--taken from: Yorkton This Week
by Thom Barker
Choosing Sloan’s Action Pact is something that not everyone is going to agree with. It’s definitely something Sloan itself wouldn’t agree with – the band’s Jay Ferguson ranked it the last of the band’s albums in an interview with Vice – but I’m not going to be swayed by the words of the guy who wrote the songs themselves. I love this album, almost every song is a winner – “Ready for You” isn’t great – but even the weaker track just emphasizes how great the good ones are.
My approach was to take the album I’d pick when I want to listen to a Canadian album, and I figured it had to be a Sloan album from the outset since I can’t think of a more Canadian band. They’ve been successful mostly in Canada, they reference the country in their lyrics, they work as a collaborative group with four songwriters getting the chance to write something for each album, which is an inherently Canadian approach.
But the most important thing is the songs are good. They also get better with each listen. I gravitated towards Action Pact because of “Nothing Lasts Forever Anymore,” one of my favorite songs, Canadian or otherwise. But listening to the album, it’s top to bottom good, and I found myself questioning whether or not my previous favorite song was actually my favorite song on the album. It’s nearly 40 minutes of nearly perfect power pop, and while I had my doubts about whether or not it would be the album I chose, after listening to it again, I can’t imagine choosing anything else.
--taken from: Yorkton This Week
Friday, September 30, 2016
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Sloan's Jay Ferguson Talks Fan Dedication and 'Moderate Success'
--taken from: Las Vegas Weekly
by Annie Zaleski
Canadian power-pop outfit Sloan is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its top-selling album, 1996’s One Chord to Another by issuing a new boxed-set version and playing the original record in full on tour. We chatted with guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Jay Ferguson about Sloan’s first-ever show in Las Vegas (and his first-ever visit to the city), One Chord’s pivotal role and the impending release of new music.
When you ranked Sloan’s records for Noisey last year, you placed One Chord to Another No. 1. Why does it stand out for you? I really like the songs. I mean, I like all of our records—I’m not embarrassed by any of them—but I really like the songs on that record. It’s [also] a little bit special, because it’s the first Sloan album that we put out on our own record label, Murderecords here in Canada. Our previous two records were on Geffen out of the United States.
Our second album on Geffen was called Twice Removed—it was a record that we made in New York, and they knew it was being made, and our A&R guy was on top of it. But when we handed it in, the marketing department was like, “We don’t know how to market this record. This doesn’t sound like the first Sloan album.” So they wanted us to redo it. We said no, put it out as-is. They said, “Okay, we’ll put it out, but we can’t guarantee anything’s going to happen, marketing- or promotion-wise.” And that was the case. It died instantly.
It was a very frustrating time for our band, because of that reception. It did okay in Canada. So our band took time off. We didn’t know if we were going to break up or get back together. When we decided to get back together, to make One Chord to Another, we actually offered it to Geffen, but we decided not to go that route again. We released it on Murderecords and recorded the drums, like, on a four-track cassette, in order to save money.
It ended up becoming our most successful album to date, [and] it really kick-started the modern-day Sloan, for me anyhow, in that we kind of grabbed all the reins of marketing decisions and promotion. It’s like running your own small business. So that made it really rewarding.
There are so many bands, especially in the ’90s, that never got that chance, especially if they were on a major label. They had two records, and if the second one didn’t do well, they were done. Oh, for sure. I can think of two other bands who were even on Geffen during the ’90s, and they handed in a record and [the label was] like, “No, we don’t think so. Go make it again.” [The first band] went and made it again—then that [album] was released and it flopped, or they didn’t do anything about it. So here’s this poor band, made their record twice, probably wasted a year or two of their life doing that, and still nothing happened. Another band who are friends of ours had to make their second album three times, and the third time it was rejected anyhow, and then nothing happened. So they took two-and-a-half or three years to make three albums of the same album, and Geffen continued saying, “No, we don’t think so—try it again.” I would go crazy being in that situation.
Sloan has been successful in Canada, and successful on an underground level in the United States. We’ve never been million sellers or anything like that, but I’m grateful that we’ve been able to at least steer our own career a little bit more than a lot of other peers, definitely from the ’90s.
Doing One Chord to Another on your own terms, and having it be it so successful, must have been vindication. It was. It was great, too, because I didn’t want Sloan to end, especially after Twice Removed. When we all decided, “Let’s try it again and we’ll put it out on Murderecords,” you know, with low expectations—and then it really caught on—like you said, it was rewarding. It was a really fun time for sure.
One Chord to Another came out on an indie label here in the U.S., a year after it came out in Canada. I remember it being hard to find at the time. So it’s like you get a second chance to reintroduce some people to this one 20 years later. Right! (laughs) That’s why we’re doing these box sets [of each Sloan album], basically trying to reintroduce everybody in America to our complete catalog. We’re working our way through our catalog.
We signed to that [U.S. indie label], Enclave, in late ’96, and they put it out in ’97. It started off well. It was run by a guy named Tom Zutaut, who used to be one of the head A&R guys at Geffen, ironically. He signed Guns N’ Roses. When he started the Enclave, I think he wanted Sloan on his label to make a success out of our band, in order be able to point the finger at Geffen, like, “Look what I was able to do, that you guys couldn’t!” or something like that.
But anyhow, like nine months later, Enclave went belly up due to a total musical chairs shift within EMI, [a] restructuring kind of thing, because his label was part of the EMI umbrella at the time. So you’re right, One Chord has always been a little bit more difficult to find in the United States.
I remember talking to some friends around that time, about us trying to find the record. It was like a mythical lost album, and it was obviously harder to hear albums in the pre-digital era. I remember hearing, back in the mid-’90s, [that] before One Chord to Another was out in the States, there would be Sloan fans in Cleveland or even Detroit who would drive across the border in order to buy One Chord to Another. The idea of that happening now is so ludicrous, because all you have to do is turn on your computer and Google it.
As you’ve been playing the album live in order, have you gleaned any new insights about it? A little bit. There are a number of songs that we do still keep in our regular setlist—“The Good in Everyone,” “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” and “The Lines You Amend.” “G Turns to D” shows up from time to time. So there’s still a number of songs that we’re quite familiar with playing. But the interesting thing is playing them in the context of the record, instead of where they would normally go in our set.
The other thing that I’ve learned is that I really don’t like singing “Junior Panthers,” which is the fourth song on the record. [With] the key that it’s in and the singing range, it’s so hard to push your voice. Like, it’s in such a low range for me that I dread when I see it coming up on the setlist. So what I’ve learned from doing One Chord to Another is that I don’t really want to do “Junior Panthers” ever again after the One Chord tour is over! But the rest of the record, yeah, I enjoy playing it.
It’s impressive that you guys aren’t futzing with the key signature, moving it up a couple of steps. You’ll suffer for the art. Oh yeah, I like keeping it pure and keeping it as it was, for sure. I saw some clip of Elton John recently, and he was doing “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” down a couple of steps, and I was like, “Oh man, it’s a drag. It doesn’t sound the way it did.” And I haven’t seen Fleetwood Mac on any of their recent tours, but some friends of mine went, and when they’re doing “Rhiannon,” Stevie Nicks never goes up high anymore. She just sings those melodies low, and they said, “Oh, it’s about three steps down.” I understand people’s voices change, but it’s hard. So anyhow, we’re suffering for our art and suffering for the fans, to keep it pure, yeah!
Is it my imagination that Sloan has been touring a little bit more in the U.S. in recent years? I know you’re playing some cities you haven’t hit before. Have you guys made a concerted push to come down here more? I don’t think we’re pushing to be like, “This is the year we’re going to make it in the States!” But yeah, we had an opportunity to play a number of California shows, so we took advantage of that. We’re playing a lot of shows that we haven’t done out there, such as Las Vegas and maybe Santa Ana—places that we haven’t been, or maybe we went to once 20 years ago. So that’s a little bit different.
We’ll still go back to the regular ones, like Cleveland, Boston, New York City, D.C. and things like that. But occasionally we get offers for other cities. Not to sound like an old man talking about the Internet, but I do feel like, [with] the way the Internet has flattened the world, we do find that there’s more fans coming out of the woodwork than before, because it’s easier to access music.
We have a lot of direct-to-fan dealings, just through the way we sell box sets and things like that. So we feel that we’re still getting new fans and we’re also still stoking the fire of the already hardcore Sloan fans, by selling box sets off of our websites and limited-edition singles and things like that. It’s been a really good way of staying in touch with hardcore fans. That’s really enabled us to keep a little bit of fire going in a lot of different American cities, [and] still adding new ones here and there when promoters are really encouraging for us to come to places that we’ve never been to before.
Where are people discovering you guys now? Do you have any sense about how people are coming to the band? I don’t have any statistics. We have a guy who helps us with our online, direct-to-fan stuff, and then Patrick [Pentland] in our band really handles the Twitter accounts, and he started [our] Snapchat, which I have not seen yet. We’re all involved in the Instagram account. I’ll put stuff on the Facebook page. I don’t know, exactly. I think it’s just a combination of all of those things.
I don’t know if I’d like to be a brand new band right now, trying to cut through all of the noise of everybody that’s trying to get attention. But all of those tools are great for a band like us that’s had a long career and already has a fanbase. I don’t know if there’s a record company that would be willing to really invest money in a 25-year-old band in order to really reach those fans on a yearly basis. So the fact that we can connect to our fans on a one-to-one level, I think really keeps our band alive.
