I first met Tony Scherr, as many of his Canadian acquaintances have, through Chris Brown and Kate Fenner (more on them later; an interview with Fenner will run tomorrow). He was playing bass with them at the time, and later guitar.
The first thing you notice about Scherr is his face: it's a rugged, square-jawed visage that from a distance gives off the impression of a boxer or a Brooklyn Dodger; up close, he's all teddy bear eyes and sly grins, and as soon as he opens his mouth you discover he's one of the warmest, friendliest guys you're likely to encounter on stage or off. Similarly, his guitar playing--particularly his slide work--can appear jagged at first, and it's because he steers away from most linear guitar solo conventions; on closer glance, you can hear Scherr pushing at edges and mistakes until they sound like they were supposed to be part of the master plan all along.
That approach extends to his songwriting, which draws from the jazz standards that he cut his teeth playing, though the songs rarely sound conventional--for better and occasionally worse; as seasoned a performer as he is, he's still young as a songwriter. As the New York Times put it in a live review, "Some of Mr. Scherr’s songs started as if in the middle, suggested by a few chords and a scrap of a lyric; some seemed chopped off after a chorus or two. Singer-songwriters usually don’t treat their babies this way."
And yet his biggest success to date has come via someone else's cover of sorts: his friend Leslie Feist adapted his song "Sacramento" with new lyrics and titled it "Lonely Lonely," which appears on Let It Die. You don't have to search too hard on the web to find a lovely live duo recording of Scherr and Feist at the Rivoli circa 1999. But neither that recording nor Scherr's own recordings help the fact that his work is best enjoyed in the moment, on stage.
Some other famous names with Scherr connections: he played in John Lurie's Lounge Lizards in the mid-90s [he also plays on the Fishing With John soundtrack], and continues to play with some of those players in SexMob. In the late 90s he met a songwriter named Jesse Harris and a performer named Norah Jones at NYC's Living Room, and has played on albums by both of them. He produced an album of country music by SCTV's Rick Moranis. He plays with Teddy Thompson and some other guy named Willie Nelson. And to top it all off, he plays bass behind one of his biggest guitar heroes, a man whose albums he always bought on the day they came out, and a man of whom Scherr does a hilarious impersonation: Bill Frisell.
Scherr's second solo album is called Twist in the Wind, and it's out this month on Smells Like Records (run by Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, home to Lee Hazlewood reissues and early Cat Power albums). He's playing the Dakota in Toronto this Thursday, March 20 with Chris Brown and the Citizens' Band (where he plays bass alongside drummer Anton Fier); and March 25 at Joe's Pub in NYC.
We spoke for an hour about a variety of topics; a clipped cell phone signal and a faulty minidisc player conspired to make most of our conversation more ephemeral than I had intended. Scherr spoke of how lucky he was to connect with the people he has in Canada: Leslie Feist, Sarah Harmer, Ron Sexsmith, Martin Tielli--artists he finds very brave in their approach in ways that he believes many American singer/songwriters are not. He told stories about not only what a thrill it is to play with Willie Nelson, but what it's like to sit on the tour bus with him and trade new songs. He spoke about the freedom he's found since befriending Chris Brown and Kate Fenner, who egged him on to be more than just a sideman. And he went into great detail about living in the musical moment with Bill Frisell: no rehearsal, no set list, pure intuition.
Here, however, we mostly get the scoop on his beginnings and his development.
Tony Scherr
March 12, 2008
Locale: cell phone in New York City, driving to the Abrams Brothers' CD release show at the Living Room so he can lend them an upright bass
It seems that for you, music is as much of a social thing as it is a professional one.
I don’t play with anyone I don’t love. Everybody that I’m involved with in my life, musically at this point, is someone I’m really close to. That makes a huge difference in the quality of the music when you’re on the road. Chris and Kate really changed my life. They introduced me to all the people in Toronto that I’m close with. They shot me off into another direction when it comes to writing songs. They were mainly responsible for that.
That was in 1997? When they moved there?
Yeah, they had just moved to New York. We met right away. I played every week in a band called SexMob, and they kept coming and listening to the band. Chris kept sitting in on clavinet, and Kate would be in the corner writing in her book—writing and writing. She struck up a conversation once, she really liked the music. We became close friends. For several months I had no idea they knew each other! Which is inconceivable now. They’re still very close to me.
You grew up in Connecticut and went to school in Texas. When did you move to New York from Texas?
In the late 80s, around 1987.
When did you fall in with the Lounge Lizards’ crowd?
That would have been probably about 95 or 96. Before that I was playing a lot of jazz gigs, very straight-ahead stuff. The Lounge Lizards was a good, healthy change. That’s what really led me to SexMob and discovering how I really wanted to play the bass. I enjoyed playing bass all my life, but I realized at that point that I wasn’t meant to be a straight-ahead jazz musician.
How would you describe what you did in Lounge Lizards?
That was a band that taught me the value of repetition. It was interesting music because my job in that band was to play just a simple bass line over and over, but have it feel like it was moving towards the horizon some way, and lead the band gently in a direction without ever playing any fills. It was about having a voice on the instrument without playing a lot of wanky stuff.
That’s not unlike any classic soul or funk music.
Yeah, it’s present more in terms of the feeling and the sound rather than someone trying to show off. Then SexMob was similar in the sense that it was all about the more social end of music. If you go see hotshot jazz guys play, a lot of times there are only guys in the audience, you know? SexMob would play and for some reason there would be all these girls in the audience. Somehow, that music was sexy and fun. The joy of it and the irreverence—people caught on to that feeling and celebrated it. I realized that that had been missing for me for a while. That continued when I started singing more and playing guitar.
Was rock music—for lack of a better term, but as something that can loosely describe what the Citizens’ Band do—was that on your radar in the 80s and early 90s?
Fundamentally, I’m a rock musician. I come from playing in garage bands. I grew up playing guitar in bands with my brother Pete, who plays bass. This was when I was 12, 13, 14. All my early experience playing with people was playing rock music. We were nuts about Jimi Hendrix, and then we got into Miles Davis. I still love all that, but I’ve come full circle through meeting Chris and Kate and a lot of other folks. Before I met them, I never conceived of having my own band—or if I did, I couldn’t conceive of what it could be. Now I’m convinced that playing guitar and singing is my music. I play bass happily with a couple of bands still—Bill Frisell, SexMob, Chris and Kate—but records that have my name on them are going to be vocal records with slide guitar on them.
Were you writing songs at all before you met them?
Not at all. It was their support and the fact that my life was changing and the fact that I had been a sideman long enough. I was realizing that there was something missing. They encouraged me in a very personal way. I was going through a lot of things, and they got me writing about it. It wasn’t directly about it, but it was about how I felt at the time. We’d be sitting around and Chris would say, ‘Come on, I just wrote one verse. Whaddya got?’ They were very kind and patient. They still are. They’re my best friends.
Did you meet them at a low point in your life?
It was a challenging point in my life. I had a lot of responsibility. Basically, I was playing a lot less at that point and doing other things. They were the first new friends that I had met in quite a while. They took me in somehow. They were safe to be around.
Other than their altruism and generous spirit, what was it about their music and writing that attracted you?
The funny thing was that originally, my friendship with them developed considerably before I ever thought I’d play in their band—or before there was a band to play in. They were doing duo gigs at the time … It’s amazing to think of what we were all doing 10-12 years ago and what we’re doing now—and why. The purpose is getting clearer and clearer.
-end-
Monday, March 17, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
D'Urbervilles
Last night was one of the finest local bills Toronto is likely to witness in 2008: the joint CD release for the Forest City Lovers and the D'Urbervilles. Both albums are out on the nascent label Out of This Spark, who made an auspicious debut with the Friends in Bellwoods compilation last year; with both of these stellar new releases in the discography, OOTS now has a jump start on carrying the torch for the late great Three Gut Records, another Guelph/Toronto transplant label that focused on quality over quantity.
The D'Urbervilles opened the bill in the intimate Tranzac room, and despite the initial lack of drunken abandon on the audience's part at 9.30PM on a Friday night, they delivered a powerhouse performance--again--that was made for the history books. As my co-interviewer Helen Spitzer pointed out to me, singer John O'Regan couldn't contain his giddy grin of pride for the entire set: the man was clearly ecstatic, and he had every reason to be.
The debut album We Are the Hunters is fiery and ferocious and wastes no time during its 30-minute duration, packing punk rock soul into every groove, the rhythm section boasting innate restraint while O'Regan and Tim Bruton's guitars alternate between intricate disco picking, new wave textures (I swear I actually heard a bit of Bauhaus last night) and AC/DC-size riffs, all served by the melodicism that O'Regan honed in Habitat, the sadly now-defunct duo with Sylvie Smith (who is now in The Magic with Bruton).
Early in their career, the D'Urbervilles garnered endless comparisons to the Constantines--and though there are certainly some similarities, the D'Urbs are better dancers. And Hunters is easily the best rock'n'roll album to come out of Toronto (and area) since the Constantines' 2001 debut, so those geezers better watch their backs (their new album, Kensington Heights, is due in April on Arts and Crafts).
The D'Urbervilles have plenty of dates out east with the Forest City Lovers (bassist Kyle Donnelly plays in both) and then out west on their own: they're all listed here.
This interview was spun into two articles: Helen Spitzer's eloquent Eye Weekly piece here; my local-boys-do-good story for the K-W Record/Guelph Mercury here.
The D’Urbervilles: John O’Regan, Kyle Donnelly, Tim Bruton
Interviewed by Helen Spitzer and Michael Barclay at Bacchus Roti, Queen St. W
March 5, 2008
H: Do you think the long gap between the first EP and this album is a good thing in terms of your evolution as a band, playing together, what you sound like together?
K: When we did the EP we didn’t really have any sound that we thought was our own, like each song had a different thing going for it. The gap helped us a lot to write more cohesive songs.
H: John, your voice has really changed immensely. It’s deepened in tone and it’s more nuanced, your singing. It’s just that much more, in a year.
J: Wow, I’m not gonna be able to get my big head out of the door now. Some of the songs definitely we spent more time on the vocals with. When we recorded the EP we were still practicing in my bedroom in Guelph, with no P.A. So these guys would be hearing the lyrics for the first time when we played the songs live.
T: Or when we recorded them.
J: Like oh, that’s what he’s singing. A lot of the songs we’d been able to play a long time, so that gave me more of a chance to work out phrasing and make everything super exact. And on some of them were really intense, like on “Hot Tips” for example. I remember we spent several days trying to get that little high vocal melody at the beginning.
K: We actually knew what he was saying on that one because he came up to us and said, ‘I’ve got a great idea for song lyrics: cold cash for hot tips, like Crime Stoppers.’
J: They had it on the board outside the OPP station on Wellington Street in Guelph, it said “cold cash for hot tips.”
M: And it just sounded like a naughty rock’n’roll song.
T: The guys in We’re Marching On thought we were saying “hot tits.”
H: Yeah, that’s where we’re going here.
M: I was wondering if you think Habitat affected your singing.
J: I don’t know, I always felt I sang differently in that band. It got me more accustomed to being more isolated, because there was less to hide behind. There’s always something with boys and singing and being self-conscious about it in rock bands. Doing [Habitat] made it more okay. It’s weird that people view vocals differently. It’s fine to be in a room with someone and say, ‘Hey, check out this guitar riff!’ [makes obnoxious rock guitar sound]. But with singing, it’s like…
M: ‘Hey, check out my soul!’
K: ‘Did you hear what I did with that note?’
T: ‘What a sissy!’
H: For me when I listen to this record I get more of the emotional tenor of what you’re singing about. Whereas I felt on the earlier one there was more of the new wave robotic thing, more like LCD Soundsystem—which I know you were listening to at the time.
K: Forest City Lovers came up with a nickname for you, which was Johnny Staccato. [all laugh]
T: That would look good on a bowling jacket.
J: Playing with the same people for a while, you figure out what you like and don’t like and what works. On the older songs, you can almost pinpoint the kind of sound we were going for on each song—the country song, the rock song, the bass song, the slow jam. Those were the titles for a long time, too, because I was lazy about writing lyrics. Tim’s playing improved a lot too, and gave us more of a style instead of just throwing shit at the wall.
H: Tim, I’ve seen big developments in your playing—especially with The Magic.
M: Did anyone lend you any 80s guitar pedals on this record?
T: They did. John Dinsmore lent me a lot of stuff. I was like a kid in a candy store.
M: What I like about it is how much you do with clean sounds, whereas a lot of other bands would just slap on the distortion as a crutch or stick to herky-jerky rhythms.
T: I prefer to think of texture rather than some sort of overdriving factor. It’s not something you hold on to: it’s something you hear for a minute and then your focus shifts back to the drum and bass.
H: Like on that Payola$[-esque] song you do, or like Spoon—who do a similar thing and pull back all the time and let your brain fill in the blanks.
J: I don’t know if it’s risky to namedrop bands, but I listen to Spoon a lot more than other new music. I like seeing how far you can get with the skeleton structure of what there is, and recognizing that you don’t need to add any more.
H: Was that a conscious conversation in the band?
J: It was, throughout both the writing and the recording.
T: It’s really easy in recording to say, ‘We have 128 tracks on this song—let’s use them all.’ For us, it made a lot of sense when we liked how a really simple element sounded, and we wanted to explore the air around that.
K: If someone were to tab out one of our songs, they’d be really boring to play.
J: That’s true of the whole album.
K: Tim’s guitar lines on their own need something else. It’s not just chords; everything is intertwined.
T: There are no campfire songs.
J: That was one of our big goals.
M: You wanted to pour water all over that campfire.
J: If the album gets huge, you won’t walk into the Brass Taps in Guelph in a year’s time and hear some first-year guy at an open mic covering these songs.
M: That to me is what they have in common with old soul music or disco or James Brown, where they aren’t guitar lines or bass lines or chord progressions—it’s about the whole band as a rhythm section. And, uh, well, that’s why I love your band.
T: I’m glad you noticed that!
H: What do you think we do for a living?
M: Lyrically, you step up to the streets all over this record. You assassin down the avenue, you’re scoping the streets, the last line on the album is “Take back the night…”
T: You know that scene in Saturday Night Fever at the very beginning? That’s what I think of, where he’s walking down the street in his new Italian boots, with ‘Stayin’ Alive’ rockin’ on the soundtrack. And he stops at the window and lifts up his boot to the one in the window, and his might even be a little bit shinier. Then he puts on his paint smock and he’s back at work.
M: John, what’s with you and the streets of Oshawa, the streets of Guelph, the streets of Toronto?
J: With any lyrics, you’re telling a story and leave it open enough that people can attach their own meaning to it. A conscious part of the album is that most of these songs were written from when we were 19 to 22, when you’re out on the town late at night. A lot of it is trying to write stuff that is honest to our experiences and play that up a little. You’re out at 1.30 in the morning and you’ve seen your friends play an awesome show and you’re going to Mega Pizza. I know for ‘Belladonna,’ the last song, a lot of that was coming from the disparity of how you could have just been at a house show on Grange St. or just seen The Burning Hell play at Family Thrift Store while drinking beer in the back of Ray’s van and it’s a hilarious time and it’s the best show you’ve ever seen and you’re with 40 friends. You walk literally ten steps down the street, and you’re at the Cowboy Bar and being screamed at by some guy in tight pants and boots calling you queer. Being out and around that all at once, you see all these separate communities clashing.
T: Just standing at the four corners [of Wyndham and Macdonnell], you see all kinds of things happening at the same time.
M: It’s a split-screen movie.
J: You have the hip-hop kids at Van Gogh’s, the cops sitting there waiting, and there’s always two girls on the corner having some kind of life crisis on the curb. Everyone’s been a kid and gone through all that, and that’s the common place we’re coming from.
M: There’s an element of subversion in these lyrics, though, an element of stealth, like you’re getting away with something.
J: That’s definitely part of it. I find Guelph is a more highly politicized place, especially coming from Oshawa.
K: We used to practice in Jonno’s bedroom, and the Guelph Union of Tenants and Supporters, GUTS, ran a soup kitchen underneath.
J: While we’d be practicing they’d be making vegan stews and chocolate cakes to take out to the streets. They fed us many times.
K: They’d set up a soup kitchen outside the Guelph Legal Clinic.
J: Streets are public, but they’re also contentious—and that’s probably a bigger issue here in Toronto than it is there. You see these YouTube videos of people on bicycles having battles with cars.
K: Although during the march for Nicole Freeborn in Guelph there were cops lined up in front of City Hall; it was weird seeing Guelph become a police state for a day.
