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Interview with Bryan Webb of The Constantines:
Category: Music Profiles (Interviews, CDs)
Contributed by David Dedrick on October 19, 2005
The Constantines have been touring steadily this year - it’s their third time in Vancouver since the spring (their first as headliners, I think). And for all the excellence of their recorded output, I highly recommend catching their live act, which can best be described as incendiary. They don’t just kick ass; they kick ass’s ass!
The Constantines are Bryan Webb, vocals and guitar; Steve Lambke, guitar and vocals; Will Kidman, organ; Doug MacGregor, bass; and Dallas Wehrle, drums. Their first self-titled album was a punk cry from the heart - recalling the Washington, DC punk scene and ur-rock forbearers like The Stooges. On their next album, Shine A Light, the sound opened up and the songwriting took a quantum leap forward. The punk past was still present, but the new sound was almost an avant-roots rock. Though they’re still compared to Fugazi and Bruce Springsteen - you have to think more left field, think Tom Waits and The Replacements. The band’s sound and Webb’s rasped vocals recall mid-period ‘Mats, but there’s the strangeness and dramatic boldness of Tom Waits too. Their newest record, Tournament of Hearts, is the culmination of the style developed on Shine A Light. I’m confident they’re going to continue to develop and it makes me wonder where they’ll go next.
The Constantines were playing at Richards on Richards in Vancouver, BC. It was here that I met Bryan Webb. Further encouraging Bruce Springsteen comparisons, he was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, but he’s very tall - something you couldn’t accuse Springsteen of - and thin. We talked backstage in a narrow room over the din of the other bands’ soundchecks. I’m not sure what the room is used for, but there was a mysterious tray of ice that never melted at all during the half-hour we talked.
Swanktrendz: So you grew up in Guelph?
Bryan Webb: Actually, none of us formally grew up in Guelph, but we often say that we’re from Guelph because we lived together there when we really started doing things. Some of us went to school there and we all lived in this house in the Ward district of Guelph.
ST: All I know about Guelph is the veterinary college, so I think of it as a very rural place, but I don’t know if it actually is.
BW: Well, there is the veterinarian college and there’s a big agricultural component to the university there, so that’s definitely a big part of it. It’s just like a university town except there’s a really big older hippy contingent that stuck around and there’s a summer festival.
ST: Hippies aren’t a bad thing.
BW: No, I love the hippies, man.
ST: So from there you went to Toronto?
BW: Yeah, we all grew up in southwest Ontario and we all live in Toronto now.
ST: So you went to where the money is, the management is…
BW: Sort of, we started working with ThreeGut Records and they were our friends from Guelph that had already moved there: like Royal City and Jim Guthrie and Gentleman Reg were bands from Guelph that had moved gradually to Toronto.
ST: So there’s a pretty good scene in Guelph.
BW: Guelph was amazing. It’s a wonderful place. The summer festival, Hillside; I’d always heard that a lot of the younger people started bands just to get into Hillside for free. That would be enough incentive for people to start bands. And there were so many people doing music and art just for their friends, in basements and garages. It was a great place to be a band.
ST: The quintessential university town then?
BW: Yeah, I imagine Olympia, Washington is a similar kind of thing.
ST: Yeah, and they have quite a scene there. In fact, you’re going to be touring later this year with Sleater-Kinney, aren’t you?
BW: Yeah, I’m excited about that.
ST: You guys have been touring an incredible amount, haven’t you?
BW: Sort of.
ST: You were here earlier this year.
BW: We were here in April, at the end of April, I think; then we played with the Foo Fighters at Pacific Coliseum about a month and a half ago and it was crazy.
ST: With Sloan.
BW: Yeah.
ST: How was that tour?
BW: That was really weird. It was fun, but it was a great, strange adventure. It was really fast and efficient – everything is very well organized.
Did you get to see The Foo Fighters?
BW: Yeah, they were really nice – they were very welcoming and hospitable and the catering was fabulous. And they were really nice. It was pretty cool. We’d hear them blasting Voivod and Jesus Lizard records in their dressing room. And Dave Grohl’s a bundle of energy; he’s got a ridiculous amount of energy. I don’t even have that much energy right now, you know, and he’s up there.
