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Jr Gone Wild emerged from the early ‘80s Edmonton punk scene with singer/guitarist Mike McDonald as the one constant until he was joined by bassist Dove Brown. From then on the two of them remained steadfast in their dedication to the group through four records, many tours, and even more band members until they broke up in 1995. Eighteen years later the band lurched back into being for a reunion gig that lasted three hours, pulling 600 fans out to the southern outskirts of the city. With Mike and Dove joined by longtime drummer Larry Shelast and returning guitarist Steve Loree new songs emerged and Jr Gone Wild began its second run.
Stories of the earlier days can be found on the band’s albums or in pixelated YouTube videos, but many of the details have been muddied by time and alcohol, and the facts have been hidden in old, uncatalogued television and newspaper interviews and divided amongst the many memories of the people who were in and around the band. This film will wade through the deep and dusty archives—the collections of Mike, Dove and many others, as well as libraries and aging television tapes—and tell the whole story spanning the decades from dysfunctional always-on-the-verge-of-wider-success cowpunks to the successful reunion and creative rebirth.
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To do this right and on the schedule we’ve planned out we’ll need $20 000. We’ve already begun filming live shows and new interviews with the bandmembers and many of those who know them, but much of this film will consist of archival materials which must be located and then transferred to digital from older formats. That process is both time-consuming and costly. The funds raised here will go towards securing the archival material, as well as the post-production process where we’ll be working full-time for five months to combine old and new materials into a finished film.
In return for your help, we’ve got some solid perks, from your very own copy of the finished film to limited runs of T-shirts, posters and behind-the-scenes photo books to house concerts by either Mike McDonald or the whole band. Heck, Mike will even cook dinner for four and regale you with tales of the road if you’d like.
Why We're Making This Film
We live in a time when every phone has a camera and every rock 'n' roll moment is documented and shared. But before we got here, music happened in dingy clubs and if it was captured at all it was on videotape, and a whole lot of living happened behind the scenes, remembered only by those who were there. We want to bring Jr Gone Wild's story back to the present, and go even further by delving into the creative process that only the band members themselves know.
We believe it's important to preserve the past, and honestly, we're also really excited about getting deep into a project where an incredible wealth of archival material exists, but which is focussed on a band that is still playing and writing as good as ever before.
The Filmmakers
NTT Films is made up of Mike Siek and Eden Munro. We both worked at an alternative weekly newspaper for many years doing an assortment of jobs beyond our official titles of Production Manager and Managing Editor. One of those was the spearheading of a video program that led to a studio space where local and touring bands were filmed in live performance with a multi-camera setup and recorded on 24-track audio. We started NTT Films in 2014 after leaving the paper and have made Burn This Town Down, a documentary on the inaugural
Hot Plains Music Festival (which can be seen on FAVA TV), and
Dead Venues, a series of six short films on defunct music venues (which premiered on the opening Friday of the 2015 Global Visions Film Festival), along with various other projects for Workshop West Theatre, Autism Speaks Canada and more.
Risks & Challenges
We’ve been filming Jr Gone Wild since the reunion show, so we know we’re making this film, but the challenges we face will affect how quickly we can do it. We'll keep filming the band, but archival materials and post-production will need to be well-funded. If we fall short of our goal here, we won’t be stopping, but production will slow down until we can tell this story the way it should be told, because we want to do this right.
If you don’t have the money to put into this film, we'd be thrilled if you'd just help us to get the word out about it through email, Facebook, Twitter, skywriting or anything else.