J: One of the women in GUTS was assaulted at a demonstration, and then there was a protest held a couple of months later that was pretty intense for Guelph. Streets should be a place for free and public expression, but in a lot of ways they aren’t.
M: What I like about these lyrics is that it’s obvious there are political subtexts there, though it’s never completely overt. I know I’ve heard you talk at shows about First Nations rights in Caledonia. Am I reading too much into “The Receiver” to hear that there?
J: Not explicitly, no.
K: We did play a song about that called “White Noise.” But we’ve only played that twice.
J: That’s one of the things I like about lyric writing in general. I love when you have an album you listen to a lot, but then a year later something has happened in your life and you put the album on again and there’s that moment when where all the sudden you understand the song on a whole other level. Of course, you might still be misinterpreting what they’re talking about. I like to leave it open enough that it’s not just: here’s the political song, here’s the love song, here’s the party song.
H: I wanted to go back and get some history. Have all of you known each other since you were seven years old?
J: No, just me and this guy (Tim).
H: Is it the kind of situation where you decided to be in a band together before you played instruments?
T: Before we played instruments well.
J: I was definitely in the open-mic-night, banging-a-bongo-drum Guelph pseudo-hippie phase after first year [university]. I had learned guitar in high school, but not really. It wasn’t until I went away that I started playing more and seeing bands. When I came back to Oshawa that first summer, I really wanted to start a group.
T: I was still in Oshawa. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I still don’t. I went to high school some days. Some days I didn’t. I played a lot of guitar. A lot of things I was working on then became parts of the EP.
H: So moving to Guelph was a conscious decision.
T: University seemed like a good idea at the time, and I definitely wanted to move away just for a new experience. I knew some people who went there already. It had some cool urban stuff that Oshawa didn’t have, and some country stuff too that appealed to me.
K: I had heard of [now-defunct vegetarian restaurant] Café Aquarius when I was still in high school in Whitby. And the Barmitzvah Brothers as well.
H: Could each of you tell me what some of your pivotal Guelph musical experiences were?
K: The first band I saw in Guelph was during frosh week when I went to see The Crappy Roommate, which is where I met Richard Laviolette; we’ve become good friends since. A big one was the Constantines/ Weakerthans show. That’s where I met Colin, our original drummer. Tim introduced me to him there. Another big one was Controller Controller and Raising the Fawn and LAL. I was watching that with these guys before I was in the band with them. Then it was all of Stuart [Duncan]’s shows at Ed Video: Final Fantasy, We’re Marching On and SS Cardiacs was a big one. Then all the shows at Grange St.
T: Kyle just said most of my favourites, like the Final Fantasy/ WAMO/ SS Cardiacs show. That’s where I met Leon Taheny, who’s an amazing drummer. And Jamie from Ohbijou came out of the crowd playing trumpet. I had seen Cuff the Duke in Oshawa before, and that had floored me, but not in the interactive way that this band was really keen on. I remember seeing For the Horseradish as well, and they were very involved with the audience and not just being stationary. As for the D’Urbervilles, I remember getting goosebumps when we played Peter Clark Hall [at the University of Guelph] with K’naan and Controller Controller.
J: We had won a Battle of the Bands against the Salt Lick Kids and Knock Knock Ginger.
K: It’s funny, because the first year we saw Controller Controller in September, the next year we opened for them at the university, and the year after that we were touring with them.
T: That show we played with them, that was the most people I’d ever stood in front of before, other than high school parliament or something. We only brought six EPs to sell, and there was a line-up. We told them that if they gave us their name we’d make some more; there were 90 names.
K: But only three people came the next day while we stood in the rain waiting.
T: We played five songs that night, and that’s when we got the idea that that was the ideal set.
J: Definitely for me it was the Constantines and Of January May, which was at the Trasheteria. I remember being totally floored by both bands. That was early in my first year of Guelph, when paying seven bucks and being so close to the band was totally new for me. I was sill in the high school mode of saving up all your money and going to the Molson Ampitheatre twice a year to see someone like Weezer. Going to this show was, holy crap, the first time I thought that I could do this in some capacity.
M: So that never happened at the Velvet Elvis in Oshawa?
J: I was underage.
K: There was the Dungeon, which was an underage punk club. I went there a lot to see shows, but Guelph and Oshawa had very different music scenes at the time. There were only punk bands in high school and it was always six-band bills.
J: We went to see Cuff the Duke at the Velvet Elvis once and they kicked us out right after the openers. Another big show for me was the Bahai Cassette at the Family Thrift Store [in Guelph]. That totally blew my mind—the idea that you can be in a band and present something that wasn’t necessarily polished. Not that they were bad, but they kind of meant to be and they didn’t care. I realized that being in a band was not only something I could do, but something I could do without being a virtuoso and spending my whole life mastering the guitar fretboard.
H: What was the gap between the D’Urbervilles starting and that first gig in the University Centre Courtyard?
T: Jon had gone hitchhiking across Canada that summer in July. I convinced him to let Colin play drums with us and write songs. Within three weeks we played a couple of shows in Oshawa.
J: I still had an acoustic guitar, a borrowed amp, and no bass player. Our
friends were very nice to come to those.
T: Then by late November Kyle joined us.
J: That was right after the Arcade Fire show at Vinyl; that was huge for us too. That was the first time I saw the Barmitzvah Brothers.
H: I remember the UC Courtyard Show and being so excited and coming up to you and telling you how awesome it was and you [shrugged and] said, ‘Ah! We just formed!’
J: That was our first show with Kyle and our third show ever. And my first with an electric guitar.
T: We’ll call that day one.
H: How did you get that gig?
J: I organized it. It was Buy Nothing Day and I was doing some organizing with Students Against Sweatshops. We had the space that day, so I thought we should get some bands—and I didn’t know many.
T: That was the first time we met Stuart Duncan too; he did sound.
J: When we played that show, I told everyone, ‘Okay guys, Stuart is doing sound and he works at the radio station so we have to be really good. If Stuart thinks we don’t suck, then it will be great.’
K: It took us about a year before Stuart told us he actually liked us.
H: I always felt your band got this point from the sheer mass of people rooting for you. When I’ve spoken to you, I never got the impression that you had any kind of master plan.
T: For the first year and a half our only goal was opening for Cuff the Duke.
J: And impressing Stuart. One of the other goals we’ve always had has been to do a big tour, which we’re about to do. We’ve been really fortunate to meet some really great people, at CFRU and everywhere else.
K: When we played early shows in Toronto at the Speakeasy, Jamie from Ohbijou would come to all those shows and we’d only know maybe two other people in the crowd. He tried to get tons of people out to those shows. He was also putting the Bellwoods compilation together at the time.
H: You’re also part of that period of time when a bunch of Guelph bands and Toronto bands grew up together and formed this community, which includes Bellwoods.
T: We snuck into that somehow.
K: Like the Social Arts Club [the very loose collective started by We're Marching On and associates, which released a compilation in 2005]. I remember when our name first popped up on the list of their bands on the website…
J: Oh, I remember that day!
T: We were so ridiculously excited.
J: Then they stopped calling themselves that almost immediately. The first We’re Marching On show in Guelph was another big moment for me.
H: What do you think people’s problem with the name is?
T: I get called Tim Burton a lot.
J: And the lead singer.
T: Which it can be argued I am. I do lead off the record. But Jon always get O’Reagan.
K: And my name is always pronounced right but there’s usually an extra ‘n’ or ‘l’ or an ‘a’ in there somewhere.
H: But I don’t get the “Doobervilles” thing.
K: If you see it written in lower case, the B jumps up more than the R.
H: But your own publicist sent something out with “D’Ubervilles” in the subject line.
J: Oh, she’s dead!
K: Stuart called us the D’Ubervilles for the longest time. But at NXNE they labeled our gear with tape that said “Gerbervilles.” We’ve also got the “Dumbrellas” and the “Doober Dillies.” That last one was the same gig in PEI that we played with “For City Lovers.”
T: I think there’s about seven mispronunciations I’ve heard. The “D’uborvilles” I thought was kind of classy.
M: What about the “Doukhaborvilles?”
J: Part of this band’s career was a battle once we realized we needed a website. When we got one, we watched it slowly climb the Google charts, slowly passing each Coles notes reference and high school essay on the actual book until we actually beat them all.
K: That’s when we realized we didn’t suck.
J: We were in the Thomas Hardy Historical Society newsletter once.
K: Really?
T: They wrote me an email to tell me we were in there.
K: Thanks for telling me, guys.
H: Do you know that the plot of the book revolves around a misunderstanding about her name?
J: Yeah, Durbeyfield.
H: Who here has actually read the book?
J: Just me.
K: I bought a copy after I joined the band, figuring I should know what we’re about. But after we played Lee’s Palace with We Are Wolves, a friend came up and gave me this really old copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
T: I have no plans to read it.
-end-
The D'Urbervilles opened the bill in the intimate Tranzac room, and despite the initial lack of drunken abandon on the audience's part at 9.30PM on a Friday night, they delivered a powerhouse performance--again--that was made for the history books. As my co-interviewer Helen Spitzer pointed out to me, singer John O'Regan couldn't contain his giddy grin of pride for the entire set: the man was clearly ecstatic, and he had every reason to be.
The debut album We Are the Hunters is fiery and ferocious and wastes no time during its 30-minute duration, packing punk rock soul into every groove, the rhythm section boasting innate restraint while O'Regan and Tim Bruton's guitars alternate between intricate disco picking, new wave textures (I swear I actually heard a bit of Bauhaus last night) and AC/DC-size riffs, all served by the melodicism that O'Regan honed in Habitat, the sadly now-defunct duo with Sylvie Smith (who is now in The Magic with Bruton).
Early in their career, the D'Urbervilles garnered endless comparisons to the Constantines--and though there are certainly some similarities, the D'Urbs are better dancers. And Hunters is easily the best rock'n'roll album to come out of Toronto (and area) since the Constantines' 2001 debut, so those geezers better watch their backs (their new album, Kensington Heights, is due in April on Arts and Crafts).
The D'Urbervilles have plenty of dates out east with the Forest City Lovers (bassist Kyle Donnelly plays in both) and then out west on their own: they're all listed here.
This interview was spun into two articles: Helen Spitzer's eloquent Eye Weekly piece here; my local-boys-do-good story for the K-W Record/Guelph Mercury here.
The D’Urbervilles: John O’Regan, Kyle Donnelly, Tim Bruton
Interviewed by Helen Spitzer and Michael Barclay at Bacchus Roti, Queen St. W
March 5, 2008
H: Do you think the long gap between the first EP and this album is a good thing in terms of your evolution as a band, playing together, what you sound like together?
K: When we did the EP we didn’t really have any sound that we thought was our own, like each song had a different thing going for it. The gap helped us a lot to write more cohesive songs.
H: John, your voice has really changed immensely. It’s deepened in tone and it’s more nuanced, your singing. It’s just that much more, in a year.
J: Wow, I’m not gonna be able to get my big head out of the door now. Some of the songs definitely we spent more time on the vocals with. When we recorded the EP we were still practicing in my bedroom in Guelph, with no P.A. So these guys would be hearing the lyrics for the first time when we played the songs live.
T: Or when we recorded them.
J: Like oh, that’s what he’s singing. A lot of the songs we’d been able to play a long time, so that gave me more of a chance to work out phrasing and make everything super exact. And on some of them were really intense, like on “Hot Tips” for example. I remember we spent several days trying to get that little high vocal melody at the beginning.
K: We actually knew what he was saying on that one because he came up to us and said, ‘I’ve got a great idea for song lyrics: cold cash for hot tips, like Crime Stoppers.’
J: They had it on the board outside the OPP station on Wellington Street in Guelph, it said “cold cash for hot tips.”
M: And it just sounded like a naughty rock’n’roll song.
T: The guys in We’re Marching On thought we were saying “hot tits.”
H: Yeah, that’s where we’re going here.
M: I was wondering if you think Habitat affected your singing.
J: I don’t know, I always felt I sang differently in that band. It got me more accustomed to being more isolated, because there was less to hide behind. There’s always something with boys and singing and being self-conscious about it in rock bands. Doing [Habitat] made it more okay. It’s weird that people view vocals differently. It’s fine to be in a room with someone and say, ‘Hey, check out this guitar riff!’ [makes obnoxious rock guitar sound]. But with singing, it’s like…
M: ‘Hey, check out my soul!’
K: ‘Did you hear what I did with that note?’
T: ‘What a sissy!’
H: For me when I listen to this record I get more of the emotional tenor of what you’re singing about. Whereas I felt on the earlier one there was more of the new wave robotic thing, more like LCD Soundsystem—which I know you were listening to at the time.
K: Forest City Lovers came up with a nickname for you, which was Johnny Staccato. [all laugh]
T: That would look good on a bowling jacket.
J: Playing with the same people for a while, you figure out what you like and don’t like and what works. On the older songs, you can almost pinpoint the kind of sound we were going for on each song—the country song, the rock song, the bass song, the slow jam. Those were the titles for a long time, too, because I was lazy about writing lyrics. Tim’s playing improved a lot too, and gave us more of a style instead of just throwing shit at the wall.
H: Tim, I’ve seen big developments in your playing—especially with The Magic.
M: Did anyone lend you any 80s guitar pedals on this record?
T: They did. John Dinsmore lent me a lot of stuff. I was like a kid in a candy store.
M: What I like about it is how much you do with clean sounds, whereas a lot of other bands would just slap on the distortion as a crutch or stick to herky-jerky rhythms.
T: I prefer to think of texture rather than some sort of overdriving factor. It’s not something you hold on to: it’s something you hear for a minute and then your focus shifts back to the drum and bass.
H: Like on that Payola$[-esque] song you do, or like Spoon—who do a similar thing and pull back all the time and let your brain fill in the blanks.
J: I don’t know if it’s risky to namedrop bands, but I listen to Spoon a lot more than other new music. I like seeing how far you can get with the skeleton structure of what there is, and recognizing that you don’t need to add any more.
H: Was that a conscious conversation in the band?
J: It was, throughout both the writing and the recording.
T: It’s really easy in recording to say, ‘We have 128 tracks on this song—let’s use them all.’ For us, it made a lot of sense when we liked how a really simple element sounded, and we wanted to explore the air around that.
K: If someone were to tab out one of our songs, they’d be really boring to play.
J: That’s true of the whole album.
K: Tim’s guitar lines on their own need something else. It’s not just chords; everything is intertwined.
T: There are no campfire songs.
J: That was one of our big goals.
M: You wanted to pour water all over that campfire.
J: If the album gets huge, you won’t walk into the Brass Taps in Guelph in a year’s time and hear some first-year guy at an open mic covering these songs.
M: That to me is what they have in common with old soul music or disco or James Brown, where they aren’t guitar lines or bass lines or chord progressions—it’s about the whole band as a rhythm section. And, uh, well, that’s why I love your band.
T: I’m glad you noticed that!
H: What do you think we do for a living?
M: Lyrically, you step up to the streets all over this record. You assassin down the avenue, you’re scoping the streets, the last line on the album is “Take back the night…”
T: You know that scene in Saturday Night Fever at the very beginning? That’s what I think of, where he’s walking down the street in his new Italian boots, with ‘Stayin’ Alive’ rockin’ on the soundtrack. And he stops at the window and lifts up his boot to the one in the window, and his might even be a little bit shinier. Then he puts on his paint smock and he’s back at work.
M: John, what’s with you and the streets of Oshawa, the streets of Guelph, the streets of Toronto?
J: With any lyrics, you’re telling a story and leave it open enough that people can attach their own meaning to it. A conscious part of the album is that most of these songs were written from when we were 19 to 22, when you’re out on the town late at night. A lot of it is trying to write stuff that is honest to our experiences and play that up a little. You’re out at 1.30 in the morning and you’ve seen your friends play an awesome show and you’re going to Mega Pizza. I know for ‘Belladonna,’ the last song, a lot of that was coming from the disparity of how you could have just been at a house show on Grange St. or just seen The Burning Hell play at Family Thrift Store while drinking beer in the back of Ray’s van and it’s a hilarious time and it’s the best show you’ve ever seen and you’re with 40 friends. You walk literally ten steps down the street, and you’re at the Cowboy Bar and being screamed at by some guy in tight pants and boots calling you queer. Being out and around that all at once, you see all these separate communities clashing.
T: Just standing at the four corners [of Wyndham and Macdonnell], you see all kinds of things happening at the same time.