ST: He’s a drummer.
BW: That’s true.
ST: In a lot of your reviews, it’s all “Fugazi, Fugazi, Fugazi” and he came out of the same scene.
BW: For sure, he used to play inn Scream and was from DC, I think, originally. He’s got the sort of punk ethic roots and you can tell.
ST: Speaking of Fugazi and the idea of influences, is it irritating when you’re a band starting out and everyone has to find the band that you are like, so all the reviews say “Fugazi meet such and such”?
BW: We always get “Springsteen meets Fugazi” or something like that. It’s a cool comparison and it’s fine. They’re definitely bands that we grew up listening to. But we’re definitely trying to do our own thing so it’s amazing that that label has…It was a friend of ours that wrote that initially in a paper in Toronto and every review has mentioned that.
ST: When I heard what you guys were doing – after the first album – to me it was more like Tom Waits meets…sort of a punk thing.
BW: I suppose I listened to Tom Waits more when I was younger than Springsteen. I got more heavily into Springsteen when we started the band. Steve, particularly, and Dallas were really big E Street fans and so I got heavily into it and loved that stuff after the band had started. I was definitely a big Tom Waits fan when I was in high school.
ST: Were you a teen snob? Speaking as a former teen snob. You know, everyone is listening to Springsteen so I’ll listen to Tom Waits.
BW: No, when I arrived at high school, everyone was listening to the Steve Miller Band, which I’m not against – I’m a fan of Steve Miller. And The Tragically Hip, which took me a while – that was the snob point. I was a skateboarder and we’d kind of get pushed around and harassed by dudes who were blaring the Hip. I can hear the Hip blaring, as I’m getting gas-pedalled or something by jocks. I had a point of contention with them for a while, but I think they’re a great band too.
ST: Yeah, I felt the same way. For me, it was hearing “Ahead By A Century”.
BW: It’s a beautiful song. Gord Downey is a consummate performer. I just think he’s fantastic and a great lyricist. When the band is making a theatre around what he’s singing that’s when it really grabs me. When I got into them, that was when they were getting bands like By Divine Right to open for them. Now Joel Plaskett and The Weakerthans have opened for them. They’ve definitely got an ear, taste, you know? Maybe that influenced my perspective.
ST: Touring with the Foo Fighters, were you guests of theirs, did they ask you to perform with them?
BW: The story was the bass player was at a show we played in LA a few years ago and just liked the show. He introduced himself to maybe Dallas or Doug and then two years later we got word that they were interested. They asked us and it sounded like a good sort of adventure. It was a chance to play music in that context. Part of the band has always been about trying to play in different spaces, to hear the music in different spaces. So that was a big pull factor for that tour and it was a total adventure, you know? It was amazing to hear the sound, to finish a song and hear the song end another two seconds later when it hits the wall and comes back. So, yeah, it was great.
ST: And the roar of the crowd.
BW: Yes, yes, the roar of half of the crowd.
ST: How did you end up with SubPop?
BW: We had just released the first record with ThreeGut. It was maybe within a year after it and we were playing a lot and a couple of folks from SubPop were in town when we were playing in Toronto. There was a lot of talk about our band at the time and they just sort of enquired about us while they were there. We met some more folks when we were down in Austin playing at SouthXSouthwest. It was about a year and half after our first record had come out, they asked for some music and expressed some interest. Then we sent them some stuff and they sent us some stuff – they seemed nice. We wanted to make a new record and we wanted a bit more money to do it and a bit more time and they made an offer at the right time. The main thing was they were cool with ThreeGut being our label in Canada. ThreeGut were a brilliant promotional force in Canada, but we hadn’t had much luck with distribution in the States so it was a great chance to get more records out in the States. And the back catalogue had a lot to do with it, I’ll freely admit. It was hard. There was a point where we were talking about not being swayed by the fact that Red Red Meat were on SubPop and we were getting a chance to be on this label with all these bands that we loved, like Beat Happening – this scene that was so inspiring when we were younger. I mean, the first bands that I was in covered Nirvana and stuff when I was fifteen or whatever. So it was exciting to be asked to be a part of that thing. We just went for it and it’s worked out.
