Elephant

Angel spends the day with an amazing band at the 2008 Skate4Cancer tour

Yes I know. Rob Dyer’s Skate4CAncer tour has been over for a few months already. But because there was no CONFRONT issue in May due to site reconstruction, we had to postpone many of our interviews until later in the summer to make sure we did not delay older material.

We have been waiting impatiently to bring you this interview with Nevado Records band, Elephant. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed meeting this London, Ontario band.

CONFRONT: So we should start with the history of your band. How you got together; where your music came from… Just individually and stuff like that, how you got into music…

Dan: Apparently when I was born, when I was a little baby, I would have a big diaper full of poop and I would just bounce up and down to the rhythm; but truly on to the rhythm. So I think that’s probably where I got my start. Something with poop in my diaper inspired that type of movement.

Ian: Hmm…History..

Matt: I was talking to Mike earlier today or last night and he noted in some of the vocals that there’s some Folk history. My dad plays guitar so I guess I got into music ’cause of him as a kid.

Ian: My brothers are both very musical and they were always playing music around me so naturally just got into it…

CONFRONT: What kind of music were you into when you were younger?

Ian: Me and Brett grew up in the same scene. Like his brother and my brother were in bands and we just kinda grew up listening to the bands that were around us, in our area and bigger bands as well; but London has a big, well at that time had a big hardcore scene… and like Emo bands and punk bands and stuff like that. So I think that’s where me and Brett got a lot of our influence from.

CONFRONT: And as a band, how did you guys decide to form?

Ian: Daniel and I used to be in a band with another guy; a three piece with another drummer. And he decided to leave and then I hadn’t talked to Dan in a long time and he found out I was going to Toronto and gave me a call one day and was like ‘I was wondering if you’d be interested in playing drums for us, just for a couple of shows. So immediately I was stoked and ready to go and he was like ‘well you want to just be in my band?’ and I was like ‘yeah for sure!’ so I moved out about a week later and we started…

Dan: That’s how the three of us got together, we added Brett recently. Ian had a dream about Brett so we asked Brett to join the band ’cause we were looking for a guitarist….and how did that go again?

Ian: I just had a dream one night that Brett was playing with us on stage and I woke up and told Dan and he said I should message him so I sent him an email and I didn’t hear anything back for two weeks and then I get this phone call and Brett was all ‘I just got your email and I’m totally down’. So he came up a couple of weeks later and we were like ‘yeah you’re in’.

CONFRONT: So Brett, why this band? What were you doing before and why did you choose to join this band?

Brett: I was a huge fan before they even asked me so it was kind of sweet and I don’t know, it just seemed perfect. At our first practice it just seemed right.

Dan: Yeah, definitely. A lot of chemistry.

CONFRONT: What do you guys think the addition of Brett brought to the sound and to the band?

Ian: It changed everything. Songs we play now that didn’t have the sparks in them before when we recorded them, kinda really quickly…we wrote everything and recorded a bunch of it and decided we wanted Brett in it and we didn’t really know how we were gonna get him on the album but then he started playing songs with us and it just made so much sense that we were like ‘he has to be on every single track on the album’ so we just threw him on and he’s a genius… he might not know what he’s doing but he’s a genius.

CONFRONT: Your album is coming out early June so can you tell me a little about the album, the recording process, the creative process and stuff like that.

Dan: The album was the most incredible experience of my life and the process was just unbelievable. Actually, this guy walking in right now knows a lot about that, we recorded our album with him. He was our sound engineer and co-producer, mister Mikey P. It was just an intense process of writing and old members leaving, new members joining. A lot of road trips out to Toronto to go record with Mike. That was the process basically.

Matt: We actually just started going at it without knowing if there was gonna be a new drummer just to get the ball rolling and see if it was worth it to continue. We started off with one of the tracks off the album, it actually made the album from when we first started recording way back. So the recording process was really long…

Dan: The concept we had for the album is… it’s kind of a circle, not entirely but it starts in the same way that it ends with gratitude and with hope. That’s the idea. And the journey through music and lyrics, the way it’s been assembled, is kind of a journey from thankfulness into frustration.

