Monday 11 January 2010
QBiM Q&A with The Ghost Is Dancing
Last week I told you about how I stumbled on The Ghost Is Dancing a bit too late for my liking, so I’ve been sure to make up for lost time. A few well placed emails got me in touch with Jamie Matechuk from the band and before I knew it, I had one of the best QBiM Q&A sessions on record so far.
(photo: myspace.com)
QBiM: State your name for the record, and mention your record while you’re at it.
Jamie Matechuck: James Bradley Matechuk, and the record is Battles On.
QBiM: Where are you from, how did you get here, and where are you going next?
JM: Originally from Niagara Falls, now Toronto. I came to Toronto for a mixture of academia and childhood aspiration. I’m hopefully touring Finland soon.
QBiM: Who’s hanging out with you?
JM: Right now Kevin Corlis, Odie, Lesley and Krums are in the band. But Alt (from Digits) and Dave Kates helped us out with the last record.
QBiM: Grant Lawrence of CBC Radio 3 mentioned that the band is from Niagara Falls. Being a Niagara region homeboy, too, tell me about your roots in The Falls
JM: It was really funny for us to hear Grant introduce us that way, because it’s been eight years since I lived there, and quite a few years for everybody else. Oh the N-Falls, what can you say about it that hasn’t already been said or inscribed on a wax mannequin of the Queen? The Falls will always be in our bones, no matter how much we felt betrayed by that city. All of our interests in art and ideas are purposely absent from Niagara, it’s just not what most people care about there. Unless you make movies. Despite all of that, when I go home and get out of the van I smell the moist air and I miss it.
QBiM: How hard is it for new bands to make a name for themselves in a musical market as rich as Toronto? Has it been a struggle to get The Ghost Is Dancing heard?
JM: The Toronto “market” bounces from welcoming to exclusive and back again every other month, really. I guess it is super-competitive, I’ve never thought about that really. When you go to Halifax, for instance, there’s still a lot of bands fighting for good nights and good coverage. Maybe there’s some magical mathematical formula relating the amount of bands per the amount of people in a city. Either way, it’s been hard for us. Not only to get people to hear you, but also to change their perception of you after the first time they hear you. When we started we were really sloppy and huggy, now that we’re not we still find people tagging us with that. But people like Sarah Liss at CBC really give you faith that people will hear you and keep listening.
QBiM: What’s the one sound that drives you crazy?
JM: The sound of my computer crapping out. Sounds like an electric fart.
QBiM: Other than music or other artists, what influences you as a musician and songwriter?
JM: I see music in shapes and colours so painting is a big influence. Jack Chambers was a particular influence for me over the last two years. Frank O Hara’s poetry was huge too.
QBiM: You’ve been compared to great acts like Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire, but how would you describe your sound without using any musical metaphors or comparisons to other bands?
JM: We have two distinct musical sides in my head. One is the sound of friends trying to make the most out of a moment, be it melodically or with lots of shouting and noise.. The other side is on our darker “ballads”, which is more about the frustration of having joy taken away from you. What people don’t talk about (maybe because they don’t care) is how SO many different things affect your “sound”. Technological and economical things, like, for instance, the fact that I could only afford to get a cheap old KORG organ instead of something more elaborate. So then I sit down at the keyboard and the organ sound sucks on it’s own, but when I combine all the little patches together it sounds pretty big and lush but also kinda eerie. And that “sound” on that keyboard, with it’s little fluctuations and whatnot, resulted in a song like WALL OF SNOW being written the way it was written. Thing is, the KORG isn’t on Wall of Snow, well you can barely hear it. Guitar covers the whole thing. Because, late in the game, someone lent us a really great Overdrive pedal. Combine that with the fact that we were listening to a lot of Animal Collective and Russian Futurists at the time (which NO ONE has compared us to) and that’s what happened with that ONE song. I guess in the end those comparisons are just a funny game with a small amount of truth to us, but they’re not intended for us.
QBiM: What’s the greatest invention of all time?
JM: Fire.
QBiM: What would be the one moment in time you’d go back and relive or experience?
JM: Rez life at York.
QBiM: I have to ask: where does the band name come from?
JM: Picking a band name is really hard. You either have one or you don’t and we didn’t have one. We knew we didn’t want a name that associated us with any musical movement. We liked long names like The Robot Ate Me or They Shoot Horses Don’t They? So we found The Ghost is Dancing on a list of horse names and choose it with a democratic vote. It was 4-3. Hardest thing we’ve ever done!
QBiM: When was the last time you got in a fight?
JM: Good question! Man I can’t remember. Oh, yeah. On Yonge St. a guy and his friend tried to rob me and Kev and Jim. We were the same size and defended ourselves and left.
QBiM: What’s the one song you wish you’d have written?
JM: “Hey Jude.”
QBiM: What’s the last good book/movie/record you read/saw/heard?
JM: Some Great Thing by Colin McAdam; Cache by Michael Haneke; Merriweather Post Pavillion by Animal Collective.
QBiM: I’m always intrigued when a band references Canadian history or culture. What’s the song “Louis Riel” about?
JM: “Louis Riel”. . . like most songs it’s a bout a few things to me that might not be apparent in the lyrics but here we go: it’s about accepting your adult status in the world and doing something useful with it. The first set of lyrics are really personal memories for me, of Jim’s first car driving us around, of us playing pool together and trying to figure out what we wanted to be. Then there I was, 25, and I was what I couldn’t predict back then. When we went on our first tour of Canada we went through Winnipeg, and there’s the grave of Louis Riel there (it just happened to be down the street from the house we crashed at). It was a bright summer day and I remember looking at his statue and thinking how amazing it was that he was brave enough to fight for what he believed in. How are those connected? They are for me, that’s all I know.
QBiM: Any vices?
JM: Coffee right now. I’m a bit of a weirdo though, I was straight edge and vegetarian for a lotof my life so my vice has become art to be honest. It takes up all my time and costs me a lot of money.
QBiM: What was the first concert you went to see?
JM: Ben Folds Five at the Government.
QBiM: What’s the one thing our world could with less of and why?
JM: Banks. Not to get too political, but the banks are controlling everything right now and we have to stop them.
QBiM: What’s the worst bit of musical advice you’ve ever been given?
JM: Play quieter.
QBiM: Has downloading killed the album and song format for music? What do you think the future will hold for the music industry?
JM: I think that the album as an entity can’t die. Cassettes made the mixtape possible, just like dl’ng has made the playlist possible, but the album as an idea of a stretch of songs conveying a narrative existed even before recorded music existed. I am pretty excited about the opportunities with downloading and digital albums though. I have this idea about releasing everything off a website, where you can download multimedia files with acoustic songs with pictures and stories whatever we want to through in. Like mini-albums I guess.
QBiM: Is there anything left to explore?
JM: Definitely and always! I wanted to be an astronaut and still do. Musically, I’m excited about the democratization of technology and the portability of production. Folk bands can easily incorporate samples and beats, tweak and pitch shift and mash up their own songs and do it all on stage (Animal Collective). It reduced the clunky and restricting weight of traditional instruments. Makes touring and producing easier.
QBiM: Anything to declare?
JM: Declare? We have some fruit and nuts on board but we’re not telling the department of Homeland security.
MP3: The Ghost Is Dancing “This Thunder”
Video: The Ghost Is Dancing “This Thunder”
Myspace: The Ghost Is Dancing
Tweet
This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 11:30 am and is filed under MP3, QBiM Q&A, ViDEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
PS I Love You