M: It’s a split-screen movie.
J: You have the hip-hop kids at Van Gogh’s, the cops sitting there waiting, and there’s always two girls on the corner having some kind of life crisis on the curb. Everyone’s been a kid and gone through all that, and that’s the common place we’re coming from.
M: There’s an element of subversion in these lyrics, though, an element of stealth, like you’re getting away with something.
J: That’s definitely part of it. I find Guelph is a more highly politicized place, especially coming from Oshawa.
K: We used to practice in Jonno’s bedroom, and the Guelph Union of Tenants and Supporters, GUTS, ran a soup kitchen underneath.
J: While we’d be practicing they’d be making vegan stews and chocolate cakes to take out to the streets. They fed us many times.
K: They’d set up a soup kitchen outside the Guelph Legal Clinic.
J: Streets are public, but they’re also contentious—and that’s probably a bigger issue here in Toronto than it is there. You see these YouTube videos of people on bicycles having battles with cars.
K: Although during the march for Nicole Freeborn in Guelph there were cops lined up in front of City Hall; it was weird seeing Guelph become a police state for a day.
J: One of the women in GUTS was assaulted at a demonstration, and then there was a protest held a couple of months later that was pretty intense for Guelph. Streets should be a place for free and public expression, but in a lot of ways they aren’t.
M: What I like about these lyrics is that it’s obvious there are political subtexts there, though it’s never completely overt. I know I’ve heard you talk at shows about First Nations rights in Caledonia. Am I reading too much into “The Receiver” to hear that there?
J: Not explicitly, no.
K: We did play a song about that called “White Noise.” But we’ve only played that twice.
J: That’s one of the things I like about lyric writing in general. I love when you have an album you listen to a lot, but then a year later something has happened in your life and you put the album on again and there’s that moment when where all the sudden you understand the song on a whole other level. Of course, you might still be misinterpreting what they’re talking about. I like to leave it open enough that it’s not just: here’s the political song, here’s the love song, here’s the party song.
H: I wanted to go back and get some history. Have all of you known each other since you were seven years old?
J: No, just me and this guy (Tim).
H: Is it the kind of situation where you decided to be in a band together before you played instruments?
T: Before we played instruments well.
J: I was definitely in the open-mic-night, banging-a-bongo-drum Guelph pseudo-hippie phase after first year [university]. I had learned guitar in high school, but not really. It wasn’t until I went away that I started playing more and seeing bands. When I came back to Oshawa that first summer, I really wanted to start a group.
T: I was still in Oshawa. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I still don’t. I went to high school some days. Some days I didn’t. I played a lot of guitar. A lot of things I was working on then became parts of the EP.
H: So moving to Guelph was a conscious decision.
T: University seemed like a good idea at the time, and I definitely wanted to move away just for a new experience. I knew some people who went there already. It had some cool urban stuff that Oshawa didn’t have, and some country stuff too that appealed to me.
K: I had heard of [now-defunct vegetarian restaurant] Café Aquarius when I was still in high school in Whitby. And the Barmitzvah Brothers as well.
H: Could each of you tell me what some of your pivotal Guelph musical experiences were?
K: The first band I saw in Guelph was during frosh week when I went to see The Crappy Roommate, which is where I met Richard Laviolette; we’ve become good friends since. A big one was the Constantines/ Weakerthans show. That’s where I met Colin, our original drummer. Tim introduced me to him there. Another big one was Controller Controller and Raising the Fawn and LAL. I was watching that with these guys before I was in the band with them. Then it was all of Stuart [Duncan]’s shows at Ed Video: Final Fantasy, We’re Marching On and SS Cardiacs was a big one. Then all the shows at Grange St.
T: Kyle just said most of my favourites, like the Final Fantasy/ WAMO/ SS Cardiacs show. That’s where I met Leon Taheny, who’s an amazing drummer. And Jamie from Ohbijou came out of the crowd playing trumpet. I had seen Cuff the Duke in Oshawa before, and that had floored me, but not in the interactive way that this band was really keen on. I remember seeing For the Horseradish as well, and they were very involved with the audience and not just being stationary. As for the D’Urbervilles, I remember getting goosebumps when we played Peter Clark Hall [at the University of Guelph] with K’naan and Controller Controller.
J: We had won a Battle of the Bands against the Salt Lick Kids and Knock Knock Ginger.
K: It’s funny, because the first year we saw Controller Controller in September, the next year we opened for them at the university, and the year after that we were touring with them.
T: That show we played with them, that was the most people I’d ever stood in front of before, other than high school parliament or something. We only brought six EPs to sell, and there was a line-up. We told them that if they gave us their name we’d make some more; there were 90 names.
K: But only three people came the next day while we stood in the rain waiting.
T: We played five songs that night, and that’s when we got the idea that that was the ideal set.
J: Definitely for me it was the Constantines and Of January May, which was at the Trasheteria. I remember being totally floored by both bands. That was early in my first year of Guelph, when paying seven bucks and being so close to the band was totally new for me. I was sill in the high school mode of saving up all your money and going to the Molson Ampitheatre twice a year to see someone like Weezer. Going to this show was, holy crap, the first time I thought that I could do this in some capacity.
M: So that never happened at the Velvet Elvis in Oshawa?
J: I was underage.
K: There was the Dungeon, which was an underage punk club. I went there a lot to see shows, but Guelph and Oshawa had very different music scenes at the time. There were only punk bands in high school and it was always six-band bills.
J: We went to see Cuff the Duke at the Velvet Elvis once and they kicked us out right after the openers. Another big show for me was the Bahai Cassette at the Family Thrift Store [in Guelph]. That totally blew my mind—the idea that you can be in a band and present something that wasn’t necessarily polished. Not that they were bad, but they kind of meant to be and they didn’t care. I realized that being in a band was not only something I could do, but something I could do without being a virtuoso and spending my whole life mastering the guitar fretboard.
H: What was the gap between the D’Urbervilles starting and that first gig in the University Centre Courtyard?
T: Jon had gone hitchhiking across Canada that summer in July. I convinced him to let Colin play drums with us and write songs. Within three weeks we played a couple of shows in Oshawa.
J: I still had an acoustic guitar, a borrowed amp, and no bass player. Our
friends were very nice to come to those.
T: Then by late November Kyle joined us.
J: That was right after the Arcade Fire show at Vinyl; that was huge for us too. That was the first time I saw the Barmitzvah Brothers.
H: I remember the UC Courtyard Show and being so excited and coming up to you and telling you how awesome it was and you [shrugged and] said, ‘Ah! We just formed!’
J: That was our first show with Kyle and our third show ever. And my first with an electric guitar.
T: We’ll call that day one.
H: How did you get that gig?
J: I organized it. It was Buy Nothing Day and I was doing some organizing with Students Against Sweatshops. We had the space that day, so I thought we should get some bands—and I didn’t know many.
T: That was the first time we met Stuart Duncan too; he did sound.
J: When we played that show, I told everyone, ‘Okay guys, Stuart is doing sound and he works at the radio station so we have to be really good. If Stuart thinks we don’t suck, then it will be great.’
K: It took us about a year before Stuart told us he actually liked us.
H: I always felt your band got this point from the sheer mass of people rooting for you. When I’ve spoken to you, I never got the impression that you had any kind of master plan.
T: For the first year and a half our only goal was opening for Cuff the Duke.
J: And impressing Stuart. One of the other goals we’ve always had has been to do a big tour, which we’re about to do. We’ve been really fortunate to meet some really great people, at CFRU and everywhere else.
K: When we played early shows in Toronto at the Speakeasy, Jamie from Ohbijou would come to all those shows and we’d only know maybe two other people in the crowd. He tried to get tons of people out to those shows. He was also putting the Bellwoods compilation together at the time.
H: You’re also part of that period of time when a bunch of Guelph bands and Toronto bands grew up together and formed this community, which includes Bellwoods.
T: We snuck into that somehow.
K: Like the Social Arts Club [the very loose collective started by We're Marching On and associates, which released a compilation in 2005]. I remember when our name first popped up on the list of their bands on the website…
J: Oh, I remember that day!
T: We were so ridiculously excited.
J: Then they stopped calling themselves that almost immediately. The first We’re Marching On show in Guelph was another big moment for me.
H: What do you think people’s problem with the name is?
T: I get called Tim Burton a lot.
J: And the lead singer.
T: Which it can be argued I am. I do lead off the record. But Jon always get O’Reagan.
K: And my name is always pronounced right but there’s usually an extra ‘n’ or ‘l’ or an ‘a’ in there somewhere.
H: But I don’t get the “Doobervilles” thing.
K: If you see it written in lower case, the B jumps up more than the R.
H: But your own publicist sent something out with “D’Ubervilles” in the subject line.
J: Oh, she’s dead!
K: Stuart called us the D’Ubervilles for the longest time. But at NXNE they labeled our gear with tape that said “Gerbervilles.” We’ve also got the “Dumbrellas” and the “Doober Dillies.” That last one was the same gig in PEI that we played with “For City Lovers.”
T: I think there’s about seven mispronunciations I’ve heard. The “D’uborvilles” I thought was kind of classy.
M: What about the “Doukhaborvilles?”
J: Part of this band’s career was a battle once we realized we needed a website. When we got one, we watched it slowly climb the Google charts, slowly passing each Coles notes reference and high school essay on the actual book until we actually beat them all.
K: That’s when we realized we didn’t suck.
J: We were in the Thomas Hardy Historical Society newsletter once.
K: Really?
T: They wrote me an email to tell me we were in there.
K: Thanks for telling me, guys.
H: Do you know that the plot of the book revolves around a misunderstanding about her name?
J: Yeah, Durbeyfield.
H: Who here has actually read the book?
J: Just me.
K: I bought a copy after I joined the band, figuring I should know what we’re about. But after we played Lee’s Palace with We Are Wolves, a friend came up and gave me this really old copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
T: I have no plans to read it.
-end-
Monday, March 10, 2008
George Fox
Did this man bring down Eliot Spitzer???!!!
Who knew that such wholesome Alberta country music had such dastardly dealings in Manhattan prostitution rings...
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Corb Lund
Because I'm still in recovery mode from Deerhoof at the Phoenix last night, I'm not at the same venue tonight to see Corb Lund--despite the fact that the Albertan's latest album, Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!, is perhaps the finest Canadian country record in recent history. And I'm not just saying that because Corb paid me to do so--which he did, because I penned his official bio when the album came out last fall.
I've been a big fan since I reviewed his second solo album (and first CD, following a debut cassette) Unforgiving Mistress in 1999 for Exclaim; I gave its 2002 follow-up Five Dollar Bill a five-star review in Eye Weekly, at a time when Lund had trouble making the Tranzac look full during a NXNE gig; I also picked it for that paper as one of my top three releases of 2002. After that, word of mouth about the power of Lund's songwriting pen and his live performances started to spread, and by the time of 2005's Hair In My Eyes Like a Highland Steer, Lund earned gold records for both that album and Five Dollar Bill--oddly enough, awarded on the same day.
Yet Steer sounded like Lund was laying low and backing off after the tour-de-force of Five Dollar Bill, where every track was a stone cold classic. One song on Steer was a goof-off called "All I Want to Do is Play Cards"--and it sounded like it.
The new album, Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!, isn't a complete concept album, although many songs deal with the role of cavalry in the history of warfare. There's also material about Mormon relatives ("Brother Brigham Brother Young") and Albertan family reunions, but no matter what Lund's literate lyrics are about, he writes with an effortless intelligence and sense of character that's rare in any genre. It's also why his audience is so diverse, which he considers his greatest career achievement.
And another thing--and I'm not just saying this because he paid me to--is that Lund is one of the most down-to-earth and engaging people you're ever likely to meet, which makes him a dream interview under any circumstance.
The bio I wrote is here. Corb Lund himself can be found here in the near future. Toronto locals note that if you missed him tonight, he's playing Guelph and Brampton next week.
Corb Lund
September 17, 2007
Locale: phone from his Albertan home
There’s a long tradition of historical narrative in country songs, from Johnny Horton and Johnny Cash to Geoff Berner. Are there other examples you draw from?
Marty Robbins, some Willie Nelson songs. Story songs are largely missing from the mainstream, and even a lot of alt/roots/underground country. I'm a storyteller, and I've never had much luck with the pure free form/word painting/poetry kind of lyric writing. But the first songs I ever sung I learned from my grandfathers, who were ranchers, and they would sing these ancient cowboy tragic story ballads that had been passed down through oral tradition in the west, before recorded music: “Strawberry Roan,” “When the Work's All Done This Fall,” “Little Joe the Wrangler.” Those are my bedrock, touchstone songs.
One of things I really enjoy about your writing is how distinctly Albertan it is, and yet it’s translated so well not just in Canada but internationally as well. Does that surprise you at all?
I believe that if you write honestly and authentically about your own culture, no matter what it is, people will pick up on the realness and the universality of it. My family's been in Alberta chasing cows for over a century, and in the American west long before that, so that's where I feel at home. I think regionalism is largely missing in commercial music. Everybody's going for generalities, when sometimes the interest is found in the quirky details.
I always use the example of being a young guy growing up on the prairies and hearing Bruce Springsteen; hearing songs about New Jersey slums was the most alien thing ever, very much outside of my life experience. But I got it because he wrote it so well, and with so much humanity. Same goes for The Eagles in Southern California, the Stones writing about living like rock stars, Stan Rogers singing Maritime stuff, whatever. That's the writer's job. If the specifics ring true, interest is held, and universality is achieved. I think: that's the goal anyway!
I guess my point is that I had the same insecurities about whether people outside of my culture and geographical area—the Western Canadian prairies and foothills—would be interested. But so far they have been, as far away as Europe, the UK, Australia. Hell, even Toronto (laughs).
For an album about the cavalry, I’m wondering if there was a decision to avoid more recent references to war, with the exception of the brief mention of the Afghan soldiers in the title track. Was that inevitable because of the decline of cavalry, or is it easier to tell war parables with historic distance?
It wasn’t really a decision, at least consciously. I tend to dig around for exotic detail, and everybody already knows about the stuff on the news. Plus, I've never been much of an overtly political writer. I know some people are, and I respect that form of art. And I do have very strong beliefs about those kinds of issues, but I also think that there's a place for music that makes people feel deeper things than current events. It interests me more to go for more timeless themes, and reach people that way. Despite all the crazy shit that goes on in the world, people still need to be able to just feel good for awhile, and get in touch with the spirit they forgot about because they've been watching the election coverage so closely, etc., etc.
What’s the story behind the song “Student Visas”?
It’s about a guy I met on tour once in the States. He had a crippled back, and we drank beer and he told me his story about his time illegally, covertly in Nicaragua with the US military. Every couple minutes he'd stop and say, 'I'm not supposed to be talking about this,' but then he'd continue. He had some things weighing pretty heavily on him. He would vacillate between soldier/tough guy/bad-ass talk and super heavy crippling remorse. I think he saw and did some pretty heavy stuff. It’s strange for a Canadian to run into that because we read about it and see the movies and read the books, but in America, you actually run into guys from Wyoming, or wherever, that actually did that stuff. Heavy duty.
I know you’re a voracious reader. Was there anything on your recent reading list that inspired these songs?
Oh yeah. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: No One Writes to the Colonel and Autumn of the Patriarch. A bunch of cavalry histories, tactics, battle stuff. A whole slew of French foreign legion books, starting with Beau Geste. And I always read Hunter Thompson's political stuff every three years or so, to keep sharp.
You’ve spent a lot of time outside of North America in recent years. Where do you do well?
We’ve been hitting England regularly for the last few years, and our last few tours have been in 200-300 seat clubs. Australia is getting good. We haven’t been there in over a year, but they’re playing the heck out of us on their version of CMT. It was okay before, but all reports say it will be better next time. In America it’s still a slog, but we’re getting better in Texas. Which is good, because that’s where a lot of people start, a lot of songwriters.
I imagine it’s harder to stand out down there.
It is and it isn’t. They rabidly support live music down there. The audiences seek out original stuff all the time—especially stuff from Texas. There are a lot of guys who make a living just playing in Texas. But on the other side of the coin, there’s this Texan songwriter thing going on. And a lot of it is really good, but it’s just like anything: a lot of it is also really derivative and it’s been done before. After the first couple of tours, people started to pay attention to us, because we’re unique compared to those guys. But we play the same bars, to the same audiences. Because of my background, there’s enough Western stuff in there that they get that part. They’re always surprised that there are cowboys in Canada.
