DB: Taking yourself as a music fan, what was it about seeing live music when you were younger that inspired you?
SV: Volume, the lights, the feeling of being in a crowd when it becomes just one, big writhing beast instead of a whole bunch of different people. Those moments where…like at a summer festival there's always that perfect moment where the northern lights are out and people are dancing and you just kind of look around and it hits you. It's a total rush. We've always tried to be a live band and if we happened to walk in and a band like us was playing we'd leave happy. We've very much carried that philosophy around; if we make sure we're having that experience on stage, people can tap into it.
DB: Do you approach each different show from a different mind set or do you have a particular routine to prepare yourself for that night?
SV: We do a little bit of singing before just to make sure that everyone's warmed up. Depending on the show - some of the shows that we have done in the last little while we have had guests join us - on those shows it's a little bit different, you almost have to think again. But there's a lot of shows where it's just the three of us and before we go on everyone just takes a deep breath and tries to get to that place, where you're not thinking, you're just playing. Before you know it, you're playing things that you've never played before.
DB: What about 'post game'? Can you give us an overview of your first half hour after a performance?
SV: Oh, it's pretty attractive (laughs). We peel our really, sweaty clothes off; we hang out on the bus and dry off; we drink as much liquid as we can; Saf goes to tear his drums down because he likes to handle them himself. We then go out and meet people for a little while…kind of just like anyone else would do after a really physical job. We just have to wind down and maybe talk about the show; if we've recorded it maybe listen to a little bit of it and see what we could do better, and what parts we were pleased with. Depending on the show what we do afterwards can be different; sometimes everyone sites and sulks if they didn't feel like they had a good night playing, or argues. Other nights we all hang out saying "This was great! Let's go out and meet people!"…
DB: …so you haven't quite hit the whole "go out and trash the hotel room" stage yet?
SV: No, we were all working class kids, brought up knowing that if you trash your hotel room, somebody's Mom or Dad has to clean it. When you're younger you think "aah, someone will do it", but as you get older you think "would I want to clean that room up? That's not part of the deal". It's wasted energy. There's a lot about the idea of being in a band that may have appealed to us when we were younger, but now it's very much about "what will it do to my head if we play music like this? What will it do to the audience if we do this?" All the hotel comes down do is 'there better be a good shower' (laughs), 'there better be good pillows', and you 'better be able to control the temperature'.
DB: Do you think that too much pressure is placed on Canadian bands by reporters and interviewers (like me)? We always bring it up and say "oh, another Canadian band. Do you think you're going to make it in the States, etc"?
SV: Yeah, there's a lot of talk about making it in the States, which I guess is only natural as it's where the business is located; there's so many people there and we're on the same continent so we should get there. I don't know, however, that there is a 'Canadian sound' necessarily. The States, and the business is a weird thing. Especially now with alcohol companies owning so much of the music business, it's a 'bottom-line business'. It's not "hey, we really think this has artistic merit and if we get it in front of enough people and work hard enough they'll eventually catch on". Now it's more like "okay, throw out that single. If that does well they can do another one, if not maybe they can go back to school". That's why I think we focused on playing live so much; we've toured through the United States a lot and we've had a couple of our records come out there. The business is so…even people that want to do something that is different from either new metal or pop feel that they have their hand's tied, like they can't really do anything or else someone will come in and say "wellll, this record that you made didn't blow up right away, so we're dropping you".
DB: Do you find that pop, rap and metal has taken over right now?
SV: I think that these genres of music is music that speaks to people. Many people want music to be a soundtrack to their coolness. It's like "this music sounds like the way I look, and my friends and I talk a certain way and we get along and we identify with it", and that's fine. There should be fluffy pop music for people who just want the cotton candy. It just makes me sad that so much of it is at the expense of other music getting out to people. It's not just sour grapes and I'm not just talking about us, but for me as a music fan it spins my head to know that Ron Sexsmith got dropped from his label and has to work so hard to put records out. He's such a brilliant songwriter and then other put-together shit that is so obviously a formula (pauses). Guys that are making all the money due to a television show about them, it's…well, one part of me thinks that people simply look to what the biggest movies are. They're generally kind of the shittiest movies of all but they have just enough little pieces to draw everybody in. So I think it's pretty much all over the place. There's no accounting for a lot of people's tastes and maybe they want something different out of it than I do, personally. It's really twisted to watch it happen. To think that 'N Sync has sold more records than a whole lot of Bob Dylan records combined. For myself, I think "what has more merit'? I'm sure this era will be like disco, where they look back and go "it got a little heavy for a while, but then they did this". There's just so many things going on right now; the industry's so big and there's so much money behind these acts. On the other hand it's really cool to stumble across something you really like that doesn't explode, that doesn't become a flavour-of-the-month and become trivialized.
DB: Do you think that we've seen "the death" of the single singer-songwriter? Do you think an act like a Gordon Lightfoot could come out into today's music scene?
SV: Well there's a little pocket of a whole bunch of those kind of people. I don't know that they're getting huge, but there do seem to be quite a few singer-songwriters that are doing interesting things…just a little more so under the radar. Even in Canada we have our Hawksley Workmans and the Rufus Wainwrights who do something that is a little more intelligent and different than the regular solo artist. I think that when you take music as an art form, there's a lot of interesting things going on. There should almost be two different charts: a McDonalds' sales chart for who's selling the most (not all of that is bad, I mean Radiohead is selling a lot of records), but on the other hand there should be an artistic merit chart, which is totally subjective, but it would put it in a different category for the better.
DB: Shaun, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today…
SV: Sure, Dave…no problem.
Interview with Dave Brosha, 2001.
<< Continued from part one
