by Joe Leary
A venerable force in Canadian music for over two decades, Sloan is a Juno Award-winning rock quartet from Halifax, N.S. Upon release of their latest CD, Commonwealth, Joe Leary spent 24 Seconds with singer Chris Murphy.
24: You guys have been together over 20 years. In the beginning, what was your initial expectation? Did you see it as something you would dedicate yourself to or was it more a wait and see if this project takes off?
CM: I played in a band with Jay before Sloan called Kearney Lake Rd. We were fairly popular in Halifax. We toured up Montreal one time and up to Toronto another time and played in Montreal and Fredericton on the way. That seemed like a success. One way success would have been measured was that we knew a band called Killer Klamz that toured right across Canada to Vancouver selling their cassette and we also knew a band called Jellysishbabies that made a vinyl record and moved to Toronto. Those seemed within our grasp. When Kearney Lake Rd. broke up in 1990, I was 19 and started playing with some older guys in a roots rock band called Blackpool. They got signed to an MCA Canada subsidiary and made a record with Terry Brown, who had recorded Rush so that was a new level of success to aspire to. Sloan was started while I was playing in Blackpool and when Nirvana released Nevermind in September 1991, there was a new level of expectation because Nirvana were playing fringe music in a fringe place and becoming well-known for it.
24: Obviously you’ve grown as artists and composers in that time. How do you feel you’ve developed over the years?
CM: The four of us write and I suppose we’re all in a constant state of changing/not changing, but talking about it as a whole is impossible. As an organism, we are the product of whatever the four of us bring to the table. That’s been the case for as long as I can remember. We started with the intention of having us all contribute songs and by 1999 we had pretty much reached equilibrium. Personally, I learned what major 7ths and minor 7ths were in 2001 and overused them for a while and still use them today. Other than that, I can’t think of how to describe a development. I think our second record was already “mature.” I suppose we went from being a band that was “of the times” on our first record to a band that attempts to make music that would be considered timeless.
24: The new record is a double disc with every member having one disc devoted to them. That’s fairly unique in the music business isn’t it?
CM: I think so. I am aware that Kiss did four solo albums. Since making Commonwealth, it has come to my attention that Emerson, Lake and Palmer did an album where they each had a section to themselves and Pink Floyd Ummagumma has selections from everyone in the band. Queen had four writers but Freddy sang them all so they weren’t exactly set up to do four solo epos the way we are. The only other bands I can think of where all of the members could do what we have done would be The Eagles and Wu Tang Clan. The Beastie Boys each had enough of a presence in the story of their band but sadly MCA died. I guess I’m not counting NKOTB, The Backstreet Boys and N’Sync. Maybe I should? OK, The Beatles had four singers, too.
24: How did you arrive at the name Commonwealth?
CM: Sloan is a (however small) “community founded for the common good,” which is how commonwealth is defined. We are a (sometimes loose) “association of common nations.” And, of course, Canada is member of the British Commonwealth. As well we are using the playing cards motif where the four of us are depicted as kings of the four suits in a deck of cards, which seems ironic as kings rule from the top down as opposed to being ruled by the people or for the common good. But we are all able to be kings because no one king is “more equal” than the others. I had a few names that we didn’t choose that were not chosen because they were playing card idioms which some of the “kings” thought was a little too “on the nose.”
--taken from: Vancouver 24 Hrs
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