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Paul Langlois
Broken Road
As guitarist for The Tragically Hip, Paul Langlois has been a member of one of the most successful bands in Canadian rock music for over two decades. He maintains that, in all those years, the desire to make a solo record never really entered his mind. This started to change early in 2010. He booked time at The Bathouse, the long-time recording studio of The Hip located in Bath, Ontario, just west of Kingston. “I guess I was in the studio and The Hip weren’t getting together for quite some time,” the veteran musician recalls. “We knew that the end of 2010 was probably the earliest that we would get together and write.”
Given this window of opportunity, Langlois decided to work on his own material, calling in Aaron Holmberg, sound engineer for the Hip, to help with the process. The first session yielded five songs. A few more tunes were completed during a second round of recording in May, and by September there was a cohesive collection of ten tracks. Langlois handled all the instruments, adding vocals to each number typically only after the music had come together. He found himself suddenly with a full album in his lap and needed to decide what to do with it. Not knowing quite what to expect from listeners, the forty-six year old released Fix This Head early in December on his own label, Ching Music. He says that both Tragically Hip fans and the generally curious have picked up the record. “Certain songs came out that I could hear the Hip do, or that do have sort of Hip sounds,” he suggests. “That’s because it’s my guitar and I couldn’t resist putting an electric guitar on it, and that’s how I play it.”
The album kicks off with ‘Broken Road’, a terrific song for the highway that would not feel out of place as a bonus track on Up to Here; interestingly, it is the one piece that was written long ago and summons up what life was once like in The Hip. “That’s the one song that is older than the rest,” Langlois smiles. “I’ve had that a long time. When I wrote it, I was picturing driving the van, which I used to do a lot of, trying to stay awake while everyone else is asleep, trying to get back to Kingston.”
Langlois ultimately achieves something quite distinctive while operating outside the group dynamic. His lyrics are often deeply personal, even confessional, and the music crosses genres well. One theme that seems to run throughout the album is an exploration of what constitutes home. In the memorable folk-tinged closer, ‘Things I Should Have Said’, Langlois addresses his wife directly, questioning the impact of his years of travel. “Being just responsible for myself and sort of living that harder life, and then getting home – adjusting I think was more difficult this time around,” he acknowledges, thinking of his most recent round of touring with The Hip. “That song came out of that. It’s almost an apology. It’s almost an apology for being a guy, kind of just saying, ‘I should have said these things to you back then.’”
Recently at Merchants of Green Coffee in Toronto, Paul Langlois spoke with Canadian Interviews about the development of Fix This Head. He talks about his hesitation in mounting a tour to showcase the album, noting that the benefits of performing with The Tragically Hip are hard to top. Hockey fans will be intrigued to hear how ‘Can’t Wait Anymore’, which is perhaps the best song on the album, wound up serving as the soundtrack for a recent Hockey Night in Canada montage. Best of all, Langlois offers his thoughts on the merits of capturing a song in just a handful of takes. The benefits of this approach are apparent throughout his solo debut.
CI: After listening to the album, songs like ‘Broken Road’ and ‘Shattered Down’ especially, it made me wonder, are you going to get out and tour with this? Are you planning to play some shows, or was this more just about the album?
PL: It certainly was more that I just wanted to put it out, even with the timing because it really came out on December seventh, which is a silly time to put out a record. You can’t get it in the stores. I was told, “you can’t get it in the stores that way so it’s just going to have to live in the online world.” I just wanted to put it out. I don’t want to tour. I just want to put it out, and I don’t really want to do anything. I didn’t necessarily know if even interviews would, you know – I thought a couple would come along, but I just wanted to go with the ‘non-plan plan’. Since then, as I’ve done a few interviews and both curiosity-seekers and some Hip fans have picked up the record, it’s the first question: ‘are you touring?’ And I say ‘no’. There is definitely disappointment, which is great for me, but I have to kind of reconsider it.
I don’t have a band, so that’s a problem. I’m happy to get up and play an acoustic guitar, or do a gig where I’m playing these songs. I’m comfortable playing these songs, just me and an acoustic. I would be comfortable playing in a band, say, at a gig, but actually going on tour and being the guy that’s hiring band people and a crew and taking all that on is just something right now that I wouldn’t be motivated and inspired to do. But if there were demand or offers come in – ‘would you like to play this show, can you get a band together?’ – then I would probably think about it.
