(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.

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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.”

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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.”

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(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.

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(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.)

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(L-R: Thom Swift, Joel LeBlanc, Tom Easley. Photo contributed.)

Hot Toddy is back. Not that the band ever really went anywhere, but the New Brunswick three-piece has been so busy working on solo projects and other musical endeavors that it’s been about four years since their last proper album as a trio.

Hence the band’s new album title – Trio. It’s another collection of fine blues, folk, roots and a dash of jazz the band has become known for.

“That’s what it is, it’s a trio album,” bassist Tom Easley explains.

The rash of other projects – guitarist Thom Swift won numerous awards for his recent solo disc, Into the Dirt; guitarist Joel LeBlanc plays in Big Alice and the Joel LeBlanc Trio; and Easley shared an East Coast Music Award this year with pianist Bill Stevenson for their work on the album For The Record – shouldn’t lead one to believe Hot Toddy has lost its focus.

“It’s definitely the biggest creative focus in my life,” Easley recently told East Coast Noise. “And I’m sure it is for the other boys as well. You don’t dedicate 12 years into something to throw it away.”

In fact, Easley says Trio, released in April, came together easier than any of their previous discs, a sign that Toddy hasn’t lost a step.

“We could visualize it a lot better,” he explains. “This one all came together very quickly. We knew what we wanted out of this project. It came together in a very natural way. There didn’t seem to be many hurdles to jump.”

Trio features 12 tracks, including several instrumentals showing off the band’s chops. Each member contributed four tracks to the album, and most of the disc was recorded live off the floor at Echo Chamber Studio in Halifax with Charles Austin.

There were some overdubs here and there, but Easley said they wanted to “retain the integrity of a live album.”
Hot Toddy played several dates around the Maritimes in April and May, and they’re looking at more dates throughout the summer.

Easley hasn’t ruled out further collaboration with friends Isaac & Blewett (Tim Isaac, Jim Blewett) either. The two groups have toured extensively together over the last few years, going so far as to release a live album, Live at the Black Box, together in 2005.

“They’re our brothers,” he says about the Albert County, N.B.-based duo.

At the time of the interview, Easley said the band had put feelers out about some potential West Coast dates.
As of this writing, there were no tour dates listed on the Hot Toddy’s website.

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(Photo courtesy of www.davidmyles.com)

While he wasn’t out to write a concept album, when it came time for David Myles to name his third album, he took a look at the songs on the record and noticed a bit of a theme.

“There’s a lot of songs with that theme – putting something at stake to get something back,” the Fredericton native says. “Whether it’s with love and relationships or something else.”

So, he named the disc On The Line.

“It’s also about the artistic pursuit of having to put yourself on the line in front of people,” the friendly, easy-going singer-songwriter says.

Lyrically, Myles is one who isn’t difficult to figure out. He rarely writes fictional stories. He says he admires Bob Marley as a lyricist because he wrote clear ideas and thoughts. Myles tries to do the same.

“They’re close,” he says of his lyrics. “Things I definitely know, whether they happened to me or people close to me. They’re my own thoughts, they’re not even story songs.”

Myles’ third disc, the follow-up to Things Have Changed (2006), is an 11-song disc featuring some of the best players the East Coast has to offer, from Matt Mays to Hot Toddy’s Tom Easley to Old Man Luedecke and Garrett Mason.

He’s been hard at work on the album for several months. Myles says it’s when he is working on the album that he is most nervous about the project, not when it’s released and available for fans and critics to analyze it.

“It’s out now, so it’s kind of a waste of my energy to worry about it. But of course, I want people to like it.”

Myles says his energies are so focused on making an album exactly what he wants that it’s difficult for him to write new music or think about much else than the upcoming release.

“The nicest part (of releasing an album) is it opens a flood-gate of creative energy. I’m writing all kinds of things now and thinking about new ideas, the next project, which sounds kind of ridiculous.”

On The Line was released nationwide on May 6. While Myles is generally regarded as a folk singer, On The Line includes moody jazz, upbeat country and even a mellow rocker. He says the world-class players who he tapped to perform on the album helped shape its sound.

“This project was probably the first time I (thought about players as I was writing),” he says.

Myles knew he wanted Tom Easley to play bass and Geoff Arsenault to play drums on the disc, so he was able to shape some of his ideas based on what he knew to be their talents.

Other songs changed during production. After writing album opener “I Don’t Want To Know,” Myles thought of making it a bit of a rocker while he was recording it. Matt Mays happened to be in the recording studio at the same time he was, so Myles asked him to perform on the track.

“I wanted to make it a rock song, which is really different for me. Matt was perfect for the song, he knows that (sound),” he says. “I usually write a song and then think about who is going to take it to the next level.”

