(Bill Plaskett joins his son Joel on the younger Plaskett’s new album as well as his current tour. Photo by Ingram Barrs.)

“If you walk, you rust,” Joel Plaskett said, quoting a line from one of his own tunes.

It was an appropriate choice of words if there ever was one.

Plaskett graciously took some time to chat with East Coast Noise a few days ago, but he was in the middle of leaving a radio station interview to head back to Fredericton’s Playhouse theatre to do soundcheck for that night’s concert.

ECN caught him just prior, during and at the end of a cab ride, not to mention between other interviews.

Plaskett quoted the line from the tune “Run, Run, Run” off his new album Three (Maplemusic) when asked if he was always as busy as he was that afternoon.

He says it’s good to keep moving and keep changing things. Otherwise, you might just rust.

Plaskett, singer-songwriter and leader of the Joel Plaskett Emergency as well as his own solo project, just wrapped the first few east coast dates on his tour in support of Three, a triple-disc record.

It’s a huge project that has garnered him some of the best reviews of his career.

It started when Plaskett noticed that he had a handful of songs coming together where each title was one word repeated three times.

Always one to grab hold of a theme or concept and run with it, Plaskett turned that little theme into the most expansive and time-consuming album of his career. While it’s a solo record, he invited several guests to perform on the record, including singer-songwriters Rose Cousins, Ana Egge and Plaskett’s father Bill Plaskett.

Each disc is its own separate record – the first one deals with departure, the second with separation and the third with reuniting. Each disc is linked together, which Plaskett says was a challenge to accomplish.

“It was a different record to finish, to sort of see through to completion because there was just so much material,” he says. “I found that recording and composing the songs was not a big deal, you know, it was just getting it all mixed and mastered and getting the artwork done and you know, to really see it through. I wanted it to be like a special package to look good and sound good and be complete.

“It took me a long time because I had to focus essentially on three records to decide how they would be connected and how many songs I would use.”

There are 27 songs on Three, but Plaskett recorded three more which didn’t make the cut (they’re now available as a 7” single from his record label New Scotland Records). He says it was a challenge to make three records and connect them all without losing the overall focus of the project.

“Sometimes I’d have the moments where I was like, ‘Is this any good?’ I’d been focusing on it too hard like looking through a pinhole, you know what I mean? And because so much of it was done by myself in the studio, yeah, I needed some perspective.”

To help him sort it all out, Plaskett took the album to his good buddy Gordie Johnson (Grady, Big Sugar) in Texas to mix the album and give him some fresh perspective.

Johnson, a friend to many east coast bands, was happy to help out, Plaskett says, explaining that Johnson has a way of helping an artist find exactly what it is they’re looking for.

In the day and age of hit singles and artists of the month where albums are becoming more and more like dinosaurs, Plaskett admits he was a little concerned how people would react to a three-disc album.

“I was concerned certainly about how people would react to a triple album because it could be dismissed or just considered pretentious or something. But I also thought it’s hard to get noticed these days, you’ve got to do something dramatic, you know? So that’s what I aimed to do, just to make something that felt really good to me and took me places I’d never been as a writer.

“And I love thinking conceptually, and something this elaborate was frankly kind of fun and exciting and I thought well, if it’s exciting for me then hopefully my audience is going to go, ‘Oh cool’ as opposed to ‘Eh whatever, it’s a really long record. Who cares?’”

Plaskett says he gets a kick out of flying in the face of what’s considered normal these days, but ultimately he just cares about records and he enjoys telling a story over the course of a long recording.

On the road with the singer-songwriter this time out is Cousins, Egge and Bill Plaskett.

“It’s got lots of variety even though it’s an acoustic show, and that’s what I’m really enjoying,” Plaskett explains. “It’s a nice balance between still  making it feel a little spontaneous and rock n’ roll even though we’re standing there with acoustic guitars. ”

The Emergency, Dave Marsh and Chris Pennell, will join Plaskett and company for a few select dates on the tour, notably two gigs in Halifax that are coming up at the end of May.

Three is in stores on CD now, and it’s available online here. The album will be released on vinyl via Plaskett’s own New Scotland Records shortly, with pre-orders being shipped this Friday. For more, check this out.

Joel Plaskett, along with Rose Cousins, Ana Egge, Bill Plaskett and The Joel Plaskett Emergency, will perform in Halifax at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium on Thursday, May 28 and Saturday, May 30. The second show is already sold out, so if you’re interested, you’d best pick up your tickets soon. Plaskett’s only other east coast date coming up soon is Tuesday, June 30 at Market Square in Saint John, N.B.

Bookmark to:

Halifax emcee Classified (née Luke Boyd) has been working, do-it-yourself fashion, for over a decade making a name for himself.

He built his name from the ground up, releasing several independent releases including his first LP Union Dues in 2001, the Juno-nominated Boy-Cott-In The Industry in 2006 and Hitch Hikin’ Music in 2007.

Amazing for a young hip hop artist based out of his home in Halifax, Classified has sold well over 40,000 records in Canada. Recently, he won the 2009 East Coast Music Award Fan’s Choice Award.

This week, Classified’s latest disc, Self-Explanatory, hits store shelves and already his single “Anybody Listening” (video embedded below) is getting regular play on MuchMusic and radio stations across the country.