I would have other issues. Who would I get? I’ve got a lot of friends who play. I’ve got the guys in the Hip, obviously. It’s been way easier to avoid that whole problem. I think I’m different because I get a lot of great stuff playing in the Hip. I get to go on the road. We do well in general, big shows but a lot of small shows, so I get a big taste of all of it, and I love it. To set out on my own to do it isn’t a huge thing. Even the record itself, it wasn’t until really far into the process that I realized, ‘I think I want to put out a record’, which had never really crossed my mind – that desire.
CI: I read about the accidental nature of it, that you had these songs and it sort of snuck up on you that you were making something cohesive. It was back in October I guess that I did an interview with Séan McCann of Great Big Sea. He had a solo album in 2009 and has another one coming out, and he said the songs just didn’t fit the mandate of his band. For you, as you got these songs together, were these just too close to yourself and didn’t feel like something that you would throw out for the band to hear?
PL: Yeah, there are certainly a couple that are folkier or countryish, ‘Cards’ and ‘Things I Should Have Said’, which I couldn’t really see with The Hip. ‘Things I Should Have Said’ is more personal, me talking to my wife, really, so that wouldn’t be right. And ‘Cards’ is just a little too trad-country or something.
I guess I was in the studio and The Hip weren’t getting together for quite some time. We knew that the end of 2010 was probably the earliest that we would get together and write. I thought, ‘I’ll just write these songs, and basically fill up the rest of the record with various songs.’ Certain songs came out that I could hear the Hip do, or that do have sort of Hip sounds. That’s because it’s my guitar and I couldn’t resist putting an electric guitar on it, and that’s how I play it.
So you know, we were on a big break. There are five of us contributing music in The Hip. I’m fairly comfortable and confident with having good material for The Hip to use. With Gord writing the lyrics and singing the melodies, I would say it’s even less pressure. I’m more apt in The Hip to think of music as a riff, a musical composition sort of thing as I present it, whereas within this framework the melody and the lyrics drive it a little more.
CI: You mention ‘Things I Should Have Said.’ That’s a stunner right at the end. It’s sort of a taking-account, a self-portrait really – here are my weaknesses, here are my strengths, here it all is. Did you have any trepidation as far as putting that on the album? It’s a pretty personal piece of writing.
PL: Yeah, a little bit. There certainly was, but I didn’t let myself really even consider not putting it there. It was very specific to the time. I have probably more difficulty adjusting, as I get older, to the back-and-forth: the life on the road, or if we’re in the studio recording. Being just responsible for myself and sort of living that harder life, and then getting home – adjusting I think was more difficult this time around. That song came out of that. It’s almost an apology. It’s almost an apology for being a guy, kind of just saying, “I should have said these things to you back then.”
My wife pointed out to me – I was like, “I finally wrote a song for you” – and she said, “well, it’s really more about you, isn’t it?” I was then, “yeah, I guess you’re right.” So I was just trying to tie up the loose ends lyrically in the song. Once I did tie them up I thought ‘okay, I’ve got to put it on’, because I was pretty happy with it.
CI: Even from some of the images in the album book and the back cover shot, one of the themes that I found is the sense of home, or what constitutes home. I wondered if you sequenced the songs with that in mind with ‘House I Fix’ and ‘Homeless in Aspen’ together, which are almost two sides of the same coin in a way. Was that idea of trying to define what home is part of this for you?
PL: Well, I guess probably more in hindsight. That’s a good point. The sequence thing is probably an accident, but there are certain words that obviously I liked. There is ‘House I Fix’, and then I’ve got ‘Fix This Head’ and ‘Homeless in Aspen’. The sequence was certainly all musical and feel, where I made those decisions; it wasn’t lyrical at all. But yeah, interesting … because home is where it’s at for me and for a lot of people. The dude in ‘House I Fix’, obviously that’s not going well, and it’s not going well for the homeless guy in Aspen. So I certainly appreciate what I have in my home. But again, it would be an ‘in hindsight’ kind of thing. I literally was just searching out good songs in me. These happened to be the ones that I believed more and that were obviously talking about things that mean something to me.
