phoner: (noun) An interview that takes place over the phone, due to calamitous circumstances that preclude an actual face-to-face meeting between subject and writer.
Or at least that's the scenario begetting most phone interviews. With 22-year old Canadian folk-pop wonder twins Tegan and Sara Quin, it was a slightly different story. I'm sure they'd have loved to do a live interview, but their beleaguered van broke down in Detroit before their scheduled stop at Pittsburgh's Hard Rock Cafe, causing them to miss the interview...and very nearly the concert as well. Arriving in town at 8:30, barely 90 minutes before they were scheduled to go on stage, they rallied together to pull off as high-energy a show as they could muster before collapsing in the Hard Rock's wooden booths to recharge. Ever-friendly and receptive to their undyingly supportive fans, they survived the customary meet-and-greet, and, while they were in no condition to conduct an interview at 1:00 a.m., they ensured that we'd chat again at some point in the week.
It was not to be an easy week. When I finally caught up with Tegan via cell phone two days later, the band was experiencing a whole new batch of problems...
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Tegan: Hey, how's it going?
Splendid: Great, how are you?
Tegan: (laughing) I'm doing pretty good. We're just a little bit lost in Boston, looking for the club.
Splendid: Great, so they've scheduled me to talk to you guys while you're lost... Would you like me to call you back when you guys find your place?
Tegan: No, no, no, it's totally fine. It's actually really good, it'll kill time.
Splendid: So apparently travelling has not been the high point of your week.
Tegan: It's been an interesting week since we broke down on our second date. Like, we were away in Europe for a couple weeks but when we flew in to Toronto and then the next day we were driving into Detroit and our van broke down and we had to get it towed across the border... Had a few days of crossing our fingers and wishing and hoping and stuff, so now we're back on the road and I'm actually happy, even though we're lost. I'm happy to be in the band.
Splendid: You're not driving, are you?
Tegan: No, I don't drive.
AUDIO: Living Room
Splendid: Great... So, you started out in Calgary and then you went to Vancouver. What prompted the whole move to Vancouver?
Tegan: I don't know if, in the moment, if I knew it, but it was a really good way of sort of shedding that part of my life. You know, I'd just graduated high school, and I was working a shitty job and started to travel and I felt a lot of guilt of leaving all the time, and a lot of restraint when it came to songwriting... sort of developing into the person I thought I was going to be. [When you start playing] you get a lot of "Okay, Rock Star" -- you know, comments like that, because you've known people your whole life and any little change around them, it's insane. It kind of brings out those changes, which is good; it keeps a good head on your shoulders and keeps your feet on the ground, but at the same time it was time for a change. Vancouver posed a new life but it was still close to home and we'd been going there quite a bit to play, and we've gone there my whole life 'cause part of my family is from Vancouver, so it's a nice change.
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Splendid: I was wondering why you'd picked Vancouver over Toronto.
Tegan: I spent an enormous amount of time out there. Actually, that's an understatement to say the least. I just didn't like it that much, and it's so far from Calgary... Vancouver's only an hour away from Calgary by plane. I didn't leave Calgary to get away from my family so much as I just needed to get away, and I love going back and seeing them and I love being close. I can't picture being much further away from them. It's already such a far drive.
Splendid: Speaking of all the traveling, do you guys ever wish you had not gone on the road as early as you did...
Tegan: (laughing) Or ever?
Splendid: ... like maybe done the whole college thing?
Tegan: Sometimes. God knows there isn't a day that passes that I don't think "what if I'd done this or that?" But I don't know -- I just haven't found something else that I enjoy doing as much. I definitely never wish I'd gone to school, because I just didn't want to go to school. I knew that for sure. I just didn't know what I wanted to do, and music just kind of fell in our laps and it started to sort of make us money, so that was cool. The day I find something that I like more, I would jump on board. I wouldn't look back. But like I said, there's nothing that I'm that good at or that I enjoy as much.
Splendid: So you're not viewing this as being locked in a van for four years of your life, then?
Tegan: Oh my God, no. I feel really lucky to be locked in this van. But if I saw opportunity somewhere else I would definitely take it.
Splendid: True, true... Like, do you actually get to see the towns that you go through at all, or is it all just a blur?