Whenever I’ve seen you—which, the first time, was a tiny café in Waterloo with Geoff Berner…
Right, where Scott Wicken worked, right?
Exactly. The Raintree. And I’ve seen you at much larger venues since, and every time I’m amazed at who comes out, and the diversity of the audience.
It’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? As you probably know, the only people who came out were people like us who seek out indie music and fans of writing. Since Five Dollar Bill to some degree and to a larger degree with the last record, because of CMT and some of the mainstream country play we’ve been getting, it’s a mixture of the aforementioned hipsters plus regular country listeners. Especially out west, we’re really resonating with the cowboys because of the lyrical content. It’s a mixed bag. I’m proud of that. It seems to cross a lot of societal boundaries. I look into the audience and see ironic cowboy hats and non-ironic cowboy hats.
My heroes are the guys who transcend style, whether it’s Neil Young or Willie Nelson or Dylan. Willie Nelson is a country singer, but he’s just Willie, you know? And Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett are others. They start out in whatever scene suits them best, and they grow to a point where it’s not necessarily a country fan that goes to see them. Most people who go see Willie Nelson aren’t country fans, they’re Willie Nelson fans. Hopefully, well-written honest music can transcend those boundaries.
To me, there are several strengths with your music. First of all, it’s a great band playing great melodies. But there’s a lot going on in the lyrics—both narratively and with creative vocabulary—that even if the music didn’t hook you first, you can instantly tell that there’s something different about it.
There are different levels to it. I worked for 15 years to develop that. Spending 10 years in a rock band helps. It was an indie band, so we were thriving in a scene where uniqueness was encouraged. Compared to a lot of other country artists and songwriters, I think I have a better grasp of band arrangements. I know a lot of guys in Texas and up here who are roots songwriters, and they go in to make a record and just hire guys to play on it. As far as I’m concerned, there is no substitute for a good band of unique players and taking them on the road. That brings a whole new dimension to it. I could take my songs and play them with studio guys and it would be okay. The lyrics would be there and the melody would be the same. But it wouldn’t have the same personality. I think my experience in The Smalls made me aware of that.
There are some people at the shows who like the music because it sounds like old country, and there are some people who focus on the lyrics and sometimes you get into the music and two months later you realize that it’s interesting.
Speaking of your band, I read that you played Glastonbury this year but that you played it solo. Is that correct?
No. The band was there. We played two sets. One was on a side stage with the full band. One was on the main stage with no drummer. As it turned out, we could have used the drummer, but communication got mixed up. I thought I was supposed to do it solo, but I got my bass player and guitar player just to show up and they let them play.
How did you land that gig?
I don’t know! And I especially don’t know how we landed the mainstage gig. It’s a really big deal over there. All my British friends were like, ‘Brilliant. Brilliant, Corb.’ It’s kind of a gateway gig: if you play Glastonbury, you can play any other festival you want. Especially the main stage. We were on right before the Waterboys. The headliner that night was The Who. I didn’t get to meet them but I got pictures of their road gear.
What are some other career highlights of the last two years?
We played a big show in Calgary that was really cool. We’re starting a festival next year called the Corb Lund Cabin Fever Music Festival. You know how [Fred] Eaglesmith has his annual picnic thing out east, right? It’s going to be like that. We’re at the point where we can do that. I want to get the country fans to come and expose them to a lot of other roots music they may not have heard of. We played the kick-off show outside in downtown Calgary and had about 3000 people. It was a triumphant show on our home turf with a bunch of friends’ bands opening. It was a mini-festival. Hopefully next year it will be a full-blown festival somewhere else in the country.
Not in Calgary?
No, probably Red Deer area. In a rural setting. Then Ireland was really good. We went there three times last year and it’s one of my favourite places to play.
I hear a Celtic influence here as well, melodically speaking.
A little bit, eh? Here and there. I swore that would never happen. But it kind of fits historically, like a Civil War thing, because they used a lot of Irish melodies.
“I Wanna Be in the Calvary” sounds very Irish to me.
I keep sayin’ it’s the Pogues meet Johnny Horton. Berner played accordion on those tunes, eh?
Right. And then those two records went gold at the same time—how did that happen? Was Five Dollar Bill still selling steadily when Highland Steer came out?
Yeah, it peaked at about—I don’t know, 35,000 or something like that—and it was always poorly distributed. Highland Steer reached a wider audience, and then a lot of people went back and bought the old one. The fact they hit at the same time was a total fluke. We had a hell of a party.
The last time I saw you was at the Hillside Festival last year, and a large part of the set was still the Five Dollar Bill material.
I’ll always play those tunes. About four or six of them, anyway. I’m always interested and a little nervous in seeing how a record does. I’m pretty sure that the people who like songwriting and are into indie music will dig this record. I hope the country fans will like it. It might be too challenging for them, I’m not sure. There are three or four tunes on there that are straightforward enough to hook ‘em in.
I’m not that well-versed in that audience, but are you underestimating them? Are they really so conservative that they’ll run screaming from mariachi horns?
It’s not that, it’s just that they’re used to getting their stuff down the pipe. There’s a very small percentage of the population who seek out music like you or I do. Most people work for a living and have kids—especially in the rural areas—and even if they hear something they like, they don’t have time to dig around for it. So they turn on the radio or CMT and tap their toe to whatever. And because of the corporate nature of the business, most of the stuff that comes down the pipe is pretty bland, right? Same with corporate rock. But I’m finding that when presented with something different or interesting, they will actually like it. So far it’s worked for me for whatever fluke or reason, and my stuff is being played on country radio beside a lot of the shit.
This is still a country record, though. You haven’t gone pop or anything.
It’s the same thing with this festival I’m talking about. There are so many bands that I know in Canada that I would consider to be country or country-based music that’s clearly outside of the general parameter of radio country fans. I think that country fans—especially rural country fans, who still have a strong taste for old country—heard them, they’d actually really dig it. So that’s my mission. I know a lot of people in the country world who are totally stuck playing in a trap. They might like really interesting stuff, but because they came up through the country system, they have no choice. If they put out a weird record, people would be freaked out.
That’s true of corporate rock, too.
Sure. But I hope my ground has been prepared, because on the last two records there’s some weird stuff going on. Not for you or I, but in terms of a straight country audience, there is.
What do you know about [figure skater] Kurt Browning's performance of “Expectation and the Blues” and how did he hear your music?
I met him at a CBC special a couple of years ago for the Albertan centennial. It was an hour-long special on Albertan music and me and Ian Tyson and a bunch of people were featured. Kurt was the host. He’s actually quite a country boy, that guy. He started out in rural Alberta as a hockey player. His dad is a hunting outfitter, taking guys on packing trips. He used that tune for a skating routine, which is a bizarre choice, don’t you think? (laughs) Especially that song! He did that in America, too. In New York, I think.
Your website says he did it for Gretchen Wilson’s Country on Ice NBC Special.
That’s right! Weirdness.
How often do you actually get to hang out with horses these days?
Not as much as I’d like. We shot a video for the "Calvary" song, so I get to ride in that one. The irony of what I’m doing is that I’m singing about this stuff, but the more popular and successful I get, the less I actually do it.
Which is why you have to reach back into history for material.
Maybe. But I rode at my folks’ place last month when I was home. I can’t keep a horse now because I’m gone so much. My dad is a veterinarian, and we keep cattle and about four horses for working the cattle.
And what is your rodeo past? Trick riding? Bulls?
When I was younger, I did junior bull riding, or steer riding, until I was 15. I did a bit of steer wrestling in high school, which is where you jump off the galloping horse onto the steer. That’s right about the time I got into Black Sabbath, so I retired and got into music. But a lot of my cousins and uncles and grandpas, they’re all cowboys.
All the ones at the “Family Reunion?”
Ha! Yes. That’s my tune for all the “Truck Got Stuck” fans [Lund's CMT breakthrough video hit]. That song has been killing the country fans live for a couple of years, so that should be good. And just to clarify, I’m not hung up on the country fans, but they’re the only ones I suspect will be challenged by this record. In the end, it’s good, because 15 years from now when I have six or eight more records out, I want to leave a canon of work that is unique, where I’ve been able to follow my own vibe throughout. So I’m not afraid to stray away from it now. I feel like I’m a country artist, but I don’t feel constrained by that.
Are you writing material now?
I got one about my German motorcycle. I got a couple of more drinking songs, including one I’m working on with Berner called "Powerful Thirst." I’m kind of off it now, because after the record was finished I just shut down because I was so burnt out.
Do you research this material, or is it stuff you’ve been reading anyway and then it manifests itself in song?
The latter. Then I check my facts sometimes. Mostly it’s based on stuff I already know about. For the "Horse Soldier" song I had to dig around to make sure my shit was correct.
What is “The Horse I Rode In On” about?
That’s the classic song about a performer painting on a smile. That’s partially true. I played this big rodeo in Ponoka, the Ponoka Stampede, which is one of the oldest rodeos in Alberta, in front of 12,000 people. I rode through the audience to the stage in my full calvary regalia. And I was having a crappy day, so I turned it into a song. They had to have security clear a path. I had a sword and a gunbelt and the whole nine yards.
Anything else we should talk about?
Yeah, we should talk about [producer] Harry Stinson. This is the third record I’ve done with him, and he’s awesome. I don’t mention him enough. He’s a big reason for the success of the band, with helping us arrange the songs. I get most of it done, and then you work on ten songs for a year and you’re sick of ‘em. Then he’ll tell us to speed them up or change the key or add a fiddle. And he’s a great singer: he does all the backup vocals.
He’s based in Nashville, isn’t he?
Yeah, he’s one of the only music guys based in Nashville who is actually from Nashville. His dad was a bus driver there. He’s a civil war buff too, so we had fun talking about this record. He’s a drummer, too, and he’s into all that re-enactment stuff. He dresses up as the drummer guy for those things. That’s actually what this new video is about.
-end-
I've been a big fan since I reviewed his second solo album (and first CD, following a debut cassette) Unforgiving Mistress in 1999 for Exclaim; I gave its 2002 follow-up Five Dollar Bill a five-star review in Eye Weekly, at a time when Lund had trouble making the Tranzac look full during a NXNE gig; I also picked it for that paper as one of my top three releases of 2002. After that, word of mouth about the power of Lund's songwriting pen and his live performances started to spread, and by the time of 2005's Hair In My Eyes Like a Highland Steer, Lund earned gold records for both that album and Five Dollar Bill--oddly enough, awarded on the same day.
Yet Steer sounded like Lund was laying low and backing off after the tour-de-force of Five Dollar Bill, where every track was a stone cold classic. One song on Steer was a goof-off called "All I Want to Do is Play Cards"--and it sounded like it.
The new album, Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!, isn't a complete concept album, although many songs deal with the role of cavalry in the history of warfare. There's also material about Mormon relatives ("Brother Brigham Brother Young") and Albertan family reunions, but no matter what Lund's literate lyrics are about, he writes with an effortless intelligence and sense of character that's rare in any genre. It's also why his audience is so diverse, which he considers his greatest career achievement.
And another thing--and I'm not just saying this because he paid me to--is that Lund is one of the most down-to-earth and engaging people you're ever likely to meet, which makes him a dream interview under any circumstance.
The bio I wrote is here. Corb Lund himself can be found here in the near future. Toronto locals note that if you missed him tonight, he's playing Guelph and Brampton next week.
Corb Lund
September 17, 2007
Locale: phone from his Albertan home
There’s a long tradition of historical narrative in country songs, from Johnny Horton and Johnny Cash to Geoff Berner. Are there other examples you draw from?
Marty Robbins, some Willie Nelson songs. Story songs are largely missing from the mainstream, and even a lot of alt/roots/underground country. I'm a storyteller, and I've never had much luck with the pure free form/word painting/poetry kind of lyric writing. But the first songs I ever sung I learned from my grandfathers, who were ranchers, and they would sing these ancient cowboy tragic story ballads that had been passed down through oral tradition in the west, before recorded music: “Strawberry Roan,” “When the Work's All Done This Fall,” “Little Joe the Wrangler.” Those are my bedrock, touchstone songs.
One of things I really enjoy about your writing is how distinctly Albertan it is, and yet it’s translated so well not just in Canada but internationally as well. Does that surprise you at all?
I believe that if you write honestly and authentically about your own culture, no matter what it is, people will pick up on the realness and the universality of it. My family's been in Alberta chasing cows for over a century, and in the American west long before that, so that's where I feel at home. I think regionalism is largely missing in commercial music. Everybody's going for generalities, when sometimes the interest is found in the quirky details.
I always use the example of being a young guy growing up on the prairies and hearing Bruce Springsteen; hearing songs about New Jersey slums was the most alien thing ever, very much outside of my life experience. But I got it because he wrote it so well, and with so much humanity. Same goes for The Eagles in Southern California, the Stones writing about living like rock stars, Stan Rogers singing Maritime stuff, whatever. That's the writer's job. If the specifics ring true, interest is held, and universality is achieved. I think: that's the goal anyway!
I guess my point is that I had the same insecurities about whether people outside of my culture and geographical area—the Western Canadian prairies and foothills—would be interested. But so far they have been, as far away as Europe, the UK, Australia. Hell, even Toronto (laughs).
For an album about the cavalry, I’m wondering if there was a decision to avoid more recent references to war, with the exception of the brief mention of the Afghan soldiers in the title track. Was that inevitable because of the decline of cavalry, or is it easier to tell war parables with historic distance?
It wasn’t really a decision, at least consciously. I tend to dig around for exotic detail, and everybody already knows about the stuff on the news. Plus, I've never been much of an overtly political writer. I know some people are, and I respect that form of art. And I do have very strong beliefs about those kinds of issues, but I also think that there's a place for music that makes people feel deeper things than current events. It interests me more to go for more timeless themes, and reach people that way. Despite all the crazy shit that goes on in the world, people still need to be able to just feel good for awhile, and get in touch with the spirit they forgot about because they've been watching the election coverage so closely, etc., etc.
What’s the story behind the song “Student Visas”?
It’s about a guy I met on tour once in the States. He had a crippled back, and we drank beer and he told me his story about his time illegally, covertly in Nicaragua with the US military. Every couple minutes he'd stop and say, 'I'm not supposed to be talking about this,' but then he'd continue. He had some things weighing pretty heavily on him. He would vacillate between soldier/tough guy/bad-ass talk and super heavy crippling remorse. I think he saw and did some pretty heavy stuff. It’s strange for a Canadian to run into that because we read about it and see the movies and read the books, but in America, you actually run into guys from Wyoming, or wherever, that actually did that stuff. Heavy duty.
I know you’re a voracious reader. Was there anything on your recent reading list that inspired these songs?
Oh yeah. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: No One Writes to the Colonel and Autumn of the Patriarch. A bunch of cavalry histories, tactics, battle stuff. A whole slew of French foreign legion books, starting with Beau Geste. And I always read Hunter Thompson's political stuff every three years or so, to keep sharp.
You’ve spent a lot of time outside of North America in recent years. Where do you do well?
We’ve been hitting England regularly for the last few years, and our last few tours have been in 200-300 seat clubs. Australia is getting good. We haven’t been there in over a year, but they’re playing the heck out of us on their version of CMT. It was okay before, but all reports say it will be better next time. In America it’s still a slog, but we’re getting better in Texas. Which is good, because that’s where a lot of people start, a lot of songwriters.
I imagine it’s harder to stand out down there.
It is and it isn’t. They rabidly support live music down there. The audiences seek out original stuff all the time—especially stuff from Texas. There are a lot of guys who make a living just playing in Texas. But on the other side of the coin, there’s this Texan songwriter thing going on. And a lot of it is really good, but it’s just like anything: a lot of it is also really derivative and it’s been done before. After the first couple of tours, people started to pay attention to us, because we’re unique compared to those guys. But we play the same bars, to the same audiences. Because of my background, there’s enough Western stuff in there that they get that part. They’re always surprised that there are cowboys in Canada.
Whenever I’ve seen you—which, the first time, was a tiny café in Waterloo with Geoff Berner…
Right, where Scott Wicken worked, right?
Exactly. The Raintree. And I’ve seen you at much larger venues since, and every time I’m amazed at who comes out, and the diversity of the audience.
It’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? As you probably know, the only people who came out were people like us who seek out indie music and fans of writing. Since Five Dollar Bill to some degree and to a larger degree with the last record, because of CMT and some of the mainstream country play we’ve been getting, it’s a mixture of the aforementioned hipsters plus regular country listeners. Especially out west, we’re really resonating with the cowboys because of the lyrical content. It’s a mixed bag. I’m proud of that. It seems to cross a lot of societal boundaries. I look into the audience and see ironic cowboy hats and non-ironic cowboy hats.
