicing witchcraft. Though ultimately successful, the trip was cut short when a Rwandan-backed militia group launched an attack on Bukavu, the Congolese city where the band was staying. But thanks to the heroic actions of Chuck Pelletier, a Canadian United Nations volunteer, the band was able to make it out of the crossfire alive. The harrowing experience inspired “We’re All to Blame,” the angry first single from the band’s new album, Chuck (Island)—named, of course, after their valiant UN pal.
Wait a minute—civil wars? Third World countries? Charity? If you’re having trouble associating these concepts with the same hard-partying, willfully juvenile band that’s given us such metal-inflected pop-punk anthems as “Fat Lip,” “Motivation,” and “Over My Head (Better Off Dead),” you’re not alone. “When I called my Mom and told her we were going to the Congo, she was like, ‘Is this Steven? What have you done with my son?’ ” says Jocz, laughing. “But we all sort of felt that, after doing so much for ourselves, it was time to do something for somebody else.”
“We were tired of watching the Kobe Bryant trial reports every day,” adds Baksh. “We had to get out and do something meaningful.”
After researching several charitable organizations, the band contacted War Child, an international group devoted to improving the welfare of children in countries torn asunder by warfare. “War Child was a good fit for us,” Jocz explains, “because they assist the kids, and they don’t have any political or religious affiliations.” Though the band originally intended to just donate money and possibly contribute songs to a War Child benefit CD, Sum 41 ultimately decided that they could draw more attention to the cause by filming a visit to one of the war-torn countries in question.
“War Child suggested going somewhere in Africa,” says Jocz. “Everybody’s paying so much attention to Iraq because of the war on terror, or whatever you want to call it, that they’ve totally forgotten about what’s going on in Africa. So we chose the Congo, because the whole conflict there is being fueled by natural resources, most of which are consumed by the Western world.”