ST: So from your first album to the second album, was one of the major changes to your sound the fact that you had more time in the studio?
BW: Yeah, the biggest one though, is the fact that Will Kidman joined on organ. That was a big thing. That let the band play a bit less.
ST: Yeah, I was going to say that. Your sound opened up.
BW: With the first record, all of us met through the punk/hardcore network in southwestern Ontario at the time and we were all really excited about Dischord and the Washington scene and that stuff. That’s where that Fugazi thing comes from, for sure. That’s definitely evident. We’re all just playing, you know. Everybody’s just playing at the same time, all the time and I’m trying to yell over top of it. So the band opened up when another player was added. The great thing about the organ is Will can hold his hand down and there’s this sound, this amazing sound for however long – until he lifts his hand away. So it’s been an exciting addition. From that record to this record, it’s just been even more space opening up so the vocals can settle in a bit more.
ST: Are you more aware that your vocals are audible now? Are you more self-conscious of your lyrics then?
BW: A little bit. It’s more that I got to the point that I didn’t want to yell everything that I sang. Like, I wanted there to be some dynamics in the singing too. In the lyrics there was a lot more of the melody and phrasing, as opposed to like we used to do: just write a song and then I would have a page of lyrics and try to yell them over top of parts and whatever came out was the phrasing. There’s been a bit more effort.
ST: So, more artifice, more art.
BW: Yeah, more craft or whatever. We’re sort of getting older so it’s a natural thing as a creative person to try and change and develop in the subtleties.
ST: Do you find that your influences have changed? That your tastes have broadened?
BW: I find that I listen to a lot more sentimental music; I don’t listen to the hard stuff anymore. I’m trying to think what we were listening to today…that Van Lear Rose album by Loretta Lynn – brilliant. There’s such poetry to that record because she’s, like, seventy-five and her vocal presence is so renewing. I’ve heard that when she plays she’s inclined to talk for twenty minutes between songs and the band will have to start playing to get her to remember that she has to sing a song. So that’s what I’ve been listening to – a lot of old country. There’s an amazing scene in Toronto that no one has really tapped into outside of Toronto called rat-drifting. There’s a club called The Transac, it’s a small pub where more intimate bands will play and then there’s big theatre venue in it. It’s a beautiful place. So there’s this rat-drifting scene in there and it’s all these people who’ve been playing together in different forms for years. Do you know Eric Chenaux from Flight Camp? He’s a big part of that scene. You should check out a band called The Silt and there’s a band called St. Dirt Elementary School that’s amazing. It’s kind of an open performance thing where people who haven’t played together in three months will get together for a night and everybody will sing a song – weird sort of bluegrass songs that are just shambling through. There’s this real adventure to it; this blues as heroic narrative idea - just that sort of spirit of adventure to music - amazing. [For more info try:
http://www.newmusiccanada.com/genres/artist.cfm?Band_Id=13042 or
http://www.joesorbara.com/ovalwindowrecords/001.htm]
ST: What’s with the country rock fixation in Toronto?
BW: I don’t know. It’s strange. Maybe it’s the landlocked, drinking population, you know?
ST: I mean, not every band claims to be country rock, but it seems to seep into the music.
BW: For sure, yeah. I saw that Blue Rodeo dvd that came out a while ago – and I like some of their stuff a lot; I respect them as a band. I think it was in the Globe where Greg Keillor wrote a big thing about how they started and they were kind of burnt out in New York City, like far away from home and then they heard Gord’s Gold[Lightfoot, people]. They bought a taped copy of Gord’s Gold and it just spoke to them like nothing else could at the time. There’s that sort of lineage there. And Gord still has a presence in Toronto.
ST: You’re doing that tribute album…
BW: With The Inintended, yeah.
ST: I was a bit disappointed that you weren’t doing Lightfoot as well [for a limited-issue 12” split record on BlueFog Records with The Constantines covering their favourite Crazy Horse songs and The Unintended covering their favourite Gordon Lightfoot songs].
BW: It would have been cool. There’s millions of songs. It would have been cool, an entire Gordon Lightfoot record. But The Unintended had some Gordon Lightfoot songs and we had this cover band that was doing Crazy Horse songs so this idea was thrown out there.