Classified had a little extra help with this new release. A few months back he signed a deal with Sony Music Canada. While this might seem curious coming from a guy with a D.I.Y. attitude and history, Classified told East Coast Noise recently that it really hasn’t changed much in terms of how he does things.

“I’ve always been doing everything myself,” he says. “Manufacturing, marketing … now it’s on their heads. They’re still letting me do my thing. They said, ‘OK, go do the record,’ and I handed it in when it was done.

“I’m still making the same amount of money,” he continues. “But I get to focus on the music.”

That’s just the way he likes it. “I don’t like doing the business shit,” he explains.

With Self-Explanatory hitting stores this week, Classified has a busy schedule ahead of him. A cross-Canada tour kicks off in Vancouver April 23 and it runs pretty much non-stop until a show in Halifax on June 5. He’ll follow that up with festival dates in the summer and a tour of Australia in August.

Plus, he is still producing Halifax-based artists.

That’s not all that is keeping him busy, however. Classified is now the proud pop of a six-month-old daughter.

Things have been busy and stressful, he admits, but he adds that this is what he loves to do, so he’ll take the stress.

Asked if having a child will affect his music in any way, he says with a laugh, “I’m not doing a bunch of daddy-daughter songs yet. But it will likely change my perspective on things, on life.”

Classified will perform these east coast dates in May and June:

May 29 – Saint John, N.B. @ Ozone (19+)
May 30 – Fredericton, N.B. @ Capital Exhibition (All Ages)
June 5 – Halifax, N.S. @ The Palace (19+)

Here is the video for Classified’s current single “Anybody Listening.”

Bookmark to:

(Photo contributed)

Moncton rock band The Watermen is releasing its sophomore effort, 11,000 Days, tomorrow night (Wednesday) at the Rockin’ Rodeo in Moncton with guests Neon Highway.

The band (Marc Little, Mike Gaudet, Clinton Fernandes, Tom Thompson, Gilles Savoie) released its debut record two years ago.

“It’s a great feeling – album number two,” singer Marc Little told EastCoastNoise in an e-mail. “It’s really a serious milestone. Most bands never release number two.”

The album will be released nationally on March 17 via Prism Music, distributed by Fontana North/Universal.

“The new album 11,000 Days is something the band is very proud of,” Little says. “We enjoy playing the songs, and I am proud of my vocal message. It’s just a blast really, is all it is. Good times really. Not really sure what to compare it to however. I would think if you’re a fan of Tom Petty, new Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams, Doc Walker, Johnny Reid … you may just take a liking to The Watermen.”

By gigging around town, playing open mic nights and so on over several years in Atlantic Canada, Little has managed to build his name up.

“Momentum is a very fickle thing,” he says. “It has to be capitalized upon immediately.  We’re really hoping for a lot of airplay out west. We don’t even bother trying to get airplay in our hometown. Because a local band is always a local band in their hometown and there is almost contempt for local bands.”

Little says radio stations are very “cookie-cutter” and unwilling to break the mold and try out new artists, but he’s hoping to drum up airplay out west. That said, if a music director in Atlantic Canada is willing to give the band a chance, they certainly have Little’s blessing.

Even if radio won’t pick up the band, you’ll be able to hear three of the band’s new songs on The Global Television show Biker TV in spring/summer of this year.

After launching the album in several cities, the band will be on the hunt for gigs across Atlantic Canada.

Also, the band is already working on new material for its next disc with Alex Call (Huey Lewis and the News). Little says he and Call have been bouncing song ideas off each other.

Opening for The Watermen tomorrow night is Rik Reese & Neon Highway. The band just wrapped up some performances at the ECMAs in Corner Brook, NL, during which they were asked to perform at some festivals in the United Kingdom.

Since releasing its album, Mama Raised a Good Boy, last summer, Neon Highway has opened for The Kentucky Headhunters, Julian Austin and Matt Minglewood.

The album was chosen on the list of Top 12 Canadian Country albums for 2008 by Country Music News.

Advance tickets to tomorrow night’s show are $15 at Rockin’ Rodeo, Ayer Convenience, Spin-It CDs & DVDs and Maggie’s Flowers in Riverview. Advance tickets come with a copy of The Watermen’s new album. Admission is $8 at the door.

Bookmark to:

In the 1990s, Celtic and roots music experienced a rebirth of sorts with a handful of bands and performers who took traditional sounds and blended them with pop and rock to create sounds that made old style music fresh and even “cool” again.

Great Big Sea, Natalie McMaster, Ashley MacIsaac and The Barra MacNeils were all a part of this resurgence. Right along with them, Newfoundland band Rawlins Cross took trad music by storm, rocking it up and adding a pop sheen that made it exciting for a new generation of fans.

Cross formed in 1988 and throughout the ‘90s had several hit singles, including “Reel ‘n’ Roll,” “Colleen” and “Long Night.”

In 2001, the band wound down. Each member went their separate ways, some having children, others seeking work outside music. But each of the band members kept music in their lives, so it’s no surprise that seven years later, Rawlins Cross is back to doing what it does best – performing.

Brothers Dave and Geoff Panting, Ian McKinnon, Joey Kitson, Brian Bourne and Howie Southwood reformed the band earlier this year, and the group released Anthology, a collection of 16 tracks including their biggest hits and three new tunes.

