Romantic Hobos
of the Pacific Northwest
Where do you call home?
That is a problematic question at best my friend. To answer it in short, I currently live in Montreal, but my heart is in the balmy mountains of the BC interior.
What do you do when you're not making music?
Think about ways to make music.
So you planted trees for many years. What kind of inspirational and/or destructive influence has that had on your artistic career?
Treeplanting is the perfect creative lifestyle in so many ways. Not only did I get hours and hours and hours of isolation in the deepest reaches of the Canadian wilderness to ponder my creative ideas and daydream, but I was given a ticket to ride at the end of every season, when I got laid off and went on EI. EI from forestry work, as you well know, pays better than most jobs. So, once again, I was given an incredible amount of free time to work on my ideas. It was destructive because it made me a chain-smoking, binge-drinking sociopath . . . . . . or did I do that on my own?
Do you aspire to be a professional musician? Or are you a happy hobbiest?
I'd have to say a healthy dose of each, along with a dash of obsessive multi-tracker, and just a touch of compulsive performer. Oh, and a light sprinkling of swashbuckling vigilante.
What's your favorite ditty you've written to date?
"A Penny for the Headless Whore". It's sort of a melancholy, operatic punk song about a tragic love that emerges when the decapitated body of a prostitute washes up on shore next to a lighthouse, and the lighthouse keeper falls madly in love with her, but alas, her spirit still works the murky streets of london. It's either a parallel for modern love, or cheap shock, depending on how you see it.
What instruments do you not possess yet that you would like to acquire?
If I see an instrument, and I do not possess it, then I immediately want to possess it. My current wishlist is a set of bagpipes and a sitar. They both seem ridiculously fun to play. All you need to do is smack that droning note and noodle around on the other thingies.
Do you enjoy a good live performance more or less than crafting a tune in your studio?
They both do different things for me. After the bombay laughing club sessions though, I sort of burned out on multi-tracking. We spent six months locked in a cabin together writing a song a day, and when it was done, I just wanted to get on stage. Now I'm doing that so much thats it's sort of burning me out, but I love it anyway.
What's are the best and worst gigs you've experienced?
Worst gig was in Quebec City. We got all the way there before we realised that we had forgotten our drummer. SO, I bravely drank until I was blacked right out, and our band did a set of noise music, much to the dismay of the local Quebec bands and promoters. Best gig would either be this wedding gig, where the Unsettlers married another band called the Subcollisions on stage, then performed a set with sixteen musicians, a burlesque dancer jumping out of a wedding cake, and all sorts of other awesome tricks. That show blew my mind.
Armageddon is impending, you have a budget that makes U2 blush, now where is your final show, who opens for you, what do you wear, and what's on your rider?
I'd most likely play my final show in downtown Princeton, a wretched little town I had the displeasure of growing up for a bit in, and I would make my former high school teachers open up for me, and I would wear a cape made out of dungeons and dragons maps. My rider would be all about parachuting onto the old water tower for my final song.
If you could inject yourself into any of your favorite bands, in any point in time, which band in which instrument? And do you think this replacement might not be catastrophic for their success?
I'd put myself inside of The Barenaked Ladies and put a stop to their sinister plot.
Who were some of your artistic influences growing up? Any that might surprise your listeners?
Anyone who has heard my music but doesn't know me would probably be stunned by the fact that I was an avid, unyeilding metal kid until about the age of nineteen. Before metal, my life was nothing more than two Beach Boys tapes on repeat, and whatever retro seventies stuff my hippy parents listened too (see Led Zepplin).
Moving on, how many time's have you been naked in public? Elaborate.
Define naked, that's sort of a grayish term.
If you could speak to any one animal for insite, which animal would that be and why? Any animal?
I would probably talk to David Yow.
If you instead were a professional cagefighter, what song would you march out to?
It would be fucking Maiden, thats for bloody sure. Probably "Powerslave". Either that or Cannible Corpse, something off of the bleeding. If neither of those two, then I would do "Anything For Love", by Meatloaf. I would love to kick someone's ass to that song.
On a related note, which song do you want them to play at your funeral?
I won't have a funeral, I will get rich enough to buy a new body and place my brain inside of it, thus perpetuating my megalomania throughout the centuries.
What's one piece of advice you'd give to all the adolescent Santosh's across the globe that look up to you and aspire to be indie Gods?
Don't wash your hair so much. It leaves it crunchy and brittle. Also, the last thing you want to do is what is already popular. It's much more fulfilling to come up with your own sound and play it until people start to listen. If you play whats already hot, it will be played out by the time your band gets all the proper networking and promotion in place. You have to do what's true to your heart. If it just so happens that what is true to your heart is what's already popular, then you are either lying or extremely lucky.
- November, 2008
some Peppermill creations:
Planter For Life (after four years)
Drink Your Rrrhum
Suba Deba
Bad Things
Workin' Boy Blues
Don't Send Me To Hell
visit him and his various bands in person in Montreal, or right here in cyberspace: