Bryan Webb of Constantines : Q&A

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/constantinesinterview.jpg" alt=" " />Constantines singer/guitarist Bryan Webb stopped for a moment during their eastern North America tour to talk to QRO....

  Webb discussed the current tour, playing festivals, their new record, Kensington Heights (QRO review), their new label, Arts & Crafts, winter in Montreal, meeting the ‘Kibbles ‘n’ Bits’ dog, and much more…

QRO: How has this current tour been going?

Bryan Webb: We just started, but it’s going smashingly so far.  We just played Boston.  That was fun.

We haven’t been on tour in a while.  We went to Austin in March.  Yeah, we’re just getting started again.  We had a nice break for recording and stuff.

QRO: How was the first show of the tour, at Mercury Lounge (QRO venue review) on Wednesday?

BW: It was cool.  The turnout was great, the audience really nice, friendly.

It was an early show, so there was like dead silence between songs.  The same thing happens at all-ages shows for us: where it’s just, nobody’s ‘sauced up’ enough, I guess, to be making noise.  There’s no chatter.  It just makes us a little bit self-conscious.  We’re used to playing to the usual rowdy bunch of folks.

But it was good.  It was a good show.

QRO: You’re doing eastern North America on this tour, and then western in June & July.  Why did you set it up that way?

BW: We’ve been a band for nine years, and we’ve kinda realized, especially on the last record, that it’s much more healthier, and it leads to better shows, if we don’t burn ourselves out, trying to a five-week straight tour.  This is a bit over two weeks, and the July one’s almost a month, between three weeks and four weeks, so it’s a lot healthier.  It makes a world of difference, in terms of enjoying playing and performing well.

It’s also just such a big loop, to do the entire ‘perimeter of North America’ or whatever.

QRO: Why did you do it ‘east vs. west’?  Was that just geography?

BW: In Canada, it’s sort of either go east or west, generally.  We’ve done tours where you start in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and ride the entire Trans Canada Highway to Victoria (British Columbia), which is possible in Canada, but you can’t really do that at the beginning of a tour, then go south.  That would be a three-month tour.  For the Canadian side of the touring, it makes sense for us to do a western block.

QRO: Do you notice anything different between American and Canadian audiences?

BW: No, not in those terms.  Maybe city-to-city, sometimes, there are differences.

I think maybe we have people that are behind us in Canada because we are a band from Canada that’s managed to play some successful shows in the States.  Maybe it’s a bit of a point of pride for some people, there’s some ‘Canadian pride’ or something, but I don’t see that Canadian audiences are more ‘self-deprecating’ or whatever Canadians tend to be.  There isn’t a personality difference between audiences, based on national borders.

QRO: Have you noticed the strong ‘loonie’ [Canadian dollar] on this tour?

BW: Not yet, because we just started making the American money.  It’s not working as well for us, since we’re touring in the States.  I guess the money we changed over is pretty much equal to the American dollar right now.  It was kind of nice, coming home before, upping your earnings ten percent or something like that.

QRO: How was South by Southwest (QRO Festival Guide) last month?

BW: It was good.  I live in Montreal now, and the winter in Montreal this year was unbelievable.  In my neighborhood, there were drifts; just cars of people who I think decided to leave until spring.  You’d look down one street, and there’d just be a small lane for one car to get through, giant drifts from cars stuck all over the place.

But it was fun; I like Montreal winters because they’re very picturesque.  But SXSW was a nice break; I was starting to get a bit of cabin fever, being at home.

It was nice and hot and fun.  Not really ‘run around, drinking my face off’ or anything like that, like I maybe did the first time I was there, but it was nice to walk around, went to some weird oddity shops on South Congress, by the river.  It’s a nice, beautiful city.

QRO: Do you do anything differently at ‘industry showcases’ like that?

BW: No.  The only thing’s that different is that we usually don’t play as long, I guess because they have an evening schedule, pretty tight.  We play like forty-five minutes instead of an hour-ten, or whatever we usually do.

We’re certainly not gonna try and change anything to impress a certain segment of the industry; the show would probably be worse off if we tried to do that, so we just do our thing.

