Fireball Kid in a Candy Store

On Deer Path Turn to a Shortcut, Colin Ratchford turns sugar-coated indie rock into something heavier, haunted, and unexpectedly tender.

By Madeline Lines

Photos by Alex Apostolidis

Published on May 6, 2026

Colin Ratchford swings open the sticky door to Bar de la Plaza for me, gripping a rainbow swirl lollipop the size of his head. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and sun spills into the otherwise invisible corners of the Montréal dive bar. He sits down—beer in one hand, a giant hunk of wet sugar in the other—to talk about his new Fireball Kid album, old ghosts, and being a troublemaker forever.

“I think I was a creepy looking kid. Really pale with fine blonde hair, like a haunted doll or something,” Ratchford muses with a smirk. “I was never not in trouble. I had an older friend growing up who said I was like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.”

I keep asking questions to poke at the “kid” in Fireball Kid, a project rooted in adolescence and not taking life too seriously—at least on the surface. Earlier that day, I took him to a candy store where he racked up a $50 bill and befriended the goth baddie working there.

Ratchford says his go-to sweet treats as a little shit-disturber was Smarties, or Skittles—any sort of sugary little discs. He grew up playing the drums “with a couple guys named Ben,” and a guy named John in the Kennebecasis Valley outside Saint John, New Brunswick.

“People who are from Saint John know that what I’m saying right now is bullshit. I’m from Rothesay,” he says. “It’s really golf course vibes. Saint John is a working class city, and Rothesay is where the Irving family lives, and the Irving family does nothing but take advantage of blue-collar people living in New Brunswick.”

Even if he’s from sperrys-and-polos-wearing country, Ratchford isn’t afraid to rock the boat. Fireball Kid forges ahead with their unique blend of unabashed sugar-coated indie rock. The seed of the project started when Ratchford met his musical other half, Seth O’Neill (aka Ura Star), in the ninth grade. They’ve been making music together ever since.

So far, it’s been about “capturing the rowdy spirit of a kitchen party.” But crack the blasé shell open and there’s a more tender interior. The upcoming album Deer Path Turn to a Shortcut is meaty in a way they haven’t touched before, moving beyond the usual pointedly simple lyrics.

Ratchford’s longtime partner, Ana-Maria Espino Trudel, directed the music video for the single “Guilt Drive” and many before it. She was beside him at his dear friend John Batt’s wedding (a.k.a. internet Canadiana expert and fellow New Brunswicker @canada.gov.ca) as he bawled in the rain. The new album was recorded in just over a week at Batt’s cottage. As much as it’s about riding ATVs in the mud with friends, it’s really about the emotions that surface when you’re together with the people who matter most.

“It’s funny, it still is about partying, but it’s also about how there is no partying without death. And there is no partying without tragedy and sadness,” says Ratchford. “Those things give meaning to each other.”

He conjures a couple images—the feeling of wandering into the trees for a pee at a summer party, looking back at the glowing shapes of your friends from afar and feeling how fleeting it all is. Or the pang in your chest when you realize who is missing from the bonfire, but feel their ghost squatting beside you.

The album asks: isn’t getting soaked in beer or piss or dirty river water a kind of baptism in itself? Isn’t partying holy? Is it not when you’re having a chuckle to yourself in the bathroom mirror that you feel closer to God?

It was during one of these “private mirror laugh” moments that Ratchford realized he’d become the washed-up older guy with a rat tail and bloodshot eyes he once thought was a lost cause. Now he sits across from me, zipped up in a “total 2010 weed-dealer hoodie.”

It’s true. The sweatshirt has yellow Celtic Dara knots all over it—a design inspired by the strong, tangled roots of Irish oak trees, representing strength and family. He cites Amps for Christ as an influence on this record, a noise project that uses busted old instruments to gurgle out Celtic folk sounds. He channels old ghosts and family lore, transmuting it into a gentle whine over indie melodies.

His grandmother’s ring glints on his finger, but it’s not what you think. It’s the ring she demanded of his grandfather after he’d run off with a 20-year-old in London for a year and then came slinking back. “Since they’re both gone now, I was like yeah sure, I’ll take the cursed post-cheating ring,” says Ratchford.

There are more stories tracing back to his family roots (and drinking habits) in Cape Breton, a place he calls “super magic and haunted.” Ratchford lights up with an old story about how his grandfather was chaperoned on a drunken walk home by a ghost with a lantern, who said “goodnight, Charlie” once he got him to the top of the hill, safely within squinting view of his house lights.

This record reaches back to shake hands with those who came before, finding a common thread in the most ordinary rituals. On the cover is a mess of beer bottles intertwined, inspired by a “fuddling cup”—an ancient drinking puzzle where you try to drink from the side that won’t spill.

“Thinking of people in the 17th century, hammered and trying to figure out the right way to drink from one of these is so funny,” says Ratchford. “Partying, being silly, having fun – that is the real history of the world.”