Band: The Weakerthans Member: Stephen Carroll Label: Anti- Records Location: Winspear Centre - Edmonton, Alberta Date: April 23rd, 2009 Interviewer: Bobby Gorman

For some reason or another I've never been able to see The Weakerthans live. Despite playing here numerous times over the past five years, there's always been something has gotten in the way of me seeing them. Not this time though. This time I was going to see them, and I finally did. PLaying to an almost sold out crowd at the fabulous Winspear Centre, The Weakerthans wowed the crowd and captured most of it on film for an upcoming DVD. But before they did all of that, I sat down with guitarist Stephen Carroll to discus the tour in question, the aforementioned DVD, and their enviromental footprint. Read on and enjoy...

Bobby: Starting with the basics, you guys are almost a month into this Rolling Tundra Revue, how’s that going so far?

Stephen: It’s been really fun. This is our eighth province. Sorry, no, ninth province and we have one more to go and one territory until it’s concluded. So we’ve had quite a journey. Lots of fun, lots of shows and we’re playing a beautiful theatre. It’s great.

Bobby: Yeah, it’ll be really good sound here too tonight. The sound here is amazing. Has there been any really memorable moments from the tour so far?

*Someone walks into the room looking for something*

Stephen: This is pretty memorable. This guy coming in and interrupting my interview. What do you need?

Interrupter: Oh, I’m sorry. *and leaves, Stephen gets up and removes the door block so the door closes completely*

Stephen: *looking around* What was he hoping to find in here? Well it started pretty memorably. The Constantines keyboard player fell off the stage backwards into a kind of crevasse and gave himself a concussion.

Bobby: Ouch.

Stephen: And we’ve had lots of fun, lots of good shows. The concerts sort of blur together but we had two nights in Winnipeg, that was great. Our hometown, a beautiful theatre. I think one of my favorite shows was in Sackville. It was in a tiny roadhouse for only two hundred people, it was great.

Bobby: You said you had a good time in Winnipeg, I read that you guys hosted after parties at the Lo Pub after both of those shows. How were they and do you often host after parties in your hometown?

Stephen: Yeah, we always try and do something fun. Last time we played in Winnipeg we played at the same theatre we played in this time – the Burton Cummings Theatre – and after the show we did a secret show at the Albert. So we walked off the stage at the Burton, had like an hour to ourselves and went on stage at the Albert. It was just stripped down gear and we played at the Albert.

*Someone knocks on the door, Stephen answers it and no one’s there.*

Stephen: Nobody has come here before.

Bobby: This tour was split up kind of odd. It had a two week break from April 4th to the 17th, before Western Canada. Why did you have it set up that way?

Stephen: It was the way it was convenient. We were able to take a little bit of a break and rest and get organized for the West. We did that on purpose.

Bobby: This is the second time you guys have used the moniker The Rolling Tundra Revue having used the same moniker when you toured with the Constantines in 2005. Why did you decide to use it again and will it become a tradition for you two?

Stephen: I think that, yes, by doing it a second time it made it a tradition. That was fun. And why did we do it again? Because I think it takes a brotherly spirit and a sense of adventure and mutual admiration for something like this, at this scope, to succeed. Twenty-seven shows in a fairly short period of time for a type of tour at this level. That’s why we chose to do it again.

Bobby: On this tour you said you were going to try and lower your environmental impact, particularly your bus and your lighting. You didn’t go into very many specifics, so what have you been doing to diminish your environmental footprint on this tour?

Stephen: Well, there’s basically three different things that we attempted to address. Internally, we looked at what we can do within our group. Our rider, how much waste we generate, and how we behave on tour. So we tried to eliminate anything that was disposable. We tried to reduce the amount of products just being used. We got rid of bottled water, changed to a different system which has made a big difference. It’s been really striking how much less. That’s just sort of led to a whole bunch of other steps. We changed the rider, I mean we’ve been doing this for years, but we changed the rider so there’s no disposable goods on the rider. So we have glasses because promoters will often give you plastic cups. Why? You can wash them and use them again, go forward like that. We made organic merch. Our t-shirts are organic and North American made.

And then we thought about what the fans could contribute. We did the calculations and there’s about twenty-two thousand people out there who come to the show over the course of the whole tour. And if you consider that they all do one kilometer of travel in a car, that is a phenomenal amount of carbon emissions that are created by the audience themselves coming to our concert. So we made an incentive for them to try and find alternative transportation. So we’re giving away buttons at the shows if you come up and show them some sort of alternative transportation you get a button.

We’ve also been pushing the venues to participate and having them either recycle all the waste, or promote these things or compost or whatever. We try to do these things, it hasn’t been very successful. But sometimes it work. It doesn’t work if you don’t try.

Lastly for these shows, and for BC, we have managed to successfully buy carbon offsets through an alternative electricity company. *Someone else knocks on the door* What the fuck? *He gets up and answers the door.* I’m doing an interview.

Guy behind the door: Oh, I didn’t know.

Stephen: Sorry, you’re like the hundred thousandth person to knock on the door. Nobody’s come in here all day.

