The best things are often those that just happen. No planning. No preparation. No pain. Sounds easy. Sounds great.

Jon Spencer gives the impression that's exactly how Heavy Trash, his current project with Canadian ex-pat Matt Verta-Ray, came into being.

"Matt and I just started getting together and hanging out, talking and just playing other people's music," Spencer says of the rockabilly-based band.

"And then we started writing our own songs and at a certain point, we felt we could make a record. So we started to do it."

About six months into messing about in Verta-Ray's New York studio, Spencer, the founder of legendary '80s sleaze rock merchants Pussy Galore, decided to put his Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on the back burner and throw all his energies into Heavy Trash.

And while he admits recording the band's self-titled debut was an easygoing process and somewhat a "labour of love" -- which can be heard in the album's gritty, groovy good nature -- he emphasizes both he and his partner took the songs and the music seriously.

"It was a lot of fun," he says. "But laughs and jokes and stuff (aside), there's also a real deep love of this music.

"There's a great life to a lot of this music.

"Rock 'n' roll can be a tricky thing and for some people it can be confusing I think the energy and the life that is rock 'n' roll, you take someone like Little Richard as an example -- people get confused by it.

"They think, 'Well, this can't be a serious art form.'

"But we certainly did have a great time making the record. And we really do love this old music and really feel it's very, very much alive."

Not that Heavy Trash is represents a purists take on rockabilly music.

Sure, the live shows feature covers of such musical legends as Don Gibson, Carl Perkins and Sleepy LaBeef, but Heavy Trash, as the name implies, aren't afraid of using the material as a rock 'n' roll clearing house, dragging it through the mud and having a little fun with it.

And for the most part, fans who've been coming to the shows get that.

"From where I'm standing onstage, it doesn't seem like just hardcore rockabilly ... looking types," says Spencer, who brings Heavy Trash to MacEwan Hall tomorrow night.

"Rockabilly was definitely the fuel for the fire of this thing -- there was that love ...

"That was where it all began, but there's different kinds of things going on in the music.

"It's not so strict and it's not so pure."