Matt: It kind of goes through the wasteland, you know? There’s a whole lot of depression and sadness but it always ends up with hope, in each track. We didn’t really intend for it to be that way but it came together that way.

CONFRONT: Well it’s a very good album. I’ve been listening to it non-stop the past few days and it’s great.

Dan: That is amazing..

Matt: Thank you.

CONFRONT: Why did you decide to call it “The Violet Hour”?

Matt: It’s a line, or a part of a line in T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”.

Ian: Wanna read it?

Matt: Yeah we can open [the CD cover] for you…

Ian: What the quote is about is a lot like homecoming, the journey back home for sailors at sea. It makes a lot of sense for me, Brett and Dan ’cause we’ve been playing music together for a long, long time. Like the first band I was ever in was with Brett. So like for us it’s kind of like we finally broke down and did what we should have done for a long time.

Matt: So the quote is this: “At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives homeward, and brings the sailors home from sea.” That’s near the end of “The Wasteland” and the process was amazing once we started finishing up the album and it got really emotional and quotes just started coming to us… we weren’t even going to call it “The Violet Hour” until, well, the violet hour.

CONFRONT: So creatively, you guys all write the lyrics together and write the music together?

Dan: We stick to our main instruments and Matt writes all of the lyrics and we write the songs together; it’s a process that’s very dynamic. Someone might come in one day with some chords or someone might come in another day with a full song and it’s all just a process. In terms of crediting, we don’t like getting into that whole McCartney-Lennon thing. For us, it’s just a group effort and we do it together and there just isn’t a way to do it without one another; it’s that simple.

Ian: And the thing is, even if someone comes in with an idea, by the time it gets around to the end song, it’s nothing like the original idea… maybe just the feel of it. So yeah, it’s definitely just a big group effort.

Dan: But yeah, Matt’s our poet.

CONFRONT: So what are your hopes for the album down the line? Like your hopes for it in a year, where do you see it going? Ideally.

Matt: Ideally, we’d like a lot of people to hear it and get opinions on it and I mean ideally, any kind of creative piece you’d like to get good or bad critics on it because you want to improve for the next album.

Ian: Personally, I hope that it just creates some space for us to make a second album that’s better, more thoughtful in the way that we go about writing it. Like I know this album, the writing process we took towards it, we’ve really matured in the ways that we go about writing music. Like especially some of the songs we wrote towards the end of the album. There’s a lot more thought into the structure and vocal patterns. So if anything, I hope it sparks in people and gets them interested so that maybe they’ll come and get the next one.

CONFRONT: You’ve had a lot of big changes recently: you got a new band member, you recorded the album and you join Nevado Records… Is this what you thought being in the music industry was going to be like compared to what your dreams were like about being a rockstar when you were a kid? Is this what you thought it was?

Ian: I don’t know how deep into the music industry we are.

Dan: We’re kind of in the shallow end but we’re kind of walking down the ramp to the deep end. For me, it’s like when someone tells you Niagra Falls is huge. I can understand that; I know it’s huge. But when you get there, you actually comprehend it and that’s how it is for me. And like I know there’s stress, I know that it’s insane and difficult to manage your time and band. You hear that but it doesn’t resonate until it starts happening. And that’s when the bags start forming; like right now I could use some eye drops.

Matt: You just think it’s going to slow down at some point and get you’re going to get a breather… but you don’t. There’s always a last minute emergency… that’s what I think I might call the next album.

(Laughter)

CONFRONT: In your bio it says you’re actively pursuing the ideals of truth, beauty, and love. What does that mean to you and what was behind that?

Ian: I think maybe we should take that bio off…

(Laughter)

Ian: It’s kind of just like… everything that encompasses our surroundings; our group of people we’re with. Like in Toronto, all of our friends are so tight. There’s a lot of artistically talented people… I don’t know.