Steve had actually broken his hand, which is why we had to reschedule our last New York show.  So Steve had a cast on his hand, which made us look pretty badass at those showcases.  It was his fretting hand; we worked out the songs that he didn’t have to play like ‘giant bar chords’, and I think he transposed a few things, but it looked great.  He was a trooper, for sure…

QRO: Was that Mercury show the only show that got affected?

BW: There was one other Toronto show, it was a ‘secret show’ that we were gonna do, so it wasn’t a big deal.

QRO: What happened to him?

BW: He lives in Montreal now, too, and he just slipped on ice on some stairs.  Also in Montreal, most of the residential streets have stairs outside that go up to the second floor, which is very picturesque, but is really crazy in the winter, all ice.  He was just carrying big bags of groceries, I think, and just landed on his hand.  Could have been worse, I guess, but sucked for him.

QRO: You’re going to play a few festivals this summer (Virgin Festival, Electric Picnic).  Which do you prefer playing: outdoors or indoors?

BW: I prefer playing outdoors.  It’s great.  I mean, if the stage set-up is good enough.  Sometimes, you’ll play outdoors and the amps will just push sound, and it won’t bounce anywhere.  It will seem like the sound is just disappearing.

But you can never buy a stage production as nice as playing at sunset at a folk festival.  I definitely love playing outside.  We’ve played some beautiful indoor spaces, too, but often, it’s a corridor, hanging out in a basement.  It’s not the same as walking around outside with your friends, drinking under the stars or something.

QRO: You’re going to play the Virgin Festival in both Calgary and Toronto.  What about Vancouver – and/or Baltimore?

BW: We’re actually going to be on tour when that Calgary one is happening, so that just worked out nicely, and they pay bands really well, I gotta say, so it will be nice, in the middle of the tour, to have that little cash ‘boom’.

For the Toronto one, we’re actually going to Ireland to play the Electric Picnic thing, then flying home, playing V-Fest, and then flying back to Europe to do a European tour.  It’s a little bit crazy, but it’s nice to be on Toronto Island.  It’s one of the nicest things about Toronto.  It’s a little bit crazy to see it covered in advertising, ‘cause it’s such a naturally beautiful place, but that’s the way it goes, I guess.

QRO: Back in 2006, you played Sasquatch! during a hailstorm.  What was that like?

BW: That was great.  That was, collectively, probably one of our favorite shows we’ve ever played.  The Gorge is one of the most naturally beautiful places, an incredible location.

We were there, we were playing outside at the second stage or whatever, which is a platform, rafters, and a roof, but no walls.  We were waiting to play, watching two storm fronts converging.  You could see across the river valley for miles and miles. 

We were watching this coming for two hours, wondering what was going to happen, and then these two storm fronts collided just as we were going on.  It started to rain like crazy, and then just hail like mad.

When we started, the wind coming up, it was the most…  You can’t pay for stage production like that.  It was incredible.  We were all pretty excited, pretty into it.


QRO: What drew you to Arts & Crafts, your new label?

BW: We just basically wanted to bring the business side of things back to a Canadian label, back to Canada.  There were lots of practical reasons for that, and it was nice, the idea of being on a smaller label again, albeit a smaller label that’s doing really well – they definitely know what they’re doing.

They asked, and we were interested.  Our Canadian label that put out our first three records, Three Gut Records, had folded, and everybody had moved on to other things.  Sub Pop, we had a good relationship with, but like I said, there were certain practical things about having the business in Canada that really made us want to do that.

QRO: Did you feel any extra pressure, with Kensington Heights being your first record for your new label?

BW: Actually, we had a lot more time, far more than we’ve ever had before.  Usually, it’s always kind of a rush, trying to get all the extras recorded.  You always wish you could do more.  This time, we actually had more time than ever before.  I’ve never felt so relaxed in the recording process.  We were actually able to work on some songs in the studio, which was amazing.

And that was partly from being eligible for a grant.

QRO: Was this your first time getting…

BW: We had some retroactively on our first record, because it was originally just on Three Gut in Canada, but Sub Pop, we weren’t eligible anymore.  So it was nice to be eligible again.