Ian McKinnon spoke to East Coast Noise shortly before Christmas to talk about the rebirth of the band and what lies in store for its future.

In spring of this year, McKinnon, who plays bagpipe, tin whistle, bodhran, percussion and trumpet with the group, says he and the rest of the band were “getting quite ambitious for the group again.”

Around the same time, a Warner Music Canada representative approached the group about the possibility of compiling a greatest hits CD.

It was a sign of things to come, but initially the group wasn’t sure after seven years how it would gel. When Rawlins Cross split in 2001, it was amicable. The band mates remained friends, they just wanted to concentrate on other projects. But still, after seven years, it could prove difficult to get back in the swing of things.

“Creatively, we felt it was time for a break,” McKinnon explains of the split.

The strange feeling upon reuniting didn’t last. Very quickly, once the group finally performed together, it “felt like we hadn’t left the stage.”

The band rehearsed and recorded Anthology’s three new tracks, “Look Ahead,” “Make The Change” and “The Story” in St. John’s in August.

“We released this record just a couple of weeks ago and the reception has been great,” he says. “If feels very much like we’re picking up where we left off.”

He says the band is “new and improved” in that they have more experience in life, music and business.

Asked of the shelf life of the reunion, McKinnon says the band is “feeling our way through this,” but he adds that there are a lot of opportunities that lie ahead for the group.

Currently, Rawlins Cross is planning some festival dates across North America and Europe for next summer.

You can catch the rejuvenated band on New Year’s Eve on CTV’s annual Year’s Eve bash in Halifax.

Since this interview, a spring east coast tour was announced by Sonic Concerts.

Rawlins Cross will perform the following dates: April 14 at Moncton’s Capitol Theatre, April 15 at Glace Bay’s Savoy Theatre, April 16 at Saint John’s Imperial Theatre, April 17 at Fredericton’s Playhouse and April 18 at Halifax’s Rebecca Cohn Auditorium. Tickets are on sale now.

While McKinnon wouldn’t go too deep into what the future may hold for Rawlins Cross, from the way he spoke of the group, it’s likely the tour dates that are currently being planned are just the start of things to come.

“Music is a passion for all of us,” McKinnon says. “I expect at this point that Rawlins Cross will be fairly active for many years to come.”

Bookmark to:

Moncton most stylish punk rockers Knife Party will release its debut EP, Just Like You, Only Better, this weekend with at Doc Dylans on Main Street in Moncton.

The five-piece formed last year from the ashes of two other Moncton projects, and it has spent the last year honing its sound, playing shows in Moncton and recording the group’s debut with longtime Moncton engineer and music geek Kyle MacDonald.

The group is made up of Little Danny Whore Moan (vocals), Davey Romance (guitar and vocals), Kayle “Killington Stabb” Piercy (guitar), Johnny Marnix (bass) and Jedi Eric (drums).

The formation of the group is a little confusing. Jedi Eric was sort of the catalyst for the group coming together. He says after seeing the rest of the band in their previous group, Danny & The Cunts, he knew he wanted to work with them.

“They had such a unique sound and the front man, Danny, was amazing. Their drummer at the time, Kayle, had the oddest style I’d ever heard.

“I still am not certain if he was the greatest or worst drummer I’ve ever seen, but whatever it was just created this intense experience to see and hear in cohesion with the guitars and Danny’s raspy, violent vocals. As soon as I’d heard that Danny quit … I decided I was going to work with this band somehow.”

Eric would get his wish, but it took some time. Danny’s band broke up, as did Eric’s project, the Fuckhead Bastards. What followed was a mix-mash of projects that eventually led to the Knife Party forming. But when the group’s original singer, Fat Marc of the Bastards, developed serious throat issues, he was forced to quit.

The band spent the next six months looking for someone to replace Marc, but it proved difficult as they were looking for someone unique to counter the band’s Ramones-inspired garage punk. They went through about eight singers before Eric decided he wanted to give Danny a try. His former bandmates weren’t too keen, but Eric wasn’t about to give up.

“Being the resourceful little bugger I am, I devised a trick, if you will, where I brought up the two projects I was currently working on and asked Danny if he’d like to try out for one, but didn’t specify which.

“He, naturally, assumed I meant the project not containing the entire band he had left eight months prior, and by the time the jig was up, he was already there anyway. After a few awkward minutes that would make The Office cast blush, he decided to give it a shot. It immediately just felt right.”

The band was quick to settle on a sound and even an image, with their black dress shirts and pink ties.

“We just didn’t want to be lumped in as another run-of-the-mill punk rock band, so we thought the best way to stand out onstage was take our style polar-opposite,” Eric says. “Instead of dressing homeless, we dressed corporate and classy, but added the pink ties for that touch of sass. Also, because it made our bass player uncomfortable to wear pink. Another benefit was it made us more recognizable. It creates a band image …

“We’re the ‘guys that wear the sissy little pink ties,’” he explains. “Then it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, those guys. They suck.’ Or whatever.”

The band has stayed in the Moncton area playing regularly, and they’ve kept busy in the studio too. While they are releasing their debut this weekend, a follow-up is already in the works. It is tentatively titled Stabba Dabba Doo or Stabbey Road. MacDonald is once again penciled in to record the project.

Unfortunately for those outside Moncton, you may not get the opportunity to see Knife Party anytime soon. Eric says the band is content to play in and around the Hub City.

