It’s D-Day — the day the NHL season was taken out back and shot like Ol’ Yeller. On this day, there’s plenty of blame to go around and everyone has their opinion — including, as it happens, Mike Reno.
The frontman for Canadian classic rock act Loverboy is laying all of the guilt at the feet of the owners.
It’s not surprising, really, considering his band went through a lockout of its own sorts, falling victim to the music industry, which made a fortune off of the band and its music before casting them in the reject heap as the ’80s came to a close.
Instead of a living, breathing band, they were expected — and to this day still expected — to be a nostalgia act playing donning the red leather pants and performing the aging hits such as Working for the Weekend, Turn Me Loose and The Kid Is Hot Tonight.
“It’s a tough reality,” says Reno, who formed the band in Calgary 25 years ago. “In my opinion that is the toughest reality a guy like me has to face …
“There was a lot of damage done by record companies that wanted to put out bands for a while and then just stop dealing with them, stop promoting them.
“They spend years and years boosting Loverboy into superstardom status and dropped it …
“Then they stopped wanting to work with us and put out new product … So when you have the whole industry … that drops the ball, you’re pretty much finished.”
But, as Reno notes, Loverboy wasn’t ready to be finished.
They took a couple of years off, to get their private lives in order and recuperate after their decade-long rise to the top and fall to the ground, and then came back at it for all the right reasons.
Since the early ’90s they’ve released a handful of albums but have spent the majority of their time and efforts on touring — playing anywhere from 100-200 shows a year, including benefits and fundraisers.
“We’re not playing for 18,000 people a night, but a lot of times we’re playing to 4,000,” Reno says, noting that on this tour they’re playing smaller venues such as Cowboys Feb. 19.
“We’re totally happy with that. We don’t feel belittled, we don’t feel like we’re making some kind of backwards motion.
“We’re up, we’re mobile, we’re good and we’re really looking forward to it.”
But, as Reno celebrates a quarter century of Loverboy, it’s not without a little sadness, as four years ago his bandmate and best friend Scott Smith was lost at sea in a boating accident.
It’s something Reno says he thinks about every day, but notes that keeping Loverboy going is something Smith would have wanted. It also helps that the entire point of the band when they started 25 years ago and continues to be today is forgetting your troubles.
“All we were about was having a good time,” he says.
“We weren’t about politics. We weren’t anything other than just escapism.
“That’s the beauty of Loverboy.”