Interview with Gord Sinclair [ Sep/Oct 2004 ]

Interview with Gord Sinclair [ Sep/Oct 2004 ] - Printable Version

+- PunBB (https://punbb.in)
+-- Forum: General Discussion - Hipbase.com (https://punbb.in/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Tragically Hip Discussion (https://punbb.in/forumdisplay.php?fid=7)
+--- Thread: Interview with Gord Sinclair [ Sep/Oct 2004 ] (/showthread.php?tid=13271)

Interview with Gord Sinclair [ Sep/Oct 2004 ] - BrenTheodore - 07-25-2009

While researching my paper on the Hip, I found this online in the Dal library. It is an old interview with Sinclair from Canadian Musician. Not sure if anyone has ever seen this, but it explains about some of the inspiration for some songs IBE and other cool stuff. Enjoy.

. . . : : : . . .

Capturing the essence of The Tragically Hip live

"It's amazing in this business how sometimes things just work out to be the best possible combination of things," says Hip Bassist, Gord Sinclair. Although he's talking about the process of making In Between Evolution. The Hip's latest record and the events that led up to it. It's also a statement that could sum up his feeling about the band in general.

After almost 20 years together and 11 albums, the Tragically Hip remains enviably vital in performance and on record, there's no mystery to the appeal of The Hip's live show. Whether it's the sonic interplay between guitarists Paul Langlois and Rob Baker, Gord Downie's "just on loan from the asylum" delivery or the band's ever deepening grab bag of songs you know like the back of your hand, there's just something exciting about these Ave guys on stage that keeps people coming back. There's more to it than that though; their music tends to creep up on you, both lyrically and instrumentally. They've never beat listeners over the head with the obvious and Downie's lyrics are rarely instantly transparent. So, although it might take more time for a Hip track to sink in than the average summer mega hit, they tend to kick around in the corners of your mind, find a good soft spot, dig in deep, and settle in for the long haul.

The new record, recorded in Seattle at Studio X (formerly Bad Animals) with producer Adam Kasper (Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age), is no different in that respect. But where their last effort, In Violet Light, was more of a pure studio record, this one is a conscious effort to capture The Hip's live energy. Driven by songs that are often as aggressive as they are to the point, the result is raw at times, but that was the idea. In one interview Hip drummer, Johnny Fay, likens the new album's live, spare vibe to an earlier Hip Record, 1991's Road Apples.

After finishing up tour commitments in December 2003 and then spending roughly four weeks away from each other. The Hip were ready to start writing. Although the band, Sinclair says, was more organized than in the past, there was still a clean slate before them that needed to be filled. "You look around the room at each other thinking, 'How the fuck did we start it the last time? What happened?' Then all of a sudden it starts and six, eight months later you're mastering a record with Bob Ludwig again. It's great. It's exciting."

As Sinclair points out, though, it's easy to say you want to capture the live essence of the band live in studio, but another thing entirely to achieve it. As a starting point the band would get together for a day or two and hammer their ideas into shape, different members grabbing onto different elements of the songs, running with them and letting the songs evolve naturally. "Usually all five of us kind of gravitate towards the same sort of thing," he says. "Slowly, but surely, what began to evolve was a real hard-edged collection of songs. I'm really fortunate to be in a situation where there're four other resources of musical material. It never gets boring." And boredom, he believes, can kill the writing process. "If you try and force something to come and say I'm going to work from 9 to 5 and finish this song by hook or by crook you sometimes end up taking it to a place where it may not want to go. We've always gone out of our way to record everything we're doing with each other, because sometimes you come back and you've lost the essence of what you were doing. You realize, 'Well I've been working too hard at this. I've made my part too slick.' I think we've removed the ego from the equation enough that none of us feel too precious about what we're doing."

Disagreements are resolved by "leaving no stone unturned" in the writing/arranging process; allowing each member free reign in terms of their contribution individually and finding the best solutions in consensus. "It's very direct the way we deal with each other. Do I get a 100 per cent of my way all the time within the band? No, but creatively it's really satisfying. I know if I bounce an idea off them and no one responds that maybe it wasn't the best idea I've ever had." Flexibility and compromise is key.