“It’d be awesome to tour at some point, but we’ve barely established ourselves here, let alone out of New Brunswick. If we want to play to 15 people, we’ll book ourselves locally,” he says with a laugh. “Nah, we’re fine playing pretend rock stars once a month for now.”

However, if you check out the band’s myspace and dig their tunes, you can order the new album through the band’s label, the newly revived Superbob Records, or via Paypal by contacting the band through their myspace page.

Opening for Knife Party this weekend at Doc’s will be Shortsleeve, Blueberry Swing & The Joint and Chaos Death Squad. Door is $4 if you dress up (shirt and tie), $6 if you don’t. Eric says as long as you make the effort, you’ll get in at a discount.

Bookmark to:

(L-R: Chris Murphy, Patrick Pentland, Andrew Scott, Jay Ferguson. Photo by Chris Butcher.)

Nova Scotia-born rockers Sloan rose to fame on the east coast in the early ‘90s with hits like “Underwhelmed,” “Coax Me,” “The Lines You Amend” and others.

Nearly 20 years later, one of the key bands that put the region on the rock and roll map is still going strong. With each passing album, the band still manages a hit single or two, and they sell out shows across the country. Earlier this year, Sloan released its ninth full-length album, Parallel Play.

The album’s name comes from a term used to describe children who play with others around them, but are engaged in their own activity rather than playing with the others. Like those children, for most of the Sloan’s career, each member has largely written and recorded their music on their own.

Sloan guitarist Patrick Pentland spoke to East Coast Noise recently, and he explained how and why the band acts as a foursome of individual musicians rather than as a traditional “band.”

“Part of it is just the speed of doing it that way,” Pentland says. “But we also like the idea that our records represent us individually as much as a band. I think we come across more as a band in a live situation. And on a record, it’s just for people who are good writers and producers or whatever. I think it’s just a nice change to a record that way as opposed to one sound the whole way through.”

Pentland says each member of the group (himself, bassist Chris Murphy, guitarist Jay Ferguson and drummer Andrew Scott) approaches songwriting, recording and producing a little differently, and for the most part, each member of the group isn’t really aware of what the rest are up to when an album is being worked on.

“People are here and there, or they come in to add stuff, and I think Chris and Jay tend to play or tend to hang out more together in the studio and are involved in each other’s songs a little bit more. Andrew and I tend to do everything by ourselves. I get Andrew or Chris to play drums, and on this record I got Chris to play bass on one song, but the rest I did myself.”

Even when it comes time to choosing songs for a new album, Pentland says the members of Sloan are careful not to step on each other’s toes. The songs each member brings in end up on the record. They aren’t vetoed by the others.

“Like Andrew, for instance, no one knew what he was doing towards the end of mixing. And for me too, like, Chris or Jay would pop in occasionally when I was recording, but there were songs where they had no idea how they were going to end up. If they come in and hear music, but there’s no singing … I think those two, Chris and Jay, tend to work a little more together like that, they probably played demos for each other and stuff like that.

“Individually, we know what songs are working and what songs aren’t. And also, if somebody in the band is really into a song, it’s going to go on the record regardless of what the other guys think about it. Everybody gets their own little piece of real estate on a record, and they bring what they feel most passionate about.”

Early on in the band’s career, Pentland says the band tried a little harder to write and record as a band. And on 2003’s Action Pact, the band made a conscious decision to work cohesively, but it didn’t work out as they’d hoped.

“And we like the record, but it wasn’t as enjoyable an experience as … I think we have more fun recording the way we do now.”

Like The Beatles, KISS and a few other bands before them, each member of Sloan has its own fans. Needless to say, talk of solo records amongst fans and media has come up several times over the last few years. Pentland reveals that prior to recording Parallel Play, fans very nearly got their wish.

“We were really kind of into (doing solo albums), and then we realized that, we just put out a 30-song record (2006’s Never Hear The End Of It), and then if we put out four solo records, with say, a minimum of 10 songs each, that was like 75 songs in two-and-a-half years or something. And we weren’t really wanting to do that.”

The band decided to instead split the new album up in four sections, with each member getting one block of three tunes. But again, reality set in as the boys realized certain songs made more sense following others instead of having to follow a specific order, like if Murphy’s songs were all grouped together, Scott’s songs were grouped together and so on.

So once again, Sloan released a 12-track album with each member getting moments to shine throughout.
Still, with any band that’s been together so successfully for so long, the idea of a solo venture outside Sloan must be appealing. Pentland isn’t so sure.

“I don’t know if I’d want to do a solo record,” he says. “I mean, maybe in the past I was into that idea. I might be interested in working with some other people. You know, potentially doing a record where there is a singer and I don’t sing that much. I’m not sure. We don’t have a lot of time to do that type of stuff anyway, between touring commitments and family commitments and then making records.”

Pentland says Sloan has been discussing several different projects recently, including more music releases, but not in CD form. He says there have been discussions about releasing batches of songs online without bothering to print them on hard copy.

“To me, it’s exciting to go into a practice space, record a song, mix it, master it and then, within a week it’s up on iTunes for sale for a dollar if you want it. It’s so instant – not having to record it and wait, and do the artwork and the photos and then manufacture it and find a release date … you just sort of record music, and put it out, and if people want to buy it, then they can buy it.

