As you can tell from the video, I’m absolutely terrified! Tere’s a lot of twiddling of the thumbs and a couple of visible shakes!
characters that might have, I dunno, stolen my heart as well.
I imagine that you were bequeathed some of your musical passion or influence from your parents, but a career in music wasn’t the easiest thing for them to stomach, was it? No, I mean they’re fine now, but it’s been exaggerated a bit and that’s my own fault for just rambling, haha. Tey’re just like any other parents; when their kid tells them they’ve dropped out of school and moved away to a different country and I’m not coming back ‘til my album’s finished, they’re going to be naturally a bit freaked out! But it’s all good, they’re really supportive now and I just say that initially, they just wanted the best for me and in the beginning they didn’t think what I was doing was the best and they were freaked out. Tey just had a lot of expectations for me, and dropping out of university and moving to a different country was not one that they expected!
You mentioned Great Lake Swimmers, but there are a wealth of Canadian bands that I really love, and all very different; Metric and Broken Social Scene for that, Feist, Grimes, hip hop artists like K-Os… Is it a very nurturing scene in Canada, or are there success stories come out of something quite disparate? I think in Canada, not many people expect to make a career out of music. Te music industry isn’t very big there; it’s a very big country, but the population is only something like 40 million people, so no one really expects to make a career out of it. People are just very creative and, I guess, not afraid to be different because they don’t expect anyone to sign them so I find that musicians in Toronto just go for it creatively.
One of the other aspects of music that I read you had an affinity with were the old tradition of field recordings. I’ve listened to loads of live sessions of your music, like the Daytrotter session, and they sound not too distant from the album recording. Did
you set out to translate that live sound? I think what happened was that I hadn’t really played that many shows until I recorded the album, so I recorded the album and then figured out how I wanted to sound live and took it from there.
I was reading the write-up on the Daytrotter website actually – - I haven’t even listened to that yet, I should get around to it.
Oh, I love the Daytrotter site – I’m a paid up member and each new session is a real treat to listen to… I remember when I did that, I was in Ashville, North Carolina and someone came and picked me up to take me to the studio, and it was amazing. After, when I walked out, I noticed a music shop across the street and said to the guy, “I see loads of vintage amps over there – what are they like?” He said, “I’m not sure, but I know that Jack White was in there last night and spent a fortune!” So I went in there and just plugged my guitar into a bunch of amps and thought if it’s good enough for Jack White, it’s good enough for me! I found this vintage amp from 1956, a Fender Champ and it doesn’t have any tone dials, just a volume dial. I think it was originally meant for harmonica players.
Te write-up on the site suggested that the tracks were autobiographical, but equally, they come across as folk narratives that anyone can share – ancient themes that run through all of our lives… When I write lyrics, well certainly when I was writing them for this album, I tried to write personal lyrics, but still have them be very vague. So I have my own personal meanings that I don’t really want to share, but by writing it that way, I made it so that
people could interpret it in their own way.
You spoke about writing for the new album, but as you said, you also haven’t had much time, so as fans, how long do we have to wait? No, I haven’t, but I started writing it a couple of months ago and so there are a handful of songs that are written for it. But it’s just gone a bit dry inside of my head; I think just ‘cause of time, and being quite busy. I’m not sure… there are a couple of songs that I might do a live EP with, or might do a record some time down the line, so hopefully it won’t be too long!
Lastly, you’re coming to Norwich as part of the line-up for Norwich Sound and Vision’s John Peel Festival of New Music, which I’m really excited about in its entirety. I read that at one stage you couldn’t afford to take the whole band on the road with you, so what’s the situation for this tour? Te whole band’s coming! Tat was the American tour in May; we were an opening band and it was very expensive to do that 35 days in America but we’re in the UK now – we’re all based here so we’re all coming.
I’m sure you’ll appreciate the company of the band for this tour though – are you looking forward to it? Yeah, very much; I’m very excited to be able to do this again with all of my buddies. Rob Ellis is going to be drumming with us as well –
No way! I can’t tell you how many albums I own that he’s had something to do with… Yeah, so I’m really looking forward to doing it!
Emma Garwood
Cold Specks comes to the Norwich Arts Centre on Friday 12th October, as part of Norwich Sound and Vision, running from 11th-13th Oct. For ticket info go to
www.norwichsoundandvision.co.uk. Read the full interview at
Outlineonline.co.uversion of this interview at
Outlineonline.co.uk
outlineonline.co.uk / October 2012 / 27
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