My heroes are the guys who transcend style, whether it’s Neil Young or Willie Nelson or Dylan. Willie Nelson is a country singer, but he’s just Willie, you know? And Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett are others. They start out in whatever scene suits them best, and they grow to a point where it’s not necessarily a country fan that goes to see them. Most people who go see Willie Nelson aren’t country fans, they’re Willie Nelson fans. Hopefully, well-written honest music can transcend those boundaries.
To me, there are several strengths with your music. First of all, it’s a great band playing great melodies. But there’s a lot going on in the lyrics—both narratively and with creative vocabulary—that even if the music didn’t hook you first, you can instantly tell that there’s something different about it.
There are different levels to it. I worked for 15 years to develop that. Spending 10 years in a rock band helps. It was an indie band, so we were thriving in a scene where uniqueness was encouraged. Compared to a lot of other country artists and songwriters, I think I have a better grasp of band arrangements. I know a lot of guys in Texas and up here who are roots songwriters, and they go in to make a record and just hire guys to play on it. As far as I’m concerned, there is no substitute for a good band of unique players and taking them on the road. That brings a whole new dimension to it. I could take my songs and play them with studio guys and it would be okay. The lyrics would be there and the melody would be the same. But it wouldn’t have the same personality. I think my experience in The Smalls made me aware of that.
There are some people at the shows who like the music because it sounds like old country, and there are some people who focus on the lyrics and sometimes you get into the music and two months later you realize that it’s interesting.
Speaking of your band, I read that you played Glastonbury this year but that you played it solo. Is that correct?
No. The band was there. We played two sets. One was on a side stage with the full band. One was on the main stage with no drummer. As it turned out, we could have used the drummer, but communication got mixed up. I thought I was supposed to do it solo, but I got my bass player and guitar player just to show up and they let them play.
How did you land that gig?
I don’t know! And I especially don’t know how we landed the mainstage gig. It’s a really big deal over there. All my British friends were like, ‘Brilliant. Brilliant, Corb.’ It’s kind of a gateway gig: if you play Glastonbury, you can play any other festival you want. Especially the main stage. We were on right before the Waterboys. The headliner that night was The Who. I didn’t get to meet them but I got pictures of their road gear.
What are some other career highlights of the last two years?
We played a big show in Calgary that was really cool. We’re starting a festival next year called the Corb Lund Cabin Fever Music Festival. You know how [Fred] Eaglesmith has his annual picnic thing out east, right? It’s going to be like that. We’re at the point where we can do that. I want to get the country fans to come and expose them to a lot of other roots music they may not have heard of. We played the kick-off show outside in downtown Calgary and had about 3000 people. It was a triumphant show on our home turf with a bunch of friends’ bands opening. It was a mini-festival. Hopefully next year it will be a full-blown festival somewhere else in the country.
Not in Calgary?
No, probably Red Deer area. In a rural setting. Then Ireland was really good. We went there three times last year and it’s one of my favourite places to play.
I hear a Celtic influence here as well, melodically speaking.
A little bit, eh? Here and there. I swore that would never happen. But it kind of fits historically, like a Civil War thing, because they used a lot of Irish melodies.
“I Wanna Be in the Calvary” sounds very Irish to me.
I keep sayin’ it’s the Pogues meet Johnny Horton. Berner played accordion on those tunes, eh?
Right. And then those two records went gold at the same time—how did that happen? Was Five Dollar Bill still selling steadily when Highland Steer came out?
Yeah, it peaked at about—I don’t know, 35,000 or something like that—and it was always poorly distributed. Highland Steer reached a wider audience, and then a lot of people went back and bought the old one. The fact they hit at the same time was a total fluke. We had a hell of a party.
The last time I saw you was at the Hillside Festival last year, and a large part of the set was still the Five Dollar Bill material.
I’ll always play those tunes. About four or six of them, anyway. I’m always interested and a little nervous in seeing how a record does. I’m pretty sure that the people who like songwriting and are into indie music will dig this record. I hope the country fans will like it. It might be too challenging for them, I’m not sure. There are three or four tunes on there that are straightforward enough to hook ‘em in.
I’m not that well-versed in that audience, but are you underestimating them? Are they really so conservative that they’ll run screaming from mariachi horns?
It’s not that, it’s just that they’re used to getting their stuff down the pipe. There’s a very small percentage of the population who seek out music like you or I do. Most people work for a living and have kids—especially in the rural areas—and even if they hear something they like, they don’t have time to dig around for it. So they turn on the radio or CMT and tap their toe to whatever. And because of the corporate nature of the business, most of the stuff that comes down the pipe is pretty bland, right? Same with corporate rock. But I’m finding that when presented with something different or interesting, they will actually like it. So far it’s worked for me for whatever fluke or reason, and my stuff is being played on country radio beside a lot of the shit.
This is still a country record, though. You haven’t gone pop or anything.
It’s the same thing with this festival I’m talking about. There are so many bands that I know in Canada that I would consider to be country or country-based music that’s clearly outside of the general parameter of radio country fans. I think that country fans—especially rural country fans, who still have a strong taste for old country—heard them, they’d actually really dig it. So that’s my mission. I know a lot of people in the country world who are totally stuck playing in a trap. They might like really interesting stuff, but because they came up through the country system, they have no choice. If they put out a weird record, people would be freaked out.
That’s true of corporate rock, too.
Sure. But I hope my ground has been prepared, because on the last two records there’s some weird stuff going on. Not for you or I, but in terms of a straight country audience, there is.
What do you know about [figure skater] Kurt Browning's performance of “Expectation and the Blues” and how did he hear your music?
I met him at a CBC special a couple of years ago for the Albertan centennial. It was an hour-long special on Albertan music and me and Ian Tyson and a bunch of people were featured. Kurt was the host. He’s actually quite a country boy, that guy. He started out in rural Alberta as a hockey player. His dad is a hunting outfitter, taking guys on packing trips. He used that tune for a skating routine, which is a bizarre choice, don’t you think? (laughs) Especially that song! He did that in America, too. In New York, I think.
Your website says he did it for Gretchen Wilson’s Country on Ice NBC Special.
That’s right! Weirdness.
How often do you actually get to hang out with horses these days?
Not as much as I’d like. We shot a video for the "Calvary" song, so I get to ride in that one. The irony of what I’m doing is that I’m singing about this stuff, but the more popular and successful I get, the less I actually do it.
Which is why you have to reach back into history for material.
Maybe. But I rode at my folks’ place last month when I was home. I can’t keep a horse now because I’m gone so much. My dad is a veterinarian, and we keep cattle and about four horses for working the cattle.
And what is your rodeo past? Trick riding? Bulls?
When I was younger, I did junior bull riding, or steer riding, until I was 15. I did a bit of steer wrestling in high school, which is where you jump off the galloping horse onto the steer. That’s right about the time I got into Black Sabbath, so I retired and got into music. But a lot of my cousins and uncles and grandpas, they’re all cowboys.
All the ones at the “Family Reunion?”
Ha! Yes. That’s my tune for all the “Truck Got Stuck” fans [Lund's CMT breakthrough video hit]. That song has been killing the country fans live for a couple of years, so that should be good. And just to clarify, I’m not hung up on the country fans, but they’re the only ones I suspect will be challenged by this record. In the end, it’s good, because 15 years from now when I have six or eight more records out, I want to leave a canon of work that is unique, where I’ve been able to follow my own vibe throughout. So I’m not afraid to stray away from it now. I feel like I’m a country artist, but I don’t feel constrained by that.
Are you writing material now?
I got one about my German motorcycle. I got a couple of more drinking songs, including one I’m working on with Berner called "Powerful Thirst." I’m kind of off it now, because after the record was finished I just shut down because I was so burnt out.
Do you research this material, or is it stuff you’ve been reading anyway and then it manifests itself in song?
The latter. Then I check my facts sometimes. Mostly it’s based on stuff I already know about. For the "Horse Soldier" song I had to dig around to make sure my shit was correct.
What is “The Horse I Rode In On” about?
That’s the classic song about a performer painting on a smile. That’s partially true. I played this big rodeo in Ponoka, the Ponoka Stampede, which is one of the oldest rodeos in Alberta, in front of 12,000 people. I rode through the audience to the stage in my full calvary regalia. And I was having a crappy day, so I turned it into a song. They had to have security clear a path. I had a sword and a gunbelt and the whole nine yards.
Anything else we should talk about?
Yeah, we should talk about [producer] Harry Stinson. This is the third record I’ve done with him, and he’s awesome. I don’t mention him enough. He’s a big reason for the success of the band, with helping us arrange the songs. I get most of it done, and then you work on ten songs for a year and you’re sick of ‘em. Then he’ll tell us to speed them up or change the key or add a fiddle. And he’s a great singer: he does all the backup vocals.
He’s based in Nashville, isn’t he?
Yeah, he’s one of the only music guys based in Nashville who is actually from Nashville. His dad was a bus driver there. He’s a civil war buff too, so we had fun talking about this record. He’s a drummer, too, and he’s into all that re-enactment stuff. He dresses up as the drummer guy for those things. That’s actually what this new video is about.
-end-
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Black Mountain: Colin Stewart
You can tell I'm a bit frazzled from full-time 9-5 and family life on top of that, which results in me writing sentences like this one yesterday: "[Black Mountain ripped off their influences] with such exhilaration and authenticity that its lack of originality hardly mattered."
Nothing like some good ol' unoriginal authenticity, eh?
And yet I will stand by that paradox, as daft as it seems, when describing Black Mountain--who get the vintage sounds down to a science (the authentic part) to the point where it actually sounds like you've already heard these songs thousands of times before... in the 70s (the unoriginal part).
Colin Stewart is not just the reason why Black Mountain's records sound so incredible; he's also one of Vancouver's top sonic architects, responsible for much of the best music to emerge from that city in recent years, including Destroyer, Frog Eyes, The Beans, Veda Hille and much more. (His site is here; the site for his studio The Hive, with plenty of rare MP3s--including many by Black Mountain precursors--is here).
For my recent Magnet piece on Black Mountain (in the current issue on stands now), I interviewed singer/guitarist Steve McBean and drummer Josh Wells; Wells was actually more talkative than the somewhat hesitant McBean, though Stewart proved to be more enlightening than either of them--as outsiders often are.
Black Mountain – Colin Stewart
October 30, 2007
Locale: phone from The Hive studio, where he was finishing Veda Hille’s new album
Having worked with Josh and Steve for so long, what do you think of In the Future? And how does it fit into their evolution?
Whenever I record an album with them, I never know if I like it until three or four months later. Then I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s actually genius!’
I have to say that I like about half this record right now.
Oh good. You just have to digest it for a while. They’re always out to challenge you.
I was a huge fan of the first Black Mountain album. And Pyrokinesis [the final Jerk With a Bomb album]. When did you first start working with them?
I think it was in 1997. I was recording Daddy’s Hands, and Christof, who played saxophone in that band, told me about this other band where he played bass. That was Ex Dead Teenager, and that was the first time I met Josh and Steve. Have you heard that?
Just what you’ve put up on your site.
That’s all they have, I believe. They were super awesome. Apparently immediately after they played in Victoria, Hot Hot Heat sprang up. Back when they were more of a screamo band. Ex Dead Teenager were the first of the heavy synth bands around here.
Of which there have been many since.
Yes. Then Josh and Steve said they were in this other two-piece band called Jerk With a Bomb, and I recorded their first album, Death to False Metal. I did a few bands with Josh’s other band, Radio Berlin. They’re interesting guys. I get along really well with them, but I never communicate with them very much between records. We have a working relationship. Especially with Steve, who is very aloof (laughs).
Does he know what he wants?
He demos the record in its entirety before coming in and re-recording the songs. He has very precise ideas. So does Josh. Between those two, they have the record in their heads. This last Black Mountain was more democratic than the last one. Everyone contributed ideas. I’m not sure if that was for the best or not.
I’m curious about that, too. There’s a vision to the other stuff that I don’t hear with this record.
The thing is that everyone else has added so much to the band. The last Jerk With a Bomb album was just a Josh and Steve record, but they asked Amber [Webb] to sing two songs. Immediately after, they started writing these Black Mountain songs and she joined in. A few months before recording that album, [original bassist] Christof quit the band and they taught Matt [Camirand] the songs as they were recording them. Then after we had all these tracks, they asked Jeremy [Schmidt] to play some synths. It was still very much a Josh and Steve record, and concise in its vision. Everyone else were just musicians. On this one, I sat in the control room and saw these bigger discussions—certainly not arguments, it was very democratic—but there were bigger, longer discussions about what would happen next in the song.
I imagine the bond between the two of them is so strong, going back that far. What was their relationship like back then, and how have you seen it change?
I don’t really know if it’s changed. I can’t really speculate too much. Of course things were easier going back then, because no one had any expectations of them. And [the final JWAB album] Pyrokinesis only sold 500 copies, so we all thought, well, no one gives a fuck what we do now. This record was the first time there was a lot of expectation from them. I thought that would cause some strain, but it wasn’t too obvious. Josh likes to jump in there and take control. He’ll leap onto the console and be in charge. And he does a great job of it, so no one stands in his way. Every so often Steve will assert his authority and step up, but it’s more sporadic.
How do you think the writing has changed, both musically and lyrically? One of the things I really liked about the first JWAB record is that it doesn’t sound like anything else he’s done before or since: very simple instrumentation, very direct songs, very playful. Then things started getting darker…
Yeah, heavier and more retro. In earlier Steve songs I would say it was more his own thing. Now he’s really inspired by taking all these classic songs and rewriting them. In some cases it’s really obvious to me, like on ‘No Satisfaction’ from the last record. He’s clearly taking a line from a Rolling Stones song and reworking it over a Velvet Underground thing. Or the riff from ‘Don’t Run Our Hearts Around’ is obviously lifted from something you’ve heard before. He’s really open about that.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Os Mutantes recently, and they did that. They’d say, ‘We’ll take this Beatles song and play it as our chorus and then throw this Stones riff in the bridge.’ But it works. It’s rewriting these great themes. That seems to be his vision. [off the record talk about the last Pink Mountaintops record]
Steve constantly reinvents. His major thing right now I his solo work seems to be this drone rock, very Spacemen 3 kind of repetitive grinding. It’s funny, because when we were mixing the last Pink Mountaintops, he said to me, ‘Everyone tells me this sounds like Spacemen 3.’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, it does.’ He says, ‘I’ve never heard them.’ I told him, ‘Well, you should listen to them—if you like your own music, you’ll probably like Spacemen 3!’
I know people who don’t like Black Mountain, for obvious reasons: it’s taking from this and that. And usually those people don’t like the source material in the first place. But even those that do, they think it’s just such an obvious rip-off. I think the first album is brilliant, but I often have trouble justifying it or articulating why. McBean is clearly taking all of that and regurgitating it, but it’s very much his voice and his vision.
He makes those songs modern again. There are a lot of people who don’t like Black Mountain. But Josh and Steve are always one step ahead of everyone else. When that record came out, I didn’t know of any other band doing that kind of thing. Then a couple of them came out of the woodwork, like Dead Meadow. But they weren’t doing it as well.
I fell asleep once, standing up, while watching that band.
I don’t like them too much, but I don’t dislike it. I’d rather people make music like that than most other music. But I really think Black Mountain are the best of this retro rock revival thing. They do take these old riffs, but you have these young kids who don’t know what they’re taking from. I record young guys all the time who tell me, ‘I’ve never heard Led Zeppelin. I don’t listen to the Beatles.’ My jaw drops when they tell me that. ‘How can you play music and not listen to the Beatles?’ I have no problem with someone telling me they don’t like the Beatles. I can respect that, because at least they heard them and made a decision that they didn’t like it. But you do have to hear them—you need a musical education! But I’m ranting now. Black Mountain are the best at the heavy rock revival meets Velvet Underground meets Can. They’re a very dynamic band. They’re not like Sunn )))O who are just incredibly heavy all the time.
Black Mountain records have such a vintage sound. Is that you or is it them? Where does it come from?
With the first record, that’s the one that’s got me the most work out of any record I’ve done. I got Ian Astbury of The Cult, who called me up and said, ‘I love your record.’ I’m like, what the fuck is going on here?! He thought the sound was so real and authentic.
