ATOMIK TRAIN - Junior Bourcier

By: Lori Smerilson Carson

When you grow up surrounded by a musical family, music will both embrace and encompass your life. This basically is the case with Lead Guitarist Junior Bourcier and what has now led him to form ATOMIK TRAIN along with Lead Vocalist Francois Babin. Bringing in Bassist Nolan Babin, and Drummer Alex Guilbault, they are currently preparing to release their self-titled debut album this fall which was recorded at Planet Studios in their home base of Montreal.

Catching up with Bourcier after the release of their first single “Supersonik Speedway”, he revealed some details about the new album, their videos, a bit about his past and what fans can look forward to.

SFL Music Magazine: What inspired this self-titled album?
Junior Bourcier: Well, you write a lot of songs and at one point you say, this one is good enough for the album and you work on it. We didn’t necessarily have a vision about the whole album for starters because we did it in three sessions of recording. So, we recorded “Playground”, “Reborn, and “Destination” first of all. Then the three other ones were “Deal With It”, Never Again”, and “Back on Earth”, and then the five others with John Webster in another studio. At the end we were looking at this and we were saying, yeah, this works (he laughed)!

SFL Music Magazine: It definitely did! “Supersonik Speedway” is already out with the great guitar and drum intro. What inspired that song?
Bourcier: The first part of the song, the intro was made after the rest of the song. For the intro, I wanted something like, you know “Fire Woman” from The Cult? The intro was so good! I didn’t want to do it like them, but in the same theme of the crescendo and the intensity. So, I think we managed to have a good result with that. With that song, I don’t know, I just started playing a riff. I was in my basement in front of my tools (he laughed) and it was just rocking along with my guitar and this riff came up, and I thought it was pretty cool. So, I arrived with the riff and the first verse. I think I had some sort of a chorus, but it was not like that. At first, I did not want to play it, but I kept coming back and eventually they did, and now it’s one of the best songs. It’s sort of like building blocks one at a time and once the musical part was pretty much finished, we had to work on the lyrics. So, I did this with Francois, and we had a lot of fun writing that. He was throwing a lot of words at me and at one point he said, “Speedway” and I said, (he snapped and pointed) that’s it!

SFL Music Magazine: So, working with Francois, is that the writing style?
Bourcier: Yeah, it’s a little bit for a couple of songs. “Never Again” is the first song we wrote together, but a couple of them I already had written. So, I had pretty much everything, the musical part and the lyrics, and we changed a couple of things here and there, but that’s mostly how it happens.

SFL Music Magazine: I noticed the album has a variety of songs. It’s in that metal theme, but some were more melodic and for instance “Playground” has a bit of a psychedelic sound. “Back on Earth” is your second single coming out. That one also has a bit of psychedelic, heavy metal sound.
Bourcier: Yeah.

SFL Music Magazine: Would you elaborate on what inspired that song, please?
Bourcier: You know it’s very funny. It was a Sunday morning. I was having my coffee and just fooling around with my guitar. The day before when I arrived home, I just left my pocket change on the table and there was a five-dollar bill. I did not ever notice this before, but on the back of the (Canadian) five-dollar bill there’s an astronaut. There is a drawing of an astronaut. So, I saw this and I like had a flash, an immediate flash and I started working on something about an astronaut alone in his spaceship struggling to get back, not knowing if he had enough oxygen and stuff like that. So, it was really all around this in my head, visualizing him in his spaceship, and all the effects of the guitar was a little like in space. Also, the guitars at the end when you hear beeeaaaeww, it’s like the spaceship landing. In my head at least (he laughed).

SFL Music Magazine: What would you say inspires you when you write your music in general?
Bourcier: Sometimes I have an idea. A very, very specific idea in mind, and other times I’m just having fun trying stuff. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Like for “Destination”, this is the first song that we worked on together, Francois and me. At first, we were just the two of us. It was after a weekend that I wanted to do something with him because we had our own projects on both sides, and at one point I decided to just concentrate. I have a piano album also that I got out in 2018. It’s been, I don’t know, maybe half a year or eight months and we haven’t spoken much, and at one point I called him and I said, I want to do something with you. Something more specific because we were doing gigs but just playing covers and stuff. So, he came over. We rocked all the weekend (he laughed). When he left, the next morning, I woke up at five and I said, I’m going to write an album this week. I made myself a coffee, I went downstairs, plugged it in my guitar, cranked up the volume and I rocked. This is where I wrote “Destination” and “Reborn” in the same week. Other songs too that were not good enough, but those two songs came from the emotion of being with Francois and all the fun we’re having together because we have the same goal. The other guys too of course, but it started with Francois at first.