Matt: Part of it was that we wanted to be involved in a community of musicians and artists and not just limit ourselves to just playing music but to be involved in charity stuff as well. And the Skate4Cancer is another part of it. We’ve known Rob for a while and we’re really fortunate to even be on this tour. There’s a lot of things you could be involved with outside of music that can help other people. And I think music is a good thing in itself but I was thinking today, as we were driving, that if you’re gonna do that, you gotta also think of other things. If you’re gonna be a musician, you’ve got to talk about some issues that you’re passionate about outside of music ’cause it’s pretty boring if it’s just the music. If you can’t help people and be involved in something that’s…I don’t like to say ‘inspiring’ because I don’t think any one person can inspire but at least, you know… change people’s way of thinking, or change your own way of thinking after doing it…

CONFRONT: So then are you changing that logo coat of arms that has the words in Latin on it?

Ian: No, that’ll stay..

Dan: Those coats, depending on how lost they are, can be pretty subjective and the idea for me at least, and I think from what we’ve talked about, is that we are actively engaging our concepts, our ideals of truth and of beauty and love and the way we go about that may be the same to some people or may be different but that’s not really the issue because we are actively engaging and that’s really the point; taking a very pro-active stance to pursue what you consider to be truth.

CONFRONT: One of the things that we’re trying to do with the magazine is based on our motto which is DARE. DEFY. PROVOKE. And for us that means dare to listen to something new, defy the stereotypes and provoke change, either in the industry or just in the minds of people, about what mainstream is, what it should be but we also want people to know that there’s not necessarily something wrong with mainstream music and it’s basically what you listen to that makes it mainstream. So how do you think you fit in that mentality and what do you do that dares, defies and provokes?

Ian: I think that musically we dare to do some pretty ambitious things that not many people around are doing. I don’t know many bands around us or in our community that are going at it the same way as we are. I mean, there are some bands that are doing really amazing crazy things, but I don’t really think they’re doing it the same way…

Matt: I would say provoke would be the lyrical content; it’s somewhat ambiguous and I know what they meant to me when I wrote them but you can take them a lot of different ways and if someone could come up with their own… and the amazing thing about music or art or poetry is that everyone has their own idea about what something means and that’s my hope anyway, not that I could spoon feed someone something in music or poetry but that they could come up with something themselves and find their own meaning to it.

CONFRONT: So finally to let you guys get back to your day, here’s our last question. There’s a section on the site called the Daily Urges. We ask readers, and we ask bands as well, to list us some artists they feel people should be taking notice of; it could be old bands, new bands, whoever…

Ian: Well there’s everyone on the tour: Shad and Matthew Johnston. They’re both incredible musicians that need more respect and more recognition than they already have. Other bands we play with in Toronto: The Wooden Sky, Bass Lions, Fox Jaws, people at Nevado Records are unreal bands that in the near future people will get to hear because they’re so good, so talented..

Dan: And that’s what MySpace is so amazing for, you get to take the chance to surf through independent artists that take the risk and I’m really getting stoked about. Like I’m really stoked on this one girl that no one is really joining me on but everyone has their one artist and just because you haven’t heard about them anywhere it doesn’t mean they’re not as good as someone you have heard of.

CONFRONT: And what’s her name?

Dan: Adaline. She’s out of Vancouver, she’s an amazing solo singer. We’re so gonna produce her.

CONFRONT: Ok well we’re done. Thanks for taking time out of your day to sit with us!

Dan: Thank you!

What was initially meant to be nothing more than a short interview, turned into a whole day affair, where we got to hang out with the performers of the event, do the interview and stay for the show.

Because of a scheduling conflict, I ended up having my God Daughter with me that day and what a first show experience these amazing musicians provided her. To say that this band has talent and is worth listening to would not do them justice as people. Yes they are talented and yes they give an amazing show but as individuals, they touched a special place in a little 6 year old girls heart… and that says a lot.

I urge you to check out their myspace and buy their record. You won’t be disappointed.

http://www.myspace.com/elephantlive

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