With a collection of 15 to 20 songs in as near a state of completion as they could get them, but still without a producer locked in, the band headed west to Whistler, BC to finish arranging the songs free from the distractions of home. While there, local tragedy struck when Rutherford Creek flooded, sweeping away a car carrying several locals returning home after work. "It's a small community. It hit everybody really, really hard and beyond condolences, we wanted to do something for these young guys and their families. So we set up a couple gigs at the Boot Pub." First and foremost, the shows allowed The Hip to give something back to a community they have longstanding ties to, but it also gave them a chance to flesh out the new material on stage with the crowd packed in around them and people hanging over their heads. It was an event that, Sinclair says, inspired them to take the writing process to a new level just about the time that Adam Kasper was to meet with them.

"He was a fan of ours from the stage, not from on record. He kept coming back to what he felt was a gap between what the band is in a live setting and what the band is in a recorded work." By the time recording started, Sinclair says; "We had the stuff cold; it was just a matter of capturing that intangible performance aspect. But." he continues, "It's the most difficult thing going to try to capture the essence of a band on tape." He credits Adam with applying his meticulous sense of detail to creating an environment that enabled them to do just that. "It was all very chilled. Very much like going up on stage. There's no pressure, like, 'Oh, the tape machine is rolling. I better tense up my ass and overplay.'"

Like any normal gig day, the band would spend some time doing a live sound check, trying out different combinations of amps and guitars and jamming on the songs they were going to record. "We'd work on one, maybe two tracks a day, in a big room where we were able to set up two, sometimes three different kits. So we'd do it, very laid back, have a little lunch, kick back and spend the rest of the day playing. The end result was that half the record is single versions; that's what the band is all about, this simultaneous performance of five guys."

For Sinclair it's a return to earlier days, the way the band did their first recordings; "As simple as that sounds it was kind of a complex approach; you're out on the road, you're playing, you get a recording contract, you finally get a chance to go in the studio, minimal budget, minimal amount of time — you gotta know your shit going in — you set up, play and lo and behold, three weeks later, you've got a record." On some records, particularly those recorded in the band's own studio, The Bathouse, Sinclair says they had a tendency to micromanage the songs, to really pick them apart in the digital realm. It's part of the luxury of having your own studio, he says, but adds that your chances of getting a truly live sound go out the window pretty quickly.

"We wanted to create this environment: We're on someone else's nickel, the meter's running and this is costing us. So we fired up the 2" machine and stayed away from the Pro Tools rigs, which to me was perfect. It's kind of like this process of rediscovering what the essence of the band is. I've been at every show we've ever played, but I've never had the chance to stand out front to see what the impact is — we're very proud of our recorded output, but what people have always focused on is what the five guys in the group do on stage. Adam jumped at the chance to work with the group based upon his experiences live, not anything that we'd done on record. Clearly he thought there was something he could rediscover that we'd lost sight of, or that other producers hadn't been able to find, and I think he achieved it."

Although some of the tracks required a certain amount of fixes, overdubs and buffing up in the digital realm, the band and Adam did their best to keep the album as purely live as possible. "It's all about creating a musical arrangement where the parts just blend very naturally, like we do on stage." Sharing space in the mix, glory in the arrangements and taking meticulous notes that any overdubs match the original live track.

As much as the recording process helped bring out the grunt instrumentally it also suited Gord Downie's latest batch of lyrics and his trademark growl. "I know Gord's trying to capture place and mood, and specific events, in a roundabout way. It's all about creating a sense of atmosphere. I know 'Mean Street' was written when he was on the road for Battle Of The Nudes (Gord Downie's second solo record), about a run in that he had with a person on the street. I think that song, lyrically, came together for Gord after we'd been working on the record. Being in Seattle, having to watch CNN constantly definitely informed that particular track."