QRO: Was that one of the factors in wanting to go to a Canadian label?

BW: Partly, that was one of the more practical reasons, definitely.  One of the huge benefits of being a band in Canada; it’s an amazing, amazing thing.  We were lucky to get a grant, help us out a lot, for sure.

But I don’t think we were that nervous about how the label would receive it or anything like that.  I think, if it was our first record, as a band, there would be, but we kind of feel like we know what we’re doing now, and they knew what they were getting into.

QRO: How in other ways did making Heights compare with making your previous records?

BW: That was the biggest thing, that there was more time.

This was the first time we’d gone back to a similar situation from the record before.  We recorded at the same studio, with the same engineer, Jeff, who’s a close friend of ours, so that usual process of trying to figure out what works in a studio, or how this room’s gonna work.  We kinda knew from the record before.  There were some familiar elements.  That was another part of it being more comfortable.

QRO: How did you get in touch with [amp-maker] Gar Gilles (The Weakerthans, BTO)?

BW: Friends of ours, The Weakerthans (QRO photos), they had some connection to him as well, ‘cause they’re from Winnipeg.

I never met him, but he made really incredible gear.  He passed away, I think while we were making the record, and we had used some of his gear on the record that kinda made a big difference.

I think he’s a cool figure in Canadian music, the technical side.  He’s had an impression on a lot of bands.  A lot of people don’t know about him.  He’s a person who had complete control, was completely connected to the products that he was making, from them being created, designing them completely, and the way that the company was marketed, and everything like that, he was just completely connected to the product of his labor.  It’s pretty exciting to see somebody able to do that throughout the course of their lives.

That’s the more idealistic way of looking at it.

QRO: Was the song “Credit River” written during or before the current credit crunch?

BW: There’s actually a river called ‘Credit River’ near Toronto.  It’s in between Toronto and London, Ontario, which is where I’m from, Guelph is all in that area, so I’d cross over the Credit River for years, and I always thought it would be kind of a funny, good name for a song.

"Credit River" was not a ‘lark’, but cast off money concerns.  The spirit it was written, a friend going through some kind of economic crisis, financial crisis, and just wanting to say, ‘Fuck it’ to that.  Your life’s not over, just because you have debt.

But, at the same time, it’s a fun song.  It wasn’t meant to be too economic…

Constantines playing “Credit River” live @ Southpaw, Brooklyn, NY:

QRO: Do you have any material that’s been written since Heights?

BW: No, not really.  We did this cover of “Islands in the Stream” with Feist (QRO live review) that’s about to come out.  That was the only other recording that we’ve done since working on this record.

Steve, and Dallas, and Will, and I all play in other bands as well.  Usually, we just go, ‘Okay, this year, we’re gonna work on the record, write songs throughout the year, and try to record them at the end of the year’ kind of thing.  When that’s done, we tour for a while.

We’re not the kind of band that can write songs on the road.  Individually, we can, but not as a band.

QRO: Are you going to make any videos for Kensington Heights?

BW: Yep.  We started making one for “Hard Feelings”, which is still being edited.  And I think we’re gonna do one for “Trans Canada”, and maybe one for “Our Age”.  We’re not sure when those are going to happen.

QRO: Do you get grants for that?

BW: You can, yeah.

QRO: That’s why you should do “Trans Canada”…

BW: That would definitely look good, for sure, on the application.

Constantines playing “Hard Feelings” live @ Southpaw, Brooklyn, NY:

QRO: Back on March 24th, you and Ted Leo & the Pharmacists played the Berkeley Church in Toronto for The Beautiful Noise Concert Series.  What was that like?

BW: It was good.  It was actually kind of fun.  They bring an audience in.  It’s in this beautiful old church in Toronto.  It’s not a functioning church anymore, so there’s like chipped paint behind this beautiful art, behind the stage.  There’s cameras zooming around on cranes, which can interfere with a good live show sometimes, but they weren’t very invasive.  We were well taken care of.

And, we met at that show, there’s a dog that lives at the church that’s the ‘Kibbles ‘n’ Bits’ dog, the bulldog.  That’s what we were told, and he looks like that dog…

QRO: He must be pretty old…

BW: Yeah, he was pretty old.  His name’s Hank.  He’s a sweet dog.