“So much energy and so much money goes into promoting albums in a time where a lot of people are not buying albums anymore.”

The music business, he says, is too slow to adjust to changing trends, the move from albums to MP3s and so on. Pentland says a band on its own can move much quicker if it has the freedom to do so.

“I listen to more music now than I’ve ever listened to in my life because of the Internet. I own more music now, whether I’m getting it for free, or I’m buying it.’”

Pentland hopes people are doing the same with Sloan, if not buying their records, at least listening to them online and maybe buying songs online.

“I know that, where we aren’t selling records the way we used to, we’re still playing to as many people as we used to. And people know the songs, because you go out and play them, and the people sing along to them.”

Pentland reveals that there has also been talk of re-releasing Sloan’s back catalogue, possibly with rare tracks on each album and perhaps a separate collection of rarities or b-sides for those who don’t wish to re-purchase Sloan’s entire discography.

A b-sides collection would be a difficult one for the band to assemble, he says. Over the last 15 years or so, the group has recorded all kinds of songs, some of which they don’t even remember. The trouble is, they’re all on different formats, some digital and some analog, on a variety of different kinds of tape.

Pentland ran into this snag recently when CBC’s The Hour, hosted by George Strombolopolous, asked Sloan to use the band’s hit 1996 hit “The Good In Everyone” as its new theme song.

Pentland says the song was recorded on a one-inch tape machine, and the band didn’t do any instrumental mixes of it.

“So I kind of had to cut up ‘The Good in Everyone’ from the record to try to make it into an instrumental for them to use, and so I did that as a temporary thing as I was on tour,” he says.

“The idea was, when I came back to Toronto, I was supposed to go into a studio and take the original tape, and make an instrumental mix of ‘The Good in Everyone,’ which would have been the first time we heard the original tapes since 1994 or whatever it was. But it turns out that nobody has those tape machines anymore, and the only one we could find is the one in Halifax that we used (in 1994). So I had to take the tape back to Halifax to dump it into digital so I can bring it back to Toronto.

“I have to go to the east coast to go back in time to use a tape machine to dump it into digital and bring it back to the big city of Toronto with a digital form of it to mix a song for a TV show …” he says with a laugh.

Speaking of the east coast, Sloan was here recently on tour with rocker Lenny Kravitz. Unfortunately, the Newfoundland shows were first rescheduled and ultimately canceled.

Sloan hasn’t done its own proper east coast tour for Parallel Play yet. With the band members all living in the Toronto area, Pentland couldn’t make promises, but he said he would “make it my mission” to try to get the band down east sometime soon.

He said if they would swing it, the dates would like be this month or early December.

“You can quote me on that, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen,” he said with a laugh.

Last week on the band’s website, they noted that they were working on booking dates in “central and eastern Canada,” and that a tour announcement would be made soon.

Bookmark to:

As a child in London, Ont., Meaghan Smith loved to sing and perform. Trouble was, she had a serious case of stage fright. So, her musical dream stayed just that – a dream – while she went off to school to become an animator. Smith’s musical talent was kept to herself. So how is it, in 2008, she is signed to a major label in the U.S. and is distributed across Canada by another?

It all happened pretty fast for the folk-pop singer whose music, steeped in traditional pop and jazz, but with flourishes of current sounds, is now being heard by audiences coast to coast. When Smith was studying to become an animator a few years back, she began holding small concerts for only two or three people at a time in a stairwell at her school. Eventually, some of her teachers began coming to the shows and soon enough, an audio engineer at the school offered to record some of her songs. When Smith moved to Halifax for an animation job, it was a new chance for her to try her hand at music without a lot of pressure. She had nothing to lose in this new city where no one knew who she was.

“And now, four years later, I kind of worked through (the stage fright), and I’m still working through it, but I can get up on stage now and I actually feel really happy to be there,” she says.

Smith and her band mates, including her husband Jason Mingo (who also plays with Steven Bowers and Charlie A’Court), were driving from one show to the next in Ontario when she spoke to East Coast Noise recently.

Smith never expected to be performing for a living, but that’s just what she is doing. After developing her sound in Halifax, she recorded her first EP, Lost With Directions, with CBC in 2004.

In 2007, while attending seminars at the Atlantic Film Festival, she met some film and TV producers from California. She gave them samples of her music, hoping for nothing else but some constructive criticism. Instead, the move helped launch her career.

“I expected nothing, I was just hoping they’d write back and say something like, ‘You should work on this,’ or whatever,” Smith says. “But I heard back from all of them, and across the board, they said, ‘This is fantastic. We want you to come to Los Angeles, and we’ll  introduce you to this record label and to this huge guy and this huge producer …’

“I didn’t even have a manager at the time. So I started scrambling to find a manager and setting up meetings.”
From there, Smith began getting offers. She eventually signed with Sire Records in the U.S., which is distributed by Warner Music in Canada.

“I had no idea what to expect, truly. I wasn’t expecting any of it, so I hadn’t been researching it.”

It’s been a learning curve for Smith, but she’s relishing it. Her first release for the label, The Cricket’s Quartet, was recently released. It features four songs and an accompanying video for each one.

While the EP is a great little listen on its own, traditional jazz and pop mixed with some scratching from Montreal DJ Kid Koala and some other more modern flares, Smith promises it’s only a sample of what’s to come.