Sinclair describes the songs as short, beefy and meant to be delivered aggressively — a product of forces that were affecting the band long before the actual recording took place: "One Night In Copenhagen", for example, talks about a time that had a great deal to do with how the new record would evolve: "'Copenhagen' was inspired when we were touring at the end of the In Violet Light sessions. Professionally it was a difficult time for us; we'd just left our long-term manager of 15 years; we'd come through a very difficult tour and yet, amidst it all, the group was playing better than we ever had. The stage, and the five of us, became a real refuge. It was our last month of touring in Europe that inspired that song. You're a million miles away from home. There's no sunlight. Everything is falling apart around you and yet, there's this life raft and the life raft happens to be the five guys in this band on stage."

In the end the experiences brought the band closer together, more inspired than ever and with a renewed belief in what they do. "You set that as a backdrop to everything we're going through in a global sense, particularly our exposure to the United States and what we're seeing every day on the news and the kind of the world in which we live. There's an urgency to the way the world is right now. I think that coloured a lot of what Gord was writing thematically. It can't help but infiltrate your mindset and how you're approaching what you're doing." It's a sentiment that shows up in a number of places, but nowhere as starkly as on "Are We Family", where Downie's lyrics ask; "Are we family... when taking care of each other one bullet to another." It's hardly all doom and gloom, mind you. There are lighter moments and the opaque quality of The Hip's lyrics have always allowed listeners to put their own spin on the song's meanings.

Sinclair is quick to express his satisfaction with where the band is now and a deep pride in what they've accomplished. "I've had the same job for almost 20 years with the same guys as my co-workers and I still love going to work everyday. We're at the stage of our career that if we didn't enjoy the writing process and the performance process we wouldn't be doing it." Although, he says, The Hip have never achieved the variety of universal acceptance globally that they have in Canada, that they've been together for as long as they have and can continue to do what they do so well together is the very definition of success. "The road to American stardom is littered with groups like ours. I've honestly always believed that if we had achieved proportional success in the United States compared to what we did in Canada earlier in our career I doubt the band would still be together."

Although we often define our national identity in terms of some vague differences between the Americans and ourselves, we know there's more to it than that. The relationship between Canada and the US is impossible for Canadian artists to ignore and has always informed Canadian music and fascinated musicians. Years ago, Sinclair wrote a paper for a fourth-year Canadian History course on the Gordon Lightfoot song, "A Black Day In July". More recently, he and The Hip were asked to cover the song for Beautiful: A Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot. "I always loved the piece of music. The images he evokes from literally across the river; you're watching Detroit burn — I always loved the concept that here, literally a stone's throw away, while we have tones of social problems that are uniquely Canadian, that we don't have this one, clearly nagging, monstrous problem that the United States have." When the chance came to record the song, the band jumped at it.

Differences or not, for most Canadian artists American success is the holy grail of music — America is, after all, where they keep all the fancy real estate and such. But it's all a matter of perspective. "For us, it's always been a very, very strange career," he says. "In the US and Europe it's a market by market trip for the band; one night we're an arena band, the next a bar band, the next a theatre act." With the support of the band's Canadian label as well as fans in Canada, the US and Europe they've managed to stay pretty much in the black over their careers. "We were never making anyone in the business enough money that they wanted to fuck around with what we were doing, you know? We never had someone coming in and saying, 'Okay, you've sold 200,000 copies of Fully Completely — let's try to make that 2 million.' We've just sort of flown — it's kind of like a little drug runner from the Bahamas — safely under the radar, dropped our product off and flown right back to the safety of grand old Canada."

Sinclair points out that there are, no doubt, some people who might view their success as failure, but he says; "Other groups look to us as being successful because of the length of our career and the fact that we can still gig. I'll never be living in Bel Air with Britney Spears as my next-door neighbour, but I'm quite content living where I'm living. You can see the cost of American success by the number of artists who never have the chance to achieve, what I think, is their creative potential, because of the demands placed on them by the star making machine. For me the opportunity to explore who I am as a writer, who my bandmates are as writers, that's really what it's all comes down to."

