The Dirty Beat Conjure a Ritual of Sound on Birthrite: Lancing the Boil

Winnipeg’s own The Dirty Beat just released their extraordinary new album, Birthrite: Lancing the Boil, a record that doesn’t just push boundaries but tears them wide open.

Led by multi-instrumentalist and recording artist Warren G. Funk, The Dirty Beat asks a question few bands dare to: What would punk have sounded like before electricity? The answer comes alive in a sound that merges grit with folk textures, button accordion, mandolin, Irish flute, tin whistle, trumpet, hulusi, and more, layered over drop-tuned acoustic guitar and raw rhythmic force. The result feels both ancient and futuristic, ritualistic yet electrifying.

Comparisons to Queens of the Stone Age, Ween, or Tom Waits only scratch the surface. As The Tinnitist wrote of their debut, The Dirty Beat commands a “seemingly endless palette of originality that distinguishes [them] from other musical acts.” Rooted in Funk’s upbringing as a Mennonite preacher’s son on a Manitoba farm, the music carries ghostly echoes of church hymns, rural isolation, and a mind shaped without mainstream pop culture, refined further through years in East Vancouver and his eventual return to prairie solitude.

Their self-titled debut already earned college radio play worldwide and critical acclaim for its audacious instrumentation and scope. Now, with Birthrite: Lancing the Boil, The Dirty Beat goes even further. Early reviews describe the record as poetic, uncompromising, and cathartic. York Calling praised it for “poetry and cynicism in equal measure,” while Irregular Dreams hailed its ability to balance intensity with melody.

If the debut cracked open the door to The Dirty Beat’s world, Birthrite walks straight into the fire. Symbolic lyricism collides with hypnotic grooves, layered harmonies, and a rhythm section that feels less like a backbeat and more like a ritual heartbeat. The album doesn’t just entertain, it purges, heals, and rebirths, cementing The Dirty Beat as one of Canada’s most original folk-rock innovators.

You’ve described The Dirty Beat as answering the question, “What would rock sound like before electricity?” How did you land on that concept, and how does it guide your creative choices?

Somewhere along the way, I’m not exactly sure how, there developed a “rule” that there are no electric guitars in the Dirty Beat, and it has become The Cardinal Rule. More than a rule, it’s a challenge, a game, a gauntlet thrown down: how to make heavy music without relying on guitars, amps, distortion? 

Electric guitars fill an incredible amount of sonic space, and it’s that power, that force, that wall of sound, that makes them such awesome instruments. So, how do you convey such power and heaviness when the electric guitar is removed from the equation? This limitation (and limits can be amazing for creativity) forces the acoustic, folk instruments – which in a rock setting tend to play more auxiliary roles – to the forefront, to push harder, to work together to create those textures and that spirit.

What would a rock band marching an army to an ancient battlefield sound like? What would a prehistoric band trancing a shaman around a ceremonial fire sound like? I guess my desire to hear that is what drives my creative choices; reaching into thin air, grasping for those sounds.

The instrumentation on Birthrite is incredibly unique—button accordion, Irish flute, hulusi, and more. How do you approach blending all of those sounds into something cohesive without losing the grit?

I guess the cohesion comes naturally, from the instruments themselves. I’ve always just loved picking up instruments, finding their voice, putting them in different combinations and contexts. I consider the instruments as my bandmates, and either through trial and error or inspiration, they usually end up telling me what song needs them where. 

Making primarily acoustic music means you get to – and have to – squeeze so much more out of each instrument. They are so much more than just notes: the flow of breath through wood, air grinding through reeds, valves popping, keys clacking, strings flopping. I also don’t have fast hands or good technique: writing and playing is more like wrestling for me. So as for not losing grit, when most of your instruments are long in the tooth and your playing is shit, the grit comes naturally!

Your upbringing as a Mennonite preacher’s son on a Manitoba farm clearly shaped your perspective. How does that background continue to inform your songwriting and sonic identity today?

My writing is informed and influenced by the hymns, choirs, and country-gospel I was raised on. I have more affinity with wood and fur and dirt than concrete and lights and synthetics, so I suppose my work will always lean rather earthy, low-tech, and handmade. Rooted in the earth, reaching for the sky!

I think I always carry the belief that my work has to mean something; it should always be pointing to, striving for, the divine, not simply just to entertain or grab attention. 

Growing up in a strict religious context with very little influence from pop culture means I never got marinated in any particular genre or scene. This has maybe allowed me to maintain a sort of childlike wonder and outsider approach to music and the world. It’s also made me kneejerk averse to ideological conformity and groupthink.

Early reviews have called this record poetic, uncompromising, and cathartic. What emotions or experiences were you personally purging through the making of Birthrite?

It really is a retrospective, a sort of looking back and taking stock of my life thus far. Living with mental illness and then hitting middle age is a bit of a brutal wake-up call; caught between a rock and a hard place, so to speak. The regrets, seeing the lost years, missed opportunities, dreams, and goals bailed on. The avoidance and bad habits that can, over time, become ingrained in a lifestyle. The realization that you have turned out so different from who you intended to become. And of taking personal accountability – that no matter who or what happened to me, I alone am ultimately responsible for how I have chosen to live… that’s a hard one. 

If The Dirty Beat is about exorcism and rebirth, what do you hope listeners feel after experiencing the full album?

It’s a somewhat exhausting record, so if listeners don’t feel a little spent afterwards, I guess the album has fallen short. I hope it somehow connects to their own experience; I really hope that younger listeners take heed. Life and dreams can really pass you by. You can literally wake up and a decade or two has gone by and all the stuff you intended to do, all the things you swore you’d change… It’s all still there, except now you have less energy, less time, less flexibility; things have settled into stone. So yeah, I’d hope people would take to heart: dreams don’t often die, but they can grow stale; they don’t stay alive and burning bright forever without your help. And pull the weeds out, in your life, in your spirit, the moment you see them, when they are small; once they mature, grow strong, become a part of you, they get so much harder to get rid of. Aside from that? I just hope they dig the music. I hope it makes heads bounce and bow.