Guy behind the door: Okay, I’ll come back for it.

Stephen: Yeah, alright.

Guy behind the door: Sorry I didn’t know.

Stephen: That’s alright. *Closes the door and comes back to the table*

Bobby: It’s all quiet and then everything always happens at once. It always happens that way.

Stephen: Anyways, we bought alternative, environmentally low impact electricity to power up the venues for the BC and Alberta shows. Bull Frog Power. So that was a lot but that’s what we’re doing.

So like everything. Electricity, merch, waste and we bought carbon offsets for our flights. Earlier when they had earth hour, that day we got the venue to turn off all the electricity, turned off all our buses for an hour. It was actually very nice. Very still.

Bobby: Nice and quiet.

Stephen: Yeah, it was really quiet. A good vibe.

Bobby: And like you said, even if some of the venues didn’t actually do it you have to at least try. If you don’t at least try, it’ll never happen.

Stephen: Yeah and some were participating already and do stuff on their own and some were not and didn’t do anything.

Bobby: You also said that you were encouraging your fans too, that if they brought a bus stub, bike helmet, something like that and they’d get a free pin. Have you noticed that a lot of fans have been trying to do that?

Stephen: Yeah, yeah. I think most people kind of come up to the merch table and they want to buy the pin. We’re like “well, you can only get that pin if you came here on a sustainable mode of transportation.” Then they’re like “we walked!” I saw a couple say that the other day, and I’m like “there you go. Here’s your pin, good job.”

Bobby: You also started a Rolling Tundra Revue book club where you were encouraging people to read Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. I didn’t have a chance to read it but have you ran into many fans who have read it?

Stephen: I haven’t yet. It just went up. I’m not actually in the book club. John and a bunch of the other guys are in the book club.

Bobby: Do you know why they decided to start the book club?

Stephen: For fun.

Bobby: You guys are doing a blog for the tour on Exclaim. When you had a day off in Montreal, you listed what you did throughout the entire day. There was one line that really stuck out, it was “filmed a scene for a movie with the Plains of Abraham in the background.” Can you explain that? What movie were you filming?

Stephen: We’re making a tour movie about our experiences on the road and a live film and live concert DVD. So it’s a documentary about the tour and we’re going to have a live album made from it. It’ll be kind of a live film so we were doing scenes for that. And they’re filming tonight.

Bobby: Do you know when this will be coming out?

Stephen: Probably late in the year or early next year.

Bobby: Probably through Anti- again?

Stephen: Yep.

Bobby: Nice. One thing that has always fascinated me about you guys is how incredibly versatile you are. Over the past few years, just in Edmonton alone, you have played at the Starlite Room, The Myer Horowitz Theatre, The Edmonton Folk Festival and now today, at the Winspear Centre – which are four vastly different venues. Do you treat each show the same or do you kinda of take into account the different venues when you approach the show?

Stephen: Well I think we are very versatile. We think that about ourselves. We love all sorts of music and like to play different kinds of music and we really have grown up without a kind of archetype for what we’re doing. Just following our noses and that has led us down this trail to be able to play different venues and have different experiences. And we’re also really making a conscious effort to try and do new things differently for ourselves, for our own little experience. Tonight will be totally different. Tonight we’ll probably go with the slow songs because those are the ones that will sound the best, the quiet ones rather than the rock songs which sound better in a rock club.

Bobby: Even with…

*someone tries to open the door, sees that its locked and goes away.*

Stephen: It’s insane.

Bobby: If you look at the different venues you have played – the more underground at the Starlite Room, the big folk fest and tonight at a concert hall – it kind of shows how you guys can cross the genre barriers and generation gaps. Like my friends and I really like you guys, my dad and his friends like you guys; some of his friends are coming tonight. So you’re able to cross not only the genre barrier but the generation barrier. Why do you think your music is able to reach so many people on such a large scale?

Stephen: Well, you know I think what we’ve been trying to do is really a simple thing all along. We’re just trying to write good songs that we’ve tried our darnest to make good. We follow and make music that we think is interesting and through that has occurred this happenstance where we have all these sort of styles that sort of appeals to people with all sorts of different tastes. People who love some songs are going to find some aspect of each of our songs to enjoy and I think that really helps to transcend generation barriers that maybe occur for other bands. I think that some youth maybe really enjoy it because they see us as people who have gone forward and are still connected to their ideals and are trying to live up those ideas. You really see that and I think they enjoy that experience. I think the adults like that fact as well. We’ve come to this place, we’ve tried to stick true to our ideals as far as we can and we’re a rock band. We play rock shows and that’s something everybody really likes.

Bobby: One thing I want to touch on is the mass amount of critical acclaim you guys have received, particularly with Reunion Tour. You guys won Band of the Year at the inaugural Verge Music Awards, the song Night Windows won the Echo Song Writing Award and you guys were on the short list for the Polaris Prize. What was your reaction when you heard about all these accolades and did any of that any of that even remotely cross you mind when you were writing Reunion Tour?

