Sloan includes Patrick Pentland, Jay Ferguson, Chris Murphy and Andrew Scott. One Chord to Another remains the most successful album in the band's career.
by Mike Devlin
Sloan’s decision to recreate its landmark 1996 album One Chord to Another for a cross-Canada tour was partly out of necessity.
With no new album to promote, but a desire to go out on tour, the Toronto rockers reverted to the format that saw them fête 1994’s Twice Removed with a full-album tribute tour four years ago.
One Chord to Another will be delivered much the same way tonight at Sugar — in its entirety and proper running order.
A second set of Sloan hits will follow, meaning the band will play in the neighbourhood of 30 songs (hence, no opening act).
Revisiting the Juno Award-winning album, which remains the most commercially successful in the band’s career, is an appealing experiment, especially for Sloan fans who don’t go to as many shows as they once did.
Sloan has released eight albums since One Chord to Another, but only 1998’s Navy Blues enjoyed the same commercial success.
“It will bring some people out of the woodwork who perhaps haven’t seen us in years,” singer-bassist Chris Murphy said. “We still speak to some people who get the new records, even though we’re not the zeitgeist. But it’s fun. I enjoy doing it.”
Sloan is committed to the concept, Murphy said, despite the difficulty of playing certain One Chord to Another songs that were never intended to be performed live.
As a result, the recorded versions of Junior Panthers and A Side Wins have been reworked slightly to sound-stage ready.
“There are a couple of songs, despite our rehearsal of them, that remain rickety,” he said with a laugh. “But we can pull this off.”
The Halifax-bred band, now based in Toronto, revisited its entire catalogue during the lead-up to the anniversary tour, with hopes of playing some rare B-sides from the Japanese release of One Chord to Another.
When they drew up a sample setlist, Murphy said, they quickly realized luxuries like Japanese B-sides were not in the cards.
With a full plate of One Chord to Another songs on the agenda, finding space for other notable hits from the band’s 200-song catalogue was going to be difficult enough.
Some tough decisions on what to cut were made by Murphy and his bandmates — guitarists Jay Ferguson and Patrick Pentland and drummer Andrew Scott.
Tour favourite Rest of My Life didn’t make the cut this time, but a sense of freshness is a good thing for diehard fans, Murphy said.
“There are people who see us every time, and I would like to not punish them with the exact same setlist. I’ll play anything, but I want to give people their money’s worth.”
Life in a band with four equal-share songwriters doesn’t always make for smooth sailing.
One Chord to Another arrived at a time when Sloan was all but broken up, making its eventual success even more impressive.
The struggle proved beneficial for the group, as it re-aligned the business model of the independent band.
Ferguson and Murphy, who were the de facto leaders at the time, relinquished control and made it so that all four members had equal say.
From that point onward, Sloan would function like a democracy. There was no arguing with the results. In a series of music-industry polls conducted over the past two decades, One Chord to Another was consistently voted one of the best records in Canadian history.
“We were kind of broken up and came out of nowhere and made this great record,” Murphy said.
The band had made Twice Removed two years earlier, when it was signed to a subsidiary of Geffen Records, home to acts such as Nirvana and Beck.
Twice Removed was recorded in a New York City studio with a producer who would go on to work with Weezer and Wilco, at a cost of many tens of thousands of dollars.
When the recording didn’t meet Geffen’s expectations, Sloan was dropped from the label.
After years of strife, the decision was made to record One Chord to Another at home in Halifax for $8,000, Murphy said. “I thought it was a cool character-record for some people who had no money. It was an experiment that turned out well.”
The band has been an independent entity ever since.
“We have a lot to be proud about,” Murphy said. “We are in a unique position, being from Canada, in that Canadian content propped us up.”
Critically acclaimed U.S act Pavement was bigger, but unlike Pavement, Sloan is still going, he said.
“I’m not complaining. It’s awesome. I’ve got a house. We’ve all got houses.
“We had to put up with each other, which is a big enough pain in the ass. But nobody told us what to do, ever.”
--taken from: Times Colonist
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