Steve and Josh and I are all about the same age. Steve is older. I think Josh is about 32. We all have the same foundation, though in high school Steve listened to more hardcore and thrash metal than I did. But we all love Zeppelin and the Stones, and the older you get the more you realize that the stuff you love the most is the stuff you loved when you were 18. For those guys and for me, it is an attempt to dismiss the idea that modern recording sounds better. We kind of proved it, because people really like the sound of that record. We did the drums and bass on a half-inch reel-to-reel, totally semi-professional, the kind of gear that you would record your demos on at home in the late 70s. Then we would dump that into computers and overdub on top of that.
I have a tendency to make things sound really dull and round on the high end. I don’t like shiny, sparkly, new-sounding stuff. I don’t mind listening to it; I don’t want my recording to sound like that. Those guys are on the same page. They want to sound like their heroes from 30 years ago. For me, a band like Wolfmother fails because they try to make it new, and then it’s not the real thing anymore.
Weird. Then do you only make records that are frozen in time, or do you try to push the form? Wolfmother may or may not be a bad band, but you could argue that they’re trying to bring that stuff into the 21st century. I don’t know; I haven’t actually heard them.
I could totally buy that argument. My ideas change all the time.
Or someone like the Flaming Lips, which is very informed by the 70s but very clearly 21st century music.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan, but I can’t deny that their sound is absolutely brilliant. They’ve clearly defined this space between vintage and modern sounds. I thought it was amazing that they loved the first Black Mountain record. When I listened to the last Flaming Lips album, I thought, oh my god, that’s a Black Mountain riff.
But is it really just a Black Mountain riff?
That’s the thing. Steve even pointed it out to me: ‘You know that Flaming Lips song? That’s my riff, but I don’t mind because I actually stole it from this other song.’
And they [the Lips] have been caught before, by Cat Stevens.
True.
I’m curious about Jeremy’s role in the band, and what he brings to the new record.
He really shines on the new record. He really is a genius. He’s the best synth player in Vancouver. [Jeremy's band] Sinoia Caves is such perfect prog synth stuff.
I know he was in several other bands before this one.
Jeremy used to be a part of an ambient prog scene, which was pretty small in Vancouver about ten years ago. He was in a band called Pipedream, which was one of the bigger local bands who did that kind of thing. They would play these 15-minute meandering songs, and he would sing through vocoders.
This was very synth-driven, or were there guitars as well?
Incredibly synth-driven. He was on the fringe of the Vancouver scene. Those in the know knew about him, but not a lot of people were really into these long, meandering prog rock bands.
To say the least!
(chuckles) Exactly. I’ve also known him for about ten years now. I always thought he was amazing. I didn’t record Sinoia Caves, but my studio partner did.
What else should I know?
I’ve recorded hundreds of people, and I’ve only recorded one or two other bands who have the same concise vision that Josh and Steve do. I would say that most of my career, I’ve been trying to play catch-up to those two. I find them so inspiring, their ideas so amazing, that I wish I could think like they did. When they asked me to work on their last record, I thought they could go work with anybody now, so I was very thankful. They know what’s up.
Knowing all of this, it must have been frustrating for Jerk With a Bomb to never have found an audience. Especially for guys who were then on the other side of 30, at an age when most people give up.
Totally. They would do month-long tours for every Jerk With a Bomb record, and no one would go to their shows. Just before Black Mountain got signed to Jagjaguwar, it was the first time I’d ever seen Josh look despondent. He looked miserable. He was saying, ‘My band’s not going anywhere. Fuck this.’ Luckily everything changed within a couple of months. Steve was always very modest, and he is more modest now than he ever was. Which is nice. I haven’t had many experiences watching people move from one level to the next, but I knew the Hot Hot Heat guys before they got signed, and they were decent dudes... [off the record] I want people to be successful, regardless of what I think of their music. It’s weird how a person becomes an asshole when they think they’re so awesome all of the sudden. Steve has proved that you don’t have to be that way. Quite the contrary. He’s taken his success and he’s more modest and more grateful than anyone else I know.
I’m sure that has everything to do with age, too. If you’re as young as Hot Hot Heat were when they got signed and everyone’s licking your ass…
Yes, age has a lot to do with that.
Finally, I’m just curious what other work you got directly as a result of Black Mountain. Did Pretty Girls Make Graves come there because of that?
Yes, and that then led to the Cave Singers. Then there’s this band from Toronto called the Ten Kens who got signed to Fat Cat. Then Fat Cat called me because they loved the Black Mountain record. So they sent me to Montreal to record at the Besnard Lakes’ studio, and that’s the best record I’ve done all year. They’d never played live. They sent a demo to Fat Cat and got signed based purely on the demo. They are like if Nirvana were playing the Unicorns, if that makes any sense. They’re older guys, very grunge influenced but they do a modern micro-prog thing where every song is a couple of songs pasted together. They are so rad, man. I wish I could see them live.
So you’ve never even seen them live!
No! Well, I recorded them, so I guess I’ve seen them play. I think since then they’ve played a couple of shows. They had a song that we didn’t record that WAS a Nirvana song. It wasn’t Bush or any of those other post-grunge bands trying to be Nirvana. They actually WERE Nirvana for that song. That’s the best gig I got out of the Black Mountain record, was this completely unknown band.
When does that come out?
I think in the spring. Fat Cat works very slowly. It hasn’t been mastered yet.
-end-
Note: the Ten Kens are profiled in this week's Eye Weekly, and open up for Deerhoof tomorrow (Wednesday March 5) at the Phoenix.
Nothing like some good ol' unoriginal authenticity, eh?
And yet I will stand by that paradox, as daft as it seems, when describing Black Mountain--who get the vintage sounds down to a science (the authentic part) to the point where it actually sounds like you've already heard these songs thousands of times before... in the 70s (the unoriginal part).
Colin Stewart is not just the reason why Black Mountain's records sound so incredible; he's also one of Vancouver's top sonic architects, responsible for much of the best music to emerge from that city in recent years, including Destroyer, Frog Eyes, The Beans, Veda Hille and much more. (His site is here; the site for his studio The Hive, with plenty of rare MP3s--including many by Black Mountain precursors--is here).
For my recent Magnet piece on Black Mountain (in the current issue on stands now), I interviewed singer/guitarist Steve McBean and drummer Josh Wells; Wells was actually more talkative than the somewhat hesitant McBean, though Stewart proved to be more enlightening than either of them--as outsiders often are.
Black Mountain – Colin Stewart
October 30, 2007
Locale: phone from The Hive studio, where he was finishing Veda Hille’s new album
Having worked with Josh and Steve for so long, what do you think of In the Future? And how does it fit into their evolution?
Whenever I record an album with them, I never know if I like it until three or four months later. Then I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s actually genius!’
I have to say that I like about half this record right now.
Oh good. You just have to digest it for a while. They’re always out to challenge you.
I was a huge fan of the first Black Mountain album. And Pyrokinesis [the final Jerk With a Bomb album]. When did you first start working with them?
I think it was in 1997. I was recording Daddy’s Hands, and Christof, who played saxophone in that band, told me about this other band where he played bass. That was Ex Dead Teenager, and that was the first time I met Josh and Steve. Have you heard that?
Just what you’ve put up on your site.
That’s all they have, I believe. They were super awesome. Apparently immediately after they played in Victoria, Hot Hot Heat sprang up. Back when they were more of a screamo band. Ex Dead Teenager were the first of the heavy synth bands around here.
Of which there have been many since.
Yes. Then Josh and Steve said they were in this other two-piece band called Jerk With a Bomb, and I recorded their first album, Death to False Metal. I did a few bands with Josh’s other band, Radio Berlin. They’re interesting guys. I get along really well with them, but I never communicate with them very much between records. We have a working relationship. Especially with Steve, who is very aloof (laughs).
Does he know what he wants?
He demos the record in its entirety before coming in and re-recording the songs. He has very precise ideas. So does Josh. Between those two, they have the record in their heads. This last Black Mountain was more democratic than the last one. Everyone contributed ideas. I’m not sure if that was for the best or not.
I’m curious about that, too. There’s a vision to the other stuff that I don’t hear with this record.
The thing is that everyone else has added so much to the band. The last Jerk With a Bomb album was just a Josh and Steve record, but they asked Amber [Webb] to sing two songs. Immediately after, they started writing these Black Mountain songs and she joined in. A few months before recording that album, [original bassist] Christof quit the band and they taught Matt [Camirand] the songs as they were recording them. Then after we had all these tracks, they asked Jeremy [Schmidt] to play some synths. It was still very much a Josh and Steve record, and concise in its vision. Everyone else were just musicians. On this one, I sat in the control room and saw these bigger discussions—certainly not arguments, it was very democratic—but there were bigger, longer discussions about what would happen next in the song.
I imagine the bond between the two of them is so strong, going back that far. What was their relationship like back then, and how have you seen it change?
I don’t really know if it’s changed. I can’t really speculate too much. Of course things were easier going back then, because no one had any expectations of them. And [the final JWAB album] Pyrokinesis only sold 500 copies, so we all thought, well, no one gives a fuck what we do now. This record was the first time there was a lot of expectation from them. I thought that would cause some strain, but it wasn’t too obvious. Josh likes to jump in there and take control. He’ll leap onto the console and be in charge. And he does a great job of it, so no one stands in his way. Every so often Steve will assert his authority and step up, but it’s more sporadic.
How do you think the writing has changed, both musically and lyrically? One of the things I really liked about the first JWAB record is that it doesn’t sound like anything else he’s done before or since: very simple instrumentation, very direct songs, very playful. Then things started getting darker…
Yeah, heavier and more retro. In earlier Steve songs I would say it was more his own thing. Now he’s really inspired by taking all these classic songs and rewriting them. In some cases it’s really obvious to me, like on ‘No Satisfaction’ from the last record. He’s clearly taking a line from a Rolling Stones song and reworking it over a Velvet Underground thing. Or the riff from ‘Don’t Run Our Hearts Around’ is obviously lifted from something you’ve heard before. He’s really open about that.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Os Mutantes recently, and they did that. They’d say, ‘We’ll take this Beatles song and play it as our chorus and then throw this Stones riff in the bridge.’ But it works. It’s rewriting these great themes. That seems to be his vision. [off the record talk about the last Pink Mountaintops record]
Steve constantly reinvents. His major thing right now I his solo work seems to be this drone rock, very Spacemen 3 kind of repetitive grinding. It’s funny, because when we were mixing the last Pink Mountaintops, he said to me, ‘Everyone tells me this sounds like Spacemen 3.’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, it does.’ He says, ‘I’ve never heard them.’ I told him, ‘Well, you should listen to them—if you like your own music, you’ll probably like Spacemen 3!’
I know people who don’t like Black Mountain, for obvious reasons: it’s taking from this and that. And usually those people don’t like the source material in the first place. But even those that do, they think it’s just such an obvious rip-off. I think the first album is brilliant, but I often have trouble justifying it or articulating why. McBean is clearly taking all of that and regurgitating it, but it’s very much his voice and his vision.
He makes those songs modern again. There are a lot of people who don’t like Black Mountain. But Josh and Steve are always one step ahead of everyone else. When that record came out, I didn’t know of any other band doing that kind of thing. Then a couple of them came out of the woodwork, like Dead Meadow. But they weren’t doing it as well.
I fell asleep once, standing up, while watching that band.
I don’t like them too much, but I don’t dislike it. I’d rather people make music like that than most other music. But I really think Black Mountain are the best of this retro rock revival thing. They do take these old riffs, but you have these young kids who don’t know what they’re taking from. I record young guys all the time who tell me, ‘I’ve never heard Led Zeppelin. I don’t listen to the Beatles.’ My jaw drops when they tell me that. ‘How can you play music and not listen to the Beatles?’ I have no problem with someone telling me they don’t like the Beatles. I can respect that, because at least they heard them and made a decision that they didn’t like it. But you do have to hear them—you need a musical education! But I’m ranting now. Black Mountain are the best at the heavy rock revival meets Velvet Underground meets Can. They’re a very dynamic band. They’re not like Sunn )))O who are just incredibly heavy all the time.
Black Mountain records have such a vintage sound. Is that you or is it them? Where does it come from?
With the first record, that’s the one that’s got me the most work out of any record I’ve done. I got Ian Astbury of The Cult, who called me up and said, ‘I love your record.’ I’m like, what the fuck is going on here?! He thought the sound was so real and authentic.
Steve and Josh and I are all about the same age. Steve is older. I think Josh is about 32. We all have the same foundation, though in high school Steve listened to more hardcore and thrash metal than I did. But we all love Zeppelin and the Stones, and the older you get the more you realize that the stuff you love the most is the stuff you loved when you were 18. For those guys and for me, it is an attempt to dismiss the idea that modern recording sounds better. We kind of proved it, because people really like the sound of that record. We did the drums and bass on a half-inch reel-to-reel, totally semi-professional, the kind of gear that you would record your demos on at home in the late 70s. Then we would dump that into computers and overdub on top of that.
I have a tendency to make things sound really dull and round on the high end. I don’t like shiny, sparkly, new-sounding stuff. I don’t mind listening to it; I don’t want my recording to sound like that. Those guys are on the same page. They want to sound like their heroes from 30 years ago. For me, a band like Wolfmother fails because they try to make it new, and then it’s not the real thing anymore.
Weird. Then do you only make records that are frozen in time, or do you try to push the form? Wolfmother may or may not be a bad band, but you could argue that they’re trying to bring that stuff into the 21st century. I don’t know; I haven’t actually heard them.
I could totally buy that argument. My ideas change all the time.
Or someone like the Flaming Lips, which is very informed by the 70s but very clearly 21st century music.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan, but I can’t deny that their sound is absolutely brilliant. They’ve clearly defined this space between vintage and modern sounds. I thought it was amazing that they loved the first Black Mountain record. When I listened to the last Flaming Lips album, I thought, oh my god, that’s a Black Mountain riff.
But is it really just a Black Mountain riff?
That’s the thing. Steve even pointed it out to me: ‘You know that Flaming Lips song? That’s my riff, but I don’t mind because I actually stole it from this other song.’
And they [the Lips] have been caught before, by Cat Stevens.
True.
I’m curious about Jeremy’s role in the band, and what he brings to the new record.
He really shines on the new record. He really is a genius. He’s the best synth player in Vancouver. [Jeremy's band] Sinoia Caves is such perfect prog synth stuff.
I know he was in several other bands before this one.
Jeremy used to be a part of an ambient prog scene, which was pretty small in Vancouver about ten years ago. He was in a band called Pipedream, which was one of the bigger local bands who did that kind of thing. They would play these 15-minute meandering songs, and he would sing through vocoders.
This was very synth-driven, or were there guitars as well?
Incredibly synth-driven. He was on the fringe of the Vancouver scene. Those in the know knew about him, but not a lot of people were really into these long, meandering prog rock bands.
To say the least!
(chuckles) Exactly. I’ve also known him for about ten years now. I always thought he was amazing. I didn’t record Sinoia Caves, but my studio partner did.
What else should I know?
I’ve recorded hundreds of people, and I’ve only recorded one or two other bands who have the same concise vision that Josh and Steve do. I would say that most of my career, I’ve been trying to play catch-up to those two. I find them so inspiring, their ideas so amazing, that I wish I could think like they did. When they asked me to work on their last record, I thought they could go work with anybody now, so I was very thankful. They know what’s up.
Knowing all of this, it must have been frustrating for Jerk With a Bomb to never have found an audience. Especially for guys who were then on the other side of 30, at an age when most people give up.
Totally. They would do month-long tours for every Jerk With a Bomb record, and no one would go to their shows. Just before Black Mountain got signed to Jagjaguwar, it was the first time I’d ever seen Josh look despondent. He looked miserable. He was saying, ‘My band’s not going anywhere. Fuck this.’ Luckily everything changed within a couple of months. Steve was always very modest, and he is more modest now than he ever was. Which is nice. I haven’t had many experiences watching people move from one level to the next, but I knew the Hot Hot Heat guys before they got signed, and they were decent dudes... [off the record] I want people to be successful, regardless of what I think of their music. It’s weird how a person becomes an asshole when they think they’re so awesome all of the sudden. Steve has proved that you don’t have to be that way. Quite the contrary. He’s taken his success and he’s more modest and more grateful than anyone else I know.
I’m sure that has everything to do with age, too. If you’re as young as Hot Hot Heat were when they got signed and everyone’s licking your ass…
Yes, age has a lot to do with that.
Finally, I’m just curious what other work you got directly as a result of Black Mountain. Did Pretty Girls Make Graves come there because of that?
