HANT
“Any song that we create, whether it’s from one guy or two guys… it’s all shared equally among us.”
Please, share some memories of The Canadian Tenors’ early days. We’ve been doing this for quite a while now. When
we started on our first tour that was in Saskatchewan, which is this small prairie province in the middle of Canada, nine years ago let’s say, we were all in one little like Toyota Corolla rental car (laughs) and going from town to town. We didn’t even play the major cities in Saskatchewan, which are called Saskatoon and Regina, okay? There’s a joke about that but I shouldn’t tell you that joke (laughter). We played 12 different small towns. That was our very humble beginnings. You know? As Malcolm Gladwell states in The Outliers, “We earned our ten thousand hours.” We went from town to town and then word of mouth spread and we got invited to other provinces. We started doing bigger cities like Toronto and Vancouver and built up a bigger audience. That was back when we were The Canadian Tenors and now we’re known as The Tenors, but every- one knows we come from Canada. I remember your performance onThe Oprah Winfrey Show. “Hallelujah” was the song we sang on Oprah. You
know what… that really changed our career trajec- tory. We became more of a household name. Millions and millions of people have seen that video and that was when we sang at The Olympics and the NBA All-Star game. It’s been an incredible thing. We’ve been to Africa a few times and sung for Her Majesty the Queen and we’ve been invited back to sing at her birthday in May… it’s pretty incredible! On your newest CDUnder One Sky, there are seven producers involved. Why was it important for The Tenors to have this many? We did consider actually, early on, going with one executive producer and we had a couple meetings
with that, sort of in mind. After one or two meetings, we realized that to have one person who would be at the helm as far as making artistic decisions, that it would have been the first time for us doing that. It just wasn’t meant to be. As you said, we are four individuals as well, who
come together to make this harmonious music. We all come from different backgrounds and trying to follow all of that creative energy through just one producer… we felt like we weren’t going to get so many important flavors or colors, as we would have wanted. Even though our intention was to go with one, we ended up with seven producers. We were still able to make it cohesive and put our stamp on it. Was there one song onUnder One Skythat was more difficult to sing and record, just the way you guys wanted it? Actually, Freddie Mercury’s “Who Wants To Live
Forever” was one of those pieces. It’s such a beast of a song. It’s almost like a small opera, in and of itself. I think that’s appropriate for Queen, the band, be- cause they did such rock opera arrangements, right. Certainly, I’m sure you would have loved to be a fly on the wall in some of those experiences in the studio, where we’re kind of banging our heads against the wall trying to find the best approach to serve the lyric and to serve the voices in the group. It’s not the easi- est process. We spend so many hours in the studio, Bill, that it’s probably not healthy (laughs). We end up coming out after recording an album and this one took over a year and we all need to take a break for a couple of weeks, because of not sleeping enough and not eating enough. We’re so devoted to it. It definitely shows. Have a great Thanksgiving and holiday season. Thanks Fraser. Thanks buddy.
NOVEMBER 2015 | RAGE monthly 33
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