Broken Social Scene's Brendan Canning - Interview

The beauty of Montreal-based Broken Social Scene is how easily its many conspicuous personalities lose themselves in one another to feed the whole of what they’re creating.

While Broken Social Scene as a collective has been garnering critical and fan attention since the band’s 2003 American debut You Forgot It In People through to the current self-titled album, the individual projects of group members have simultaneously taken off.

Possibly the biggest achievement is Feist (Leslie Feist) whose solo release Let It Die was awarded 2005 Juno Awards for both Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album. (In 2003 Broken Social Scene also was awarded the Juno for Best Alternative Album). Social Scene members Amy Millan, Evan Cranley and Torquil Campbell have had success with their outfit Stars as has Emily Haines and James Shaw in Metric, Andrew Whiteman with Apostle of Hustle and member Jason Collett. But each artist returns to feed the larger community, a beautiful mess of order or confusion called Broken Social Scene.

At the heart of Broken Social Scene is the label Arts & Crafts, created by Broken Social Scenes’ Kevin Drew with music business veterans Jeffrey Remedios and Daniel Culter. The goal has always been to produce art and within that members constantly inspire and challenge one another. Broken Social Scene’s usual round of suspects on any day currently includes Justin Peroff, Brendan Canning, Kevin Drew, Charles Spearin, Andrew Whiteman, Feist, Jason Collett, Evan Cranley, Emily Haines, James Shaw, Amy Millan, Dave Newfeld, John Crossingham, Ohad Benchitrit, Julie Penner, and Lisa Lobsinger. The Aquarian Weekly talks to BSS’s Brendan Canning.

AW: How do you feel about the recent success of Broken Social Scene and the rise of many of its individual members, like Feist and Metric?

Brendan Canning: Well it’s pretty exciting times, especially right now. The next couple months are sort of fast action. We have our homecoming shows, two shows in Toronto Friday and Saturday, playing a 2,300 seat venue for two nights and the next day we go to Sundance because we have a film at the Sundance Film Festival called Half Nelson, an independent film made by this Brooklyn director and producer. The most famous guy in it is Ryan Gosling. It’s a really good film. They had sort of used the music from Feel Good Lost and You Forgot It In People and Beehives [all Arts & Crafts albums] as well to score their film. We have New York after that and then an appearance on Conan O’Brien and then off to the U.K. for a whack of sold-out dates, and then an Australian tour to follow. Meanwhile, we have Leslie Feist in Montreal playing a sold-out show for 2000 people. We have Metric opening up for The Rolling Stones. We have Jason Collett in Europe. Andrew Whiteman’s working on a solo record. Charles Spearin just had a baby, which is probably the biggest news of all, second child as a matter of fact. And John Crossingham’s band, Raising the Fawn, is releasing a record. Julie Penner continues to produce the show Vinyl Café on radio up here, so the list goes on.

AW: It’s sort of a revolving door membership?

Canning: Yeah, we’ll have different members for New York than we will for Toronto, like Emily and James from Metric won’t be in Toronto, but they will be in New York. Leslie Feist, Amy Milan and Evan won’t be with us in New York, but they will be in Toronto. Charles won’t be with us for Sundance, but he will be in Toronto and New York.

AW: So it takes real organization to lock up your live set list I’d imagine.

Canning: The whole thing with everyone’s careers coming to such great fruition has made it more difficult to orchestrate Broken Social Scene as a touring entity and a traveling sideshow.

AW: Despite individual careers, everyone seems to be returning. It’s a statement about the music and the genuine importance of collaborating with people you enjoy.

Canning: The fact is it was all based upon friendship. There were no ads and papers. The only person we’ve reached outside the circle was our latest singer Lisa Lobsinger, mainly due to the fact that between Amy, Emily and Leslie Feist, we had no one to maintain the vocal duties and Lisa was a singer from a group I heard in Calgary. She was very close in range to Amy and Emily so that is why she got the call. Other than that everything has been within the family so to speak.

AW: What’s the process of writing a Broken Social Scene album like?

Canning: It’s very similar to the touring aspect. Some days you have certain members. Other days you have certain other members and a lot of it comes down to timing and how inspired an individual is towards a certain tune. There’s a core of us like myself, Justin Peroff, and Kevin Drew. We don’t have other bands. Obviously something needs to steer Broken Social Scene on a consistent basis because it is arguably the hardest beast to contain. And Andrew Whiteman, beyond Apostle of Hustle, he’s very much part of the Broken Social Scene sound as is Charles Spearin, as is everyone. But I mean at the core, that’s a good five that need to be involved on a fairly regular basis. As far as horn sections, they come when they come. As far as Feist or Emily or Amy, they are there when they’re there and we gladly welcome them when they show cause we need them.