ST: You guys would be really good for Crazy Horse.
BW: It works pretty well.
ST: The dual guitars.
BW: It’s been a big influence on the new record, I think. Just having this openness and simple song structures that have a life outside of the recorded form.
ST: There’s not many bands that do that kind of simultaneous lead playing when I think about it now. The Local Rabbits did a lot of that on their first album…
BW: Yeah, they were great.
ST: Crazy Horse, obviously. You guys do it.
BW: Well, that’s a Fugazi thing too, you know. They had this great intertwining sound. Sonic Youth, too.
ST: I was down in Seattle recently and walked by SubPop’s offices and saw your new record on display. My first thought was “The Constantines and curling?”
BW: I don’t know…it works…
ST: It’s a great title, is what it is.
BW: Well, that’s the thing. What happened was Doug had a scarf that he had bought at Value Village when we were on tour somewhere and it was a Scott’s Tournament of Hearts scarf – the red and white. I was like, “Man, that’s a great scarf.” He was like, “It’s the Tournament of Hearts scarf!” And he was really excited about it. And I was like, “Man, that’s a great name for a record. That should be the name of our next record.” This was about a year and half ago. We actually got into curling. The Tournament of Hearts was on while we were recording this record. Dallas especially dove right in and we were all enamoured with the Ontario women’s team – Jen Hannah was amazing. For me, the title is a beautiful turn of phrase – this really elegant, eloquent turn of phrase. But it refers to something that’s mastered by the most run-of-the-mill, average people – working people. And it’s a really delicate sport. I’ve only curled once and it’s freakin’ hard, man. The stance and the positioning – it’s the weirdest thing. And to see the most regular people doing it – there’s no celebrity status to curling so you do it for the love of it. It’s the definition of amateur.
ST: My second thought was, “It’s the Youngblood’s Rock Concert.” Do you know that album?
BW: No, I don’t.
ST: It’s called Rock Concert and it has rocks on the cover. It’s the lamest rock pun ever.
BW: The layout was done by Dallas, as all the records have been. What happened was after that Weakerthans tour we were on, which was two months across Canada, and we’d been recording right before that. So we’d been pretty heavy at it for four months and we just all decided we were going to take two months off, which was the longest time we’d ever taken off as a band. And we all kind of went into separate corners – Steve went to New York, I stayed out west for a little while.
ST: Where’s “out west”, like out here?
BW: Yeah, and Dallas went to Dawson City where we’d actually played the Dawson City Music Festival last year and we fell in love with it. So Dallas went up there and stayed there for two months in a shack, like this old abandoned prospector’s shack on the property of some friends we’d met there. Basically, he made the layout out of photos he’d taken up there and things he’d found there in the shack. The place had actually been abandoned very hastily, I think, because there were clothes still left there. So the collages on the record are all based on stuff he had found. Dawson has an amazing kind of ghost town feeling, but it’s still a vital town. The music festival is amazing because people come from all corners of that area to see it. It’s one of the main cultural events around that area so people are so open to all kinds of music there. It’s pretty exciting.
ST: So where do you go next from here? You started in Edmonton, right?
BW: That was the first show. Next we’re going down to Seattle and Portland. We do a bunch of shows down the West Coast, across to Arizona and then up – we’re playing Denver for the first time, which I’m excited about. Then cutting back through the mid-West, up to Minnesota.
ST: Home of the Replacements!
BW: The Replacements are one of my favourite bands of all time. By kind of a fluke, the Replacements were one of the first underground bands that I knew – and I didn’t really know they were underground. A friend of mine found Tim in a bargain bin at Sam the Record Man or somewhere like that. He just bought it because he liked the cover. I really got into it.
[Bryan shows me a tattoo on his inner forearm: a heart with “Left of the Dial” across it – a classic ‘Mats song from Tim]
BW: That’s how much I’m into them.
ST: Well, I think this is more than enough for a “short” interview.
BW: Cool.
ST: Now I have to carefully edit it all down.
BW: You can just take out every fourth word.
ST: Thanks for your time.
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