Stephen: The accolades came much late. We’re never fortunate enough to know what we’re doing until it’s done. It’s up to other people whether they like it or not. We’re just four guys and we basically make songs based on consensus. So it’s just sort of happenstance and for us, when we got those award nominations last year, it was just nice to have acknowledgments. Really, it’s just more media attention which is great. The whole process I enjoy, not for the act of winning but for the media exposure and sometimes just for the community. Getting together with people that you haven’t seen very often in a different way and just hanging out, there’s no pressure. It can be fun.

Bobby: Back in June of last year, the Canadian Minister of Industry Jim Prentice introduced a new copyright bill in Canada called Bill C-61. All the legalese is a bit over my head but basically it makes it easier for big corporations to sue people and makes it illegal to break digital locks so you can’t make copies of your own music to put on iPods and stuff like that. John and a bunch of other bands joined together to create the Canadian Music Creators Coalition. Do you know how that came about?

Stephen: I think we were approached by Stephen Page who was steering that project. John signed us up for that. I, myself, actually didn’t know too much about the bill itself. I can’t really comment, it’s sort of not my department. It came through John and Stephen Page who organized that issue. Digital rights for music are a complex being. Digital formats are fantastic for distribution of music and access but at the same they’re very compromising for control for the artist and the industry. I respect the fact that the industry is trying to find some way of garnering an income for themselves and the artists. I respect that but maybe that wasn’t the best model.

Bobby: Yeah, that was one of the big things that the Canadian Music Creators Coalition was saying. They were saying that basically what they did was just copy the United States platform whereas the Canadian government should have created a new copyright bill that wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the United States. They needed to get together with all the stakeholders – bands, labels, everyone – and create one that would suit all parties. Do you think they could have handled it in a better way instead of just copying the United States?

Stephen: Well I think that the garnering of more widespread and clearer information campaign on the artist side and the Coalition side would have really helped their cause. I didn’t quite understand what the point was. It wasn’t clearly explained. Me, as a person that was reading the e-mails, I didn’t quite really understand their platform and the ins and outs and why things were bad. I think perhaps in the future it will probably be re-addressed once again. *Music starts playing in the background through a speaker* What is that? Oh, it’s this thing. *He gets up and turns off the house speakers*.

Bobby: Doors are open now, they’re probably playing music through the speakers. All of your albums, all you lyrical contents have a staunchly Canadiana feel to them. You have lots of references to Winnipeg, streets in Winnipeg and stuff like that; but you also have references to Gump Worsely and the Scottish Tournament of Hearts. Do you think its important to show this Canadian side in your music?

Stephen: Me, personally, yes, I think it’s really great to embrace your culture and cherish it and bring light to it and play with it and play on its faults. I think we’re so self-deprecating, so self-effacing and so shoe-gazing in a lot of ways about our culture here, it’s great to poke fun at that, about the small things that sort of make us quirky. Bring it to the light and try to explain it to the greater population of the world.

Bobby: On top of the Canadiana aspect of you lyrics, you also have very insightful and intelligent lyrics. You have references to paintings by Edward Hopper on your new album, you have references to Karl Marx’s economic theories, you have references to explorer Ernest Shackleton and writer Jack Derrida in some of your older songs. Why did you decide to go for the more intellectual and insightful lyrics?

Stephen: Well I think John is a very literate person and he’s very inspired by novels and philosophy and political writings as well as all sorts of curiosity writings. Just writing in general I’ll say is one of his most cherished things. The way he writes songs is a way of combining his love of the written word and his love of songs and song writing and rock and roll and performance.

Bobby: I was reading an interview that you did right after Left and Leaving came out back in 2000. You were saying that John is a very shy and reserved person and was not always the most comfortable being the front man of a rock band.

Stephen: Yeah, for sure.

Bobby: Over the nine years has he gotten over it?

Stephen: *laughing* No. *laughs* Nah, he has. He has. I think that we’ve gotten better at what we’re doing which makes it easier for him to do what he does. I think playing these kind of shows are really about the singer and uniting people. The voice and the acoustic instrument. All the guitars get turned down. It does help give him a place that’s more comfortable where he doesn’t have to yell over the band.

Bobby: Two years ago you guys were the backing band for Greg Graffin’s Cold as Clay album. How did that come about?

Stephen: It came through our record label executive for Epitaph, Brett Gurewitz. He put it together. He was producing the record, he’s a big fan so he called us up. It was great. It was one of my favorite experiences of my musical career. Just going down, four days, scrap, pulling it together and three days later we have his record and we flew home.

Bobby: It’s such a good record too. His voice with that mellow music really works well.

Stephen: Some of my favorite guitar playing I have ever done is on that record. The way his songs were structured were really about the guitar. Really guitar music, really friendly. Like the chordal structure the way John writes and we write are very tight and really hard to find any space whereas his were just traditional country chords or blue-grass. Very fun.

Bobby: I guess that’s about it, thanks a lot. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Stephen: No. I’m sorry for all the interruptions.

Bobby: No worries.

Stephen: There’s going to be so many “knock-knocks” in your written version.