AW: Do you write with a particular member in mind as far as singing or playing or just figure it out later?

Canning: I don’t think there’s any great pre-meditation. At least myself, I don’t really think that way. The opening track on this record, I actually did a vocal for and it got scrapped and then Amy was maybe going to do a vocal and she wasn’t quite inspired for it and Feist came in and nailed it.

AW: Everyone brings things to life a different way then?

Canning: Yeah, like “Stars and Sons” on You Forgot It In People, Kevin originally want in to try a couple vocal passes and there was me sort of saying, ‘Let me try something.’ Some days it can be very easy. Some days it can be very difficult.

AW: What’s next?

Canning: We have a whack of material recorded…I think we will release something before the end of the year—because we should…It’s interesting to see how the band mutates and develops.

Broken Social Scene performs at Webster Hall January 26, 27, 28.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 1/25/06.

Here's "Almost Crimes" live with really bad audio quality, but you can tell they're having fun.


Broken Social Scene video for "Fire Eye'd Boy."

Cyndi Lauper - Interview

by Tina Whelski

When Cyndi Lauper hit early MTV rotation in 1984 she knocked music charts into next week becoming the first artist of the rock era to have four Top 10 singles off a debut album, beginning with her female empowerment anthem “Girls Just Wanna Fun.” As the aptly named record, She’s So Unusual released subsequent hits “Time After Time,” “She Bop,” and “All Through The Night,” it shouted a message to celebrate the unconventional and stand tall in who you are.

From rainbow-colored thrift store clothes to cocktail dresses, Lauper has continued to re-invent her image to match her maturing music. And with a career now spanning 25 years, Lauper transforms again with The Body Acoustic (Daylight/Epic) where she strips her classics to their bare souls and invites guest artists to join her for footstompin’ “back porch” renditions of those as well as new songs.

Lauper is joined by Adam Lazzara of Taking Back Sunday for a twangy, earthy version of “Money Changes Everything,” while "Time After Time" features the angelic voice of Sarah McLachlan and "All Through The Night" is given funky treatment by reggae/pop superstar Shaggy. Japanese pop duo Puffy AmiYumi joins on "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," and Ani DiFranco and Vivian Green revel with Lauper on "Sisters of Avalon.”

Lauper applies her own interpretative prowess to re-workings of "Shine," "Fearless," "She Bop,” and "True Colors," while introducing two brand new songs, "Above The Clouds" featuring guitar legend Jeff Beck and "I'll Be Your River" with Green. Longtime pals Rick Chertoff (She's So Unusual) and William Wittman (At Last) joined Lauper to produce.

STARPOLISH: Why did you decide to go acoustic on this album?

LAUPER: I had been playing little outings with acoustic instruments and before I knew it I had an acoustic set of the songs that people would want to hear at benefits and songs that they might not know, but that lived well in this “dulcimer world.” After a while some guys at the record company said, “Gee, why don’t you go with that?” …I get to play dulcimer on every single song, so I was very thrilled. I felt kind of like, “William Shatner sings. Cyndi plays dulcimer.” (laughs).

STARPOLISH: You wanted to evoke a “back porch” vibe on this album, a feeling of people coming together, like after a big dinner, to sing and play?

I basically started out as a folk singer so it was very interesting to bring this back into folk. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call my approach folk, because they don’t exactly play the dulcimer the way I think you’re supposed to play it. But I don’t really care. Well, I don’t care and I do care. It’s more important to take that sound and bring it to a new place.

STARPOLISH: What was it like hearing so many different impressions of your songs?

LAUPER: It was interesting having other peoples’ takes. Sometimes you don’t say anything and you let them go and then you kind of tell them, “Well what about this rhythm?” You direct a little bit without directing too much…I had a fantastic time with Vivian [Green]. It was so fantastic in the studio on “I’ll Be Your River.” Shaggy was an over the phone kind of thing. He’s fantastic and I spoke to him about this folky, funky, rock kind of thing for “All Through The Night” and he got it. I mean he did call me up very cute and he says, “Cyn, this is a love song, right?” And Ani was fantastic on “Sisters of Avalon.” She’s so funny because I said, “You know, you gotta just conjure up this spirit.” She wrote back and said, “I had the spirit of The Supremes come to me—in the glitter dresses.” (laughs). Me, I’m singing “Sisters of Avalon” and I think I was just standing in front of a cauldron—I don’t know what I was conjuring up. Vivian sang on that too. It was great to have all of us from different kinds of music all meet together on a song about women and women’s sense of loss of history, reclaiming history or “herstory” as I had once put it.