Tegan: Some of them. Usually when you go somewhere for the first time, you don't get to see it. But second, third, fourth time you start to, you know? We try to stay at the same hotels, and you kind of get your little neighborhoods figured out. Some of these places, like New York, or Boston, we're in tonight -- we've been here four, five, six times, so you start to sort of recognize things and stuff. A lot of the times the thing is, you don't want to get out and see it; you're not shedding any tears over not seeing the city. You're excited to see the hotel and take a shower. We were just in London for the second time ever and we got to spend, like, three days there looking around and stuff, and that's good. It's hard to go places and then tell people later on, "Yeah I traveled through Europe" and they're like, "Wow, that must have been so amazing." Deep inside, you're like, "Not really, we just spent the whole time in a car," but you're like, "Yeah, it was so cool..."
Splendid: They'll never know.
Tegan: When they look at my pictures in my photo album, they know. (laughs)
Splendid: Yeah, they'll notice it's all just hotel room shots.
Tegan: Hotels and clubs, yeah.
Splendid: So you guys have pretty much built a word-of-mouth following down here in the States, near as I can tell, because --
Tegan: It worked pretty much that way in Canada, too. We don't get a lot of single or video support.
AUDIO: Not Tonight
Splendid: Yeah, I figured. We never get Canadian bands down here on the radio period, for some reason. But every time I've heard a Canadian band -- you guys, the Tragically Hip, going back to Hayden -- I don't get a whole lot of "every Canadian band sounds alike," I get a whole lot of "every Canadian band sounds really authentic and original compared to the cookie-cutter bands down here." Why is that?
Tegan: I think the Canadian sound is really regional. I don't know if it works quite the same way in the US, but West Coast bands sound really different than Toronto bands, and very different from East Coast bands, and there's this whole little scene in Manitoba and Winnipeg and stuff, and... I don't know if Calgary has a music scene that could be spoken for, but (laughs) I think each territory sort of has its own little thing going on. I think because Canada's so big and there isn't really a big trendy, hip kind of magazine or something that represents the indie kind of stuff, each place sort of dictates what's cool. Each city. Like what's cool in Toronto right now isn't cool in Vancouver right now, so I think that's why you hear so many different sounds coming out of Canadian bands.
Splendid: That makes sense. Because we'll go up to Niagara Falls and turn on MuchMusic and get just a plethora of stuff that we've never heard before or never would hear.
Tegan: Yeah, that's the one good thing. I think sometimes as Canadians we tend to take Muchmusic for granted because it's still... filled ... full of shit. But, yeah, you see videos, which is a good thing, and you see more good and Canadian and independent stuff, segments like The Punk Show or Wedge or all those spinoffs of the main, hip, top twenty thing. You get a whole bunch of different music. I'd like to think I know sort of what's going on and I read Rolling Stone and all that stuff, but, I heard of like three or four of my favorite bands of the past couple years on those little side program[s]. And I know as a Canadian I take for granted how good it is and then I come down here and I watch MTV and I'm like, "Does anyone play videos?"
Splendid: No. You have to go to MTV4 to actually get the videos anymore.
Tegan: (laughing) You have to have the satellite dish.
Tegan and I then speak briefly about the Vancouver film scene, which will be of limited interest to music readers, and in which she bashes Toronto once more, so I have not included it here.
Splendid: So, with the most recent album, If It Was You, what's with the dramatic change between your first and the second album? (Tegan laughs) Is it a conscious commercial choice or is it just natural?
Tegan: No, no, I think it's hard when you're mixed up in the middle of it all. I don't hear that dramatic of a change, so my answer will probably negate the question. I just think that it is a natural progression and that the only real difference on the record is that we had more time to do it so it's louder and it's not as sparse. I think This Business of Art, if John (Collins) and Dave (Carswell) had come in and produced that record and added extra guitars and keyboards and stuff like that, it probably would sound very much the same. I think that it all comes from the same place. You know, our first record was just really acoustic because that's sort of where we were at musically and our band was really sparse, and then for This Business of Art we actually heard louder drums and bass, and then on this record, we heard drums and bass and we also heard a lot of keyboards and more guitars. In my mind, it's actually like we had extra time so we just put extra stuff on. The songs were all written exactly the same. Obviously our influences, you know -- we've been listening to different bands and I think we were still emulating what inspired us to write music in the first place, like Bruce Springsteen and U2 and such simple melodies, things like that.