Sloan turns 25 this year. To what do you attribute your longevity? Moderate success! That’s what will keep your band together. Not bottoming out, and not being so successful and rich that you become obnoxious and you don’t need to work or something.
Splitting the money four ways will help keep your band together, because you’re all in the same boat. Everybody in our band sings and writes and contributes, but if someone has a good year where they have a hit song on the radio, then everybody benefits. The next year, someone else is going to write a song that’s going to do well at radio, but everybody still benefits. And everybody puts in work in different areas. That will help keep your band together.
[Otherwise] one person, a la Sting in The Police or something, is going to be so much more wealthy than the others, because he wrote all of the hit songs and probably didn’t cut the others in for a bit of a slice. That’s going to breed dissension after a while in your band.
And also artistically, it’s an outlet for everybody. It’s not like there’s the disgruntled drummer who’s writing songs but can’t put them on a Sloan album because there’s someone else singing all of the songs. Sloan is an outlet for everybody in the band, and everybody sings and contributes as much or as little as they want. That’s a key factor as well.
That’s kind of like the R.E.M. model. When they started off, they said, “We’re going to split everything four ways. That kept them together. I think U2 might do the same thing. It’s true, U2 for sure. I was a big R.E.M. fan growing up in the ’80s—their early career was really big for me—and I remember reading that and thinking that was a good model.
Are you guys working on any new music? We’re just sort of debating right now. Maybe we’ll do a reissue, another box set a la One Chord to Another for Navy Blues, which is our fourth album. Or do we go back and do [debut LP] Smeared? That might be a bit different, because it really sticks out as a different record in our early catalog. Or are we going to work on some new music? I’m not sure.
I think the next thing that’s actually going to come out [that] we were just recording this past week is two original Christmas songs, which we’ve never done before. We have recorded Christmas covers—Patrick sang “Merry Xmas Everybody,” the Slade ’70s Christmas song, but I don’t know if it really came out. I think we just sort of put it up online. We did “The 12 Days of Christmas” a few years ago as part of a split single with another Canadian band. But this will be the first time we’ve actually written two original holiday songs.
I wrote one called “December 25” and Chris wrote one called “Kids Come Back at Christmas.” Hopefully those will come out as a seven-inch single right before Christmas time. That’s kind of the next thing we’re working on.
Do you have any expectations of Las Vegas? I can’t visualize Las Vegas except for the cliché of the strip and casinos and hotels and, like, no trees. Maybe that’s just the way someone in the United States would imagine Nova Scotia as nothing but a fishing village and a bunch of lobster traps.
I can’t visualize, like, what kind of venues a band like us would play there. But once again, perhaps I’m just imagining the cliché. I’m looking forward to going.
--taken from: Las Vegas Weekly
by Annie Zaleski
Canadian power-pop outfit Sloan is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its top-selling album, 1996’s One Chord to Another by issuing a new boxed-set version and playing the original record in full on tour. We chatted with guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Jay Ferguson about Sloan’s first-ever show in Las Vegas (and his first-ever visit to the city), One Chord’s pivotal role and the impending release of new music.
When you ranked Sloan’s records for Noisey last year, you placed One Chord to Another No. 1. Why does it stand out for you? I really like the songs. I mean, I like all of our records—I’m not embarrassed by any of them—but I really like the songs on that record. It’s [also] a little bit special, because it’s the first Sloan album that we put out on our own record label, Murderecords here in Canada. Our previous two records were on Geffen out of the United States.
Our second album on Geffen was called Twice Removed—it was a record that we made in New York, and they knew it was being made, and our A&R guy was on top of it. But when we handed it in, the marketing department was like, “We don’t know how to market this record. This doesn’t sound like the first Sloan album.” So they wanted us to redo it. We said no, put it out as-is. They said, “Okay, we’ll put it out, but we can’t guarantee anything’s going to happen, marketing- or promotion-wise.” And that was the case. It died instantly.
It was a very frustrating time for our band, because of that reception. It did okay in Canada. So our band took time off. We didn’t know if we were going to break up or get back together. When we decided to get back together, to make One Chord to Another, we actually offered it to Geffen, but we decided not to go that route again. We released it on Murderecords and recorded the drums, like, on a four-track cassette, in order to save money.
It ended up becoming our most successful album to date, [and] it really kick-started the modern-day Sloan, for me anyhow, in that we kind of grabbed all the reins of marketing decisions and promotion. It’s like running your own small business. So that made it really rewarding.
There are so many bands, especially in the ’90s, that never got that chance, especially if they were on a major label. They had two records, and if the second one didn’t do well, they were done. Oh, for sure. I can think of two other bands who were even on Geffen during the ’90s, and they handed in a record and [the label was] like, “No, we don’t think so. Go make it again.” [The first band] went and made it again—then that [album] was released and it flopped, or they didn’t do anything about it. So here’s this poor band, made their record twice, probably wasted a year or two of their life doing that, and still nothing happened. Another band who are friends of ours had to make their second album three times, and the third time it was rejected anyhow, and then nothing happened. So they took two-and-a-half or three years to make three albums of the same album, and Geffen continued saying, “No, we don’t think so—try it again.” I would go crazy being in that situation.
Sloan has been successful in Canada, and successful on an underground level in the United States. We’ve never been million sellers or anything like that, but I’m grateful that we’ve been able to at least steer our own career a little bit more than a lot of other peers, definitely from the ’90s.
Doing One Chord to Another on your own terms, and having it be it so successful, must have been vindication. It was. It was great, too, because I didn’t want Sloan to end, especially after Twice Removed. When we all decided, “Let’s try it again and we’ll put it out on Murderecords,” you know, with low expectations—and then it really caught on—like you said, it was rewarding. It was a really fun time for sure.
One Chord to Another came out on an indie label here in the U.S., a year after it came out in Canada. I remember it being hard to find at the time. So it’s like you get a second chance to reintroduce some people to this one 20 years later. Right! (laughs) That’s why we’re doing these box sets [of each Sloan album], basically trying to reintroduce everybody in America to our complete catalog. We’re working our way through our catalog.
We signed to that [U.S. indie label], Enclave, in late ’96, and they put it out in ’97. It started off well. It was run by a guy named Tom Zutaut, who used to be one of the head A&R guys at Geffen, ironically. He signed Guns N’ Roses. When he started the Enclave, I think he wanted Sloan on his label to make a success out of our band, in order be able to point the finger at Geffen, like, “Look what I was able to do, that you guys couldn’t!” or something like that.
But anyhow, like nine months later, Enclave went belly up due to a total musical chairs shift within EMI, [a] restructuring kind of thing, because his label was part of the EMI umbrella at the time. So you’re right, One Chord has always been a little bit more difficult to find in the United States.
I remember talking to some friends around that time, about us trying to find the record. It was like a mythical lost album, and it was obviously harder to hear albums in the pre-digital era. I remember hearing, back in the mid-’90s, [that] before One Chord to Another was out in the States, there would be Sloan fans in Cleveland or even Detroit who would drive across the border in order to buy One Chord to Another. The idea of that happening now is so ludicrous, because all you have to do is turn on your computer and Google it.
As you’ve been playing the album live in order, have you gleaned any new insights about it? A little bit. There are a number of songs that we do still keep in our regular setlist—“The Good in Everyone,” “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” and “The Lines You Amend.” “G Turns to D” shows up from time to time. So there’s still a number of songs that we’re quite familiar with playing. But the interesting thing is playing them in the context of the record, instead of where they would normally go in our set.
The other thing that I’ve learned is that I really don’t like singing “Junior Panthers,” which is the fourth song on the record. [With] the key that it’s in and the singing range, it’s so hard to push your voice. Like, it’s in such a low range for me that I dread when I see it coming up on the setlist. So what I’ve learned from doing One Chord to Another is that I don’t really want to do “Junior Panthers” ever again after the One Chord tour is over! But the rest of the record, yeah, I enjoy playing it.
It’s impressive that you guys aren’t futzing with the key signature, moving it up a couple of steps. You’ll suffer for the art. Oh yeah, I like keeping it pure and keeping it as it was, for sure. I saw some clip of Elton John recently, and he was doing “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” down a couple of steps, and I was like, “Oh man, it’s a drag. It doesn’t sound the way it did.” And I haven’t seen Fleetwood Mac on any of their recent tours, but some friends of mine went, and when they’re doing “Rhiannon,” Stevie Nicks never goes up high anymore. She just sings those melodies low, and they said, “Oh, it’s about three steps down.” I understand people’s voices change, but it’s hard. So anyhow, we’re suffering for our art and suffering for the fans, to keep it pure, yeah!
Is it my imagination that Sloan has been touring a little bit more in the U.S. in recent years? I know you’re playing some cities you haven’t hit before. Have you guys made a concerted push to come down here more? I don’t think we’re pushing to be like, “This is the year we’re going to make it in the States!” But yeah, we had an opportunity to play a number of California shows, so we took advantage of that. We’re playing a lot of shows that we haven’t done out there, such as Las Vegas and maybe Santa Ana—places that we haven’t been, or maybe we went to once 20 years ago. So that’s a little bit different.
We’ll still go back to the regular ones, like Cleveland, Boston, New York City, D.C. and things like that. But occasionally we get offers for other cities. Not to sound like an old man talking about the Internet, but I do feel like, [with] the way the Internet has flattened the world, we do find that there’s more fans coming out of the woodwork than before, because it’s easier to access music.
We have a lot of direct-to-fan dealings, just through the way we sell box sets and things like that. So we feel that we’re still getting new fans and we’re also still stoking the fire of the already hardcore Sloan fans, by selling box sets off of our websites and limited-edition singles and things like that. It’s been a really good way of staying in touch with hardcore fans. That’s really enabled us to keep a little bit of fire going in a lot of different American cities, [and] still adding new ones here and there when promoters are really encouraging for us to come to places that we’ve never been to before.
Where are people discovering you guys now? Do you have any sense about how people are coming to the band? I don’t have any statistics. We have a guy who helps us with our online, direct-to-fan stuff, and then Patrick [Pentland] in our band really handles the Twitter accounts, and he started [our] Snapchat, which I have not seen yet. We’re all involved in the Instagram account. I’ll put stuff on the Facebook page. I don’t know, exactly. I think it’s just a combination of all of those things.
I don’t know if I’d like to be a brand new band right now, trying to cut through all of the noise of everybody that’s trying to get attention. But all of those tools are great for a band like us that’s had a long career and already has a fanbase. I don’t know if there’s a record company that would be willing to really invest money in a 25-year-old band in order to really reach those fans on a yearly basis. So the fact that we can connect to our fans on a one-to-one level, I think really keeps our band alive.
Sloan turns 25 this year. To what do you attribute your longevity? Moderate success! That’s what will keep your band together. Not bottoming out, and not being so successful and rich that you become obnoxious and you don’t need to work or something.
Splitting the money four ways will help keep your band together, because you’re all in the same boat. Everybody in our band sings and writes and contributes, but if someone has a good year where they have a hit song on the radio, then everybody benefits. The next year, someone else is going to write a song that’s going to do well at radio, but everybody still benefits. And everybody puts in work in different areas. That will help keep your band together.
[Otherwise] one person, a la Sting in The Police or something, is going to be so much more wealthy than the others, because he wrote all of the hit songs and probably didn’t cut the others in for a bit of a slice. That’s going to breed dissension after a while in your band.
And also artistically, it’s an outlet for everybody. It’s not like there’s the disgruntled drummer who’s writing songs but can’t put them on a Sloan album because there’s someone else singing all of the songs. Sloan is an outlet for everybody in the band, and everybody sings and contributes as much or as little as they want. That’s a key factor as well.
That’s kind of like the R.E.M. model. When they started off, they said, “We’re going to split everything four ways. That kept them together. I think U2 might do the same thing. It’s true, U2 for sure. I was a big R.E.M. fan growing up in the ’80s—their early career was really big for me—and I remember reading that and thinking that was a good model.
Are you guys working on any new music? We’re just sort of debating right now. Maybe we’ll do a reissue, another box set a la One Chord to Another for Navy Blues, which is our fourth album. Or do we go back and do [debut LP] Smeared? That might be a bit different, because it really sticks out as a different record in our early catalog. Or are we going to work on some new music? I’m not sure.
I think the next thing that’s actually going to come out [that] we were just recording this past week is two original Christmas songs, which we’ve never done before. We have recorded Christmas covers—Patrick sang “Merry Xmas Everybody,” the Slade ’70s Christmas song, but I don’t know if it really came out. I think we just sort of put it up online. We did “The 12 Days of Christmas” a few years ago as part of a split single with another Canadian band. But this will be the first time we’ve actually written two original holiday songs.
I wrote one called “December 25” and Chris wrote one called “Kids Come Back at Christmas.” Hopefully those will come out as a seven-inch single right before Christmas time. That’s kind of the next thing we’re working on.
Do you have any expectations of Las Vegas? I can’t visualize Las Vegas except for the cliché of the strip and casinos and hotels and, like, no trees. Maybe that’s just the way someone in the United States would imagine Nova Scotia as nothing but a fishing village and a bunch of lobster traps.
I can’t visualize, like, what kind of venues a band like us would play there. But once again, perhaps I’m just imagining the cliché. I’m looking forward to going.
--taken from: Las Vegas Weekly
Monday, September 19, 2016
Sloan talk being uncool, ‘One Chord to Another’ box set & tour & more in BV interview
--taken from: Brooklyn Vegan
by Bill Pearis
Sloan‘s 1996 album, One Chord to Another, was the pivotal third LP in the Canadian band’s career. After their second album — 1994’s out-of-time, critically-loved but commercially unsuccessful Twice Removed — the band broke up, for the most part, and parted ways with Geffen Records. In the interim, members Jay Ferguson and Chris Murphy started Murder Records which released records by The Super Friendz, Jale, Thrush Hermit, The Inbreds and more. It wasn’t long before the urge to continue Sloan resurfaced and the band recorded OCTA on their own, on the cheap. It ended up being Sloan’s most commercially successful album, spawning Canadian hit singles “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” and “The Good in Everyone,” and is generally regarded as their best album in a very consistently good discography.
The band are currently celebrating One Chord to Another‘s 20th anniversary, with a vinyl box set that includes the Live at a Sloan Party album (a bonus disc on the 2007 U.S. release of the LP, a disc of rarities and more. The fall leg of their tour, where they’re playing OCTA in full, starts this week, and includes an NYC stop at Bowery Ballroom on October 17 (tickets are still on sale).
Ahead of the tour, I talked with Chris Murphy and Jay Ferguson about the box set, the tour, the evolution of songs, “riff farms,” a 4-track recorder’s importance on OCTA and more. Read that below…
So after doing the OCTA tour in the Spring, you’ve spent most of the summer playing festivals.
Chris Murphy: We played almost every weekend. We have a slightly different career in Canada than in the United States. We were on the radio and TV here, so we have “value” in summer festivals that are put on by a city or a town. “Let’s get these guys in, they’ve got 12 recognizable songs.” So we make more more money playing that festival than we would coming through town on a tour, so we morph into a greatest hits show in the summer. We did play one “cooler” festival where we played the One Chord to Another set.
Festival crowds don’t want “deep cuts.”
Chris: Not necessarily. When we play in the States, we might say “Here’s a deep cut from ‘Between the Bridges'” and people will cheer, but in Canada it’s “play the five songs we know from the radio!” So it’s kind of more rewarding when we go “south.” We’re not a part of any mainstream media, we command less money but if you’re at our shows it’s because you’ve searched us out, you’re a music fan.
At least in New York, Sloan shows are full of die-hard Sloan fans. And Canadians in NYC.
Chris: I think so. I should say in Canada too we have fans. We didn’t become “uncool” or anything but when you’ve “crossed over” you can’t help but lose some of your cache. For me it happened when The Joshua Tree came out. “These guys don’t deserve my love anymore. How can I separate myself from the jocks in my class?” Even though I was already out of high school, but I am still fighting jocks to this day. [Laughter].
When I was doing research for this interview, I looked up to see where you had played in NYC in 1996 — it was during CMJ at Luna Lounge. Do you remember who you played with?
Chris: Olivia Tremor Control?
Yep, and this Chicago band Number One Cup.
Jay Ferguson: Oh yeah, it was all bands on this label Flydaddy. Back in the ’90s when we were doing Murder Records, I had a relationship with the guys who ran Flydaddy. I loved all that stuff, Olivia Tremor Control, Cardinal, and Murder Records put out the first Richard Davies album in Canada. We talked about releasing a single with Flydaddy but it never happened.
Chris: Jay, what year is that? 1996? I feel like we had the songs earmarked for that. I have a feeling about what those songs would be though I don’t remember what actual songs they were. I remember we were kind of ramping up to do that and were like “we need a song.” If you told me what song it was it would be satisfying.
Jay: I think I had a song in mind for it that maybe ended up being on Between the Bridges, but I forget.
Do you remember anything about that Luna Lounge show? That was a tiny place.
Jay: I remember the venue, with the bar in the front and almost living room sized performance space. I wanna say Olivia Tremor Control didn’t play their best show, a little bit falling apart. But I don’t remember a lot about our show. I was happy to be playing a “cool” show. This was us playing CMJ basically on our own, we didn’t have a label at that point, it was after Geffen and our “breakup” when we came back together to make a new record. It wasn’t a bunch of unknown bands playing that CMJ show, it was like we were being associated with a bunch of likeminded bands. Especially Olivia Tremor Control who had a similar aesthetic to the music we were making then.
Chris: I think that also may have been the show where we met Richard from The Enclave who we ended up signing with and who released One Chord to Another in America. We were all set up to release One Chord to Another with Geffen, actually, which is a story too long to tell. But I ended up staying out all night talking to the Enclave guy. Even though I thought nothing was going to come of it, as It looked like we were going to get in bed with Geffen again but I was dead-set against it, I thought it was a terrible situation. Sorry, again, that’s a story that may or may not be related. Giant sidebar that goes nowhere.
Jay: But if that was the case, it does make that show eventful, that we played that and Richard, which set things up a little bit for what was to come in America. Which wouldn’t last for long. [The Enclave released One Chord to Another in February 1997 but the label folded by year’s end. – Ed]
Chris: That was probably the last time Sloan was actually promoted in the States, The Enclave actually had ads come out and everything.
