Iqaluit-bred Jerry Cans revel in homegrown humour

Here’s half of the Jerry Cans: Andrew Morrison, 25, and Nancy Mike, 24. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Andrew Morrison and Steve Rigby, two members of the Jerry Cans, met when they were in elementary school in Iqaluit. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE JERRY CANS)

At the opening of Toonik Tyme on April 12, be prepared to rock to music from Iqaluit’s homegrown band, the Jerry Cans.

When Andrew Morrison, Steve Rigby, Nancy Mike and Stuart Crose, members of the Jerry Cans or, as they’re known in Inuktitut, Pai Gaalakkut, start singing “Mamartuq,” audiences in Iqaluit go wild.

Sometimes you’ll see people climb on stage with the band to act out the music, which, in this song, involves shooting, butchering and eating a seal.

“Mamaqtuq Mamaqtuq [tastes delicious] nattiminik uujjuq [seal meat stew] mamaqtuq mamaqtuq nattiminik uujjuq,” goes the refrain.

It’s a song best understood if you speak Inuktitut and live in Nunavut.

But even if you can’t understand the words and have never tasted seal meat, the rollicking accordion music, beefed up with guitars and drums, played in a style which the band jokingly calls “Ol’ Fashion Seal Clubbin’ Music” on its Facebook page.

They don’t take themselves too seriously. The band’s name came from some jerry cans they tried to rig into a drum kit.

The sound was terrible, but the name stuck.

But things are beginning to happen for the band.

They will perform at Toonik Tyme’s opening. Then, next week they play for delegates at the Nunavut Mining Symposium in Iqaluit.

They’re also booked for Iqaluit’s Alianait festival this summer, as well as Igloolik’s Rocking Walrus festival and the Folk on the Rocks festival in Yellowknife.

In late July, they’re heading to Greenland to test the waters there.

They’re starting to make real money, which they stick into a band fund to pay for things like their upcoming trip to Greenland.

If you ask band members Morrison and Mike about who influences their music, they point to growling balladeer Tom Waits, the veteran Iqaluit band Uvagut and the late Nunavik Inuk singer-songwriter, Charlie Adams.

While their music sounds like an improbable mix, that’s typical of Iqaluit, said Morrison, 25, who grew up, like his fellow band member Rigby, as a transplanted southern kid in Iqaluit.

“The music culture is small. Everyone comes from different places, lots of people from the South, coming together [with Inuit] and bringing everything together,” Morrison said. “The direction is a bit of everywhere.”

Mike, a third year nursing student at Nunavut Arctic College, plays the accordion in the Jerry Cans.

That’s an instrument that Inuit women once played more often than men. Now, the accordion is thought of as more of a man’s instrument.

Mike wants to change that.

“I think to bring back women playing accordion again makes me feel special,” Mike said.

For inspiration, band members just look around town, which explains why they have created at least a dozen songs with local themes.

One is about shopping at the Northmart, played in a 1950s’ crooner style. Another, about fishing in the spring, has a jazzy, reggae beat.

Morrison, a Trent University graduate, said he also wrote a song about his “hilarious” experience as a Government of Nunavut bureaucrat, where he enjoyed 45-minute coffee breaks and 90-minute lunches.

“It’s another crowd pleaser,” he said, adding that he played that song last week in front of an audience that included Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak.

There’s no lack of “cheeky political” subjects to feed the Jerry Cans’ songwriting.

Among the band’s other new songs, a “1970s style, sexy song about being in love with bingo.”

Many of the songs are written in Inuktitut.

Morrison hopes everyone in English-dominated Iqaluit, where nearly half the city’s residents are non-Inuit, can make a more of an effort to learn Inuktitut.

And music, said Morrison, is great way to do it.

A CD lies in the Jerry Cans’ future but “when things happen, they happen,” Morrison said.