STARPOLISH: Ani’s great. I recently featured her on my site WomanRock.com.

LAUPER: She’s a great artist and a hero. You can have people who have been at it longer than you inspire you or people who just come in inspire you. She’s just very inspiring. I find most artists inspiring.

STARPOLISH: In selecting tracks for this album you picked songs that you loved but do any mean more to you than the others?

LAUPER: “Waters Edge” surprised me because I didn’t actually think I would play dulcimer on it but I kept hearing it and I wanted to…Sometimes you go with a song one way and you bring it back the other way because it’s not right. You keep trying to find its soul, where it lives in that world. All of a sudden you find it. I was wrestling with that when I played it for Sarah. When she sang it was very Celtic and very kind of siren-like, but almost a call to the wild side of yourself. I think the whole song is about the underworld of a woman…When she started singing like that I played the dulcimer and the sound of that connected me to it. “Waters Edge” wasn’t just a song. I think most songs, if they’re part of your bone structure, they become a magical place that you walk through for three minutes, and that to me is the most enveloping, engaging kind of ballad or story or song you can sing. Another one is “Shine” because when it came time to do the solo I’d remembered that when Declyan was a little baby I used to play recorded tin whistles for him and I played “Sally’s Garden” all the time. We took a piece of that and put it in the solo and had the violin player play it. It was great because of what the song said: “Gonna pull you up by your love.” You’re making somebody stand and telling them they can shine and its okay, but you’ve got to pull them up through love, through their love for you and your love for them. That to me was the most powerful thing…I still believe that love does heal and you can use that to pull someone up.

STARPOLISH: I’ve interviewed some artists who have opened shows for you in the last few years, namely Jennifer Marks and Nellie McKay, and it was interesting to me how they both pointed out how supportive you were of their careers. You even went as far as to fix Mark’s makeup for her. Why is it so important to you to encourage emerging artists?

LAUPER: Ahh. I love them! For Jenn I thought her songs were good and the stage is just larger than life. When the Native Americans went to war, they put their war paint on. When a diva or somebody gets up there, you’ve got to make a bonfire right there. Baby, you’ve gotta dress for the occasion…So we’d pull stuff out and see what she was comfortable with and it was fun. With Nellie I had a riot. I wrote with her and she talked me into playing trombone on her record. That wasn’t hard to talk me into because you know, I love that trombone (laughs)…See, I came from touring with Cher. She used to say to me, “Cyn, I don’t like when you wear your makeup like that cause we can’t see into your eyes” and “I’m going to have them put more light on you.” Basically she was directing the lights and the cameras on me. She told them what she wanted. She had an amazing sense of professionalism and she taught me how to get my butt on stage on time. I have an enormous respect for her and she was really supportive.

STARPOLISH: So you pass that along…

LAUPER: Well you have to so that next time they’ll be good to somebody else and you just hand that tradition down. You embrace female musicians because you want more of us.

Originally posted on Starpolish.com 1/19/06.

Cyndi Lauper performing "Money Changes Everything" with Adam Lazzara of Taking Back Sunday.

Tegan and Sara - Interview

Tegan's childhood dreams included being a clown, working as a veterinarian with polar bears in the Arctic and being a rock star, of course. Sara wanted to be a lawyer and live in Boston. Thankfully the combat boots (for kicking around at punk gigs) the twins received from their mom back in Junior High put them closer in step with Tegan’s musical aspirations.

Since then the Calgary, Alberta, Canada-born duo have toured with many bands and performers, including The Killers, Hot Hot Heat, Ryan Adams, Rufus Wainwright, Neil Young, and Ben Folds. Tegan and Sara are currently touring with Cake supporting So Jealous (Vapor/Sanctuary). But none of this would be possible without mom.

“My mom was way cooler than Tegan and I,” says Sara. “She went back to University when we were in elementary school, so when we were going to Junior High and we’d be going back-to-school shopping she’d be like, ‘Do you want to get you noses pierced?’ We’d go to all these crazy stores where all her friends who were in their twenties would shop. She tried to get us combat boots and tried to get us to dress cool, but we didn’t want to. We dressed the way we wanted the first six months and then we ended up being geeky. That’s when we started letting her pick things. It’s normal now. We’re cooler than our mom, I think?”