So I don’t want to turn this interview into something out of Tape-Op, but reading the liner notes to the OCTA box, I was fascinated by the fact that the drums on the album were recorded on a cassette four-track. I don’t know that much about recording, but I’m just curious about, apart from it being cheaper, what is the advantage of doing it like that?
Chris: Well. If you have a drummer who says “I’ll give you five hours of my time over the Christmas holidays” and I just thought “Oh shit, what are we going to do?” No it was self-financed so, setting up drums and getting takes, that’ll take you a long time, that’ll cost you money. Luckily, we had a fantastic drummer in Andrew and we didn’t have very much money, so I think Jay and I were on the same page, it was his big idea to do it. We made Twice Removed and it cost $120,000 U.S., this giant budget where we used the best gear in the world. So with this we thought “we either make a poor man’s version of that or we really go for character.” So we opted for crazy sounding drums that were recorded super-cheap. It’s not like we didn’t like the aesthetic of it, we weren’t “ugh I hate the way this sounds but that’s all we can afford.” We thought it was kinda ’60s throwback. We also don’t know how to record or use the gear very well, certainly at the time. We used the same microphone on every track, we didn’t know about phasing or stereo separation. I have the tapes still — when you isolate each of the tracks, they all sound almost the exact same. This one has just a tiny bit more bass drum on it, this one has a tiny bit more snare. While we recorded it on the four-track, we also recorded it on a two-track reel-to-reel machine at the same time, the same takes, but we preferred the four-track cassette every time. It was our most commercially successful record, we had songs on the record that, hilariously, had this dinky drum sound. Maybe we could have been more commercially successful if we had had more fidelity, but we don’t have any regrets. We think it sounds super-cool. We love it.
Jay: My favorite sidebar of the recording of the drums, is that we had to record piano for the song “Junior Panthers” and there was no piano at the studio where we were doing the overdubs. We had to record the piano at Chris’ parents house using that four-track. We had used all four tracks for the drums and we had to erase two of the drum tracks to make room for the piano. The other funny thing is, it’s Chris and I playing it together sitting side-by-side because I didn’t know how to play the complete chords. Chris is playing the root and I’m playing the chord. It was a total hobo affair.
Chris: That was the alternate title of the album: “A Hobo Affair.”
What I was really getting at was if it was as much the way it sounded as the money you were saving.
Jay: I guess it was a little both. It was a limited budget, Andrew was only around for a little bit, so how can we eliminate two or three days of recording time? So we thought we’d just record the drums in our practice space. But we were also fans of records that didn’t have much of a budget, that had a do it yourself spirit. I’m not sure which was the chicken and which was the egg, but both aspects were appealing.
Chris: We had done the demos on the same machine, and we really liked the way it sounded so we thought “Let’s just do the drums on this.” The only thing that is unfortunate is that at some point you have to mix the drums down to record anything else. I don’t know if this is too “Tape-Op” but then took all four of the tracks and brought them onto a 16 track, so we didn’t have the fidelity problems associated with four-track recording.
Jay: Actually, speaking of this we both still use four-tracks and a couple of months ago we had the idea of recording a couple of original Christmas songs to make as a 7″. So when we recorded the songs we did the drums, almost like a 20th anniversary, with on a four-track and then did all the overdubs in a studio. Hopefully that will be out as a 7″ right before the holidays. A whole new adventure in four-track recording.
What a scoop! [Laughter]
Jay: I can’t wait to see the headline.
I really do think, though, that the drum sound on One Chord to Another gives it a timeless quality. You listen to it today and don’t think “Oh this sounds like 1995.”
Chris: I think you’re right. From our second album on that became a thing. We weren’t thinking about “timelessness” but we definitely thought “we love the ’60s, we love the ’70s, we love American college rock and hardcore.” Music from all times. It was kind of a goal to make it so that you wouldn’t know what year it was from. I don’t want to speak for Jay, but I was really kind of embarrassed at the time of the sound of our first album, Smeared. It was so of the time, and behind the times at that. Our blueprint for making that record was Isn’t Anything by My Bloody Valentine which was a record that came out in 1988. Maybe we were ahead of the curve in Halifax, but I felt like if we went to England we’d be the laughing stock. I was really excited when we made Twice Removed to make one that sounded so different. I don’t know if you think of Once Chord to Another as that different that Twice Removed but our aesthetic was the same. We just had different tools at our disposal.
This is the second one of these 20th Anniversary box sets you’ve done. Did you learn anything from the first one that made things easier this time?
Chris: We spent so long working on Twice Removed I thought, “This one will be a breeze. We know what we’re doing,” but, of course, it also took fuckin’ forever. Next time we’ll know.
Jay: We had the template for the book, after doing the first one, which was helpful but it was still a lot of selecting photos and moving them around that Chris had to deal with.
Chris: When Jay says I have a template, we worked on almost every aspect of this together but Jay was in charge of the audio side of it and I am sort of in charge of the look of it but basically I’m just trying to please Jay. We really liked doing it. Whether or not you like the music, you can’t say that a lot of time and care didn’t go into it.
Was there anything that you wanted to include but, for whatever reason, couldn’t?
Jay: The only thing was something that I thought would be fun to have in the box, but wouldn’t fit in the box, was to have an actual cassette of the demos from the album, with like a hand-written label, so it would’ve been like what we would’ve handed around to friends in 1996. So you’d get three LPs but also a cassette. But it physically didn’t fit, so you get it as a digital download. That would’ve been fun.
Chris: When we had the Twice Removed box, we had so many demos, we pressed a record of what we called the “mirror” version of the album with the exact same running order, just in demo form. Jay really insisted, I think he was right, that we do demos that are as different as possible from the finished studio versions because that’s the most interesting. However I, from an ego point of view, wanted to illustrate that we had demos that were almost the exact same as the finished versions, to illustrate that we were not “produced.” All of the musical ideas that we had were our own, we didn’t go to New York to make it not knowing what we wanted to do.
Most of the One Chord to Another demos sound remarkably similar to the finished product.
Jay: Yeah. With one disc being the actual album, and another being the Live at a Sloan Party album, it was up in the air whether we were going to do the third vinyl LP as another “mirror” album or “outtakes” and I definitely wanted outtakes, which is what we did.
Chris: When we did the Twice Removed demos we put a lot of effort into making them sound beautiful and perfect, but with One Chord to Another, they were more sketches. I argued against the party record, saying that since that was originally the bonus disc on the American CD release, you were only getting one “new” record after that. But Jay said, and I ended up agreeing, that the fidelity of the Party record is so much nicer, and deserving of a vinyl release, plus it never came out in Canada.
Jay: I was on the fence myself but I’d run into people who’d say “You are going to put the ‘Party’ album in the box right?” It also gave Chris an opportunity to make cover art that really mimicked The Beach Boys’ “Party” album, which we didn’t get to do before.
Chris: And it gave Jay an opportunity to complain about the photos we had available to do it with. [Laughter] And currently, we’re on a quest to find all the pre-mastered mixdowns of Navy Blues stuff. Jay seems to think that we mixed everything down to reel-to-reel but we don’t seem to have those mixdowns. We have DATs and stuff, we have enough material to make a box set, but Jay’s been spending a lot of time and energy trying to find those fucking things.
Speaking of different version of songs, I think it’s interesting that across the two box sets there are a bunch of versions of “Autobiography” which would end up on OCTA. It was neat to hear how that song really changed over the course of the different demos.
Chris: Actually there’s at least one other version of that out there somewhere.
Jay: We can put that on the Navy Blues box set.
Chris: We were actually playing it before Smeared came out, it was awful though.
Jay: Was it slow and dirge-y?
Chris: No, but I don’t know how to describe it apart from using that word that you never want to hear associated with anything, which is… “funky.” It was almost like a poor man’s version of The Stone Roses’ “Fools Gold.”
Jay: Really? Oh my god. I kinda want to hear that now. Is there a live recording of it?
Chris: There’s a VHS of us playing it. You might want to see it, but you will not want to release it.
The forgotten “baggy” era of Sloan.
Chris: That’s right! We like that stuff. Well, Jay was aware of it. I knew nothing, I was just following Jay at that point.
I also think it’s interesting on the outtakes disc, you can definitely hear parts of melodies that would end up on other songs, like there’s at least two that use elements that end up in “Anyone Who’s Anyone.”
Chris: That was just me blowing on the embers of the few ideas I actually have in life. If I’d had another good idea in the meantime, I’d have used that.
Jay: On the Twice Removed box set there’s a demo of “Ill Placed Trust” which wouldn’t show up on an actual record for another 12 years. I’m a fan of things like that, the Beatles had “Child of Nature” from The White Album era that would eventually be John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.” Or The Rolling Stones originally recorded a version of “Start Me Up” in 1974. So as a nerdy fan of musical history, I hope Sloan fans enjoy it too.
Does that happen a lot, that you have these riffs or melodies that you just catalog till they’re actually used in a song?
Chris: I think so, yeah. I have mine cataloged, Jay has his and I have Patrick and Andrew’s cataloged for when they don’t remember anything I can say “But what about this one? What about this one?” For his 18-minute song “Forty-Eight Portraits” on our last album Commonwealth, I was just feeding him his own ideas. “What about this riff?” “Oh yeah.” And then he stitched them all together into one giant song. He could’ve remembered them, I should say. He’s got an excellent musical mind which so many great ideas, but I’m better at cataloging them than I am at music.
