Trashed Ambulance is a skate punk trio formed in 2014 from the city of Alberta, Canada. They released their well-crafted third LP “Future Considerations” on Canadian independent label Thousand Island Records, from which came the single “Stalk in the Park (featuring Robbie Morön and Émilie Plamondon)” which won the category in the GOOD SHIT AWARDS 2022.

I had the honor to make a small interview with these guys, so check it out!!!

1. Why Trashed Ambulance?

A lot of people have been asking about the name lately and we are not too keen on spoiling the mystique right now. Did we come across an emergency vehicle in a wreck? Is Lagwagon’s Trashed album one of the greatest records ever written? Is it just a cool combination of words? Maybe one day we’ll have an answer.

2. It looks like you guys are close friends. How is your relationship?

We try to keep the drama to a minimum in this band. If it stops being fun, we don’t want to do it. Ultimately, the band is stress relief for us so if it’s causing more than it’s relieving, why would we keep doing it? We all get along and work our butts off to make the band as good as it can be. Rikey stopped with the booze quite a while ago so he always keeps the other guys in line if it appears a runaway is on the agenda at shows. We’ll always listen when he says it’s time to go and we think he’s appreciative of that! I mean sometimes our response time may be slightly delayed but we don’t outright disobey him and that means something!

3. You guys have worked on a lot of shit together with The Moröns, High End Demin Records and Thousand Islands Records… Do you want to share with us some funny and professional things you experienced with them?

Sure. The Moröns are friends of ours in the city of Calgary about an hour South of Trashed HQ. Since this current lineup of Trashed has been assembled, we have played quite a few shows across Western Canada together. Their latest record “The Book of Morön” is really good and you should probably spin it right this instant! They always get the crowd going with their take on “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” so if you have a chance to see ‘em live, make it happen! You can also catch Robbie singing on our songs “Leapfrog” and “Stalk in the Park”. We had asked the other guys if they wanted to sing but they were busy doing anything else.

High End Denim Records is Josh and Ozone’s record label. It started as an outlet to put out our side projects and has started to morph into something bigger and cooler. We have co-released a few European records and handled North American distribution for a few others and have recently begun signing more local bands as well as a rad band from Germany called Hit the Dirt. Check out our bandcamp to see all the releases under the HED banner like Safety Gear, Sessions, and The Moröns! Robbie Morön has even helped out a lot with HED and we hope to keep doing cool shit well into 2023!

While High End Denim was created by 2 of the Trashed Ambulance dudes, their own band is not releasing music on the label. We are super happy on Thousand Islands Records so we will stay put until they get sick of our shit! In all seriousness, Josh has been friends with Bruno & Cynthia since 2016 and when we were looking for a label for our EP “Dime For Every Time”, Bruno agreed to help out and now they’re stuck with us. They are always great hosts when we head out East to Montreal and try to return the favour to them when they come, against their own better judgement, to Alberta. Hoping to hang out again soon! xoxo

4. Good Shit Awards… they really suck… how was your experience there?

Well we won Best Single of the Year with our song “Stalk in the Park” so we gotta say it’s pretty cool. We are obviously big fans of punk rock and may not agree we had the best single of the year cuz holy moly, there were some great songs released this year. However, we’re grateful to everyone who voted for us and are stoked to put the trophy on display at our jam space! It was also cool to check out all the other bands nominated and have definitely found some instant classics that have entered our regular rotation of tunes.

5. Emilie Plamondon is featured with so many good bands. Why did you invite her?

Well when Josh started the concept of this tune, he knew he wanted it to be a duet inspired by songs like Heart Shaped Guitar (Masked Intruder) and Fairytale of New York (Pogues or NUFAN, pick your poison). He had met Emilie when Trashed went out to Quebec in 2018 and have stayed in touch. Always a fan of her voice, she was a pretty obvious choice to play the creeped out mother of 3 in the song and luckily, she agreed to do it! At first, she thought we just wanted her to review the song but once she realized we wanted her great voice on the track, she was all in and did a fantastic job with her parts and even changed some stuff to make her performance even better. To be honest, we didn’t know she did guest vocals on so many songs before but have enjoyed all the songs we’ve heard with her voice on it. Go check em out if you haven’t spun them before!

6. Next Album, project or tour?

We are finishing off 2022 with a hometown show to celebrate us finally receiving our vinyl. Funny story, the pressing plant that is making our record was broken into and they stole 80% of the vinyl jackets for our new record! Luckily, they missed one box so we’ll have a partial order in time for the show but we have to laugh thinking about how disappointed those thieves must be with hundreds of empty Trashed Ambulance jackets as their haul. Maybe they’ll check us out and like the album though. Time will tell!

As for tours and future releases, we have some things in mind but nothing concrete that we could announce yet. We hope to play lots of shows, sell lots of records, meet cool people and see new towns and dive bars. If you wanna see us in your town, let us know and we’ll see what we can do! We can tell you that we have a handful of new demos that might turn into something hopefully sooner rather than later. 

7. You’re free to talk whatever you want here… so do it, adding something you guys want.

Thanks very much to Diego and all you beautiful Punk Rock Mag enthusiasts for giving a good god damn about our band. We appreciate anyone who gives our music a spin, buys our merch, or comes to a show. It’s hard to stand out these days especially when you play music that was big in the 90s and not necessarily the 2020s! We’re gonna keep doing it anyways so give us a follow on FB, Instagram, and Twitter to keep up on all things Ambo. Hopefully, the best is yet to come for our dumb little band!

THANX GUYS for your time!!

Just take your time to enjoy their third LP and the first recordings from the current lineup… hope to see these guys in Costa Rica someday.