Sara’s parents also decorated their house with sounds of the 70’s, leaving a lasting impression on the girls until they made their own discoveries, like the Smashing Pumpkins.

“There was so much music in our lives,” says Sara. “There was a transition period where what my parents were listening to became what I wanted to listen to…David Bowie and Led Zeppelin and The Police and that sort of stuff…I remember being thirteen and going to school and hearing The Smashing Pumpkins. I remember hearing “Siamese Dream.” Much Music in Canada was really playing that video with the ice cream truck…I had never heard music like that before and I remember that moment, for sure. That’s when it transitioned for me. I started seeking out what was in the city, what was local. We would go to punk gigs and indie rock gigs. Because of the Internet, I think it’s really genre-fied everything now, but at the time I knew there was music that your parents listened to on the radio and then there was the music that didn’t get played on the radio.”

Growing up as a fan, Sara still treats music with religious respect and acknowledges that Tegan and she are fortunate to be performers.

“We grew up very average, normal kids,” says Sara. “It wasn’t like we were piano virtuosos or something when we were six-years-old…We really literally were obsessed with music all the time. When I figured out that we could do it when we were fifteen or so, we just started writing songs. I guess we’re accidental artists…It’s an incredible job because there are so many jobs where you don’t get that kind of validation on a daily basis.”

Tegan and Sara perform at Hammerstein Ballroom on January 20.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 1/18/08.

Tegan and Sara performing "So Jealous."

Dr. Dog's Scott McMicken - Interview

Dr. Dog’s been running stray under the radar for nearly four years now, but with bands like My Morning Jacket and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah choosing them to open tours in the last year, it’s only a matter of time before fans outside their Philadelphia hometown start wagging their tails to the sounds of Easy Beat, the band’s first proper release on National Parking Records.

Captured with eight-track honesty, Toby Leaman (bass/vocals), Scott McMicken (woof+mud distortion solo guitar/vocals), Andrew Jones (guitar), Juston Stens (trapset/ harmonies), and Zach Miller (keyboards) deliver kicking rhythms, grinning lyrics and mesmerizing harmonies all tinted with dreamy, dark undertones.

“Dr. Dog tries to operate with as little thought as possible,” says McMicken laughing. “We have been fortunate, Toby and me, to have known each other for so long that we can work from each other without thinking too hard or with very little pretense. That’s one of the things that I’m most consistently thankful for in this band, just the ease with which things work. We have a lot of catch phrases in Dr. Dog and they all pertain to just working with immediacy, like ‘just nail it,’ which means just go at it, hit it in once and it’s done…In Dr. Dog if it’s not working immediately then it’s just abandoned.”

Live, Dr. Dog’s pack demonstrates its musical instinct best, tuning in for those convincing bits of time where everyone is having fun. Wearing oversized sunglasses, perhaps to shade the band’s warm tones hallucinating around him, McMicken ultimately is so stricken with song he lands on the floor scratching around his guitar. In “Wake Up,” Dr. Dog sing, “We are only part of a dream” and it’s a delightful trance they create.

“It’s been a couple of years for us and the fun just keeps compounding,” says McMicken. “We really hadn’t done any touring prior to a couple years ago and while we would have wanted to, the opportunity just didn’t present itself and we’re not the type of dudes to have that kind of labored discipline. If My Morning Jacket wouldn’t have asked us to go on tour, chances are we’d probably still be in a basement. Getting in front of people really helped us get better live and helped us appreciate how much you can do with a live show.”

Lyrically imaginative lines like, “I was born at the scene of a crime/every witness, he was deaf and dumb and blind” (from “Wake Up”) fuel the delirium the band patches together.

“Toby’s one of my favorite lyricists on the planet and I have really no idea where he’s coming from a lot of times,” says McMicken. “…He admires my ability to be so direct… but I’ve always wished I could write more from the imagination like he does…That kid can come up with a song on a dime. He must write like ten songs a day off the top of his head…A permeating theme in Dr. Dog the last two years has been ideas about dreaming. For the next album there’s a lot of that…So many of the songs are about the difference between dreaming and being awake and those lingering emotions you have while you’re asleep that when you wake up you can’t quite pinpoint, how it affects your day. This comes back to Toby’s lyric-writing…One aspect of Toby that I’ve always noticed is that he’s severely dark and twisted is his dreaming world. That’s got to have a lot to do with his aesthetic sensibility as a lyricist.”

