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Dillon is the spike-haired, butt-flicking growler with Toronto's Headstones -- arguably the country's most intense, no-frills rock 'n' roll band.
Bathed in sweat, clad in black, stomping his way through his band's hard-driving repertoire, Dillon is the archetypal rock character onstage. His band's appeal is such that it sold 100,000 copies of its last album, Smile and Wave.
But Dillon can also be a rock caricature, which he proved last fall when he slipped back into the heroin addiction that plagued him through the late 1980s.
In fact, guitarist Trent Carr said in an interview last week that he and the other Headstones -- bassist Tim White and drummer Dale Harrison -- had to confront Dillon to get him to stop.
Turns out that Dillon, who has admitted publicly to being an addict between 1985 and '89, had been dabbling with the drug on and off since then.
"Then, all of a sudden it was a problem," Carr said. "I don't think our future was ever threatened directly, but I think we were all getting sick of the situation."
For his part, Dillon prefers to speak of the future rather than the past.
"I'm a lot better than I was, health-wise, and I'm totally into what we're doing next," is all he says on the issue
"It feels like we've got a whole new career going now. We've got new management, a new album, we're putting together a new live show -- everything's good right now."
The new album, Nickels for Your Nightmares, hit the streets this week and the band is wasting no time getting out behind it, hitting clubs and small halls across the country.
Produced by Paul Northfield, who has worked with I Mother Earth, Moist, Hole and Suicidal Tendencies, the album marks something of a departure for Dillon and co.
While the band's first three recordings -- Picture of Health, Teeth & Tissue and Smile and Wave -- were relatively straightforward representations of the quartet's balls-to-the-wall sound, NFYN explores mellower territory, especially the title track, which is an album-closing seven-and-a-half minute dub-reggae-meets-Ginsberg epic.
Elsewhere, the group explores its Stones jones on a couple of faux-country tracks, while the ringing acoustic guitar refrain of Exhausted seems to mimic Sixpence None The Richer.
"We've always had that side of us," Dillon says. "And there's been slower stuff on our other records -- I guess just never to this extent. As for the last tune, well we just decided to try this thing one night in the studio.
"Trent and I had come up with it about five months beforehand, and everyone was playing live off the floor, it was a very late-night thing that ended up working."
Dillon was impressed, too, by the dedication of Northfield to the project.
"This guy mixed our last record, liked it and offered to do this one," he says of the producer. "He could do anything he wanted and since we're working with a Canadian recording budget, he basically did this for f-- all."
With a new album and a new outlook, Dillon adds that the band's new manager, Bernie Breen of The Management Trust (which also handles the affairs of The Watchmen and The Tragically Hip), is looking to break the Headstones in new territory.
To that end, the singer has put his budding acting career on hold for the summer, aiming to devote all his energies to the band.
"I've got stuff coming up," says the star of Dance Me Outside and Hard Core Logo. "I did a part on Twitch City, I've got a part playing (late NHL hockey player) John Kordic and I've got a part in Bruce MacDonald's new movie, Pontypool Changes Everything.
"All that's fine, but the band comes first. It's always come first and it always will.
"Everything I've done with acting has helped the band, I hope," he says.