QRO: It seems like the Kensington Market area of Toronto is getting a lot of face-time in indie-music: your album, Jason Collett’s “Charlyn, Angel of Kensington”…

BW: ‘Kensington Heights’ is just a joke on the fact that we practice in a basement in the Kensington Market.  It’s now the unofficial name of our basement rehearsal space.

[Kensington Market] is a very important area of Toronto, in that it’s a market, a freaky market in the middle of downtown.  You’ve got traffic moving at the usual main arteries all around it, but it’s designed as a market, so it slows the traffic down completely, and they have ‘Pedestrian Sundays’ in the summer, where there aren’t any cars allowed.  So it’s just this nice place of ‘stillness’ in downtown Toronto.

And I lived right on the perimeter of it when I lived in Toronto; an important place in my life, for sure.  It’s a great little freak space.  And, like I said, most of the songs came together in a space in Kensington Market.

QRO: Are there any songs you really like to play live?

BW: I like “Time Can Be Overcome”, because there’s a lot space in it.  It’s a nice break in the middle of the set.  It has a different dynamic than anything.  I like the song a lot.

“Trans Canada” is fun, because there’s a lot of feedback.  And I like any of the songs that have ‘the jams’.  We have these songs from our first record which have ended up being ‘hippie jams’, which is fun, that kind of ‘wank’ sometimes, indulgent moments.

Constantines playing “Trans Canada” live @ Southpaw, Brooklyn, NY:

QRO: Are there any songs you can’t play live, because of the arrangement, don’t like to play live, or don’t play anymore?

BW: It’s kind of hard to work in any acoustic songs.  I love the song ‘Windy Road” that Steve wrote for Tournament of Hearts, but we just can’t seem to figure out a way it works to fit in a song like that.  We’ve played “New King” a couple of times live, and it’s alright, but it’s just a weird, awkward kind of thing, to try to throw in that dynamic in the middle of a rock show?

I don’t know…  Maybe we’ll just play some festivals tours where we just play them…

QRO: What cities have you really liked playing at?

BW: Dawson City in the Yukon Territory was amazing.  There was a festival up there that was great, that we were lucky enough to play.  Barcelona was wonderful.  Lecce in the south of Italy was amazing.  Anywhere that has a distinctive physical landscape is fun to play in, for sure.

QRO: Are there any places that you haven’t been to that you want to go to?

BW: I’d love to go to Japan, and we’re hoping to go to Australia and Japan on this record.  New Zealand would be cool – I really want to learn to surf.

QRO: Do you have a favorite tour story?

BW: There was a show that we played on our first tour of the States in Chesterfield, Maryland, this bar that was really good to friends of ours when they toured.  This band Royal City had an amazing time there.  But it was this strange place, and I don’t think the woman who ran it had remembered that we were supposed to play, or at least had really no interest in the fact that a really loud rock band was coming to play.  It was sort of a small, kinda hippie café.  There was side room where the bands play, with all these sofas all over the place, which could have been great…

But we started setting up, and soundchecked – it was with Oneida – as soon as we started soundchecking, she slammed the doors dividing this room from the bar.  Came in, kept telling us to turn down, was really obviously not into the show happening, at all.  So we were kinda bummed.

We tried to play a quieter set, and Oneida went on, and did a really mellow set, just improvised a mellow set, including “Take It Easy” by The Eagles.  There was this woman there who was the only person that was watching that wasn’t in the band, and she was just in love with Oneida’s ‘mellow jams’.  She started dancing with them, in the stage area, getting way, way too close, really getting in on their personal space.

This is my favorite moment of the whole night, was watching her grind Baby Jane, the bass player.  He’s backed up completely against the wall, and she’s literally grinding him.  And the other guys in the band are pissing themselves laughing, we’re all laughing.  That kind of just ‘made the show’.  If you’re going to have one audience member, it might as well be someone who’s that into it.

Constantines playing “Our Age” live @ Southpaw, Brooklyn, NY:

Also see them playing “Nighttime/Anytime (It's Alright)”

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