Jay: It’s like Chris is Andrew’s musical secretary. I remember there was a lot, especially around Pretty Together, of just 30-second riffs and bits that had been mined a lot of the succeeding years.
Chris: When we were making Pretty Together, my big idea was, and it kind of sounds gross to say, but was to have a “riff farm.” I had these riffs numbered. Since we were all capable of writing and playing, let’s just come up with a giant catalog of riffs. Since we split the money equally, if you make a song out of Riff 18 and Riff 40 and Riff 12, and I use Riff 12 too, it’ll just be fun, a musical motif that repeats. So I thought it would be cool for us all to contribute to this “riff farm” and we’ll all benefit from it. Ultimately, though, I think it was just I that benefited from it. As you can see, I’m still referring to it.
So you’re already done one leg of the OCTA tour which was back in the spring. I’m guessing before that you had never played this album front-to-back. What was the hardest thing about doing it this way?
Chris: Jay downplays his enjoyment of playing “Junior Panthers” because it’s in a vocal range that doesn’t allow him much air to move, but it always goes over great and it’s awesome, and we all enjoy playing it.
Jay: The middle part is nice with all the “oohs” and chord changes but it’s basically in a vocal black hole, it’s like trying to talk with melody.
Chris: It’s rapping. [Laughs]
Jay: [Laughing] That’s right, I’m rapping. I’m especially looking forward to doing it in New York City. No, it’s frustrating to play, for me anyhow, but this has been really fun. These days there aren’t that many songs where Patrick and I both play guitar leads on a song, so getting to do “Can’t Face Up” is fun, and there’s all sorts of neat guitar parts on the album. It’s a fun album to play, apart from my rapping.
Chris: Hello New York, Birthplace of Rap. Here’s one for you called “Junior Panthers.” [Laughter] Seriously though, One Chord to Another is probably our best album all the way through. Our manager says “you can judge an album’s greatness by seeing how many times you have to press ‘skip'” and I don’t think there are any skips on that one. I would like to argue that you don’t have to do it on any of our records, but maybe you do.
--taken from: Brooklyn Vegan
by Bill Pearis
Sloan‘s 1996 album, One Chord to Another, was the pivotal third LP in the Canadian band’s career. After their second album — 1994’s out-of-time, critically-loved but commercially unsuccessful Twice Removed — the band broke up, for the most part, and parted ways with Geffen Records. In the interim, members Jay Ferguson and Chris Murphy started Murder Records which released records by The Super Friendz, Jale, Thrush Hermit, The Inbreds and more. It wasn’t long before the urge to continue Sloan resurfaced and the band recorded OCTA on their own, on the cheap. It ended up being Sloan’s most commercially successful album, spawning Canadian hit singles “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” and “The Good in Everyone,” and is generally regarded as their best album in a very consistently good discography.
The band are currently celebrating One Chord to Another‘s 20th anniversary, with a vinyl box set that includes the Live at a Sloan Party album (a bonus disc on the 2007 U.S. release of the LP, a disc of rarities and more. The fall leg of their tour, where they’re playing OCTA in full, starts this week, and includes an NYC stop at Bowery Ballroom on October 17 (tickets are still on sale).
Ahead of the tour, I talked with Chris Murphy and Jay Ferguson about the box set, the tour, the evolution of songs, “riff farms,” a 4-track recorder’s importance on OCTA and more. Read that below…
So after doing the OCTA tour in the Spring, you’ve spent most of the summer playing festivals.
Chris Murphy: We played almost every weekend. We have a slightly different career in Canada than in the United States. We were on the radio and TV here, so we have “value” in summer festivals that are put on by a city or a town. “Let’s get these guys in, they’ve got 12 recognizable songs.” So we make more more money playing that festival than we would coming through town on a tour, so we morph into a greatest hits show in the summer. We did play one “cooler” festival where we played the One Chord to Another set.
Festival crowds don’t want “deep cuts.”
Chris: Not necessarily. When we play in the States, we might say “Here’s a deep cut from ‘Between the Bridges'” and people will cheer, but in Canada it’s “play the five songs we know from the radio!” So it’s kind of more rewarding when we go “south.” We’re not a part of any mainstream media, we command less money but if you’re at our shows it’s because you’ve searched us out, you’re a music fan.
At least in New York, Sloan shows are full of die-hard Sloan fans. And Canadians in NYC.
Chris: I think so. I should say in Canada too we have fans. We didn’t become “uncool” or anything but when you’ve “crossed over” you can’t help but lose some of your cache. For me it happened when The Joshua Tree came out. “These guys don’t deserve my love anymore. How can I separate myself from the jocks in my class?” Even though I was already out of high school, but I am still fighting jocks to this day. [Laughter].
When I was doing research for this interview, I looked up to see where you had played in NYC in 1996 — it was during CMJ at Luna Lounge. Do you remember who you played with?
Chris: Olivia Tremor Control?
Yep, and this Chicago band Number One Cup.
Jay Ferguson: Oh yeah, it was all bands on this label Flydaddy. Back in the ’90s when we were doing Murder Records, I had a relationship with the guys who ran Flydaddy. I loved all that stuff, Olivia Tremor Control, Cardinal, and Murder Records put out the first Richard Davies album in Canada. We talked about releasing a single with Flydaddy but it never happened.
Chris: Jay, what year is that? 1996? I feel like we had the songs earmarked for that. I have a feeling about what those songs would be though I don’t remember what actual songs they were. I remember we were kind of ramping up to do that and were like “we need a song.” If you told me what song it was it would be satisfying.
Jay: I think I had a song in mind for it that maybe ended up being on Between the Bridges, but I forget.
Do you remember anything about that Luna Lounge show? That was a tiny place.
Jay: I remember the venue, with the bar in the front and almost living room sized performance space. I wanna say Olivia Tremor Control didn’t play their best show, a little bit falling apart. But I don’t remember a lot about our show. I was happy to be playing a “cool” show. This was us playing CMJ basically on our own, we didn’t have a label at that point, it was after Geffen and our “breakup” when we came back together to make a new record. It wasn’t a bunch of unknown bands playing that CMJ show, it was like we were being associated with a bunch of likeminded bands. Especially Olivia Tremor Control who had a similar aesthetic to the music we were making then.
Chris: I think that also may have been the show where we met Richard from The Enclave who we ended up signing with and who released One Chord to Another in America. We were all set up to release One Chord to Another with Geffen, actually, which is a story too long to tell. But I ended up staying out all night talking to the Enclave guy. Even though I thought nothing was going to come of it, as It looked like we were going to get in bed with Geffen again but I was dead-set against it, I thought it was a terrible situation. Sorry, again, that’s a story that may or may not be related. Giant sidebar that goes nowhere.
Jay: But if that was the case, it does make that show eventful, that we played that and Richard, which set things up a little bit for what was to come in America. Which wouldn’t last for long. [The Enclave released One Chord to Another in February 1997 but the label folded by year’s end. – Ed]
Chris: That was probably the last time Sloan was actually promoted in the States, The Enclave actually had ads come out and everything.
So I don’t want to turn this interview into something out of Tape-Op, but reading the liner notes to the OCTA box, I was fascinated by the fact that the drums on the album were recorded on a cassette four-track. I don’t know that much about recording, but I’m just curious about, apart from it being cheaper, what is the advantage of doing it like that?
Chris: Well. If you have a drummer who says “I’ll give you five hours of my time over the Christmas holidays” and I just thought “Oh shit, what are we going to do?” No it was self-financed so, setting up drums and getting takes, that’ll take you a long time, that’ll cost you money. Luckily, we had a fantastic drummer in Andrew and we didn’t have very much money, so I think Jay and I were on the same page, it was his big idea to do it. We made Twice Removed and it cost $120,000 U.S., this giant budget where we used the best gear in the world. So with this we thought “we either make a poor man’s version of that or we really go for character.” So we opted for crazy sounding drums that were recorded super-cheap. It’s not like we didn’t like the aesthetic of it, we weren’t “ugh I hate the way this sounds but that’s all we can afford.” We thought it was kinda ’60s throwback. We also don’t know how to record or use the gear very well, certainly at the time. We used the same microphone on every track, we didn’t know about phasing or stereo separation. I have the tapes still — when you isolate each of the tracks, they all sound almost the exact same. This one has just a tiny bit more bass drum on it, this one has a tiny bit more snare. While we recorded it on the four-track, we also recorded it on a two-track reel-to-reel machine at the same time, the same takes, but we preferred the four-track cassette every time. It was our most commercially successful record, we had songs on the record that, hilariously, had this dinky drum sound. Maybe we could have been more commercially successful if we had had more fidelity, but we don’t have any regrets. We think it sounds super-cool. We love it.
Jay: My favorite sidebar of the recording of the drums, is that we had to record piano for the song “Junior Panthers” and there was no piano at the studio where we were doing the overdubs. We had to record the piano at Chris’ parents house using that four-track. We had used all four tracks for the drums and we had to erase two of the drum tracks to make room for the piano. The other funny thing is, it’s Chris and I playing it together sitting side-by-side because I didn’t know how to play the complete chords. Chris is playing the root and I’m playing the chord. It was a total hobo affair.
Chris: That was the alternate title of the album: “A Hobo Affair.”
What I was really getting at was if it was as much the way it sounded as the money you were saving.