Yes, and that then led to the Cave Singers. Then there’s this band from Toronto called the Ten Kens who got signed to Fat Cat. Then Fat Cat called me because they loved the Black Mountain record. So they sent me to Montreal to record at the Besnard Lakes’ studio, and that’s the best record I’ve done all year. They’d never played live. They sent a demo to Fat Cat and got signed based purely on the demo. They are like if Nirvana were playing the Unicorns, if that makes any sense. They’re older guys, very grunge influenced but they do a modern micro-prog thing where every song is a couple of songs pasted together. They are so rad, man. I wish I could see them live.
So you’ve never even seen them live!
No! Well, I recorded them, so I guess I’ve seen them play. I think since then they’ve played a couple of shows. They had a song that we didn’t record that WAS a Nirvana song. It wasn’t Bush or any of those other post-grunge bands trying to be Nirvana. They actually WERE Nirvana for that song. That’s the best gig I got out of the Black Mountain record, was this completely unknown band.
When does that come out?
I think in the spring. Fat Cat works very slowly. It hasn’t been mastered yet.
-end-
Note: the Ten Kens are profiled in this week's Eye Weekly, and open up for Deerhoof tomorrow (Wednesday March 5) at the Phoenix.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Black Mountain: Steve McBean
There's a popular theory that says the music you love for the rest of your life is the music you fall in love with between the ages of 16 and 25. That's the age when music means everything, when everything sounds new, when you're willing to defend your musical choices to the death and choose most of your social relations along these segregated lines.
While this is true of music fans, one likes to believe that musicians themselves evolve and grow and discover new frontiers to challenge them--sadly, this is not often the case. But every so often a band like Black Mountain comes along with an album like their 2005 debut, which gloriously ripped off so many obvious 70s touchstones--Black Sabbath, the Velvet Underground, Krautrock, the Rolling Stones and glam without the ham--yet did it with such exhilaration and authenticity that its lack of originality hardly mattered; even less so if you grew up on classic rock. Especially when you have a drummer like Josh Wells steering the ship, and the haunting vibrato vocals of Amber Webber acting as a counterpoint to Steve McBean's impish manchild celebrating "no hits!" and taking a phrase like "we can't stand your modern music! we feel afflicted" and turning it into a taunt rather than a resignation.
Black Mountain rose from the ashes of a criminally undercelebrated Vancouver band with the unfortunate name of Jerk With a Bomb (I wrote an essay for CBC Radio 3 about them for the now-defunct magazine, now no longer anywhere on the web), whose third album Pyrokinesis I had this to say about in a recent issue of Magnet devoted to forgotten treasures:
JERK WITH A BOMB
Pyrokinesis (Scratch, 2002)
Before they scaled mountaintops and coloured them pink and black with
newfound comrades in arms, East Vancouver's Steve McBean and Josh
Wells were still a duo dodging men in uniform, running with thieves,
and committing acts of corporate sabotage in the streets of their
crooked city. They searched for signs of love and hope underneath "the
bloody weight of history," and found some by letting others into their
strictly stuckist guitar and drums universe, including some dirty
keyboards they dragged from the dumpster. This is the wasted landscape
and deconstruction that was necessary for their rebirth as Black
Mountain, where they discovered optimism amidst increasingly sludgy
surroundings.
I have a long feature on Black Mountain in the new issue of Magnet, which I wrote before I had many good things at all to say about their new album In the Future. After being quite smitten with the side projects Blood Meridian and Lightning Dust (McBean's Pink Mountaintops project less so--it just sounds lazy to me), I was sadly unimpressed with their live show back in the fall (reviewed here for Eye Weekly). And though I've warmed a bit to the new material--though the 17-minute "Bright Lights" is still atrocious--it still doesn't hold a candle to the burst of energy heard on the debut.
No matter--they're on tour right now and you can make up your own mind. (Lee's Palace in Toronto tomorrow night, more dates here.)
Part one of this three-part series starts with vocalist/guitarist Steve McBean, who has a long and storied history in Vancouver/Victoria punk rock. This conversation was conducted over the course of two days on a shitty cell phone signal; it has been severely edited, pasted together, and my questions are almost entirely reconstructed.
Steve McBean
October 26-27, 2007
locale: cell phone from the tour van
I’m curious about the lyrical evolution on your albums since Jerk With a Bomb, which started out being very personal and dark. By the time of Pink Mountaintops and Black Mountain, there was this sense of celebration and embracing life despite the darkness at the door; while this new album seems to dwell on tyrants, witches, blood, demons…
On the first two JWAB records, there was some stuff lyrically where when you play it live and sing it again, it was hard to deal with. It’s hard to go back to that stuff when you’re in a good mood. On the third one it became separated from the self, lyrically.
When JWAB started, I was sick of yelling all the time in punk bands. When it got to Black Mountain, it was still going to be dark, but not the weight of “everything sucks.” Traveling more and meeting lots of people, it’s a bit more of a celebration, even though it has a dark tone. At the end of the day, everyone wants to have a good life and happiness despite all the depressing elements of the world and the stuff that weigh you down. There’s lot of great things to celebrate: friends, your community.
Were you reading Milton while writing this album?
No, but I was listening to a lot of Venom. That and the West Side Story soundtrack. Both of those spawned “Evil Ways.” I was watching a documentary on Leonard Bernstein and listening to the first Venom album, and so I tried to force them together a bit.
Tell me about your teenage metal band, Mission of Christ. When was that exactly?
Mission of Christ was when I was 16-18. We put out two tapes and a seven-inch. We got signed to Metal Blade, and we were signed to Alchemy, which put out the Melvins and Poison Ivy. We were really young. We never released an album, because, uh, we lived a little fast, maybe. Plus, it was 1987 and none of us had a job or a van and we didn’t know how the hell we could tour. The rest of them were in school. I was kicked out of school in grade nine because I was a bad kid.
Running with the devil?
Pretty much. It was kind of a choice, too. Grade school was fine, but high school was just fucked. I couldn’t deal with the social circles and the teachers. If you were different in any way you were basically screwed. It’s funny, I run into the preps now and everyone’s older and it’s all fine. Even though it sucked at the time, in the end it makes you come into your own more. It’s one of the reasons I still love playing music with friends and driving around in a van, because when I was young it was a real struggle with my parents. I’d have to hide my punk records from my parents and sneak off to punk shows, so it meant that much more to me. I’m 38, I don’t have my driver’s license, and I spend all my time in vans. We’d still do it, even it was more financially difficult.
What were you into as a teenager?
Slayer, Venom, Celtic Frost, COC, DRI. I got Pink Floyd’s The Wall for my birthday when I was eight. When you’re a teenager, all teenagers want their own thing. There’s the band that you love and you can actually see them live and there’s the excitement and thrill of all that. It seems funny, because when I was into Zeppelin and all that shit, it was only maybe five years gone. But to me at that time, listening to Zeppelin was like listening to your grandpa’s records.
What is listening to Black Mountain like for kids today?
Like listening to a dead corpse!
...When you’re a kid and you expand on [your first loves], you wander through life and discover stuff along the way. There’s a lot music available now that was too obscure back then, too, or it was just a collector’s record. Like the more obscure 60s and 70s psych, the German stuff—not Kraftwerk, but the other stuff. Unless you had an older brother who was totally in the know about Amon Duul and all that stuff, you wouldn't know. There’s also a lot of stuff from back then that might be rare but it isn’t that good. I’ve also heard lots of great 60s R&B and soul singers that I’ve never heard of before, just from reading some blog.
Why did you invite Amber Webber into Jerk With a Bomb? How did you first hear of her?
Jerk With a Bomb played a couple of shows with her band Dream on Dreary. I first heard them in [merch man] Warren Hill’s car… Her voice is so strong that it changes the whole spectrum so that it’s not just four dudes rocking out. For the longest time when we started to get heavier, I had this latent paranoia of becoming a rock band. I didn’t want that; I wanted to keep the folkier elements of what we were doing. It sounds silly to say, but I was like, ‘I don’t want to totally rock; I want to partially rock.’ When I say ‘rock’ I mean that male testosterone thing where it’s indiscriminately aggressive for no reason. With Amber’s voice it adds this calm to it that brings everything back…
I didn’t want the rock to take over. I really like the more lush, pretty and beautiful points of our music, like Jeremy’s stuff and Amber’s voice. I think we’re all restless people, so we like going back and forth. The next record could be a folk record, I don’t know.
When did you know that Jerk With a Bomb would morph into something different?
On the last Jerk With a Bomb tour, things were pretty low key—to put it mildly. I remember wondering, do I want to do this anymore? There was a slight desperation there. That band had run its course. It was fun, but we wanted to move on to something that was a bit more us. Sometimes that little panic helps and makes you refocus.
Sometimes when either listening or playing music, people get lazy and listen to the same things over and over. Or you can be like you were when you were a kid and search out new stuff. You have to love listening to music if you’re playing it. If you’re jaded and you’re saying, ‘Oh, I fucking hate music’—then why the hell are you playing it? Why not do something else? And if you hate touring, then don’t do it.
With JWAB, we had three records out. It wasn’t a question of whether or not we were going to throw all that away, because it was done and it wasn’t feasible to tour anymore. It was depressing and things got worse as the band got better. We played in Minneapolis, which was one of the final straws. We played with some funk metal band who did a cover of the Inspector Gadget theme, and I remember just thinking, ‘This fucking blows. I’d much rather be lying face down in a bag of puke in the middle of a cornfield.’ I don’t mean to sound like a whiner—on all those tours there were special shows. Just when you’re ready to pack it in and lose your mind there will be something that makes it worthwhile.
How did the shift to becoming Black Mountain go over in Vancouver?
When Black Mountain started there were all sorts of new bands, all these new kids who were excited about live music. There were a few years there where every show had the same 30 people at them. Then these kids came and started waving their fists around. When there’s an audience reacting in a certain way, it helps. For a lot of bands in Vancouver, it felt like good times again. People started taking off their backpacks and started dancing again…
When we were talking about the shift from JWAB to the Pink and Black shit, it’s almost like you realize that you put so many self-important rules on yourself, like, ‘Oh, that sounds like so-and-so.’ Then you become less uptight about making each song sound totally original, or using the same line as something else. Rock’n’roll should be fun.
On the first JWAB CD, the liner notes tell us that the “songs are property of those we stole them from.”
That probably stemmed from that twentysomething punk rock attitude of saying, ‘Oh no, we’re not really proud of this.’ Then after a while, you realize that, yeah, when I die I’ll probably be proud of 51 per cent of what I did. Ninety per cent would be better, but that’s a bit of a reach.
-end-
While this is true of music fans, one likes to believe that musicians themselves evolve and grow and discover new frontiers to challenge them--sadly, this is not often the case. But every so often a band like Black Mountain comes along with an album like their 2005 debut, which gloriously ripped off so many obvious 70s touchstones--Black Sabbath, the Velvet Underground, Krautrock, the Rolling Stones and glam without the ham--yet did it with such exhilaration and authenticity that its lack of originality hardly mattered; even less so if you grew up on classic rock. Especially when you have a drummer like Josh Wells steering the ship, and the haunting vibrato vocals of Amber Webber acting as a counterpoint to Steve McBean's impish manchild celebrating "no hits!" and taking a phrase like "we can't stand your modern music! we feel afflicted" and turning it into a taunt rather than a resignation.
Black Mountain rose from the ashes of a criminally undercelebrated Vancouver band with the unfortunate name of Jerk With a Bomb (I wrote an essay for CBC Radio 3 about them for the now-defunct magazine, now no longer anywhere on the web), whose third album Pyrokinesis I had this to say about in a recent issue of Magnet devoted to forgotten treasures:
JERK WITH A BOMB
Pyrokinesis (Scratch, 2002)
Before they scaled mountaintops and coloured them pink and black with
newfound comrades in arms, East Vancouver's Steve McBean and Josh
Wells were still a duo dodging men in uniform, running with thieves,
and committing acts of corporate sabotage in the streets of their
crooked city. They searched for signs of love and hope underneath "the
bloody weight of history," and found some by letting others into their
strictly stuckist guitar and drums universe, including some dirty
keyboards they dragged from the dumpster. This is the wasted landscape
and deconstruction that was necessary for their rebirth as Black
Mountain, where they discovered optimism amidst increasingly sludgy
surroundings.
I have a long feature on Black Mountain in the new issue of Magnet, which I wrote before I had many good things at all to say about their new album In the Future. After being quite smitten with the side projects Blood Meridian and Lightning Dust (McBean's Pink Mountaintops project less so--it just sounds lazy to me), I was sadly unimpressed with their live show back in the fall (reviewed here for Eye Weekly). And though I've warmed a bit to the new material--though the 17-minute "Bright Lights" is still atrocious--it still doesn't hold a candle to the burst of energy heard on the debut.
No matter--they're on tour right now and you can make up your own mind. (Lee's Palace in Toronto tomorrow night, more dates here.)
Part one of this three-part series starts with vocalist/guitarist Steve McBean, who has a long and storied history in Vancouver/Victoria punk rock. This conversation was conducted over the course of two days on a shitty cell phone signal; it has been severely edited, pasted together, and my questions are almost entirely reconstructed.
Steve McBean
October 26-27, 2007
locale: cell phone from the tour van
I’m curious about the lyrical evolution on your albums since Jerk With a Bomb, which started out being very personal and dark. By the time of Pink Mountaintops and Black Mountain, there was this sense of celebration and embracing life despite the darkness at the door; while this new album seems to dwell on tyrants, witches, blood, demons…
On the first two JWAB records, there was some stuff lyrically where when you play it live and sing it again, it was hard to deal with. It’s hard to go back to that stuff when you’re in a good mood. On the third one it became separated from the self, lyrically.
When JWAB started, I was sick of yelling all the time in punk bands. When it got to Black Mountain, it was still going to be dark, but not the weight of “everything sucks.” Traveling more and meeting lots of people, it’s a bit more of a celebration, even though it has a dark tone. At the end of the day, everyone wants to have a good life and happiness despite all the depressing elements of the world and the stuff that weigh you down. There’s lot of great things to celebrate: friends, your community.
Were you reading Milton while writing this album?
No, but I was listening to a lot of Venom. That and the West Side Story soundtrack. Both of those spawned “Evil Ways.” I was watching a documentary on Leonard Bernstein and listening to the first Venom album, and so I tried to force them together a bit.
Tell me about your teenage metal band, Mission of Christ. When was that exactly?
Mission of Christ was when I was 16-18. We put out two tapes and a seven-inch. We got signed to Metal Blade, and we were signed to Alchemy, which put out the Melvins and Poison Ivy. We were really young. We never released an album, because, uh, we lived a little fast, maybe. Plus, it was 1987 and none of us had a job or a van and we didn’t know how the hell we could tour. The rest of them were in school. I was kicked out of school in grade nine because I was a bad kid.
Running with the devil?
Pretty much. It was kind of a choice, too. Grade school was fine, but high school was just fucked. I couldn’t deal with the social circles and the teachers. If you were different in any way you were basically screwed. It’s funny, I run into the preps now and everyone’s older and it’s all fine. Even though it sucked at the time, in the end it makes you come into your own more. It’s one of the reasons I still love playing music with friends and driving around in a van, because when I was young it was a real struggle with my parents. I’d have to hide my punk records from my parents and sneak off to punk shows, so it meant that much more to me. I’m 38, I don’t have my driver’s license, and I spend all my time in vans. We’d still do it, even it was more financially difficult.
What were you into as a teenager?
Slayer, Venom, Celtic Frost, COC, DRI. I got Pink Floyd’s The Wall for my birthday when I was eight. When you’re a teenager, all teenagers want their own thing. There’s the band that you love and you can actually see them live and there’s the excitement and thrill of all that. It seems funny, because when I was into Zeppelin and all that shit, it was only maybe five years gone. But to me at that time, listening to Zeppelin was like listening to your grandpa’s records.
What is listening to Black Mountain like for kids today?
Like listening to a dead corpse!
...When you’re a kid and you expand on [your first loves], you wander through life and discover stuff along the way. There’s a lot music available now that was too obscure back then, too, or it was just a collector’s record. Like the more obscure 60s and 70s psych, the German stuff—not Kraftwerk, but the other stuff. Unless you had an older brother who was totally in the know about Amon Duul and all that stuff, you wouldn't know. There’s also a lot of stuff from back then that might be rare but it isn’t that good. I’ve also heard lots of great 60s R&B and soul singers that I’ve never heard of before, just from reading some blog.
Why did you invite Amber Webber into Jerk With a Bomb? How did you first hear of her?
Jerk With a Bomb played a couple of shows with her band Dream on Dreary. I first heard them in [merch man] Warren Hill’s car… Her voice is so strong that it changes the whole spectrum so that it’s not just four dudes rocking out. For the longest time when we started to get heavier, I had this latent paranoia of becoming a rock band. I didn’t want that; I wanted to keep the folkier elements of what we were doing. It sounds silly to say, but I was like, ‘I don’t want to totally rock; I want to partially rock.’ When I say ‘rock’ I mean that male testosterone thing where it’s indiscriminately aggressive for no reason. With Amber’s voice it adds this calm to it that brings everything back…
I didn’t want the rock to take over. I really like the more lush, pretty and beautiful points of our music, like Jeremy’s stuff and Amber’s voice. I think we’re all restless people, so we like going back and forth. The next record could be a folk record, I don’t know.
When did you know that Jerk With a Bomb would morph into something different?
On the last Jerk With a Bomb tour, things were pretty low key—to put it mildly. I remember wondering, do I want to do this anymore? There was a slight desperation there. That band had run its course. It was fun, but we wanted to move on to something that was a bit more us. Sometimes that little panic helps and makes you refocus.
Sometimes when either listening or playing music, people get lazy and listen to the same things over and over. Or you can be like you were when you were a kid and search out new stuff. You have to love listening to music if you’re playing it. If you’re jaded and you’re saying, ‘Oh, I fucking hate music’—then why the hell are you playing it? Why not do something else? And if you hate touring, then don’t do it.
With JWAB, we had three records out. It wasn’t a question of whether or not we were going to throw all that away, because it was done and it wasn’t feasible to tour anymore. It was depressing and things got worse as the band got better. We played in Minneapolis, which was one of the final straws. We played with some funk metal band who did a cover of the Inspector Gadget theme, and I remember just thinking, ‘This fucking blows. I’d much rather be lying face down in a bag of puke in the middle of a cornfield.’ I don’t mean to sound like a whiner—on all those tours there were special shows. Just when you’re ready to pack it in and lose your mind there will be something that makes it worthwhile.
How did the shift to becoming Black Mountain go over in Vancouver?
When Black Mountain started there were all sorts of new bands, all these new kids who were excited about live music. There were a few years there where every show had the same 30 people at them. Then these kids came and started waving their fists around. When there’s an audience reacting in a certain way, it helps. For a lot of bands in Vancouver, it felt like good times again. People started taking off their backpacks and started dancing again…
When we were talking about the shift from JWAB to the Pink and Black shit, it’s almost like you realize that you put so many self-important rules on yourself, like, ‘Oh, that sounds like so-and-so.’ Then you become less uptight about making each song sound totally original, or using the same line as something else. Rock’n’roll should be fun.
On the first JWAB CD, the liner notes tell us that the “songs are property of those we stole them from.”
That probably stemmed from that twentysomething punk rock attitude of saying, ‘Oh no, we’re not really proud of this.’ Then after a while, you realize that, yeah, when I die I’ll probably be proud of 51 per cent of what I did. Ninety per cent would be better, but that’s a bit of a reach.
-end-
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Rufus Wainwright
Rufus Wainwright is in Toronto tonight to play a gig at the Canadian Songwriter's Hall of Fame, where his mother Anna is getting a nod for "Heart Like a Wheel."
It took me a long time to warm to Wainwright completely--I thought his debut album, though lovely, was much too overproduced; the second album was slight. I was also thwarted in my attempt to see him live on three occasions when the debut came out in 1998, and it wasn't until I finally saw him play a solo show on a snowy night in Mile End at the Theatre Outremont, right before Christmas 2003, that I fell completely in love with his voice, his songs and his dedication to performance.
His fifth album, Release the Stars, features some of his finest songs to date, though the low moments (including the song "Tulsa," rumoured to be about a one-night stand with a certain alt-rock radio star) are more than distracting, and likely kept the album out of many people's minds when the best-of-07 lists were being compiled.
This interview was conducted last spring, just before Release the Stars came out. He was also putting finishing touches on the DVD/CD documenting his re-creation of Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall concert, although our all-too-brief conversation (with a publicist ready to cut us off precisely at the ten-minute mark) left no time for that.
This Q&A was printed in its entirety in Magnet magazine last summer.
Rufus Wainwright
April 11, 2007
The last time I saw you play live, was at Theatre St. Denis in Montreal. The most memorable part of the evening was when you came out on a cross as the crucified Gay Messiah. Which, as campy as it was, was still daring in an election year when gay issues rallied the conservative votes in the States. Yet I didn’t read much about that element of your performance in the press. Were you mildly disappointed that it wasn’t more provocative?
Actually, I was completely vindicated. Initially there wasn’t a huge splash, but then of course Madonna appropriated my idea and had it in her set. Though I was crucified in a Halston gown, and she chose something from H&M—whatever that means. I was more mad about that, because nobody had pointed that out. But then in Vanity Fair not long after her tour, in the Then & Now section—even though they got the order wrong, because I did it first—they had her in the Then section and me in the Now. So in the annals of publicity and showbiz points, I won that one—in Vanity Fair, anyways. That’s all that matters to me.
Still, compared to Piss Christ or the Virgin Mary in elephant dung, this went completely unnoticed.
There was talk sometimes of people walking out and getting upset. But I didn’t do it that much in America. I did it mostly in Europe and in Canada.
On purpose?
It actually turned out that most of my big shows were in Europe and in Canada. I think I did it once in New York. I didn’t do it in Atlanta or anything; I just stayed away from the whole thing.
Sexual conservatism is obviously still huge in the U.S., but I thought a movie like Shortbus would also cause more of a fuss. And instead, I was reading mainstream magazine articles about guides to swinger clubs.
I would also say that Shortbus is not totally in the mainstream. I don’t think that movie made it past the Mississippi or over the Sierras. America right now is basically involved in licking its various wounds and not losing too much blood. Not to be too morbid. I think things have got so complicated and impacted that it’s everyone for himself.
The first single from this album features the chorus line, “I’m so tired of America.” What’s the early reaction to that been?
It’s been released to radio in England, because they do everything early over there, and it’s made it on to the playlists of the major stations there. So far in America, not one TV show has offered me a slot. Actually, Letterman said I could do something, but they suggested another song. I had this insane vision the other day where I was thinking about America in terms of Moby Dick, and how in that song I’m going out to hunt Moby Dick or something. But then in my horror, I realized that at the end of the book the entire ship goes down and everybody dies! You don’t want to upset the beast too much. But we’ll see.
You’re the second artist from Montreal this year to write a song about leaving America behind.
Who’s the other one?
There’s the Arcade Fire song “Windowsill,” with the line, “I don’t want to live in America no more.” It’s actually written by an American expatriate who’s married into Montreal.
I still live in America and I love America. This is the deal with that song: I never intended to write it. I was about to go to dinner and I had ten minutes to spare, and I sat down at the piano and the next thing you know it was there. It wasn’t this purposeful thing. Then I recorded it and it sounded great immediately. Even the record company thought it was an obvious single, because it grabs you right away melodically. We’re just kind of going with it. I do consider it as tapping into a wider subconscious feeling that really pervades the world right now. I’m just the messenger: don’t shoot me.
How much of your life have you spent in the States versus time spent in Canada?
I left Canada when I was 23, and I’m 33 now.
You went to a boarding school for a while in the States, though didn’t you?
Yeah. So I’ve been in the States a long time.
Have you ever felt particularly like a citizen of either, or have you always been between worlds?
I’ve been very much in between worlds. My mom’s family is very Canadian, and more specifically from Quebec and entrenched in that whole universe. My father’s from a very American family from way back. I take the best from both. Get all you can get while you can get it!
In the song “Between My Legs,” there’s part of one verse that suggests there’s a looming disaster, something apocalyptic in the background. But it’s merely the setting of the song, not the focus of the narrative.
That’s more of a fantasy… about reality! Where I take something that’s obviously going to happen, i.e. terrorist attack or environmental disaster, and turn it into a hook to seduce a young man and offer them safe haven. I’m hoping to try this out when the world ends, to have some sort of exit plan for a stripper I met once.
What kind of political writing, if any, do you enjoy yourself?
Songwriting? I’m of two minds on it. On the one hand I think it’s important to express the situation and so forth, but I had a talk recently with my boyfriend where he pointed out to me that we talk far too much about politics in North America. In Europe, it’s a fraction of the conversations that go on there. We’re so obsessed with debunking Bush in this country that we don’t spend time on any other subjects. That’s a little depressing, that it takes up so much mental space.
When Want One and Two came out, you spoke of those as being an apex of what you’d been trying to achieve since your first album. I’m curious then if this album is an extension of that or a new beginning.
Those albums were about me toiling in my inner sanctum and rebuilding myself and trying to face the world like man. It was very arduous and exorcist. Release the Stars, because I worked so hard on the other albums, was very effortless in terms of how big and fast it came. The only parallel I can draw is in terms of the Olympics, as an athlete who trains and trains for years and once they’re in the Stadium throwing their discus or jumping on their pole (laughs), I imagine they feel quite happy and it’s rather painless to be finally there. That’s how Release the Stars feels to me: painlessly jumping on a pole and releasing the discs.
You’ve worked with various trainers or producers before, and now you’re the boss, producing yourself. Although Neil Tennant [of the Pet Shop Boys] is listed as “executive producer”—doesn’t that just mean he paid for it?
No. It’s like an advisor. Like Karl Rove. You just ask them questions and they give you their opinions.
On the title track, you sing of Old Hollywood being over. And extending that to old media in general, I’m a bit amazed that you still have the support of a major label to make these lush, ornate albums that don’t sell millions of copies in a blockbuster world.
Even though I don’t sell millions of albums, I do have a high profile in the film work I’ve done and being able to fill a room. I’m surprised too, in a way, but on the other hand I work so hard on my albums and my stage show that I fucking deserve it (chuckles).
-end-
It took me a long time to warm to Wainwright completely--I thought his debut album, though lovely, was much too overproduced; the second album was slight. I was also thwarted in my attempt to see him live on three occasions when the debut came out in 1998, and it wasn't until I finally saw him play a solo show on a snowy night in Mile End at the Theatre Outremont, right before Christmas 2003, that I fell completely in love with his voice, his songs and his dedication to performance.
His fifth album, Release the Stars, features some of his finest songs to date, though the low moments (including the song "Tulsa," rumoured to be about a one-night stand with a certain alt-rock radio star) are more than distracting, and likely kept the album out of many people's minds when the best-of-07 lists were being compiled.
This interview was conducted last spring, just before Release the Stars came out. He was also putting finishing touches on the DVD/CD documenting his re-creation of Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall concert, although our all-too-brief conversation (with a publicist ready to cut us off precisely at the ten-minute mark) left no time for that.
This Q&A was printed in its entirety in Magnet magazine last summer.
Rufus Wainwright
April 11, 2007
The last time I saw you play live, was at Theatre St. Denis in Montreal. The most memorable part of the evening was when you came out on a cross as the crucified Gay Messiah. Which, as campy as it was, was still daring in an election year when gay issues rallied the conservative votes in the States. Yet I didn’t read much about that element of your performance in the press. Were you mildly disappointed that it wasn’t more provocative?
Actually, I was completely vindicated. Initially there wasn’t a huge splash, but then of course Madonna appropriated my idea and had it in her set. Though I was crucified in a Halston gown, and she chose something from H&M—whatever that means. I was more mad about that, because nobody had pointed that out. But then in Vanity Fair not long after her tour, in the Then & Now section—even though they got the order wrong, because I did it first—they had her in the Then section and me in the Now. So in the annals of publicity and showbiz points, I won that one—in Vanity Fair, anyways. That’s all that matters to me.
Still, compared to Piss Christ or the Virgin Mary in elephant dung, this went completely unnoticed.
There was talk sometimes of people walking out and getting upset. But I didn’t do it that much in America. I did it mostly in Europe and in Canada.
On purpose?
It actually turned out that most of my big shows were in Europe and in Canada. I think I did it once in New York. I didn’t do it in Atlanta or anything; I just stayed away from the whole thing.
Sexual conservatism is obviously still huge in the U.S., but I thought a movie like Shortbus would also cause more of a fuss. And instead, I was reading mainstream magazine articles about guides to swinger clubs.
I would also say that Shortbus is not totally in the mainstream. I don’t think that movie made it past the Mississippi or over the Sierras. America right now is basically involved in licking its various wounds and not losing too much blood. Not to be too morbid. I think things have got so complicated and impacted that it’s everyone for himself.
The first single from this album features the chorus line, “I’m so tired of America.” What’s the early reaction to that been?
It’s been released to radio in England, because they do everything early over there, and it’s made it on to the playlists of the major stations there. So far in America, not one TV show has offered me a slot. Actually, Letterman said I could do something, but they suggested another song. I had this insane vision the other day where I was thinking about America in terms of Moby Dick, and how in that song I’m going out to hunt Moby Dick or something. But then in my horror, I realized that at the end of the book the entire ship goes down and everybody dies! You don’t want to upset the beast too much. But we’ll see.
You’re the second artist from Montreal this year to write a song about leaving America behind.
Who’s the other one?
There’s the Arcade Fire song “Windowsill,” with the line, “I don’t want to live in America no more.” It’s actually written by an American expatriate who’s married into Montreal.
I still live in America and I love America. This is the deal with that song: I never intended to write it. I was about to go to dinner and I had ten minutes to spare, and I sat down at the piano and the next thing you know it was there. It wasn’t this purposeful thing. Then I recorded it and it sounded great immediately. Even the record company thought it was an obvious single, because it grabs you right away melodically. We’re just kind of going with it. I do consider it as tapping into a wider subconscious feeling that really pervades the world right now. I’m just the messenger: don’t shoot me.
How much of your life have you spent in the States versus time spent in Canada?
I left Canada when I was 23, and I’m 33 now.
You went to a boarding school for a while in the States, though didn’t you?
Yeah. So I’ve been in the States a long time.
Have you ever felt particularly like a citizen of either, or have you always been between worlds?
I’ve been very much in between worlds. My mom’s family is very Canadian, and more specifically from Quebec and entrenched in that whole universe. My father’s from a very American family from way back. I take the best from both. Get all you can get while you can get it!
In the song “Between My Legs,” there’s part of one verse that suggests there’s a looming disaster, something apocalyptic in the background. But it’s merely the setting of the song, not the focus of the narrative.
That’s more of a fantasy… about reality! Where I take something that’s obviously going to happen, i.e. terrorist attack or environmental disaster, and turn it into a hook to seduce a young man and offer them safe haven. I’m hoping to try this out when the world ends, to have some sort of exit plan for a stripper I met once.
What kind of political writing, if any, do you enjoy yourself?
Songwriting? I’m of two minds on it. On the one hand I think it’s important to express the situation and so forth, but I had a talk recently with my boyfriend where he pointed out to me that we talk far too much about politics in North America. In Europe, it’s a fraction of the conversations that go on there. We’re so obsessed with debunking Bush in this country that we don’t spend time on any other subjects. That’s a little depressing, that it takes up so much mental space.
When Want One and Two came out, you spoke of those as being an apex of what you’d been trying to achieve since your first album. I’m curious then if this album is an extension of that or a new beginning.
Those albums were about me toiling in my inner sanctum and rebuilding myself and trying to face the world like man. It was very arduous and exorcist. Release the Stars, because I worked so hard on the other albums, was very effortless in terms of how big and fast it came. The only parallel I can draw is in terms of the Olympics, as an athlete who trains and trains for years and once they’re in the Stadium throwing their discus or jumping on their pole (laughs), I imagine they feel quite happy and it’s rather painless to be finally there. That’s how Release the Stars feels to me: painlessly jumping on a pole and releasing the discs.
You’ve worked with various trainers or producers before, and now you’re the boss, producing yourself. Although Neil Tennant [of the Pet Shop Boys] is listed as “executive producer”—doesn’t that just mean he paid for it?
No. It’s like an advisor. Like Karl Rove. You just ask them questions and they give you their opinions.
On the title track, you sing of Old Hollywood being over. And extending that to old media in general, I’m a bit amazed that you still have the support of a major label to make these lush, ornate albums that don’t sell millions of copies in a blockbuster world.
Even though I don’t sell millions of albums, I do have a high profile in the film work I’ve done and being able to fill a room. I’m surprised too, in a way, but on the other hand I work so hard on my albums and my stage show that I fucking deserve it (chuckles).
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