Dr. Dog is nearly finished with its follow up album, but the main challenge has been that things just sound “too good.”

“We’re working with a lot better equipment now,” says McMicken. “Easy Beat was made with eight tracks only and we have 24 tracks now, so a lot more is possible… A lot of people think it [Easy Beat] doesn’t sound that good or they call it lo-fi or something like that, but to me that’s what I wish all music sounded like. It has a bit of a smoke screen in front of it. It does kind of put it in this context. I think that’s why some people who like it appreciate that it appeals to your being sort of removed.”

Dr. Dog performs at Mercury Lounge January 27.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 1/11/06.

Dr. Dog video for "Fool's Life."

Emily Haines of Metric - Interview

Metric made the map with their 2003 debut, , Old World Underground Where Are You Now and over the course of 2004-05 they traveled it. Emily Haines (vocals/synths), Jimmy Shaw (guitar), Josh Winstead (bass) and Joules Scott-Key (drums) were everywhere, from MTV and commercial rock radio to French art-house cinemas (the band made a show-stopping cameo in Oliver Assayas’ 2004 junkie drama Clean); depending on the night, you could find Emily playing sombre solo piano shows in churches, or diving off the stage at Toronto’s Mod Club Theatre, where Metric played an unprecedented four sold-out nights in a row in January ’05. And the band’s about to mark another milestone this month performing music from their latest album, Live It Out, (Last Gang Records) as they open for The Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden January 18 and 20.

“I think it’s going to be amazing,” says Haines. “The way we found out was the best too. We were in France. We just finished a three month tour, and we were so tired. It was our last night and there were a lot of filmmakers there and they threw this party for us on a boat on a set, which was already really cool. It was like an apartment on water. While we were there we got the call that we had gotten the Stones show and we’re like, ‘Well, where? Madison Square Garden! Great!’”

Described as a “band comfortable making music for both the misfits and the masses,” the Toronto four-piece with hometowns scattered throughout the world (Montreal, London, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles), demonstrate that as concerned citizens, the personal and political are interchangeable.

“I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence that each of us realize that whatever’s happening in the larger context of the world always seems to have a big impact where we’re each at personally,” says Haines. “Decisions relating to where to live, what move to make next, who to work with and what not to do is pretty affected by the larger state of things…We went back to Canada the day Bush got re-elected. It sounds like a most poetic act of civil disobedience, but it was in fact the biggest coincidence…I was like, ‘Wow, my life is on this storyline and I don’t know who is writing it.’”

Why not shut the world out? Why is responsibility important?

“I think about that.” said Haines. “I’m kind of envious of people who don’t feel that responsibility. Is it just the way I was raised? And it just happens that the three other people I’m most excited to work on music with were raised the same way? I don’t know. I’m sure if I sat down with a therapist they could help me figure it out (laughs)…By going to Canada and surrounding myself with friends, it’s the closest thing I could do to just shutting the world out and hibernating with my friends and making a record, but it’s still completely present (laughs).
While in Toronto, surrounded by childhood pals from Broken Social Scene and Stars, Metric found additional inspiration, particularly for Haines’ favorite track, “Empty.”

“So much changed with all my friends,” says Haines. “It was just a crazy bunch of years between what happened in the New York scene and the loft that we lived in and obviously Nick Zinger and Karen O [both of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs] got so huge. Then with Broken Social Scene and Stars and all those inter-relationships, everybody’s lives just sort of fell apart. Nobody really knew how it was going to keep going. That summer James and I got together over at Kevin Drew’s place [from Broken Social Scene] and that song was the first sign to me that we were going to be able to make another record. I really like the song because we definitely exhausted a certain approach to trying to make improvements in our lives and what we perceive the world to be and we definitely had to take another tact.”

Haines leaves her songs open to interpretation, however, and often finds other peoples’ takes quite amusing.

“It’s funny,” says Haines. “I don’t really read press, but I read a couple of things and they were the most hilarious interpretations of the songs—written as though they had gotten first-hand, sworn testimony from me that that was what the song was about. It makes me happy in a way that it’s so open to interpretation, but in this case they found war imagery everywhere. Like ‘Glass Ceiling’ was like the tale of a soldier who’s general won’t let him speak out, I mean wow! Obviously anyone can get whatever they want.”

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 1/4/06.