Jay: I guess it was a little both. It was a limited budget, Andrew was only around for a little bit, so how can we eliminate two or three days of recording time? So we thought we’d just record the drums in our practice space. But we were also fans of records that didn’t have much of a budget, that had a do it yourself spirit. I’m not sure which was the chicken and which was the egg, but both aspects were appealing.
Chris: We had done the demos on the same machine, and we really liked the way it sounded so we thought “Let’s just do the drums on this.” The only thing that is unfortunate is that at some point you have to mix the drums down to record anything else. I don’t know if this is too “Tape-Op” but then took all four of the tracks and brought them onto a 16 track, so we didn’t have the fidelity problems associated with four-track recording.
Jay: Actually, speaking of this we both still use four-tracks and a couple of months ago we had the idea of recording a couple of original Christmas songs to make as a 7″. So when we recorded the songs we did the drums, almost like a 20th anniversary, with on a four-track and then did all the overdubs in a studio. Hopefully that will be out as a 7″ right before the holidays. A whole new adventure in four-track recording.
What a scoop! [Laughter]
Jay: I can’t wait to see the headline.
I really do think, though, that the drum sound on One Chord to Another gives it a timeless quality. You listen to it today and don’t think “Oh this sounds like 1995.”
Chris: I think you’re right. From our second album on that became a thing. We weren’t thinking about “timelessness” but we definitely thought “we love the ’60s, we love the ’70s, we love American college rock and hardcore.” Music from all times. It was kind of a goal to make it so that you wouldn’t know what year it was from. I don’t want to speak for Jay, but I was really kind of embarrassed at the time of the sound of our first album, Smeared. It was so of the time, and behind the times at that. Our blueprint for making that record was Isn’t Anything by My Bloody Valentine which was a record that came out in 1988. Maybe we were ahead of the curve in Halifax, but I felt like if we went to England we’d be the laughing stock. I was really excited when we made Twice Removed to make one that sounded so different. I don’t know if you think of Once Chord to Another as that different that Twice Removed but our aesthetic was the same. We just had different tools at our disposal.
This is the second one of these 20th Anniversary box sets you’ve done. Did you learn anything from the first one that made things easier this time?
Chris: We spent so long working on Twice Removed I thought, “This one will be a breeze. We know what we’re doing,” but, of course, it also took fuckin’ forever. Next time we’ll know.
Jay: We had the template for the book, after doing the first one, which was helpful but it was still a lot of selecting photos and moving them around that Chris had to deal with.
Chris: When Jay says I have a template, we worked on almost every aspect of this together but Jay was in charge of the audio side of it and I am sort of in charge of the look of it but basically I’m just trying to please Jay. We really liked doing it. Whether or not you like the music, you can’t say that a lot of time and care didn’t go into it.
Was there anything that you wanted to include but, for whatever reason, couldn’t?
Jay: The only thing was something that I thought would be fun to have in the box, but wouldn’t fit in the box, was to have an actual cassette of the demos from the album, with like a hand-written label, so it would’ve been like what we would’ve handed around to friends in 1996. So you’d get three LPs but also a cassette. But it physically didn’t fit, so you get it as a digital download. That would’ve been fun.
Chris: When we had the Twice Removed box, we had so many demos, we pressed a record of what we called the “mirror” version of the album with the exact same running order, just in demo form. Jay really insisted, I think he was right, that we do demos that are as different as possible from the finished studio versions because that’s the most interesting. However I, from an ego point of view, wanted to illustrate that we had demos that were almost the exact same as the finished versions, to illustrate that we were not “produced.” All of the musical ideas that we had were our own, we didn’t go to New York to make it not knowing what we wanted to do.
Most of the One Chord to Another demos sound remarkably similar to the finished product.
Jay: Yeah. With one disc being the actual album, and another being the Live at a Sloan Party album, it was up in the air whether we were going to do the third vinyl LP as another “mirror” album or “outtakes” and I definitely wanted outtakes, which is what we did.
Chris: When we did the Twice Removed demos we put a lot of effort into making them sound beautiful and perfect, but with One Chord to Another, they were more sketches. I argued against the party record, saying that since that was originally the bonus disc on the American CD release, you were only getting one “new” record after that. But Jay said, and I ended up agreeing, that the fidelity of the Party record is so much nicer, and deserving of a vinyl release, plus it never came out in Canada.
Jay: I was on the fence myself but I’d run into people who’d say “You are going to put the ‘Party’ album in the box right?” It also gave Chris an opportunity to make cover art that really mimicked The Beach Boys’ “Party” album, which we didn’t get to do before.
Chris: And it gave Jay an opportunity to complain about the photos we had available to do it with. [Laughter] And currently, we’re on a quest to find all the pre-mastered mixdowns of Navy Blues stuff. Jay seems to think that we mixed everything down to reel-to-reel but we don’t seem to have those mixdowns. We have DATs and stuff, we have enough material to make a box set, but Jay’s been spending a lot of time and energy trying to find those fucking things.
Speaking of different version of songs, I think it’s interesting that across the two box sets there are a bunch of versions of “Autobiography” which would end up on OCTA. It was neat to hear how that song really changed over the course of the different demos.
Chris: Actually there’s at least one other version of that out there somewhere.
Jay: We can put that on the Navy Blues box set.
Chris: We were actually playing it before Smeared came out, it was awful though.
Jay: Was it slow and dirge-y?
Chris: No, but I don’t know how to describe it apart from using that word that you never want to hear associated with anything, which is… “funky.” It was almost like a poor man’s version of The Stone Roses’ “Fools Gold.”
Jay: Really? Oh my god. I kinda want to hear that now. Is there a live recording of it?
Chris: There’s a VHS of us playing it. You might want to see it, but you will not want to release it.
The forgotten “baggy” era of Sloan.
Chris: That’s right! We like that stuff. Well, Jay was aware of it. I knew nothing, I was just following Jay at that point.
I also think it’s interesting on the outtakes disc, you can definitely hear parts of melodies that would end up on other songs, like there’s at least two that use elements that end up in “Anyone Who’s Anyone.”
Chris: That was just me blowing on the embers of the few ideas I actually have in life. If I’d had another good idea in the meantime, I’d have used that.
Jay: On the Twice Removed box set there’s a demo of “Ill Placed Trust” which wouldn’t show up on an actual record for another 12 years. I’m a fan of things like that, the Beatles had “Child of Nature” from The White Album era that would eventually be John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.” Or The Rolling Stones originally recorded a version of “Start Me Up” in 1974. So as a nerdy fan of musical history, I hope Sloan fans enjoy it too.
Does that happen a lot, that you have these riffs or melodies that you just catalog till they’re actually used in a song?
Chris: I think so, yeah. I have mine cataloged, Jay has his and I have Patrick and Andrew’s cataloged for when they don’t remember anything I can say “But what about this one? What about this one?” For his 18-minute song “Forty-Eight Portraits” on our last album Commonwealth, I was just feeding him his own ideas. “What about this riff?” “Oh yeah.” And then he stitched them all together into one giant song. He could’ve remembered them, I should say. He’s got an excellent musical mind which so many great ideas, but I’m better at cataloging them than I am at music.
Jay: It’s like Chris is Andrew’s musical secretary. I remember there was a lot, especially around Pretty Together, of just 30-second riffs and bits that had been mined a lot of the succeeding years.
Chris: When we were making Pretty Together, my big idea was, and it kind of sounds gross to say, but was to have a “riff farm.” I had these riffs numbered. Since we were all capable of writing and playing, let’s just come up with a giant catalog of riffs. Since we split the money equally, if you make a song out of Riff 18 and Riff 40 and Riff 12, and I use Riff 12 too, it’ll just be fun, a musical motif that repeats. So I thought it would be cool for us all to contribute to this “riff farm” and we’ll all benefit from it. Ultimately, though, I think it was just I that benefited from it. As you can see, I’m still referring to it.
So you’re already done one leg of the OCTA tour which was back in the spring. I’m guessing before that you had never played this album front-to-back. What was the hardest thing about doing it this way?
Chris: Jay downplays his enjoyment of playing “Junior Panthers” because it’s in a vocal range that doesn’t allow him much air to move, but it always goes over great and it’s awesome, and we all enjoy playing it.
Jay: The middle part is nice with all the “oohs” and chord changes but it’s basically in a vocal black hole, it’s like trying to talk with melody.
Chris: It’s rapping. [Laughs]
Jay: [Laughing] That’s right, I’m rapping. I’m especially looking forward to doing it in New York City. No, it’s frustrating to play, for me anyhow, but this has been really fun. These days there aren’t that many songs where Patrick and I both play guitar leads on a song, so getting to do “Can’t Face Up” is fun, and there’s all sorts of neat guitar parts on the album. It’s a fun album to play, apart from my rapping.
Chris: Hello New York, Birthplace of Rap. Here’s one for you called “Junior Panthers.” [Laughter] Seriously though, One Chord to Another is probably our best album all the way through. Our manager says “you can judge an album’s greatness by seeing how many times you have to press ‘skip'” and I don’t think there are any skips on that one. I would like to argue that you don’t have to do it on any of our records, but maybe you do.
--taken from: Brooklyn Vegan
Rock From the North: Sloan Makes the Trip From Toronto to the Desert Stars Fest
--taken from: Coachella Valley Independent
by Brian Blueskye
Sloan has been around for 25 years—and chances are, you’ve never heard of the band.