SFL Music Magazine: What made you guys decide to do “Lunatic Fringe”? Your rendition of that song is amazing!
Bourcier: Thank you so much. I’m glad you asked that question. We had the chance to work with John Webster as a producer on the album. He’s in the same league as Bob Rock and he’s from Vancouver. “Back on Earth” is the song he listened to the first time and that’s when he wanted to work with us. He remixed it to show us what he could do with it, and it was amazing! It was a major difference than what we had before. The drums were sounding like, oh my God! It was another place. Then he suggested us a cover song. He had two choices. One that I don’t remember that we did not choose obviously (he laughed), and “Lunatic Fringe” because “Lunatic Fringe” is a song from Red Rider with Tom Cochrane as the lead singer, and John Webster was their keyboard player for a number of years. So, these guys are friends and when we were in the studio working on that song, Tom called him and he said, “listen to this.” So, Tom heard the song, and John has been an amazing producer. He made us do our best and he did his best. He worked hard. He’s a hard-working person and the results are amazing, honestly. We’re very lucky to have been working with that guy. Hopefully we will work with him again.

SFL Music Magazine: The vocals and harmonies in the songs on the album are amazing as well. What prompted you to become a musician?
Bourcier: Well, for me, I come from a family of musicians. My father played piano and accordion, and my mother played the guitar and sang. My two older brothers played music also, so there was always somebody playing music at home, and it was natural. I started at age nine on the piano and then on the guitar at thirteen, so I never stopped.

SFL Music Magazine: You just explained you wanted to do something with Francois to make the album. Is this what brought ATOMIK TRAIN together?
Bourcier: At first, we were just doing more and more stuff together, but it was slowly building up. We all have our day jobs and our families and stuff, so we are what they call weekend warriors it seems (he laughed). But with the weeks and months passing by, we added songs. At first it was Régis Gravel. This is when it all started, our first drummer that played on the first three songs “Destination”, “Reborn” and “Playground”. We thought it was really good and that’s really when the band started to grow faster.

SFL Music Magazine: Are there any new videos for fans to look forward to?
Bourcier: We’re working on “Back on Earth” for the next video. We worked on something, but it was not quite how we wanted it to be. So, we’re going to shoot another one because I think the song deserves something, and we all think the same thing in the band, deserves something stronger as a video for the song. It was a friend of ours that did amazing work, but he didn’t have time to finish our project. So, we swept it to somebody else, but it’s not the same thing when you have the image in mind and then you’re doing the rest of the job for people in the movie industry, it’s two different visions. So, it’s going to come out and it’s going to be better.

SFL Music Magazine: Any specific time frame?
Bourcier: We’re aiming at the end of August or mid-September. The album launch date is not set up officially yet for when it’s going to be in stores everywhere, but it’s somewhere in the end of September. As soon as we have the date, we will write it on social media and on our website atomiktrain.com.

SFL Music Magazine: Is there any touring coming up?
Bourcier: We will play two gigs for the album launch at first. Of course, we are working right now on booking other shows for this fall and we will put all the dates on the website. At minimum, we will go in Ontario and a lot of places in Quebec, and hopefully somewhere else in Canada. After that, if we’re lucky and we’re building our team, we can go down to the States, of course. We want to go play there.

SFL Music Magazine: Was there anything else you wanted to add?
Bourcier: Please, if you enjoy our music, go see our website. You can buy the album for pre-order sales and some merch, t-shirts and stuff. Also, on our Facebook page ATOMIK TRAIN. We’re very easy to find and go see our videos on YouTube. Tell us how you like them. What do you like about the songs if you do and if you don’t like it, you can tell us also. We are open to constructive criticism (he laughed).