Myles, who lives in Halifax now, was luckily unscathed by the floods that overtook much of the Fredericton area a month ago. His parents live right on the St. John River – “It’d be hard to imagine how they couldn’t be affected, knowing where they live” – but somehow their home wasn’t hurt either.

“Their house is basically an island right now, but somehow there’s no water in their basement. They were away when it happened, so I was just watching it on TV really hoping they wouldn’t be affected.”

He’ll be heading home a few times this summer on tour. Myles’ summer touring will take him around the Maritimes and into Ontario. On The Line may see a European release, so he’ll likely end up touring overseas at some point.

“Busy in the summer, busy in the fall,” he says. “I’m just really focusing on putting on really good shows.”

Since taking on a manager and more of a support team around him, Myles has been able to focus more on the creative end of things than the business side of music.

While he learned a lot in his years of working independently, he says he is enjoying the time and freedom he has now to write music and practice.

“Plus, it’s nice having someone to speak on your behalf, to brag you up and hype you. I’m not very good at that.”

For more on David Myles, see here.

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(Nathan M. Boone photo)

When I first saw the Tom Fun Orchestra, it was at an East Coast Music Awards after-party in 2007. A friend recommended we check them out, and so we did. I’d never heard the band before, so I didn’t know what to expect.

What I saw was a ballroom full of people dancing to sounds created by about 10 people on stage – a raucous mix of rock, folk, swing, traditional sounds – a melting pot of noise that you couldn’t help but dance, tap your toes or at least raise your glass to.

The fun was infectious as was evident by the smiles throughout the room, the biggest of which were worn on the faces of the nine or 10 musicians on stage playing guitar, bass, banjo, fiddle and a handful of other instruments.

It was electric and quite obvious at the time that this Cape Breton band was something special.

At the centre of it all was the ringleader in the middle, decked out in a white suit, curly mop of hair bouncing to the songs as his gravelly voice spit out lyrics over top of the music.

It was a great initiation to a great band.

Fast forward a year or so and the band has released its debut album, You Will Land With A Thud (Company House), and it is about to embark on a tour of Scotland and Ireland.

Ringleader Ian MacDougall (aka Tom Fun) spoke to East Coast Noise recently about the band, the difficulties of traveling with a nine-piece band and how he doesn’t like the Celtic reference people keep making when referring to the Orchestra’s sound.

“We get comparisons to Celtic music,” he says over the phone from the Company House offices in Sydney, N.S. “I don’t feel there’s anything Celtic at all.”

He says the label is frustrating at times because it pigeon-holes the band in a genre it doesn’t necessarily fit in.
“It’s people who mean really well” that are saying it, he explains. “As much as the reviewer means really well, it doesn’t do us any favours.”

The Tom Fun Orchestra formed three years ago, sort of by accident. The ECMAs were taking place in MacDougall’s stomping grounds of Sydney, and he submitted a “crappy quality recording” of some tunes he’d recording in his living room to see if he could land a showcase.

He succeeded in landing the showcase, but the trouble was he didn’t have a band.

“It took me two days to form a band,” he says with a laugh. He grabbed nine or 10 of his musician friends, taught them the songs quickly and they were off to the races.

“It was mostly to put on a spectacle,” he says of the decision to go with a 10-piece group. “It shouldn’t have worked.”
But it did. Reaction to the band was immediate, and it was positive.

“It was surprising at first,” MacDougall admits. “It was totally unrehearsed, so I’m sure it was entertaining in some fashion,” he jokes.

The band’s name was really a joke, one MacDougall admits he’d take back if he could, but “we’re stuck with it now.”

On the band’s debut album, the Orchestra consists 11 members: MacDougall, Morgan Currie, Hinson Calabrese, Alicia Penney, Shane O’Handley, Zach MacLean, Dave Mahalik, Victor Tomiczek, Devon Strang, Albert Lionais and Lachie MacDonald.

On the group’s Myspace page however, only 10 members are listed. The band’s official website says there are nine members. So you can figure out how many people are actually in the group next time you see them perform.

MacDougall says nine members are traveling on the current tour, which is part of the reason the band is hitting towns overseas instead of spreading their name across Canada first.

“It’s easier for us where there’s nine of us traveling. We can drive an hour between gigs instead of 10 hours between gigs,” he says.

He says it takes a lot of patience, planning and co-operation for the large group to travel together.

“We’re compatible with each other, but not with anyone else on the planet,” he laughs.

The band will continue to put most of its energies into overseas tours for now.

“It seems to make sense for us. And if I can get some quality travel in, why not?”

Check out the Tom Fun Orchestra here.

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