If you lived in Canada, it might—or might not—be a different story: The Toronto outfit has released 11 albums, been nominated for 10 Juno Awards, and won one. The group will be appearing during the Desert Stars Festival at Pappy and Harriet’s on Friday, Sept. 23.
During a recent interview, Jay Ferguson (guitar) said that while Sloan has a following in Canada, he doesn’t feel they’re hugely successful.
“We’re not huge anywhere,” Ferguson said. “We’ve managed to make a living for 26 years, and we’re not really huge in Canada. There’s this massive misconception in the States (among people who) don’t know our band that well who say, ‘I hear they’re huge in Canada and can’t make inroads in the United States.’ We’re like a cult band. The people who know us anywhere in the world—we’re like they’re little secret. Even in Canada, we don’t play stadiums or anything; we just play clubs and concert halls.”
Sloan has always had a unique songwriting style, with all four members contributing their own material. The band members have been known to switch instruments on records and during live performances. The group’s sound is similar to ’60s garage rock, with a bit of the British Wave sound thrown in.
“I think our sound has changed a lot in the period we’ve been together,” Ferguson said. “… We were drawing more from British noise rock or even Sonic Youth when we were really young. We draw from old recordings generally. We certainly wouldn’t turn to the latest Korn record or whatever is current in pop/rock; that’s not stuff we generally listen to. I’ve determined that if there’s one band that I’ve sort of derived material from, it would be The Pretty Things.”
During the recording of the latest album, Commonwealth, the band decided to do things a little differently: It’s a double album, with each band member getting a solo section.
“We’re a band with four principal songwriters who all write, and we all sing, and I don’t know a lot of bands that do that; we’ve always done it,” he said. “We’ve never been in a position where one member says, ‘I’m going to go make my own solo record.’ Everybody just gets to do whatever the fuck they want to do. We thought, ‘Let’s make a double album where each member gets a side of wax to do whatever they want.’”
Modern technology has made it easier and cheaper for independent artists to record. Ferguson said there’s an upside and a downside to it all.
“I think for us, we’ve been lucky, because we’ve managed to make a lot of records on tape,” he said. “You couldn’t use the Pro Tools kind of perfection machine and had to settle for your takes when you did it on tape, because time is money in the studio, and tape is expensive. But I think if you do your homework and listen to records and pay attention, then either medium can achieve great results. Computers are forgiving to a fault, but it also makes the idea of the recording studio more affordable, and you can do it in your bedroom. I think in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty good.”
Ferguson said he’s always liked the sound of vinyl when it comes to recordings.
“We’ve always pressed vinyl of everything we’ve done,” he said. “It never really went away. … I’ve always preferred vinyl records and have had them around. I have young kids myself now who are into buying records, and I can see them sitting there and listening to the record, holding this big sleeve, looking at the cover art work and reading the linear notes. It’s a tactile experience, and it’s so much nicer than listening to Spotify or Google Play. There’s an actual and physical relationship to the music you listen to when you hear it through vinyl.”
Sloan said he and his band mates have never been able to spend that much time in California while touring, and that he is happy Desert Stars will give them an opportunity to see a different part of California.
“I think it sounds like an interesting, unique and oddball kind of thing,” he said. “When we come through California, we’ve always played San Francisco and Los Angeles, and then figure out how to get home. This time, it seems like we’re doing a bit of an unusual Southern California run, which is kind of a different approach for us. We’re all excited to not just go play in Los Angeles and leave.”
--taken from: Coachella Valley Independent
by Brian Blueskye
Sloan has been around for 25 years—and chances are, you’ve never heard of the band.
If you lived in Canada, it might—or might not—be a different story: The Toronto outfit has released 11 albums, been nominated for 10 Juno Awards, and won one. The group will be appearing during the Desert Stars Festival at Pappy and Harriet’s on Friday, Sept. 23.
During a recent interview, Jay Ferguson (guitar) said that while Sloan has a following in Canada, he doesn’t feel they’re hugely successful.
“We’re not huge anywhere,” Ferguson said. “We’ve managed to make a living for 26 years, and we’re not really huge in Canada. There’s this massive misconception in the States (among people who) don’t know our band that well who say, ‘I hear they’re huge in Canada and can’t make inroads in the United States.’ We’re like a cult band. The people who know us anywhere in the world—we’re like they’re little secret. Even in Canada, we don’t play stadiums or anything; we just play clubs and concert halls.”
Sloan has always had a unique songwriting style, with all four members contributing their own material. The band members have been known to switch instruments on records and during live performances. The group’s sound is similar to ’60s garage rock, with a bit of the British Wave sound thrown in.
“I think our sound has changed a lot in the period we’ve been together,” Ferguson said. “… We were drawing more from British noise rock or even Sonic Youth when we were really young. We draw from old recordings generally. We certainly wouldn’t turn to the latest Korn record or whatever is current in pop/rock; that’s not stuff we generally listen to. I’ve determined that if there’s one band that I’ve sort of derived material from, it would be The Pretty Things.”
During the recording of the latest album, Commonwealth, the band decided to do things a little differently: It’s a double album, with each band member getting a solo section.
“We’re a band with four principal songwriters who all write, and we all sing, and I don’t know a lot of bands that do that; we’ve always done it,” he said. “We’ve never been in a position where one member says, ‘I’m going to go make my own solo record.’ Everybody just gets to do whatever the fuck they want to do. We thought, ‘Let’s make a double album where each member gets a side of wax to do whatever they want.’”
Modern technology has made it easier and cheaper for independent artists to record. Ferguson said there’s an upside and a downside to it all.
“I think for us, we’ve been lucky, because we’ve managed to make a lot of records on tape,” he said. “You couldn’t use the Pro Tools kind of perfection machine and had to settle for your takes when you did it on tape, because time is money in the studio, and tape is expensive. But I think if you do your homework and listen to records and pay attention, then either medium can achieve great results. Computers are forgiving to a fault, but it also makes the idea of the recording studio more affordable, and you can do it in your bedroom. I think in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty good.”
Ferguson said he’s always liked the sound of vinyl when it comes to recordings.
“We’ve always pressed vinyl of everything we’ve done,” he said. “It never really went away. … I’ve always preferred vinyl records and have had them around. I have young kids myself now who are into buying records, and I can see them sitting there and listening to the record, holding this big sleeve, looking at the cover art work and reading the linear notes. It’s a tactile experience, and it’s so much nicer than listening to Spotify or Google Play. There’s an actual and physical relationship to the music you listen to when you hear it through vinyl.”
Sloan said he and his band mates have never been able to spend that much time in California while touring, and that he is happy Desert Stars will give them an opportunity to see a different part of California.
“I think it sounds like an interesting, unique and oddball kind of thing,” he said. “When we come through California, we’ve always played San Francisco and Los Angeles, and then figure out how to get home. This time, it seems like we’re doing a bit of an unusual Southern California run, which is kind of a different approach for us. We’re all excited to not just go play in Los Angeles and leave.”
--taken from: Coachella Valley Independent
"Mind Over Matter" (video)
--taken from: Exclaim!
by Sarah Murphy
East Coast power-pop supergroup TUNS released their debut self-titled full-length last month, and they've just treated album cut "Mind Over Matter" to a spiffy new video.
The clip follows Sloan's Chris Murphy, Super Friendz' Matt Murphy and the Inbreds' Mike O'Neil as they hop into the back of a vintage limo only to be taken hostage by a sinister looking villain. They're bound and gagged and sailed out to meet an even more menacing bad guy — though, even in the midst of being kidnapped, they make sure to slather on some sun protection. Thanks to a couple lucky twists of fate, though, things turn out okay and the bandmates end up having a pretty good time.
--taken from: Exclaim!
by Sarah Murphy
East Coast power-pop supergroup TUNS released their debut self-titled full-length last month, and they've just treated album cut "Mind Over Matter" to a spiffy new video.
The clip follows Sloan's Chris Murphy, Super Friendz' Matt Murphy and the Inbreds' Mike O'Neil as they hop into the back of a vintage limo only to be taken hostage by a sinister looking villain. They're bound and gagged and sailed out to meet an even more menacing bad guy — though, even in the midst of being kidnapped, they make sure to slather on some sun protection. Thanks to a couple lucky twists of fate, though, things turn out okay and the bandmates end up having a pretty good time.
--taken from: Exclaim!
CD Giveaway: The Junior League ‘Also Rans’
--taken from: The Celebrity Cafe
The Junior League is the brainchild of Joe Adragna, who brings to life noteworthy Indie-Pop sounds for your ears. The Junior League oozes ’60s-oriented Pop with a modern twist; creating music that is both unique and familiar. Heavily influenced by artists such as The Beatles, The Monkees, The Who, Sloan, The Lemonheads and beyond, The Junior League creates a dose of nostalgia for the modern times.
Bringing friends in for the ride such as Jay Ferguson of Sloan, he also recruits the help of Scott McCaughey of Young Fresh Fellows and Minus 5, which Adragna has also played with, on the new record. A breath of fresh air in the music world, The Junior League pens honest, down to earth songs that blend life experiences, both past and present. With doses of happiness and anger intertwined throughout, the lyricism and music are equally inspirational, as Adragna finds new and interesting ways to build his masterpieces.