CI: Well, I was curious because of the opener, ‘Broken Road’ – I imagine that is the only song that starts off with a reference to Cataraqui and Deseronto. If I’m reading the album as a novel, you set the scene in eastern Ontario and then extrapolate out on the road, which has obviously been central to your life. When you say sequencing according more to the music, the flow of the sound, I thought lyrically – I’m more of a lyric guy – but I felt a real thread lyrically through it, starting off with here is where I am and moving out from there.
PL: Yep, and ‘Broken Road’ – well, I guess that was a feel decision too – but ‘Broken Road’ does sum up in a way what life was like for me. That’s the one song that is older than the rest. I’ve had that a long time. When I wrote it, I was picturing driving the van, which I used to do a lot of, trying to stay awake while everyone else is asleep, trying to get back to Kingston. It literally was that: Deseronto, you think you’re there, but you’re not – you’ve still got a good forty minutes to go. So it was sort of based on that, and then just the emptiness and the sum feeling of being on the road. I wanted to have that song first because people that know me would have heard that song before. If I get up in a bar or whatever, if someone calls me up, that would be the one song I had written before I recorded all this. So I wanted to lead with something that was already associated with me.
CI: … ‘Can’t Wait Anymore’, personally, is my favourite on the album, and on the Hockey Night in Canada placement for that – I thought that video was pretty effective – I’m just curious about the background of that process. Do you have any input into how your song is going to be used, or is it just an agreement to use the song? How does that work?
PL: Well, it’s funny. I just met the guy. A guy phoned up who works at the CBC and does these videos. His name is Tim. … I just met him this morning. He phoned up my manager and said, ‘I hear Paul is putting out a solo record. Do you mind if I hear it?’ It was two or three weeks before, so we just made him a copy. The artwork wasn’t done or anything, so we just made a copy of it. He emailed a week later and said, ‘I think I’m working on something big here. It’s for Montreal-Toronto, a nostalgia piece.’ He said with ‘Can’t Wait Anymore’, and I was like, ‘well, okay, cool.’ I could not picture ‘Can’t Wait Anymore’ associating with hockey at all, and I thought he did an incredible job. So it was totally out of the blue and it was because this Tim guy had an interest, and I guess ‘Can’t Wait Anymore’ he liked. It was great for me.
CI: One last area that I wanted to ask about: I watched the interview a while ago that Jian Ghomeshi did with Daniel Lanois and Neil Young, talking about recording that album [Le Noise] …
PL: Yeah, I saw that.
CI: I thought it was an interesting piece.
PL: Yep, me too.
CI: There was that idea of sort of capturing songs in the first or second take because after it would get further away, I think Neil Young said, from ‘the soul of the song’. I was just wondering, for you – I mean, you were steering the ship for this album – what was your process? Were you trying to get songs pretty quickly, or did you tinker with these for a long time?
PL: No, I was trying to get it pretty quickly, for sure – everything. With the drums, that was as big a challenge as the singing was. I would just have it on a loop, practice a few times, and then pick the take that was closest, as opposed to ‘perfect’ or anything close to perfect. Same with the singing. I felt, even at the time, the same as Neil Young had said in that interview. Almost the better I learned them, the more I anticipated, the more I was thinking. So I was certainly trying.
Then there was this other thing that I think I invented, which was ‘Take Zero’. Usually with a vocal you take one, two, three. ‘Take Zero’ was your opportunity to have dinner, have some fun, and then try it at the end of the night. It only worked out once, so it wasn’t a successful invention.
CI: So you would just walk away for a while …
PL: Yeah, and then just take one shot at it. I had the songs there and it was just me. So it was like ‘okay, I’ll try it.’ I think maybe one time the vocal was better.
For the rest of it, all of it guitar-wise too, it was definitely very quickly through it. Same with the bass. Not so it wasn’t played right, but I tried to allow mistakes and those kinds of things to just happen. I would probably be known within The Hip to be that sort of person. I prefer to get my take with Johnny as opposed to overdub because I believe in that electricity. You can try, and obviously the more we do it the better we get, but still, if you can get that live take down, why wouldn’t you?
Date of Interview: 01/12/2011
Location: Merchants of Green Coffee, Toronto ON
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