The full-length follow-up, The Cricket’s Orchestra, will be released early next year. The EP and album were both produced by Les Cooper, known for his work with Jill Barber and others.

Smith has always been attracted to “old-timey” sounds, which she describes as “whimsical.” She says much of today’s music sounds too produced and “sterile.”

“It’s just really real,” she says. “Listening to those old recordings from the ‘20s and the ‘30s and the ‘40s and even the ‘50s, things were really legitimate and real. There was no overdubbing, there was no punching in, there was no pitch correction. It was really pure, a bunch of people in a room, sitting around a microphone just playing their hearts out, and I love that legitimate feel to the music.

“I really like that old-timey sound, but I’ve updated it and added a modern twist.”

In the ever-changing music industry, many musicians are taking a do-it-yourself approach or they’re signing to small independent labels. But that isn’t for Smith.

“For the kind of career that I want to have, you know, having a major label is going to work for me. It’s not going to work for everybody, but for what I want to do, I think it’s going to work really well.

“And so far, it’s been completely up to me. I have a say in everything, so I chose the director of my videos, I chose the direction of my videos, there’s no one telling me what to do at all. It’s absolutely fantastic, it’s a real team effort. They’re just really interested in getting behind me as a person and my music and just bringing that to the world.”

She says the Internet allows bands to do things however they want, whether it’s with the help of a major or indie label or it’s completely independent.

Smith has residencies planned in Canada and the U.S. over the next few months, but she has at least one Atlantic Canadian gig planned for next month.

Smith and singer-songwriter Matthew Barber (older brother Jill) will perform at Moncton’s Capitol Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 22.

“It’s great, I really, really like it,” she says of being on the road. “It suits me really well. My husband is in my band, so I never feel homesick or like I’m missing anything. And I really enjoy just travelling and seeing new places and getting to hang out with my band members.”

There’s a great deal of work ahead for Smith, whose career is beginning to snowball.

“I’m just expecting to be very, very busy and probably not spending much time in the house that I just bought,” she says with a laugh. “But it’s alright, I’d rather be busy.”

Bookmark to:

Jill Barber has shifted gears a little bit on her new album, Chances (Outside Music), from folk songstress to jazz chanteuse, singing sultry, romantic tunes that would fit easily in the set of a lounge singer in the 1940s or ‘50s. It’s not a great leap for the Ontario native, who developed her career in Halifax, releasing a few award-winning records before a recent move to Vancouver, B.C.

She called the change a “sidestep” when talking to East Coast Noise last week.

“I think that I have been leaning that way and there have been hints of heading in that direction,” the Juno nominee and ECMA award winner says.  “But I don’t feel that I’ve moved away from the folk thing, I think I’ve moved more towards where my strengths lie.

“I‘ve dabbled in a few different styles, and you know, I’m a singer-songwriter, I will always be a singer-songwriter. I think I still identify as folky in that I still write all these songs on the acoustic guitar, it’s just that we’ve sort of decorated them a little bit more.”

Barber worked once again with musician/producer Les Cooper, who also produced her 2006 record For All Time (Outside). While that album played to Barber’s folk and country leanings, Chances leans toward her jazzier side.

“(Les) and I have been kind of following a similar path,” she says. “When we made For All Time, we were both really getting into the old traditional country, we were kind of going through an old country phase, and I think you can hear that a little bit on that album.

“We sidestepped, I think, on this album. When you go back far enough, old traditional country and jazz kind of meet somewhere maybe in the ‘40s or ‘50s or ‘60s. When you look at someone like Patsy Cline, it’s jazz, but it’s country. We kind of sidestepped from country and looked to where that sort of met with jazz, if that makes any sense.”

Barber can’t pinpoint the time she fell in love with old jazz standards. She recalls purchasing an old record player in an antique shop a few years ago, and she began picking up old records in junk shops, which led her to discovering some pretty obscure material.

”I kind of had access to all this old music that a lot of people had left in their basements or thrown away,” she says. “I guess I fell in love with how that music made me feel, which is really dreamy and romantic and kind of like, ‘life is beautiful.’

“Whether or not this is true, it seemed to speak of a simpler time or something. There was a certain quality of love and romance that I don’t think you find in modern music. There was that sort of timeless quality that I try to emulate with this album.”

She nearly wound up recording some of those old classics for this record. Chances was nearly a covers album, as Barber had been considering a collection of covers of her favourite old songs before she eventually decided to write originals.

“I’ve been wanting to make a record like this for a long time. But the singer-songwriter in me … it didn’t sit right. I kind of instead tried to challenge myself to try and write an album that could stand beside those sort of classic old standards, but that is new music, that’s contributing new music.”

Three of the album’s 10 songs, the title track, “Old Flame” and “One More Time,” were written with renowned singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, whom Barber has toured with extensively.

She says writing with Sexsmith makes her worker harder on her material. It helps that they both come from similar places in music, but she says where she can reference many old songs, Sexsmith can sit at a piano and play them start to finish.

“He’s a musical encyclopedia,” she says.

From Banff to Toronto, Chances was recorded at Blue Rodeo’s Woodshed Studios and at the famed Glenn Gould Studio. In addition to Sexsmith, the Good Lovelies, The Sojourners also appear on the record providing beautiful backing vocals.