Splendid: And I've read also that you guys are utilizing the MAC Pro Tools.
Tegan: Yes we are. I know it's pretty un-cool to be using Pro Tools; it's almost like new wave stupid rock artists are like, (she affects a Southern California rock accent) "Yeah, we recorded our CD in one take." We come back and we just laugh -- like, you can't. I learned really early on that when you're live, you can do just about anything; you have people caught up in the moment and the energy and stuff like that and it's easy to move people and excite them. But when it comes to an album, you know, you're gonna be remembered forever. I read an article by the guy from Spiritualized today, and he enjoys playing live much more than he enjoys playing on records, but if you've ever heard a Spiritualized record, it's unbelievable... you, know, orchestras and choirs and all this other stuff. And so they asked him, "if you enjoy playing live so much, how come you make such complex records?" And he's like, "It's my job to make the best record I possibly can so that the live show has somewhere to go from." I kind of agree. I don't know if [you want] to go into your record thinking "We've got to make the best record ever," you know? But definitely we're looking to better ourselves each and every time and... I don't know. I can't even remember your question.
Splendid: (laughing) Me neither. That's fine. It's a noble aspiration, though.
Tegan: (laughing) I started to fear that I wasn't even talking about the statement anymore...
Splendid: Thank God I'm recording this. No, it's fine...
Tegan: Oh, the Pro Tools thing, right, that's what it was. I know it's not necessarily cool to perfect what you're doing, but I like that. I loved writing this record because every time I wrote a song, I got to record it right away. I didn't have to pay ten thousand dollars to do it. I -- well, I did, but not for one song. I got to pay seven thousand dollars and record for eight months at my own leisure, pace, and I liked that a lot. And it was good for me and Sara, you know -- we would record songs and then give them to each other and then we didn't have to actually sit in the same room and fight it out. We had so much freedom, we'd give demos to the band and we'd give demos to the producers and everybody had a copy and got to work on it at their own pace, which was nice -- not as much pressure, which is really good for us because we don't like any pressure at all.
AUDIO: Time Running
Splendid: One last question. I am also a twin, ironically...
Tegan: Oh wow. Do you have a boy twin or do you have a girl twin?
Splendid: He wasn't an identical brother. But the thing is, he passed away at birth... So I never really notice I'm a twin until I see other twins out there and I'm like, "Oh yeah, I was a twin." But I was just wondering, from a twin point of view, is there any kind of a Tegan and Sara bond?
Tegan: (pause) Wow. I don't know. It's weird. Sometimes I feel a bit of pressure to have something "twin" about us. You spend so much time as a twin trying to be independent of your twin that it's hard to associate, in one sentence, what it is that's unique about us, as twins. My stepfather's sister was born a twin also and her twin died. A girlfriend of mine also had the same experience -- she was apparently born with another sibling, and... just spoke of her whole life sort of feeling a bit lonely? I think there's that feeling, whether they're there or not. I think there's something about knowing that there's someone else out there identical to you, that came from the same place you did, that you were only supposed to be one person. Sara has this whole theory that we complement each other but we don't have the full package, we only have half the package. Half of what's important about us is missing, that kind of thing. I guess it's hard to say, standing in the midst of it all, but we obviously have a very strong connection or we wouldn't be on the road. 'Cause I don't think I would be hanging out with just anyone on the road like this. I probably would have quit a long time ago. (laughs) So maybe the bond just is that we feel obligated to succeed together, I don't know.
Splendid: Very cool. Thank you for taking the time out of your Boston mishap up there to chat with me. Have you located your venue yet?
Tegan: No, I think it's getting worse.
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TEGAN AND SARA LINKS
Read Splendid's reviews of If It Was You and This Business Of Art.
Visit Teganandsara.com.
While you're at it, visit TeganandSara.net and TeganandSara.org. They're fan sites.
Visit Tegan and Sara's label, Vapor Records, and see some video of T&S.
Complete your Tegan and Sara experience by buying their music at Insound.
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has written a new poem about otters every day since his fifteenth birthday.
[ graphics credits :: header/pulls - george zahora | photos - justin kownacki :: credits graphics ]
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