For a band that has weathered, and at times defied the trends, with their output and experience, you'd think that once the album was done and in the can the hard part of the creative process would be done. "Ridiculously enough, naming the record, trying to find one phrase that encompasses all the ideas that are there, has always been really difficult for us. Again we found ourselves with the record completed, the artwork underway and no title for the thing." He laughs. In this case the cover art supplied by artist, Cameron Tomsett, took the pressure off the band. The visual connection between Cameron's art and their music is something The Hip has already expanded, by using some of his animations in the video for "Vaccination Scar" as well as on their Web site. They also hope to incorporate it into visual for their tour when they hit the road in the fall. "We knew that we wanted to work with Cameron and when he presented us with the piece we fell head over heels in love with it. And as soon as I heard the title of the piece, to me, it was perfect for the album." Perfect, because it applies to the individuals in the band, the band itself as well as being a reflection of what the world around them is up to and being a return to early day and a more aggressive recording. Maybe it's a stretch, but the title could also sum up Sinclair's feelings about the state of the industry...

Although he admits it's not such a great time in the music business — he mentions that a number of the band's friends have lost their jobs at record companies and a number of bands have lost their deals — he's refreshingly upbeat about both the present and future of the music industry. "What will never change is that there are musicians out there who will find a way to record their output, a way to get up onto the stage. Music fans will seek them out. If it means something to you, then you support it and go to see them play. It doesn't matter if you're formerly on a major label and now you're on an indie. It doesn't matter if you're selling your records at the front of the stage with your T-shirts. There's too much press about the demise of the music business. There are more groups playing now and there's better music available in a million different formats."

At the time of this interview The Hip are hours away from a show at Toronto's Mod Club to celebrate In Between Evolution's release. Over the summer they'll be playing a variety of festivals and one offs and starting to tour Canada and worldwide in earnest in September. I know I should probably let Sinclair go to sound check for tonight's show, but before I do I wonder aloud if they've ever thought of bringing Roadside Attraction back...

"We actually considered at one point this summer. It just didn't come off. You know I've always been a fan of the all-day rock festival. It's a great way to see good old bands and hot young bands all together — sort of a one-stop-shopping kind of thing. When we first started Roadside it was all about getting into unusual places like Seabird Island, that Speedway in Ottawa, Stittsville. You bring your tent and you get a bag of weed and a box of beer and you camp out. You get ready for a fun day out in the sun. I think the desire for people to make it a little more convenient; with ample parking, flush toilets, 'here's your concession stand,' and all, has taken a lot of the charm away from the outdoor festival. It's a little difficult to sell that when you know it's happening in two weeks at the same venue with another festival type combination — you know, ultimately, what people really want from their musicians is the sense that this is special, that I'm part of something here. That's what we've always tried to do with every gig."

"We've always gone out of our way to record everything, because sometimes you come back and you've lost the essence of what you are doing."

"We've removed the ego front the equation enough that none of us feel too precious about what we're doing."

For More Info On... The Tragically Hip check out <a class="postlink" href="http://www.thehip.com">www.thehip.com</a>

Beautiful: A Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot check out <a class="postlink" href="http://www.northernblues.com">www.northernblues.com</a> • Artist Cameron Tomsett out <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tomsett.com">www.tomsett.com</a>

~~~~~~~~

By Kevin Young

Re: Interview with Gord Sinclair [ Sep/Oct 2004 ] - NegPhil - 07-25-2009

Thanks for posting this. :thumb:

Re: Interview with Gord Sinclair [ Sep/Oct 2004 ] - Escape@Hand - 07-25-2009

That's a good read. Thanks for posting; I've always thought that IBE sounded like their older stuff (in terms of the production/recording style), live off the floor type recording, so it's pretty cool that they feel the same way. I love the way that album sounds, so raw and in-your-face, the way all Hip albums should sound!

Re: Interview with Gord Sinclair [ Sep/Oct 2004 ] - ikky99 - 07-26-2009

GREAT article!

Re: Interview with Gord Sinclair [ Sep/Oct 2004 ] - BrenTheodore - 07-26-2009

There were more articles; I will sort through some and post a few more later on.