Barber, Cooper and the other musicians spent six months working on Chances, which was released just last week. Barber, who says she is a pretty sensitive person, always finds herself a little anxious before the release of an album, curious what the feedback will be.

“It’s an anxious time for sure,” she admits. “It’s an exciting time too, though. There’s a whole bunch of emotions. I wouldn’t know, but it’s probably not unlike bringing a child into the world.

“For six months I have total control over this thing. It’s my project and I put everything I have into the project, my heart and soul, and it’s the world that I control. The day it gets released is the day I give up control. I’ve taken it as far as I can possibly take it. The rest isn’t up to me.

“So, it’s an anxious time, to see how my little album makes out on its own in the world.”

Barber has several dates lined up on the East Coast, beginning with a songwriter’s circle tonight at Sackville United Church in Sackville, N.B. She’ll be touring the East Coast for the next few weeks before heading out west again. Check out her website for all the details.

In December, Barber will be heading to Australia where For All Time has just been released. She’ll be playing festivals and opening for Hawksley Workman on his tour.

While she’s living on the opposite coast these days, Barber says she still keeps Atlantic Canada close to her heart.

“Oh yeah, yeah, especially this time of year, which is my favourite time of year in the Maritimes. It’s pretty hard to beat. Halifax is a city that’s very close to my heart.

“But I’m kind of enjoying the change. It’s just sort of a change of scenery. But I’m still on the road as much as ever, or I will be, and I get to go back to the Maritimes in the next couple of weeks. I feel like I’m getting the full country perspective being out here.”

Bookmark to:

(Photo contributed)

Three albums in and Antigonish, N.S. rockers The Trews continue to ride a wave of fame that has yet to slow. But at the same time, the band continues to grow – never drifting far from their tried and true form of radio-friendly pop-rock, but adding a little more lyrical depth and some different (and heavier) sounds to their arsenal.

The band – singer/guitarist Colin MacDonald, his brother John Angus on guitar, Jack Syperek on bass and Sean Dalton on drums – is currently in the middle of an East Coast tour that will see them play Saint John, N.B. tonight, Moncton, N.B. tomorrow night, Hubbards, N.S. on Thursday and Halifax, N.S. on Saturday.

Shortly before hitting the road for the East Coast, Colin MacDonald spoke to East Coast Noise about the band’s latest album, No Time For Later, touring and the flak the band has received from some for getting a little political on the new disc.

It’s been a busy summer for the band since the new album came out.

“We’re doing the biggest shows we’ve done of our careers in terms of headlining, doing a lot of outdoor summer festivals everywhere,” he says of the band’s recent exploits. “We’ve been to pretty much every major city in Canada this summer. It’s been going great. We’re not really an opening band for anybody anymore. We’re just doing our own shows and getting thousands of people out.”

MacDonald says the band isn’t on the level of headlining the arena shows they were regularly opening a few years ago, but their audiences continue to grow in Canada as they pursue the same success stateside and overseas.

“It’s a lot more gratifying now to be doing our own shows and have people knowing all the songs and being there only for The Trews,” he admits.

While things are going well, the band has received some flak over the lyrical content of their latest disc, where the band got a little political at times. Single “Paranoid Freak” is about the paranoia spread by media, whether it’s the latest outbreak of a virus or another overseas war. But the touchy track is “Gun Control,” a heavier tune that tackles the issue of school shootings. It was written in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings last year.

The band is known for lighthearted rockers or “songs about girls” as MacDonald calls them, but the singer says as he hit his late-20s he began picking up on more and more of what is going on in the world around him, some of which was disturbing.

A lyric in “Gun Control,” which describes a school shooting, reads, “Freedom to take other people’s freedom away, is this what has become of the U.S.A, why oh why do they second guess, gun control, my my my what an ugly mess …”.

MacDonald says the song drew “a line in the sand” on the issue for the band, and gave the normally carefree, fun tunes of The Trews some extra weight that some listeners don’t like.

“You kind of maybe alienate some people, people that either don’t believe in gun control or people who think that I’ve got no right as a rock n’ roll singer to have an opinion on events in the world,” he says. “But I certainly felt at the time that I needed to say that stuff. I couldn’t muster up any more songs about girls at the time.

“I remember I was in New York City one night, and this guy came up to me and said, ‘Look man, I like your band and you guys really rock, but you’re from Canada and it’s not really your place to talk about our gun control laws.’ And I’m like, ‘yeah, but I’m not really talking about that. I’m talking about senseless killings of kids at school.’

“I think it’s a pretty universal topic. I’m not just saying, ‘Oh, the United States is good, or the United States is bad,’ I’m saying like no, ‘this is wrong, and if this kid couldn’t get a gun, then it would have been prevented, at least in my opinion.’”
Not all of the songs on No Time For Later are political. The title track is a carefree rocker, while new single “Man of Two Minds” is about a guy torn (or not so torn) between two loves.

Each of the band’s albums thus far has been produced by different producers. Ex-Big Sugar and current Grady frontman helmed the band’s debut House of Ill Fame, while veteran producer Jack Douglas (Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper) worked with the band on sophomore album Den of Thieves. Gus Van Go and Werner F. (The Stills, Priestess) produced No Time For Later.

MacDonald says The Trews have been a unit “forever” and they’d like to stay that way, so to keep things fresh and moving along, they bring in new people to work with each time.