--taken from: The Celebrity Cafe
The Junior League is the brainchild of Joe Adragna, who brings to life noteworthy Indie-Pop sounds for your ears. The Junior League oozes ’60s-oriented Pop with a modern twist; creating music that is both unique and familiar. Heavily influenced by artists such as The Beatles, The Monkees, The Who, Sloan, The Lemonheads and beyond, The Junior League creates a dose of nostalgia for the modern times.
Bringing friends in for the ride such as Jay Ferguson of Sloan, he also recruits the help of Scott McCaughey of Young Fresh Fellows and Minus 5, which Adragna has also played with, on the new record. A breath of fresh air in the music world, The Junior League pens honest, down to earth songs that blend life experiences, both past and present. With doses of happiness and anger intertwined throughout, the lyricism and music are equally inspirational, as Adragna finds new and interesting ways to build his masterpieces.
--taken from: The Celebrity Cafe
Friday, September 16, 2016
Jack White, The Beatles, Ramones and July Talk top this week's new music
--taken from: Toronto Sun
by Darryl Sterdan
Is there such thing as a Canadian indie supergroup? If so, TUNS is it. Featuring Sloan’s Chris Murphy, Super Friendz’ Matt Murphy and Inbreds’ Mike O’Neill — and named for the Technical University of Nova Scotia — they unsurprisingly traffic in the melodic, bouncy and harmony-rich Beatles and Big Star-influence power-pop of their day jobs. Tun in.
--taken from: Toronto Sun
by Darryl Sterdan
Is there such thing as a Canadian indie supergroup? If so, TUNS is it. Featuring Sloan’s Chris Murphy, Super Friendz’ Matt Murphy and Inbreds’ Mike O’Neill — and named for the Technical University of Nova Scotia — they unsurprisingly traffic in the melodic, bouncy and harmony-rich Beatles and Big Star-influence power-pop of their day jobs. Tun in.
--taken from: Toronto Sun
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Reviews of this week's CD releases
--taken from: Winnipeg Free Press
POP / ROCK
TUNS
TUNS (Royal Mountain Records)
When it comes to official "Made in Canada" supergroups, the truly great combos are few and far between. The members of TUNS (pronounced "tonnes") all come from a similar musical time and place (the 1990s, Halifax) and are among some of the craftiest Canuck power-pop singers and songwriters.
Chris Murphy (Sloan), Matt Murphy (Super Friendz, Flashing Lights) and Mike O’Neill (Inbreds) have created a set of nine dazzling tracks that at least equal and maybe even exceed their work from back in the day. Sentimental opener Back Among Friends is practically a mission statement: "Maybe we’re riding on luck, but from the first chords we ever struck, rough and a little too tough, just an easy and natural, off the cuff" pretty much explains the feeling this album evokes.
All the obligatory pop music elements are in evidence — a little bit of high note, bass guitar figure working in tandem with an animated guitar line (Mixed Messages), vocals that parallel the guitar hook (Look Who’s Back In Town Again) and background gang handclaps and layered vocals (Mind Over Matter). There isn’t a clunker here — if these fellows were smart, they would forget about their past band relationships and make these tunes their first call. Pure pop for now people? Absolutely.
--taken from: Winnipeg Free Press
POP / ROCK
TUNS
TUNS (Royal Mountain Records)
When it comes to official "Made in Canada" supergroups, the truly great combos are few and far between. The members of TUNS (pronounced "tonnes") all come from a similar musical time and place (the 1990s, Halifax) and are among some of the craftiest Canuck power-pop singers and songwriters.
Chris Murphy (Sloan), Matt Murphy (Super Friendz, Flashing Lights) and Mike O’Neill (Inbreds) have created a set of nine dazzling tracks that at least equal and maybe even exceed their work from back in the day. Sentimental opener Back Among Friends is practically a mission statement: "Maybe we’re riding on luck, but from the first chords we ever struck, rough and a little too tough, just an easy and natural, off the cuff" pretty much explains the feeling this album evokes.
All the obligatory pop music elements are in evidence — a little bit of high note, bass guitar figure working in tandem with an animated guitar line (Mixed Messages), vocals that parallel the guitar hook (Look Who’s Back In Town Again) and background gang handclaps and layered vocals (Mind Over Matter). There isn’t a clunker here — if these fellows were smart, they would forget about their past band relationships and make these tunes their first call. Pure pop for now people? Absolutely.
--taken from: Winnipeg Free Press
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Supergroup TUNS Are Secretly a Tribute Act
--taken from: Exclaim!
by Gregory Adams
While there's plenty of musical history behind the membership of TUNS, the new project from Sloan's Chris Murphy, Super Friendz singer-guitarist Matt Murphy and Inbreds bassist Mike O'Neill, the trio also looked outside of its collective sonic heritage to put together the tunes on their self-titled debut, out now on Royal Mountain.
Though definitely putting their own twist on the pop-rock lexicon, Matt Murphy explains that saluting past greats was part of TUNS' intention from the outset. "I think Chris is the one that sort of spearheaded that," the guitarist tells Exclaim! of the band's formation, which took place shortly after both Murphys backed up O'Neill for a Murderecords anniversary show in Toronto in 2013. "He'd been talking, 'We've got to do some singing. You, me and Mike — Crosby, Stills & Nash-style.' That's something he's been talking about for a few years."
The three united voices of TUNS thread themselves together finely, just as peak period CSN, but the new group's nine-song album doesn't exactly traffic in '60s folk-rock. The spritely jangle and steady pound of the Chris Murphy-sung "Mixed Messages," for example, recalls Reckoning-era R.E.M., a comparison that would greatly please at least two members of TUNS.
"Mike and I are always referencing early R.E.M. in this project, and Chris can't stand R.E.M." Matt Murphy says with a laugh. "He has no knowledge of them, and I don't think he'll ever like them. I do think there are parallels to that early R.E.M. stuff and what we're doing, because it is drums, bass, and guitar with very few overdubs. It's very natural, simple arrangements, with some singing. That covers a lot of rock, but I also think that it's the sound that we were going for."
Considering all three members honed their chops during the '90s CanRock boom, TUNS splits lead vocals duties evenly. For instance, Matt Murphy's sings angelically of the trio's friendship on "Back Among Friends," while O'Neill waxes about love on "I Can't Wait Forever." Chris Murphy handles the mic from behind the drum kit on "Look Who's Back in Town," an echo-heavy, mid-album stomp that took shape once the percussionist started whapping out old Tears for Fears rhythms in practice.
"I can basically tell you what drum beat I'm doing on every song," Chris Murphy explains in a separate interview. "For 'Look Who's Back in Town,' I'm basically trying to play 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World.' My starting point on the drums is 'I can do this beat, what can you do to help me out here?'"
Reiterating that the hard-swung rhythm isn't exactly the most original one out there, he adds: "I don't think I'm ripping off that song; I don't expect a call from Roland and Curt demanding money from me. I think there are five other songs I could come up with that have that same beat."
--taken from: Exclaim!
by Gregory Adams
While there's plenty of musical history behind the membership of TUNS, the new project from Sloan's Chris Murphy, Super Friendz singer-guitarist Matt Murphy and Inbreds bassist Mike O'Neill, the trio also looked outside of its collective sonic heritage to put together the tunes on their self-titled debut, out now on Royal Mountain.
Though definitely putting their own twist on the pop-rock lexicon, Matt Murphy explains that saluting past greats was part of TUNS' intention from the outset. "I think Chris is the one that sort of spearheaded that," the guitarist tells Exclaim! of the band's formation, which took place shortly after both Murphys backed up O'Neill for a Murderecords anniversary show in Toronto in 2013. "He'd been talking, 'We've got to do some singing. You, me and Mike — Crosby, Stills & Nash-style.' That's something he's been talking about for a few years."
The three united voices of TUNS thread themselves together finely, just as peak period CSN, but the new group's nine-song album doesn't exactly traffic in '60s folk-rock. The spritely jangle and steady pound of the Chris Murphy-sung "Mixed Messages," for example, recalls Reckoning-era R.E.M., a comparison that would greatly please at least two members of TUNS.
"Mike and I are always referencing early R.E.M. in this project, and Chris can't stand R.E.M." Matt Murphy says with a laugh. "He has no knowledge of them, and I don't think he'll ever like them. I do think there are parallels to that early R.E.M. stuff and what we're doing, because it is drums, bass, and guitar with very few overdubs. It's very natural, simple arrangements, with some singing. That covers a lot of rock, but I also think that it's the sound that we were going for."
Considering all three members honed their chops during the '90s CanRock boom, TUNS splits lead vocals duties evenly. For instance, Matt Murphy's sings angelically of the trio's friendship on "Back Among Friends," while O'Neill waxes about love on "I Can't Wait Forever." Chris Murphy handles the mic from behind the drum kit on "Look Who's Back in Town," an echo-heavy, mid-album stomp that took shape once the percussionist started whapping out old Tears for Fears rhythms in practice.
"I can basically tell you what drum beat I'm doing on every song," Chris Murphy explains in a separate interview. "For 'Look Who's Back in Town,' I'm basically trying to play 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World.' My starting point on the drums is 'I can do this beat, what can you do to help me out here?'"
Reiterating that the hard-swung rhythm isn't exactly the most original one out there, he adds: "I don't think I'm ripping off that song; I don't expect a call from Roland and Curt demanding money from me. I think there are five other songs I could come up with that have that same beat."
--taken from: Exclaim!
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