“We have to throw new people into the mix as producers, we have an extra guy on the keyboards (Jeff Heisholt), I’ve written with some other people … we’re constantly trying to reinvent ourselves, or at least try to push ourselves artistically so we can keep feeling excited about what we’re doing, you know. And with every new producer, I like that kind of feeling of the unknown.”

The new album has been out for a few months now and it’s on its third single. Once the band wraps up the East Coast tour and some university dates, they plan to release No Time For Later in the U.S. and overseas, where they will spend some time touring.

While the band lives in Ontario now, MacDonald says they make it home to Nova Scotia regularly.

“We still consider ourselves an East Coast band, and until (Detroit Red Wings assistant coach) Paul MacLean brought home the Stanley Cup (recently), we were the pride of Antigonish,” he says with a laugh.

Bookmark to:

(L-R: Jay Smith, Matt Mays, Andy Patil, Tim Jim Baker. Photo by Scott McIntyre.)

“Is it this Tuesday?” Jay Smith asked about the release of his band’s latest album. “Wow, I didn’t realize that … Guess I’m out of the loop.”

The guitarist for Matt Mays & El Torpedo had a laugh at his own expense before continuing to talk about the group’s upcoming record, Terminal Romance (Sonic/Warner), in stores – yes – this Tuesday, July 8. An 11-song collection of fuzzy, sweaty rockers and heartbreaking ballads that blends a bit of Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and some AC/DC-ish crunch.

Smith was at home in Cape Breton when he spoke to East Coast Noise about El Torpedo’s latest exploits. Like a good friend would, Smith was leaving the next morning at 6 a.m. for Toronto where he was to help bandmate Tim Jim Baker move from the big city back to Halifax.

This weekend, Mays & El Torpedo can be found playing Charlottetown’s annual Festival of Lights, which also features Billy Talent, Our Lady Peace, Nickelback, The Trews and others. Apart from that gig and a few other one-off shows, the band doesn’t have a proper East Coast tour happening until likely later this year.

“As far as a coast-to-coast tour goes, I don’t think we’re doing anything until fall,” Smith says.

That doesn’t mean the band isn’t working though. West coast dates (including 10 dates opening for Kid Rock) are planned over the next few weeks, and the recent recording of Terminal Romance took them across the Atlantic Ocean and from one end of Canada to the other.

Smith and his bandmates (Mays, Baker and Andy Patil) spent several weeks working in Kingsdown, England recording Terminal Romance with veteran producer Chris Tsangarides (Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest). They recorded more of it in Vancouver, B.C. as well as various Nova Scotia studios.

“It was great,” Smith says of recording in the U.K. with Tsangarides. “He’s worked with Thin Lizzy, which is like my favourite band. I walked into the studio and the first thing I saw was the plaque for Black Rose, which is my favourite Thin Lizzy album.”

The band actually tracked about 14 songs with Tsangarides and six of them made the album.

“Some of it was really heavy stuff, we were definitely feeling the British metal influence,” Smith says.

The tunes that didn’t fit the vibe of Terminal Romance may end up on another release in a few months time, he explains.

“Don’t hold me to that, but that’s the plan I think,” he says with a laugh.

It was three years between the group’s self-titled disc and Terminal Romance, a long gap they’d rather not repeat.

The album isn’t a departure from El Torpedo’s self-titled debut from 2005, but it does expand on the group’s sound, blending in a bit of punk and some sweet piano-led balladry to the band’s tried and tested brand of rock. Smith wasn’t in El Torpedo for the first album, he replaced original guitarist Jarrett Murphy in April of last year when Murphy left the group to work on other projects.

Asked if there is a particular theme on the record – after all, it’s called Terminal Romance and the cover art features a bleeding mechanical heart – Smith says it just happened that most of the tunes ending up being about heartbreak.

“Matt’s dad actually drew the cover,” he explains. “Anything you see with Matt Mays name on it, his father made the cover. He also made us this huge backdrop for the stage. It’s huge, I have no idea how he did it.”

Before anyone else asks, Smith says he was not the inspiration for the Ramones-esque punk track “Rock Ranger Record” on the album. Smith is a member of the sort-of defunct Sydney, N.S. rock group.

“No, I swear … I think it was just because of the alliteration – ‘Rock Ranger Record.’ It was going to be ‘Monoxides Record,’ but that just didn’t work,’” he says with a laugh. “It worked out though because I have a pile of Rock Ranger T-shirts that I can sell at shows.”

As for his other band, Smith says Rock Ranger never officially called it quits, but he doesn’t see the group playing together anytime soon with El Torpedo being so busy.

As El Torpedo prepares to hit the road again, Smith has mixed feelings.

“I don’t know … I’m married now with a little boy, it’s harder now than it ever was for me. Leaving is the hardest part. I’m sure for the other guys it’s the same.”

By the same token, he says getting paid to do what he loves is a wonderful thing.

“You know, I did this for like 10 years and I’d come home from playing with $20 in my pocket. I’m not making millions, but it’s nice to play and, you know, people come to see us.”

(Jay Smith suggested I pass this on … the group filmed it while in England. I’m not sure what it means, and Smith wasn’t saying, but if you’re looking for something goofy and fun to check out, go for it. I’ll leave the comments about the boys’ acting skills to you.)

Bookmark to: