Little Scream

My interview with Little Scream is in this month's Exclaim!

The Art of Little Scream

Interviews FROM THE MAGAZINE Apr 2011

By Andrea Warner

Montreal-based singer-songwriter Little Scream, aka Laurel Sprengelmeyer, has plenty to shout about. Set to receive her Canadian citizenship later this year, she's just a few weeks away from embarking on a North American tour, and finally, after four years in the making, Little Scream's debut album, The Golden Record, hits stores on April 12. Though it's not unusual to spend a lot of time crafting one's debut, Sprengelmeyer laughingly acknowledges she took her sweet time getting here. After following a boyfriend to Montreal, the Iowa-born musician found herself distracted by her new adopted hometown. She played in a band, but didn't record anything until she started working on Little Scream songs in 2007.

I was working two jobs and playing shows whenever I could, but it kind of took a while to get everything together to record an album," she says. "It's been a little bit slow, but I'm glad it's finally happening!" The wait was worth it. The Golden Record is a moody, bold, artful declaration that Sprengelmeyer admits borrows from a host of influences: Joni Mitchell, Cocteau Twins and Ricki Lee Jones all serve as inspirations. But, ultimately it's Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre's Richard Reed Parry, who serves as the album's co-producer, that Sprengelmeyer credits with helping her shape a recording aesthetic.

Aesthetic is a word that comes up often when discussing Little Scream. Sprengelmeyer, who also painted the album's cover illustration, admits that crafting an overall creative experience is part of what makes Little Scream a labour of love. "I want to have everything that comes out reflect part of that aesthetic, and I don't always have time," she laughs. "I'm looking forward to focusing on other aspects of the creative process: sonic landscapes that are coming out in live performances, the visuals in live performances. It's this cohesive picture in my mind. Whether or not that translates into reality..." Sprengelmeyer trails off, a Little Scream with no words left.

The Dodos

My feature on the Dodos is in this week's WEVancouver.

The Dodos are Logan Kroeber (left) and Meric Long.

Credit: Supplied

MUSIC: The Dodos ditch the acoustic and amp up

Posted By: Andrea Warner

03/30/2011 12:00 AM

 

Try as they might, even San Francisco-based duo the Dodos are hard-pressed to describe their sound. Lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Meric Long has a background in West African drumming, percussionist Logan Kroeber comes from metal, and together they’ve created a unique twist on indie-rock: a prominent percussive rhythm driven by both the guitar and drums. It’s a narrative that the Dodos’ pick up again with their newest album, No Color, their fourth full-length since 2005, which features supporting vocals from former honorary Vancouverite Neko Case. While driving between gigs on the Dodos’ North American tour, Long spoke with WE about spirit journeys, electric guitars, and Case’s new tattoos.

WE: Is the album title supposed to set a tone for the whole record?
Meric Long: Well, it comes from Logan. He kind of goes on these mystical spirit journeys in his mind when we’re playing the songs and sees these visions and stuff. Usually they’re associated with certain colours or images, and with the new batch of songs, he didn’t see anything really. Just kinda grey, ashy colours, and I think he was a little concerned when it first came to him, that it seemed kinda bleak. I think he said that it started changing recently, and just with playing the songs a little bit longer, some colour has started to appear.

I didn’t get anything bleak in listening to the album.
Nor should you.

There’s a driving pulse to the record, a lot of momentum.
That’s why he was kinda concerned. He was really digging the record, and me, too. We both really liked where it was going, and it was kind of a little strange that something we were both excited about had this other flip side that seemed bleak. We were like, ‘What? This doesn’t match up!’ You’re on the right track.

How did drums become so vital to the Dodo’s sound?
I have this very percussive style I play with. I like to use the drums to accentuate what I’m doing with the finger picking on the guitar. There’s a lot of crazy rhythms going on in there. It’s something that a lot of people lose maybe, or don’t notice, so we use big drums to accentuate the rhythms we use on the guitar and play off of them. It’s really fun and works really well, I think.

If people hadn’t heard your music and were just having it described to them, they wouldn’t understand how the influences gel together.
Yeah, we have a pretty hard time telling people what kind of music we play. Like if we’re in a restaurant or at a hotel and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re in a band! What kind of music do you play?’ it’s kind of hard to just rattle it off.

You’ve gone electric. Is there any going back?
It’s so much more fun for me to play. The acoustic guitar sounds amazing, but on stage it’s always having to compete for volume. The new record has a lot of electric guitar as well... There’s probably no going back, unless I break a string.

We take a lot of pride in Vancouver, trying to claim Neko Case as one of our own. What does having her around for some of the songs bring to the album?
It was amazing. I understand wanting to claim her as your own. You should go ahead and do that. We got to share some studio time with her for a little while and it was just super fun. She came to town when we were recording in Portland and she was going to get a tattoo, her first tattoo, and then she did. She totally got these huge tattoos on her arms. And then also stopped in and sang on some tracks. She’s really something in the studio. She’s at her best when she’s doing her own thing. If we’d had all the parts figured out that we’d wanted her to sing on and tried to teach it to her, I don’t think it would have turned out half as good. She’s able to just knock it out when she’s improvising and making stuff up on her own and that’s exactly what she did for a lot of the songs. I mean, obviously I told her what the lyrics were, but after that it was just roll tape and let her see what she could do.

I’m glad you ponied up and gave her lyrics at least.
She was funny, so much so does she do her own thing, she was kind of like, changing the lyrics on a few of the songs. She would get in her zone and do her own thing and do a couple of takes and the lyrics would start mutating and I’d have to remind her, ‘Umm, Neko? Could you actually change that back to the lyric that I sing? Sounds great though!’ (Laughs).

The Dodos play Thursday, Mar. 31 at Rickshaw, 8pm. Tickets $16 from Red Cat Records, Zulu Records and Ticketmaster.

Emma Forrest

My interview with Emma Forrest is in this week's WEVancouver.

Emma Forrest, author of Your Voice in My Head.

Credit: Supplied

BOOKS: Emma Forrest looks back on a life less ordinary

Posted By: Andrea Warner

03/30/2011 12:00 AM

 

It’s disconcerting to sit across from someone whom you’ve just met, but feel you know intimately. Anyone who has read Emma Forrest’s remarkable new memoir, Your Voice In My Head, would be armed with the same facts: a wunderkid music journalist who began wracking up major bylines in her native London at 15; tried to kill herself at 22; wonderful parents, amazing therapist, bad luck with men; funny, sad, self-aware and bipolar. She was also tabloid fodder thanks to a high-profile romance with Hollywood bad boy Colin Farrell, who may or may not be the Gypsy Man who broke her heart and became a key plot point in the story of her life.

It’s a life that Forrest writes about with the kind of aching clarity and black comedy that belies her 33 years. Sitting across from her in the lobby bar of a Vancouver hotel, she smiles warmly and passes on the proper tea-serving technique she learned from her dad (milk in first, or “MIF,” as he says). She jokes easily, and the wit and gallows humour that permeates the memoir translates easily off the page.

I wept openly in my office when I started the book, and had to take it home. How are other journalists handling interviewing you?
Well, you know what’s interesting. Absolutely the opposite in England. Because I’ve been a journalist for a long time there... I’ve been in the public eye from 15, a lot of the people who wrote about it in London were not crying in public, they were like, cursing me in public. (Laughs) People who, in writing about the book, were basically saying that they didn’t like me. That I was a good writer, but they didn’t like me. I mean, you can see it online, you can Google, but there was a Times review, and Observer review, and both were just really focused on my past as a journalist and on what they knew about me... There was sort of a generational divide in the English take, whereas the younger writers, the ones who are either my age or younger than me loved it, but the ones who remember me from way back when, sort of couldn’t get past that.

I first found out about the book from a Vancouver-based blogger who runs the website called LaineyGossip.com
Holy fuck. She’s clearly fascinating. I was sent that piece and it was such good writing because literary criticism is hard, and it’s hard to explain why you like something as abstract as a book, especially a memoir. You know, from writing about music, it’s hard to describe why music moves you and it’s hard to describe why words move you. And, I just thought it was such a well-written piece and not just because she was nice about me. She must be one of those people like Jeanette Walls, who wrote The Glass Castle, who was a gossip columnist. And she wrote this amazing memoir, like serious, profoundly literary memoir about her family; and from the little bits I was getting from what Lainey was saying, I’m sure she’s got a big, serious literary memoir somewhere in her. It was a nice reminder that there really aren’t barriers anymore between high and low culture. Here is this Internet gossip blogger who, when she wants to, is writing in this very lofty and intellectual style. And when I looked at her site, the way she just writes about whatever she likes, but moves between the high and the low. And, I’m not saying whether I’m high or low culture, I think I’m both, whereas someone like Perez [Hilton] is just a grade-A moron. Terrible writer, horrific human being, downfall of the Western world...

It’s your memoir, but the book involves a lot of other people, which makes it their story as well.
I gave them the chance to read it before it went to press. Before I even started it, I contacted Dr. R’s widow and said, ‘I’m writing this book, is that okay?’ And she said, ‘Yes, but anonymise him.’ She read it before it was sent to press, but now that she’s read it as an actual book, she said can you put his real name back in for future editions, because she loved it so much. The boyfriends, there were like three boyfriends I gave it to to say if they wanted anything changed. One of them said that I had got stuff wrong, and I said, ‘Oh God, I’ll change it.’ And he said, ‘Don’t change it. You’re a writer, stick up for what you said.’ One of them loved it so much that he wanted me to put his real name in. I was like, no, over-ruling you. And, the other said, ‘You know what, I don’t need to read it, do what you like.’ Certainly if any of those people had said, ‘I hate it, you’re a terrible person,’ I wouldn’t be promoting it with such confidence.

The book is a fierce advocate for talking about mental health issues.
It’s a lot of responsibility because people want prescriptions. Some people do, anyways, or they want me to speak about this cause or that cause. It really is how I got better, and I’m not sure it would work — I mean I hope it would work for other people, but I don’t have a medical degree and I’m not a psychiatrist — so the best I can do is listen to people’s stories. A lot of the time I can only put people in touch with other people. I’m getting this letter from a mother and this letter from a kid, and I’m like, do you guys wanna talk to each other? There’s this great human connectivity, that’s the nicest part coming out of it. I’ll get amazing letter after amazing letter, and they’re usually really sad, but it’s all kinds of sadness across the spectrum, and weirdly I find that comforting, ’cause every one’s got some tragedy. That’s the gift of books when they work. It’s not even the specificity of what happened to me, but rather, again to come back to this idea of how hard it is to describe music, I think even having depression described with some clarity is comforting to people who suffer from depression.

Sharon Van Etten

My interview with Sharon Van Etten is this week's WEVancouver music feature.

Sharon Van Etten is on tour in support of her new album, Epic.

Credit: Supplied

MUSIC: Sharon Van Etten shelves softer side for ‘Epic’

Posted By: Andrea Warner

03/23/2011 12:00 AM

Sharon Van Etten’s first album, Because I Was In Love, explored the darkest time in the young singer/songwriter’s life: six years in an ever-escalating abusive relationship. The scars-and-all honesty, coupled with compelling arrangements, made for one of the most achingly beautiful albums of 2009. Two years later, she’s touring in support of her follow-up, Epic, a louder, electric affair. As she tells WE, she’s finally ready to rock out and melt some faces.

WE: How does it feel to have a full band?
Sharon Van Etten: It’s fun. They’re just fun to be around. It’s a different way of performing and it’s cathartic in a different way. I’m learning how to rock out a little more. There are some people who prefer my solo stuff, because it’s mellow and sad and not as loud, but it’s nice to do something different for a little while. You get bored when you sing the same way for years.

You can really change it up on stage, I’d imagine, too.
I’m learning the balance. People don’t want their faces melted the whole set — well, some people do, I guess — but it’s nice to have a dynamic throughout the set, peaks and valleys, so to speak.

So faces will actually be melting on this tour?
As much as I can do. (Laughs) Just seeing heads bob is a big thing for me. I’m starting to use my pedal, but it’s funny, I don’t really know how to use them properly yet, so I mess up half the time live, and it’s either too loud when I hit it or nothing happens at all. In my mind, it’s like a joke, like Amelia Bedelia trying to rock out or something. But it’s fun to start learning stuff I always wanted to do when I had a band.

You come from a choir background. That’s as different from what you’re doing now as can be.
(Laughs) Yeah, totally. I always loved singing with other people and I didn’t really write much music in high school, but it was really fun to sing harmonies and hear moving parts and hear a cappela versions with voices acting as different instruments. It was always really interesting to me, like you don’t need an instrument to actually perform a song... That was the beginning of using my choir background to start writing songs. You can have dynamics with just vocals.

You’ve been open about your first album’s source material: leaving an abusive relationship. Unfortunately, for many women, there’s still so much shame attached to abuse. Were you consciously trying to change that?
If I didn’t have music, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with it in a healthy way. A lot of it is therapy in hindsight... Even though I was hesitant at first to talk about being the girl in an unhealthy relationship, writing songs about it, it’s not as simple as that. I came to terms with knowing that it helps other people and that it is the core of the songs and I can’t deny that. I’ve grown from that experience and I don’t always write about my relationships now. I can talk about friends, or be general, or talk about an issue so it’s not so alienating to other people where they can’t relate to it. As cliché as it is, it’s helped me and I know it’s helped other people and it’s the only thing I know how to do. I’m not gonna skirt the issue, even though it is sensitive and it is personal.

Epic sounds like you’ve really layered your strengths. It feels resilient.
It’s definitely a more confident record for me... Feeling a lot more secure in my decisions and who I am. That’s what made me take up the electric guitar, and I just started writing differently. It was weird!

Did the electric guitar change your perspective as a songwriter?
Well, you know, playing the same chords on a classical guitar is going to sound a lot more mellow and a lot sadder. It’s really hard to bang on a classical — I mean, I tried. For years! (Laughs)
Sharon Van Etten plays with Little Scream, Mar. 29 at the Media Club, 8pm. $14 (RC, S, Z).

Spring concert picks

The 10 best concerts this spring.

Jenny and Johnny.

MUSIC: Spring shines fresh light on concert scene

Posted By: Andrea Warner

03/16/2011 12:00 AM

For concert goers, Vancouver’s winter season is a routinely barren wasteland, as grey and depressing as the weather outside. But, fellow music lovers rejoice! Spring is here, and with it comes a bevy of bands that will help us leave the SADs behind. Excluding everything that’s already sold out, including Fleet Foxes, Adele, and Twin Door Cinema Club, WE offers up the 10 shows we can’t wait to see.

ESBEN AND THE WITCH
It’s no surprise that this U.K. outfit’s name came from a dark Danish fairy tale. Their music is equal parts eerie charm and aching, crashing layers of melody and cacophony, exemplified by the band’s “Marching Song.” From personal experience, their live show is as riveting as it is confounding — the way noise pop should be. Mar. 26 at Waldorf, 8pm. $14 from Zulu, Red Cat Records, Scratch and TicketWeb.ca.

SHARON VAN ETTEN
The Brooklyn-based indie-folk singer/songwriter is known for her confessional, heartfelt songs — after all, her first album was literally a form of therapy following the end of a lengthy abusive relationship. Her new album, Epic, finds her trading her acoustic guitar for electric, adding a backing band and cranking up the volume. Mar. 29 at Media Club, 8pm. $14 from Zulu, Red Cat Records and TicketWeb.ca.

DJ SPOOKY IN TERRA NOVA: SINFONIA ANTARCTICA
World-renowned experimental electronic and hip-hop musician DJ Spooky presents his multimedia work, which promises a breathtaking, multi-sensory exploration of Antarctica’s landscape, fusing visual and sonic projections and live mixing on turntables with performances from string trio Infinitus, and piano music from Corey Hamm. Apr. 9 at Chan Centre, 8pm. $33 from Ticketmaster.

ELLIE GOULDING
At first, the British singer seemed pure pop confection, radiating sparkle and sass on her 2010 debut Lights. But, in keeping one foot firmly anchored in the indie-folk world, offering occasional acoustic performances featuring just her and her guitar, Goulding promises the rarest of evenings: a well-choreographed dance party with built-in breaks. Apr. 10 at Venue, 8pm. $20 from Zulu, Red Cat Records, Scratch and TicketWeb.ca.

THE CAVE SINGERS
For many people, indie-folk-roots acts are the musical equivalent of men’s fitted plaid shirts: ubiquitous, tired and indistinguishable. But this Seattle-based trio manages to stand out in a sea of sameness, thanks possibly to its members’ sonically diverse lineage: the art-punk of Pretty Girls Make Graves, post-grunge of Hint Hint, and Cobra High’s prog-punk, but now with harmonica! April 21 at Biltmore, 8pm. $15 Zulu, Red Cat Records, Scratch and TicketWeb.ca.

JUNIP
This Swedish indie-rock trio, featuring famed solo aritst José González, returned in 2010 after a five-year absence. They promptly became every body’s favourite live act. If you missed them last year, here’s a rare second chance. May 3 at Rio, 8pm. $20 from Zulu, Red Cat Records, Scratch and TicketWeb.ca.

LYKKE LI
The electro-pop singer-songwriter ditched her native Sweden in favour of the hot noir of Los Angeles to write her second album, Wounded Rhymes. Her unique voice perfectly navigates the strangely beautiful landscape she’s created, weaving between pounding, tribal beats and ’60s soul. We can’t wait to see how the rich production is recreated live. May 27 at Vogue Theatre, 8pm. $32.50 from Zulu, Red Cat Records, Scratch and VogueTheatre.com.

!!!
The Californian dance-punk band, generally pronounced chk-chk-chk eschewed the traditional trappings of a name composed of letters, but they are committed to one old-fashioned ideal: rocking out. The sprawling act throws a dance party like almost no other band, perfecting the craft since 1996. Plus, we’re a sucker for any outfit that has a permanent horn player. May 28 at Electric Owl, 8pm. $20 from Zulu, Red Cat Records and Scratch.

JENNY AND JOHNNY
Let’s face it: we’ll take Jenny Lewis any way we can. Her new side project with longtime boyfriend Johnathan Rice doesn’t pack the same punch as her indie-rock band Rilo Kiley, and shies away from the bittersweet laments of her solo efforts, but it does offer phenomenal harmonies between her and Rice, and rollicking Americana rock songs that have their own undeniable charm. May 29 at Venue 8pm. $18 from Zulu, Red Cat Records and Scratch.

FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS
Modern American soul can feel a little, well, soulless, but this Los Angeles-based seven-piece makes catchy, colourful music that lifts the spirits and gets one’s toes tapping. Their debut full-length Pickin’ Up the Pieces is the perfect kiss off to a failed love affair with enough sunshine and catchy hooks to help even the most weather-beaten among us segue into summer. May 30 at Venue 8pm. $17 from Ticketmaster.

Diamond Rings

 My interview with Diamond Rings (aka John O'Regan) is in this week's WE. 

MUSIC: The substance and sparkle of Diamond Rings

Posted By: Andrea Warner

03/09/2011 12:00 AM

 

Diamond Rings, also known as John O’Regan, takes WE’s call at a pit stop in Fredericksburg, Texas. He and his tour mates, Canadian indie-rockers PS I Love You, are stretching their legs outside a custom winery, en route, eventually, to their co-headlining Vancouver gig Friday, Mar. 11, at the Biltmore. “It’s hot,” he says. “Oh, with daily tastings! Maybe when we’re done, we’ll taste some wine.”

This life on the road is a far cry from O’Regan’s recent stint opening for pop star Robyn, and it’s an even bigger leap from where Diamond Rings got its start: as a collection of acoustic songs O’Regan, a founding member and the lead singer of post-punk outfit the D’ubervilles, wrote while hospitalized over the summer in 2008 for Crohn’s disease. Since then, O’Regan has transitioned into his Diamond Rings persona with the same glam-adrogynous fury that made David Bowie famous, and released his debut, Special Affections, to critical acclaim, fan fervour, and plenty of speculation about his personal life.

WE: I’m fairly sure this is the best art to have ever been made from a hospital bed.
John O’Regan: [Laughs] Thanks!

How did that experience help shape the sound?
It didn’t really. I mean, I wrote some of the songs, not the whole record, when I was in the hospital and they were all acoustic. Other than ‘All Yr Songs,” which, you know, I had a shitty keyboard and a shitty guitar and the drum sound on that album is from the keyboard, it’s Casio rapman, but like I didn’t even conceptualize the songs as being electronic pop songs until later when I was out and about, living in the city, and messing with Garage Band for fun.

Was there a part of you that had always wanted to make music that sounded like that?
It was more recent. I was really into post-punk and more straight-up indie-sounding rock music when I was younger, and this is the result of listening to more music and refining my palette a little, finding a certain sensibility that I’m drawn to and trying to achieve that sonically.

Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
Yeah. It wasn’t very good, but I remember every song I’ve ever written. Well, at least the ones I write down and record.

So the ones when you’re just singing about getting out of the shower...
Yeah, I don’t really... I’m always busy, I’m always working on stuff, but I’m not the kind of artist who’s churning out a track a day. I think maybe even from the background I come from, studying art formally in school, having a degree in fine art, and the program I was in in Guelph was really based in conceptual work, steeped in theory, and what we had to do as artists was learning how to critique and defend our own stuff. I have a very sensitive filter to my own ideas, and if I’m not feeling something, I generally try to cut my losses and work on something else. It’s really hard for me to finish a song and have it be a throw-away. If I get to the point where it’s all done, I’m usually really happy with it.

Your music videos support that as well. They’re DIY, but very adorable.
We’re going for what we can do, we’re having fun. I work with my friends and family, literally, and it’s just about being active and learning. Every video’s been a learning process and we’re constantly trying to critique it and refining that whole process. With Diamond Rings, we, and by we I mean myself and Colin Medley, who I live with and who’s directed a lot of my videos, we didn’t want to wait. Typically so many bands in Canada, it’s all about recording an EP and recording an album and maybe you’ll do a video if it does really well. We wanted to do the complete opposite and I think a lot of people responded to that. When the first video came out, no one even knew I’d been recording songs on my own, so it was a big surprise. [Laughs] I think that’s always awesome, especially now. You have to do a lot more in 2011 to stand out away from the pack.

You have a strong aesthetic. Would you call Diamond Rings part performance art?
I’m not going to kid myself into thinking I’m necessarily a performance artist. I am an artist, that’s what I know. I know how to mix my paints better than I know the fret board of a guitar, but I really believe in the power of music to connect people... Performance artist, that’s someone like Chris Burton nailing himself to the roof of a Volkswaggen with the engine running. [Laughs] I don’t think I’m necessarily in that realm... But, maybe now we’re seeing a delineation between a typical gallery space and the concert stage. Maybe they’re not separate entities as they were at one time. I’d like to keep putting more art into what I do, but for now I’m a pop artist.

The media seem obsessed with your identity, specifically who you do or don’t sleep with, which also lends itself to the label of performance art.
People are going to bring whatever they do or don’t want to the table. Because what I’m doing is so striking visually, it ends up being one of the talking points, like, this guy’s wearing makeup, what’s the deal? When we started, it was never really a big deal, it was just the aesthetic I wanted to cultivate. It’s important to what I do, it’s fun, it’s liberating, but that’s all.

Diamond Rings and PS I Love You perform Mar. 11 at the Biltmore, 8pm. Tickets $13 from Zulu, Red Cat Records and TicketWeb.ca.

Little Mountain stalemate

My story on the Little Mountain stalemate is online at OpenFile Vancouver.

Here's a preview:

Ingrid Steenhuisen has lived and breathed the Little Mountain public housing complex her entire life. Her parents, both new immigrants, moved into the complex in 1957 and Steenhuisen was born in 1958. It was the province’s first public housing, and went on to become one of Main Street’s identifying landmarks, stretching between 33rd and 37th Avenues. Its 224 units were home to a diverse range of dwellers, from war veterans to single parents, seniors and the disabled, to recent immigrants and low-income families.

Click here to read the rest...

Utopia Festival

My new cover story for this week's WE hits the streets tomorrow, but you can get a sneak peak online.

The Utopia Festival: Women in Digital Culture will "stage an intervention" for the male-dominated DJ and electronic music scene this Saturday, March 5 with performances by the likes of DJ She (pictured).

COVER STORY: Hey, Ms. DJ!

By Andrea Warner

 

In the darkness, quick bursts of coloured light flash over a writhing crowd. It’s more disorienting than laser tag, but the motley assortment of strangers-no-more keep bumping bits with a practiced chaos, paying little attention to what’s going on as long as the music moves them. It might be silly, but rhythm really is a dancer, and lo and behold, it’s a woman behind the turntables, pulling the puppet strings, spinning these club kids into a melting-hot frenzy.

When DJ Betti Forde (aka Maren Hancock) started spinning in Vancouver in 1998, women in the DJ and electronic music scene were an anomaly in a testosterone sea. Thirteen years later, precious little has changed, hence the need for Utopia Festival: Women in Digital Culture. It’s a unique day-long conference that promises to unfold like a stylized mullet — business up front, party in the back, with an assortment of practical discussions, skill-building workshops (DJ 101), a keynote address from Canada’s electronic music icon, Peaches, followed by a wild late-night party showcasing some of the best women music makers in the business.

Peaches, Betti Forde, and Vancouver’s own DJ She (aka Tara Reeves) spoke with WE about making it as DIY artists, breaking down barriers, and why a festival like Utopia is more relevant than ever.

YOUNG REBELS
Peaches: [I started] out of necessity, before everyone had a home computer or even were making all the music on computers and things like that. I was in bands and people went away and I had to express myself. I had a machine and I just decided I was going to make this music and produce it myself, because I had a vision of just making it really direct and I didn’t want somebody else to tell me it was wrong, so I just went ahead and did it myself.

Betti Forde: I got into DJing completely by accident. I grew up in Calgary and I was a club kid–as much as you can be in a shit town like that–hanging at the goth bar religiously, and I was a go-go dancer and always stood by the DJ and trainspotted him. It was always a him. I was also an obsessive music collector. Then I moved to Victoria to go to university, and... I was doing this big fundraiser called Groovefest. This was the mid-’90s when everyone was like, ‘I’m a drum ‘n bass DJ, I’m a trance DJ’ and I didn’t want that. I wanted someone who was going to play James Brown, Diggable Planets, maybe some Archers of Loaf, and I was like, ‘Fuck it, I’ll just do it.’

DJ She: I went to raves in my older teen years and early 20s. I was always captivated by how much power the DJ held over people’s emotions... how the DJ could build up the emotion of a song and capture an audience and make them feel a certain way. I was kind of envious of that power. I also really love music. I grew up in a really musical household. My mom always had a lot of funk and soul playing in the house, and then I got into more hip-hop in my teenage years, and then electronic music. I had that dream of rocking a big crowd on a big stage.

PAYING YOUR DUES
Betti Forde: I was working as a barista for $10 an hour, and I saw a sign that said, ‘DJ needed for nightclub,’ and everyone was standing around laughing their asses off, because it was at this horrible bar, Kits on Broadway, like date-rape central and douchebag central. I waited until no one was looking and wrote down the fucking info ’cause it was like, $20 an hour. It was like, 1998, and I was like, ‘Holy shit, I can make $20 an hour playing music?’ So I went into Kits and talked my way into the job and got it, and did really well there, and became good. Then I bought some turntables and a mixer and threw my first night at the Chameleon, which was all funk. It was the first time after two years of being a professional DJ that I got to play what I wanted.

DJ She: When I first started six years ago, no, [it wasn’t a viable career choice]. (Laughs) It was hard to get paid decently, because you know, if you’re not really well known for doing something, it’s hard to justify getting paid well. In the beginning I did a lot of things for free or for the exposure, which is fine. You can’t expect to be paid top dollar if you’re still learning and train-wrecking. (Laughs)

[Ed’s note: Even established musician Peaches needed to prove the naysayers wrong when she began DJing.]
Peaches: People who DJ who are in bands, they’re the celebrity DJs, but I’m there to kick people in the face with music. Like, give the hardest and latest electro bangers I can think of... To me [DJing] is like going back to how I started old school, when I used just one machine or a bit of a playback. Back in the clubs, close to the people, and immediate reactions... [My set] is about things sprayin’ all over the place, people jumpin’, falling, getting back up. (Laughs) A big mess, a big mess.

The trouble with Lotus land
Betti Forde: I don’t want to Vancouver-bash too much, because the city’s been good to me, and WE in particular has always been really good to me. But it was a difficult scene in Vancouver as a woman, especially as the decade closed, when you saw a bit of a monopoly with nightclubs being owned by one of two groups. That was difficult because most of the people in charge of those groups weren’t pro-feminists, it was a boys’ club. I don’t want to accuse them of anything conspiratorial, but it got harder and harder, and Vancouver got harder and more expensive to live in. A lot of us left, and it’s partly in reaction to the club scene. We just couldn’t work in it anymore.

State of the nation
Betti Forde: I was a go-go dancer and I threw parties, but it never occurred to me to DJ, because I never saw a woman do it... When I started, there were only three of us. I could have counted all the girl DJs in the late ’90s when I moved there on one hand. And now I can name 20 off the top of my head, and if I sat down and really thought about it, I could name 40, all from Vancouver, and that’s really cool.

DJ She: The music industry is run predominantly by males, but there are women involved across the board, whether it’s DJs or singers or executives in the boardroom, CEOs running companies. I don’t think those women have submitted that much to the double standard. By saying, well, guys get more gigs and get paid more, that’s kind of leading in that direction, you’re really creating that double standard for yourself. You can go out and rock it just as hard as a male DJ, get gigs, get radio play, tour, it’s just a matter of whether you want it... If we want something bad enough, there’s no reason we can’t go out there and get it.

Achieving Utopia
DJ She: A lot of things have happened in the last decade in terms of women coming to the forefront, but we can’t necessarily be like, ‘Okay, we’ve come this far, that’s all we need.’ We need to keep pushing for conferences like this and platforms to speak.

Betti Forde: As a DIY artist, my success all came from finding people who were sympatico with me, either music-wise or politics-wise, and we helped each other. I took (Vancouver-based) DJ Rhiannon on a little tour, she got me a gig in Mexico, and this is what Peaches and I were talking about. All these stories of these artists, they’re kind of the same story, and it sounds kind of cheesy, but being a good person that other people wanna work with, and giving back what you get from people so they keep giving. A really simple concept, but it’s the driving force of anyone’s success.

Utopia Festival: Women in Digital Culture happens Saturday, Mar. 5 at W2 Storyeum (151 W. Cordova), starting at 10am. Full schedule, tickets, and information: CreativeTechnology.org.

Hard Times Hit Parade

My cover story for this week's WEVancouver features the Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret's Hard Times Hit Parade.

Hard Times Hit Parade cast members Chris Ross, David MacMurray Smith, and Jack Garton (from left) create a Depression-era carnival atmosphere set inside a dance-athon.

Credit: Courtesy Amanda Bullick

COVER STORY: Bohemian Rhapsody

Posted By: Andrea Warner

02/16/2011 12:00 AM

In a rehearsal studio overlooking Hastings Street in the heart of the Downtown Eastside, several people are watching performers move full-body puppets in exaggerated motions across the floor. In the back corner sits a man holding an accordion, waiting for his cue, while others manipulate a naked marionette whose dress won’t be ready for days yet.

“She’s more anatomically correct than I am,” one woman jokes.

Welcome to a Thursday night rehearsal with Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret (DFC), the East Vancouver performing arts collective. From its first show in 2007, The Valley of Ashes, to last year’s The Village, the volunteer-based DFC has achieved the near-impossible: transforming the scope of independent theatre through community engagement.

“The intention was to collaborate with various types of artists,” says Kat Single-Dain of DFC’s formation in 2006. “The idea of collaboration is really closely linked to community for us. The arts bringing people closer together was something we had experienced, and we wanted to bring other people together through our [own] productions.”

Since that first meeting five years ago, the collective has grown from 11 to over 35 members, attracted hundreds of volunteers, and has been commissioned to create shows for a variety of other local arts organizations like the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and Tremors Festival at The Cultch. DFC has also been tapped to help produce the Public Dreams Society’s Parade of Lost Souls. The colletive had done all this in addition to three original, large-scale productions — multimedia spectacles that involve everything from live music to puppetry, clowning to dance, and visual arts to storytelling.

DFC’s newest event, Hard Times Hit Parade (opening Feb. 24), is, in some ways, the group’s most ambitious project to date. Not only will it enjoy a one-month residency at the Russian Hall, but the DFC is turning it into a feature film in hopes of screening it at arts festivals around the world.

The cast and crew number about 35, all collective members, and boasts double that number of volunteers, bringing the total to over 100 people involved from start-to-finish. It’s a staggering number, particularly since the majority of the collective have spent the better part of the last five months working on Hard Times. September to December of last year was devoted to work-shopping the script, and intensive rehearsals started in early January. As with previous productions, the collective has a profit-sharing system in place to provide some compensation once the final curtain drops and the costs have been covered.

Hard Times marks the first DFC production to begin with a small budget. The collective received its first Canada Council grant ($23,500) last year to help further its mission of community engagement. Though this helps alleviate some of the fiscal burden of mounting such an ambitious production, no one involved will be fully compensated — at least financially — for their work. Call it blissfully bohemian or stubbornly passionate. Luckily for DFC, you don’t become an artist for the money.

“Everyone that’s involved is so artistically committed to the project, we don’t need to be funded necessarily with money,” Single-Dain says. “We have a really good organization taking care of people. We make sure everyone is fed. And, it’s a fun thing to be a part of so we don’t always feel the need to be paid.”

Alastair Knowles, a Hard Times cast member, agrees. A University of British Columbia commerce graduate, Knowles originally got involved in theatre and dance as an antidote to his staid academic pursuits. Since then, he says, the DFC has become a huge part of his social life.

“Going to rehearsal is like hanging out with my friends,” Knowles says. “And, it offers opportunities to workshop in a lot of different skills that I don’t get on my own. Before Dusty Flowerpot, I hadn’t really done any choreographed dancing, or worked with puppets or shadow-play, and those are all staples in our rehearsals. Our schedule is like, Monday night, play with puppets. Sunday, shadow jam!”

That atmosphere of joining in, building skills, and mentoring is a relatively open-door process. Everyone is welcome. David MacMurray Smith, a longtime professional artist and Hard Times cast member, has experienced firsthand the challenges facing the theatre community. He believes the future of live theatre belongs to the DFC and the “serious amateur”: independent companies that love theatre and bring it to the masses without attempting to commodify it.

“At a root level, Dusty Flowerpot has done very well to bring people in and involve them,” MacMurray Smith says. “Their approach is a process that includes the whole involvement of community from its creative beginning to those who buy tickets.”

MacMurray Smith points out that though aspects of the DFC’s operation are unique to the collective, their challenges and inspirations are similar to other independent arts groups.

“Young professionals do want to be compensated a little bit more, but they’re also in this teeter-totter of the balance between recognizing that they want to do their art and realizing they have to create their own vehicle for doing that,” he says. “That’s the way it is for a lot of companies now, as evidenced by the Electric Company and Radux Theatre. They have to create their own work.”

That’s what Hard Times is all about. Set in the early 1930s at an epic dance competition, its themes tackle identity, community, and the power of art during times of struggle — a purposeful parallel of our society’s current challenges. And, perhaps on a subconscious level, it’s also the story of DFC: the desire to tell its tale on its own terms — wildly inventive, puppet-wielding, marionette-dancing terms, of course.

Hard Times Hit Parade runs Thursday-Sunday, Feb. 24-Mar. 18 at Russian Hall (600 Campbell), 8pm. Tickets $20 in advance from Highlife, Zulu and DustyFlowerPot.org. $25 at the door.

Ryan Bingham

My Q&A with singer-songwriter Ryan Bingham is in this week's WEVancouver.

Ryan Bingham: “I had no idea anything would come of [Crazy Heart]... And then a lot happened.”

Credit: Supplied

Ryan Bingham a rising ‘Star’ with cross-country appeal

By Andrea Warner
 
Ryan Bingham’s life story has the makings of a country song: young, wild teen joins the rodeo circuit riding bulls, picks up a bit of guitar along the way, and goes on to become an Academy Award-winning songwriter for Crazy Heart’s “The Weary Kind,” all before his 29th birthday. A few months later, Bingham and his band, the Dead Horses, released their third album, Junky Star, a haunting collection that shows off the Texas-raised singer-songwriter’s bottom-of-the-bottle vocals and bruised-and-blues lyrics. Now, almost a year later, Bingham is getting ready to make his Vancouver debut, speaking with WE over the phone during a quick break on the road.

Please confirm my suspicions that there are similarities between the rodeo circuit and the record industry.
Ryan Bingham: Yeah, there are quite a few. The main thing is there’s a lotta bullshit. [Laughs]

Were you surprised by how many skills came in handy transitioning from one to another?
Yeah, I think I was. Kinda familiar territory... You spend hours and hours tryin’ to get to a place where the performance part of it is just 10 per cent of it, and the rest of it is just tryin’ to get there, you know?

Do you write from a personal perspective rather than telling stories about other people?
Yeah, I think so.

A lot of songwriters say “no,” it seems, just so people won’t analyze the subject matter too deeply.
Yeah, I mean I just think it’s a combination of a lot of different stuff. Just travelin’ across the country and goin’ overseas to Europe. The people you meet and the places you go and the stuff you see every day, you just take all of that into consideration.

Have there been a lot of ‘Wow, I can’t believe this is happening’ experiences?
Yeah, I think a lot of the stuff when we were tourin’ in Europe, goin’ through Italy and playin’ in these old castles and you know, some of the places you get to, it’s like, man, what are we doin’ here? [Laughs]

Did you have any idea at all what was in store for you when you met [Crazy Heart director] Scott Cooper?
No, not at all. I just had lunch with the guy and he told me a little bit about the film and the script and it was just kinda a real informal meeting and I had no idea anything would come of it... And then a lot happened. [Laughs]

Obviously it gave you more exposure, but does the award make any real difference in your day-to-day life?
No, not really at all. You know, still get up and put your pants on one leg at a time. [Laughs] That’s the biggest misconception: everyone thinks you win an award like that and you get a million dollars, but it doesn’t happen.

Still returning your empties to the store?Exactly.

Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses perform Feb. 20 at Venue, 8pm. Tickets $16 from TicketWeb.ca.

My cover story for Exclaim! The Decemberists :)

The Decemberists

Barnstorming

Features ON THE COVER Feb 2011

By Andrea Warner 

"After this record, we're going to take a nice long break." 

Colin Meloy isn't ready to call it quits with his indie rock band the Decemberists, but after a decade together he's looking ahead ― which means tying up some loose ends in the form of the band's sixth album, The King is Dead.

While nothing in the band's discography hinted at this destination, Meloy himself, like a fairy tale character trailing breadcrumbs through the forest, has spent the last ten years winding his way back to this very spot: a rough and tumble, country-inflected folk-rock record. Flirting with vintage Americana and Celtic rhythms, The King is Dead might not sound like a Decemberists' album, but Meloy insists that it's a "natural progression."

"It was something we ― or at least I ― have been threatening to do for the last three records," Meloy says. "None of this crazy, over-the-top stuff ― we're gonna do it in a barn in two weeks, that was sort of the joke. But each record seemed to get more and more complex, and each time we finished it was the same threat: the next one's going to be the barn record. I think after The Hazards of Love, it was the perfect time to make good on that promise. It felt like a natural and very normal thing to do to make something more stripped-down."

The left turn into alt-country territory might seem natural to Meloy, but the band's fans might be a bit more confused. At the very least, the blueprint for Hazards, a high-concept rock opera, had been laid in the foundations of the Decemberists' earlier work. Picaresque (from 2005) and The Crane Wife (2006) are thematically different, but utilize many of the same components ― storytelling songs, dramatic flourishes, interweaving mythologies, song cycles, and everything from Gypsy beats to chamber pop ― that can be found on Hazards.

If anything, The King is Dead, is the antithesis of its predecessor, down to earth and humble, whereas Hazards might be viewed as the zenith of Meloy's excessive ambitions. Meloy admits that the band, including guitarist Chris Funk, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, bassist Nate Query, and drummer John Moen, were grateful to get back to basics.

"I think everyone was a little relieved," he laughs. "I mean Crane Wife, a lot of that stuff was written specifically for Jenny and Chris in mind, because I knew that they would love playing that. The Hazards of Love, I thought it might be a little much to take in, but I knew that they'd come around to it and be into it. It didn't take a whole lot of convincing, but there was a little bit of head scratching. With this one, I think we're all on the same page, and it would be a very simple and organic process, and to a certain degree it was. It was very intuitive for everybody."

The last time Meloy made a record that sounded even remotely like this was over a decade ago when he lived in Montana and fronted an alt-country band called Tarkio. With a return to his roots, Meloy wanted to recreate one of his favourite elements in classic "barn" country-rock: marrying male and female vocals. Famed Americana singer-songwriter, Gillian Welch, a California girl with Nashville in her blood and a permanent twang in her voice, was his first choice.

"Colin had in mind a consistent ― not quite a duet voice, but he had a consistent other character, female, in his head for this song cycle, this set of tunes," Welch says. "Flatteringly, I was his first choice."

Welch, a staple of the American roots scene, has appeared sparingly in the indie music realm, recording songs with Bright Eyes and Ryan Adams in the past. Her biggest crossover hit came from the somewhat surprising popularity of the Grammy Award-winning O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, on which Welch sang two songs and also associate produced. But it's her critically acclaimed 2002 effort, Time (The Revelator) that established Welch as one of the best singer-songwriters of her generation.

The pair had sung together once before, when the Decemberists came through Nashville, and Welch and her partner, David Rawlings went to see them play. Welch remembers them hopping up on stage and singing AC/DC's "Sin City" and Welch's own "Miss Ohio."

"It was a really fantastically pleasant surprise to get in there, get into the studio, and have the tracks start coming up," Welch says. "I think we have a really above-average natural blend!" She laughs at her own review of their harmonies. "One thing I wasn't really sure about is that Colin's got that really exciting, emotional quiver voice, and I sing much more like a hillbilly in that there's no vibrato. I just go 'heeeh'" ― she makes a car honkin sound ― "and it's much more old time. I wasn't really sure what was going to happen.

"Once we got in there it went really easily and organically," Welch continues. "The only thing was, I needed lyric sheets! His vocabulary is a little less colloquial than mine, to put it mildly. One of the beautiful things about his writing are these unexpected words, which you don't get from just anybody."

On the surface, Meloy and Welch couldn't make music that's more different, but both are narrative writers, excelling in songs that tell complete stories. The stories they tell, though, are drastically different. Whole message boards and websites are devoted to dissecting Meloy's numerous literary references, while Welch writes songs that are rooted in everyday experiences, the grittier the better.

"I think she brought kind of a swagger [to the album]," Meloy says. "She was such an amazing and versatile voice, and such a character and quality to it, I think it imprints itself into the songs and on certain songs it brings out kind of a sweetness and there's other songs, like 'Down By the Water' and 'Rise to Me,' it really gives it this rough swagger, which is really an eye-opening thing to hear."

If Welch brought the swagger, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck brought the wish-fulfilment.

"I mentioned to him, while we were on the road, that I was writing fake Peter Buck riffs, and I would love it if he would consider coming and playing them," Meloy laughs. "Everything that [the Decemberists have] done is sort of an R.E.M. paean ― some more than others. On this one, I was really just trying to get back to the stuff that drew me into music and R.E.M. and the Smiths were a big part of that. I feel like I was deliberately trying to reconnect with that."

When it came time to record The King is Dead, Meloy made good on his promise (or threat) to shack up in a barn. The Decemberists had recorded Picaresque in a church, but the intervening years were spent in traditional recording studios. They recorded in rural Oregon and its influence is palpable. The album's spirit is rooted in that rustic environment, a perfect complement to the songs' earthy vibes, many of which have nature-based references.

A lot of the songs are meditations on our immediate surroundings as Pacific North-westerners," Meloy says. "So part of it was, 'Let's get out in the countryside and record this,' so when you look out the window you see an open field and when you take a lunch break, you go and sit by a campfire, or when you have to go to the bathroom, you have to put on your Wellies and go slog through mud and go to an outhouse. In some ways it's a nice thing, and a bit more challenging certainly, but it adds the intangible dimension to the record itself."

That element has fascinated Meloy ever since he first heard Scottish folk-rock band the Waterboys' 1988 album Fisherman's Blues, which was recorded in Spiddal House on the West coast of Ireland. For Meloy, the house became as vital a component as any of the musicians.

"In many respects, this is my attempt ― or our attempt ― at making Fisherman's Blues. Who knows how many records I have left in me or how many years I have left on this earth?" Meloy ponders. "I could get hit by a bus at any moment and I would not have made my version of Fisherman's Blues, which is an album that resonated hugely for me."

Between its homage to the Waterboys, R.E.M., and traditional "barn" country-rock, The King is Dead could come off as a melting pot of disparate effects. Instead, the album feels like Meloy's most personal work. In part, this is thanks to his decision to mine his past for influences. He's also, finally, letting his guard down as a writer. But it hasn't been an easy place to get to.

Though he possesses one of the most unique songwriting voices in modern music, Meloy knows that not everyone appreciates his ability to negotiate the rougher edges of a sentence. "A decade ago, I was working at a pizza place and living in a warehouse and freaking out over my student loans," Meloy recalls, laughing. "It was a different time. I would get called 'college boy' at the pizza place, because I was the only one there with a college degree, which is sort of sad, in a way, but it's probably true. What was I doing there?" In short, paying the rent.

"College boy" has made the most of his time between then and now. Since the band's first album, Meloy has been exorcising his English degree demons with tangents into British folklore, Japanese fantasy, various historical eras, ultimately creating his own strange mythological world on Hazards. The King is Dead is the first album that's mostly devoid of lavishly orchestrated narratives, consisting instead of his most personal songs to date.

Yeah, I think that would be fair to say," Meloy says. "I mean, certainly it has its moments of flights of fancy, I can't really get away from that, but the songs are personal meditations about my immediate surroundings and a lot about family life." ("Henry," for instance, finds Meloy offering advice to his young son.) "I'm not as sensitive as I was about [exposing myself]. Initially, I was very protective of my private life. I think it was just my initial reaction to becoming a not-so-private person, inevitably with whatever degree of so-called fame, you give away a bit of your privacy and I think that was a sort of shock to me. Maybe I've just grown more accustomed to it, so I've just grown more comfortable to discussing these things."

Going forward, Meloy and his family are likely going to be the subject of even further scrutiny, thanks to a three-book deal he and his wife, artist Carson Ellis, signed in 2010. The first book, Wildwood, launches in October later this year. It's another example of Meloy closing the gap on a ten-year cycle.

My wife Carson and I have been wanting to do this for a really long time," Meloy says. "Our collaboration as writer and illustrator actually pre-dates the Decemberists. We started working on a long-form, illustrated novel in 2000, 2001, and had to shelve it just because of our own separate careers happening. Finally we're getting back to it."

Meloy anticipates that the next four years will be about a lot of "book-ish" things. He lets out a loud exhale when asked how songwriting and novel writing differ for him. "God, I feel like the only thing that is similar about them is that they involve the written word!" he says. "That's where the similarity ends. Two processes couldn't be more different involving the same core element. Writing a song can take five minutes. Writing a paragraph can take all day. It's almost like a different definition of time. I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around it. They both really satisfy in a way that's very different from each other, and I feel like I'm really driven to do both things, but they're so very different."

Having turned The King is Dead into a catch-all for all his various influences, homages, and inspirations, and with his publishing obligations ahead of him, one can't help but ask Meloy where he sees himself, and by extension, the Decemberists going. He acknowledges the band will spend a lot of the year touring in support of this album, but he's not making any promises about the future. "While I won't ever leave music completely, I am really excited about exploring other modes of expression, stuff I've been putting off."

Blue Valentine

My review of the exquisite Blue Valentine is in this week's WE.

Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling play a tortured couple in Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine.

Credit: Supplied

BLUE VALENTINE

Starring Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams
Directed by Derek Cianfrance

Despite having received a controversial NC-17 rating in the U.S. (subsequently withdrawn) for an oral-sex scene, the warning Blue Valentine should come with relates more to its graphic emotional content. What you see will stay with you for a long, long time to come.

The second feature from director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance, Blue Valentine’s story unfolds in non-linear fashion, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the warm highs and devastating lows punctuating Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy’s (Michelle Williams) five-year relationship.

Part lout and part sweetheart, Dean’s an aggressive charmer whose mother abandoned him at a young age. Cindy’s a broken girl from an abusive home who needs someone to take care of her. He carries a ukulele around with him. She tap dances. They’re equally nuanced creations, and their hipster romance reflects a 20- to 30-something demographic under-represented in mainstream fare.

In fleshing out the lovers, Gosling and Williams deliver the performances of their young careers. Gosling uses his immeasurable skill to tap into Dean’s softer side, even when the character’s an insufferable dick. Williams’s quiet, determined presence suits Cindy’s inability to articulate her frustrations. Instead, the actress communicates Cindy’s feelings through wonderfully subtle body language. The pair have pressure-cooker chemistry, making every interaction between Dean and Cindy volatile, be it happy or otherwise.

At the centre of the heartbreak, Cianfrance skillfully exposes the folly of love at first sight: It doesn’t permit for change and growth. The couple can’t evolve since their bond is predicated on a moment in time that can never be recaptured. Dean and Cindy’s relationship is built on an unstable foundation such that its collapse is a foregone conclusion. To Cianfrance’s and the actors’ credit, watching those pieces come together and then implode is nothing less than riveting. —Andrea Warner

Crispin Glover

My interview with Crispin Glover is at WestEnder.com

Actor-writer-director Crispin Glover will be in attendance for a three-day residency, Jan. 14-16 at Pacific Cinémathèque.

Credit: Supplied

Getting eccentric with Crispin Glover

Posted By: Andrea Warner

01/12/2011 12:00 AM

He played Michael J. Fox’s dad in Back to the Future (despite being three years younger than the Burnaby-born actor), an evil henchman with a fetish for hair ripped from the scalps of women (Charlie’s Angels), and the titular character in cult favourite Willard, about a man who befriends a sinister rat army. One thing’s for sure about Crispin Hellion Glover’s career: it’s never been boring.

The same, it seems, can be said for the man himself. Having established an eccentric persona over the years, Glover solidified this reputation when he premiered his 2005 directorial debut, What Is It?, a surreal piece of cinema featuring a cast of actors with Down’s syndrome. Two years later, he followed it up with It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine!, a psycho-sexual thriller written by and starring Steven C. Stewart, a man born with severe cerebral palsy.

Glover comes to Vancouver this weekend (Jan. 14-16) for a three-day residency at Pacific Cinémathèque, where each of his films will be screened. Each screening also features a one-hour dramatic reading and slide show of his books, followed by a lengthy Q&A.
WE partook of an e-mail interview with Glover because, well, wouldn’t you if you had the chance?

WE: A lot of your characters — Thin Man in Charlie’s Angels; George McFly in Back to the Future — have these amazing details, but I imagine they weren’t necessarily written that way. How much of your own personality do you bring to various roles?
Glover: The sort of training that I had for acting focused on bringing portions of your own psychology to make those characters have an organic quality. It is good to have elements of your psychology come through. That being said, I cannot think of a character that I have played in any film that truly resembles myself.

Your name is often associated with adjectives like “strange” and “weird.” How much have you cultivated that reputation? Is it a benefit or a burden at this point?
I do not view eccentric as a negative term. I view it as a poetic interpretation of a mathematical term meaning something that does not follow a centric course. Many of the characters I have played can be called eccentric. My own films and books can be called eccentric. I find all of this fine. I publish my own books; produce, finance, direct, edit, and distribute my own films. Publishing, producing, financing, directing, editing, and distribution all have extremely centric elements to them that have to be followed in order for results to happen. Because I spend a good amount of time performing those very centric tasks, it means that I have very centric qualities in my day-to-day life even if the art I am interested in can be perceived as eccentric.

What Is It? was very controversial when it came out. What are you attempting to communicate as a director?
I am very careful to make it quite clear that What Is It? is not a film about Down’s syndrome but my psychological reaction to the corporate restraints that have happened in the last 20 to 30 years in filmmaking — specifically, anything that can possibly make an audience uncomfortable is necessarily excised or the film will not be corporately funded or distributed. This is damaging to the culture because it is the very moment when an audience member sits back in their chair, looks up at the screen, and thinks to their self, “Is this right, what I am watching? Is this wrong, what I am watching? Should I be here? Should the filmmaker have made this? What is it?” And that is the title of the film. What is it that is taboo in the culture? What does it mean that taboo has been ubiquitously excised in this culture’s media? What does it mean to the culture when it does not properly process taboo in its media? It is a bad thing when questions are not being asked, because these kinds of questions are when people are having a truly educational experience. For the culture to not be able to ask questions leads towards a non-educational experience, and that is what is happening in this culture. This stupefies this culture, and that is, of course, a bad thing. So, What Is It? is a direct reaction to the contents of this culture’s media. I would like people to think for themselves.

What’s next for you as a director?
I am in the process of writing a screenplay for myself and my father to act in together. He is also an actor... This will be the first role I write for myself to act in that will be written as an acting role, as opposed to a role that was written for the character I play to merely serve the structure. But even still, on some level I am writing the screenplay to be something that I can afford to make. There is another project that I may make before that — I am currently working on the screenplay [and] that may be even more affordable and yet still cinematically pleasing.

Your books are literal works of art — part collage, part manuscript, using old books as source material. But some people feel that creating new books using those that have fallen into the public domain is akin to plagiarism. How do you respond to those critics?
Most of the books that I have made do not use a significant amount of words from pre-existing books. Most of my books are completely original stories. The books that do utilize pre-existing texts utilize the words in such a different fashion from what the words were originally intended that it would be hard to call it anything other than an original story.

Go to Cinematheque.bc.ca for tickets and more info.

Stephen Dorff

My interview with Stephen Dorff, who stars in Somewhere, is featured in this week's WE.

Stephen Dorff stars as an unhappy Hollywood celebrity in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere.

Credit: supplied

Lost actor finds himself in ‘Somewhere’

Posted By: Andrea Warner

01/12/2011 12:00 AM

 

Stephen Dorff isn’t calling this a comeback, but he understands why almost everyone else has.
Back in the mid-’90s, the Los Angeles-raised actor was supposed to be the next big thing, on a par with Johnny Depp. But after drawing acclaim for his role in the 1994 Beatles biopic Backbeat, he never landed that breakthrough follow-up — until now. As the lead in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, Dorff, now 37, has earned raves for his portrayal of Johnny Marco, a hard-partying Hollywood actor numbed by depression and apathy, coasting into a downward spiral until his young daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning), comes to live with him.

For the first time in years, Dorff is in demand.

“I’m shooting covers of magazines, I’m getting offered all these movies,” says Dorff. “You know [why] people wanna say ‘comeback.’ Well, I’ve always been here, I’ve always been making movies. I just haven’t been front-and-centre in such a special film in a long time.”

Though Dorff has worked consistently over the years, the last major role he had in a popular, mainstream feature was opposite Wesley Snipes in 1998’s Blade. Recently, he’s played key supporting parts in several high-profile films, including Public Enemies and World Trade Center. He also produced and starred in Felon, a prison movie that found an audience on DVD.
 
“The last three years I’ve been doing really good work,” Dorff says, without a hint of bragging in his voice. “I’ve been trying, you know, to get to a vulnerable place, but... I hadn’t had the part. It took Sofia to show that side she thought existed in me.”

Somewhere, Coppola’s fourth film, explores themes found in her previous work: depression, alienation, and discontent amidst a backdrop of privilege and wealth — this time in Hollywood’s infamous Chateau Marmont hotel. Where Coppola breaks new ground is in her storytelling style: She drops the camera into Johnny’s life without an explanation as to who he is or what he does. What little Coppola does offer in the way of answers over the ensuing two hours might be frustrating to some, but is ultimately refreshing in an exposition-heavy medium.

With minimal dialogue (the first half hour is practically a silent film), the burden largely falls on Dorff’s facial expressions and body language to convey the excess and monotony of Johnny’s life. Dorff hints that he was able to mine his own past to help inform his performance, admitting he has plenty of firsthand experience wrestling with demons similar to Johnny’s.

“Johnny’s got a fast car, likes to drive in circles, follows girls aimlessly — because he doesn’t know what he wants to do, ’cause when you’re depressed, time moves very slow,” says Dorff. “It’s quite sad, but it’s very honest. Being a performer is a very lonely job, even if you have a family. For me, I don’t have a family. I mean, I have my family family, but I don’t have my own responsibilities, so when I go home after a movie ends or after the show stops, it’s weird. I don’t go to an office the next day. I don’t have anything to do except normal stuff. But after a week of that normal stuff and seeing my family and going to the grocery store, it’s like, well, now what?... Being an actor, a musician, any kind of a performer, is a strange job. It’s why you probably hear about all these famous comedians killing themselves, and horrible stories where all these talented people die. I’m sure they were missing something inside and never got to fix it, through success and just constantly going to the next circle and the next round of girls, and you just get lost along the way.”

Though Coppola hasn’t said this particular piece of art is meant to imitate Dorff’s own life, Johnny and Dorff have at least one thing in common: both men were in dire need of a fresh start. And even though he’s been reaping the rewards of Coppola’s casting choice for months, Dorff is still awed by his good fortune — even if he’s not willing to call it a comeback.

“I was just so blown away the way that Sofia embraced me at a time when I really needed it,” Dorff says. “I needed to show a different side of myself. I was over-playing villains. I was ready to grow up into another role, and this was kind of the perfect one to start with.”

2011 Stage Look Ahead

Steven Schelling and I look ahead at 2011 and pick a few of our favourite things in this week's cover story for WE.

Australian ‘new circus’ company Circa (above) brings its gymnastic dance style to Vancouver as part of the PuSh Festival.

Credit: Supplied

Stage Invasion

Funding cuts and the recession cast a pall over Vancouver’s stage scene last year. Who knew what 2011’s tighter budgets would hold for the city’s arts community? Would those smaller companies and festivals that depended on provincial grants manage to survive? Would arts groups band together to create co-productions? Would international and touring acts fill in the inevitable holes? As it turns out, the answer to all these questions is yes. From puppets to Panych to the King of Pop, there are plenty of things to look forward to on the city’s stages in the year ahead.

THE PAVILION

Renowned Vancouver-based actor Bob Frazer takes the director’s chair and launches his production company, Osimous Theatre, with a play that has been billed as “an Our Town for our time.” (The comparison to Thornton Wilder’s treacle-laden ode to 19th-century rural America — a staple of the Midwestern high-school drama circuit — is likely meant positively. We can’t see how, but there it is.) Those who lack a taste for the sweetly earnest can take heart in the fact that The Pavilion is the creation of Craig Wright, an Emmy Award-nominated screenwriter and producer of TV hits Six Feet Under and Brothers & Sisters. Lead actor Craig Erickson plays Peter, a man who returns to his hometown for his 20th high school reunion and meets up with his old flame, Kari (Dawn Petten). Parnelli Parnes, as the narrator, guides the couple through their time together. Promising a bare-bones production (no set, minimal props), The Pavilion could be the start of something great. Jan. 8-23 at Firehall Arts Centre (280 E. Cordova). Tickets $25 from 604-689-0926 or FirehallArtsCentre.ca.

PuSh FESTIVAL

Launched in 2003 by then-Rumble Productions director Norman Armour and Touchstone Theatre’s Katrina Dunn as a performance series for three new works, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is now a dead-of-winter arts powerhouse (with a $1.7 million budget) that brings internationally acclaimed performers to Vancouver and showcases plenty of local talent, too. The focus of many of the fest’s free and ticketed events this year is Vancouver’s 125th anniversary. Considering the continued financial fallout from the Olympics, PuSh may be the only birthday party in town this year. Jan. 18-Feb. 6 at various venues. Visit PuShFestival.ca for schedules and ticket prices.

AVENUE Q

Having seen this wonderfully funny — and often raunchy — puppets ’n’ humans musical in all its Broadway glory several times over the years, we’re thrilled that the Tony Award-winning Avenue Q is finally making its way to Vancouver. Audiences will no doubt be drawn in by its delightfully on-the-nose songs (“The Internet is for Porn,” “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”) and vigorous puppet sex, but they’ll become emotionally invested in the achingly familiar narrative of aimless and lonely people trying to figure out who they are. Feb. 1-5 at Centre for Performing Arts (777 Homer). $61.25-$86.75 from Ticketmaster.ca.

FUNNY GIRLS

Chelsea Handler
If you like your funny bone tickled by wickedly clever and acerbic female comedians, you’re in luck. In the coming months, Vancouver plays host to a bevy of brilliant visiting acts, like vodka-swilling talk-show host Chelsea Handler, insult comedian Lisa Lampenelli, acid-tongued actress Wanda Sykes, and the reigning queen of self-deprecation, Joan Rivers, on hand as part of the Unique Lives & Experiences series. Chelsea Handler appears Feb. 19 at the Orpheum (Smithe & Seymour). Tickets $69.50-$89.50 from Ticketmaster.ca. Lisa Lampenelli appears Feb. 26 at River Rock (8811 River Road, Richmond). Tickets $54.50-$64.50 from Ticketmaster.ca. Wanda Sykes appears May 6 at River Rock. Tickets $54.50-$64.50 from Ticketmaster.ca. Joan Rivers appears May 17 at the Centre for Performing Arts (777 Homer). Visit CentreInVancouver.com for ticket information.

ENCORE!

The cast of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Three of the best stage productions from the 2009/’10 season are making their way back to Vancouver stages in 2011. Blackbird Theatre’s brilliant production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a bitterly funny yet devastatingly dark tale of marital discord, moves from the Cultch to the Arts Club, featuring a star turn by Gabrielle Rose. A Beautiful View stars Colleen Wheeler and Diane Brown as two women who tiptoe around friendship and love for over 20 years, and boasts a masterful script and subtle direction from iconic Canadian writer-director Daniel MacIvor. And, drawing inspiration from Henrich Harrer’s book of the same name is Mascall Dance’s The White Spider, which pairs mountain climbing and dance as it chronicles the challenges of scaling the north face of the Eiger Mountains. If you missed any of these the first time around, consider yourself lucky to have this second chance. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? runs Feb. 10-Mar. 12 at Granville Island Stage (1585 Johnston). Tickets $29-$49 from ArtsClub.com. A Beautiful View runs Apr. 4-9 at Presentation House Theatre (333 Chesterfield, North Van). Tickets $24-$28 from PHTheatre.org. The White Spider runs Apr. 10-16 at the Shadbolt Centre for Performing Arts (6450 Deer Lake, Burnaby). Tickets $25-$30 from ShadboltCentre.com.

WONDERLAND

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet proved its talent for pop-culture adaptations with 2009’s visually rich and risqué Moulin Rouge. The company continues reaching out to audiences who might shy away from the more traditional trappings of ballet with this year’s Wonderland, a wild riff on the adventures of Lewis Carroll’s heroine, Alice, as she encounters the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, and a host of other weird and wonderful creatures in the titular land of dreams. Mar. 24-27 at the Centre for Performing Arts (777 Homer). Tickets and information at RWB.org.

THE TRESPASSERS

Preeminent Canadian triple-threat (actor, playwright, and director) Morris Panych debuted this, his latest work, at the Stratford Festival in 2009, and followed that up with a staging at Victoria’s Belfry Theatre last fall. Finally, Vancouver gets its chance to peek in on The Trespassers, a coming-of-age story about a small-town teen caught between his anarchist, atheist grandfather and his born-again Christian mother. Mar. 26-Apr. 16 at Vancouver Playhouse (Hamilton & Dunsmuir). Ticket info TBA. Visit VancouverPlayhouse.com for more information.

WICKED

Even without its stellar original cast (Idina Menzel, Kristin Chenoweth, and Joel Grey), Wicked’s behind-the-scenes talent ensured it would be a success — which is good news, because none of those stars are touring with the production coming to town. Still, the 17th longest-running show on Broadway has an impressive pedigree that helped it overcome initially lukewarm reviews. Based on the bestselling novel by Gregory Macguire and adapted by Winnie Holzman (creator and writer of TV’s iconic coming-of-ager My So-Called Life) and composer Stephen Schwartz (Pippin), Wicked tells the “true” story of the Wicked Witch of the West (of The Wizard of Oz fame). Did we forget to mention the giant fire-and smoke-breathing dragon? Or that the show’s big book number, “Defying Gravity,” snagged some major play on Glee? (Menzel and Chenoweth have also guest-starred on the show.) Or that it’s going to be the gayest show since Cyndi Lauper opened for Cher at GM Place during Pride Week 1999. Put on your ruby slippers, Dorothy — it’s going to be a campy night. June 1-26 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre (Hamilton & W. Georgia). Ticket info TBA. Visit WickedTheMusical.com for more information.

CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: MICHAEL JACKSON THE IMMORTAL WORLD TOUR

Michael Jackson’s legacy has been muddied by years of disturbing allegations and bizarre behaviour, but no one can dispute his impressive musical catalogue. That his own life was a veritable circus (albeit tending more toward the freak-show side of things) makes Cirque du Soleil’s highly anticipated production the perfect marriage of artistry, creativity, and fantasy. The music will rock, the choreography will astound, and ultimately, there’s no more fitting tribute imaginable for the self-styled King of Pop. Nov. 4-6 at Rogers Arena (800 Griffiths Way). Tickets $69.50-$190.50 from Ticketmaster.ca.

Movies look back and look ahead

My favourite movie from 2010 and the movie I'm most looking forward to in 2011 in this week's WE!

Best movie of 2010: Winter’s Bone

Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone.
This bleak masterpiece earned every single accolade it received — and there were several. Using Daniel Woodrell’s novel as source material, writer-director Debra Granik trekked a film crew deep into Missouri’s Ozark Mountains to tell the story of 17-year-old Ree, a girl racing against the clock to keep her family together. Granik’s artistic eye spares nothing in her unflinching account of a community ravaged by poverty and drugs. Watching Ree navigate the terrain and its various dark characters proves a tense, disturbing, and ultimately rewarding coming-of-age drama.

Most anticipated movie of 2011: The Skin That I Inhabit (La piel que habito)

Pedro Almodóvar directs Antonio Banderas on the set of The Skin That I Inhabit (La piel que habito).
Pedro Almodóvar has made a career out of crafting gorgeous-looking, often gloriously over-the-top films that are never short on story or emotional complexity. In his latest — a quasi-horror flick — the director taps one of the actors whose career he helped launch, Antonio Banderas, as a plastic surgeon hellbent on revenge. If Almodóvar can work the same magic he has in the past with Penélope Cruz, this moody romp may give Banderas the career revival he so richly deserves.

Theatre year-end 2010

Our favourite theatre of 2010 is featured in WE's new issue.

Simply the best: Alex McMorran and Cathy Wilmot in Fighting Chance Productions’ Sweeney Todd

Credit: Supplied

Bringing the curtain down on another year

Posted By: WestEnder Staff

12/29/2010 12:00 AM

BEST SHOW (Large Venue)

Even the most zealous anti-Olympic protestor would be hard-pressed to minimize the arts bonanza of the Cultural Olympiad. Sure, there were questions about whether too much was spent on international touring companies that could have gone to Canadian artists, but any program that brings Robert Lepage’s Ex Machina company to town is a winner. Blue Dragon, the sequel to Lepage’s The Dragon’s Trilogy, finds its central figure living in modern-day China and dealing with his Canadian past. A multimedia feast of dance, music, film, and Lepage’s signature puzzle-like sets, Blue Dragon gave Vancouverites a chance to see a true national hero who has dominated the international theatre world for a quarter century — as opposed to briefly worshipping a 17-year-old who skied a fraction of a second faster than another 17-year-old. —Steven Schelling

BEST DIRECTOR (Large Venue)

Founding member of Electric Company Theatre, winner of the prestigious Siminovitch Prize, and director of this year’s experimental film-meets-theatre extravaganza Tear the Curtain!, Kim Collier is a rare talent. Inventive, surprising, and even-handed, her work is often breathtaking, sometimes cerebral, and never, ever boring. —SS

BEST ACTOR (Large Venue)

Before the curtain went up on Arts Club’s Glengarry Glen Ross, a loosely assembled scrum of media took bets on the fortunes of its star, Eric McCormack. Would an actor known to millions as nebbish, nice-guy gay Will, from the long-running U.S. sitcom Will & Grace, be able to pull off the part of ruthless real-estate huckster Ricky Roma? Within moments, McCormack had sold his sinister performance not just to the cheap seats, but to those on the aisles who’d stopped scribbling on their notepads. It’s one thing to capture an audience in the palm of your hand, quite another to shatter a roomful of preconceived notions. —SS

BEST SHOW (Small Venue)

For two weeks in October, the Jericho Arts Centre became a seedy Victorian-era London alleyway — the setting for the blood bath that is Stephen Sondheim’s macabre masterpiece, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. This vibrant revival of the musical about a vengeful barber murdering his clients and turning them into meat pies with his landlady/co-conspirator came courtesy of the brilliant, mostly 20-somethings behind Fighting Chance Productions. The remarkably assured take on this rich, technically complex material (it’s Sondheim, remember?) proved you don’t need huge budgets and big names to craft quality live entertainment. With the right ingredients, producing the perfect piece of theatre can be as easy as, well, pie. —Andrea Warner

BEST DIRECTOR (Small Venue)

Would Sweeney Todd’s audiences ever guess that its director, Ryan Mooney, is still in college? Probably not. Since Fighting Chance Productions’ debut in 2007, Mooney, the company’s founder and artistic director, has proved himself to be a young man with a singular vision. With Sweeney Todd, Mooney hinted at the kind of director he’s growing into: resourceful, innovative, and clever. Commanding a sprawling cast in a small space is no easy feat, but Mooney’s execution made perfect use of the physical contrast, illustrating the all-consuming tension and frenzy of the source material’s tale of revenge and madness. —AW

BEST ACTOR (Small Venue)

As Sweeney Todd, Alex McMorran was glowering, darkly funny, and mad in every sense of the word. A man unhinged by grief and a thirst for revenge, McMorran made Todd’s extraordinary bloodlust utterly believable. While plotting to extract his pound (or more) of flesh from those who’ve cost him his daughter and his wife, McMorran nailed every emotional high and low, subversively toeing the line between empathetic victim and ruthless hypocrite. Additionally, his chemistry with Cathy Wilmot as Mrs. Lovett proved delightfully unsettling and surprisingly sexy. —AW

BEST ACTRESS (Small Venue)

While Sweeney Todd’s Mrs. Lovett is a role many salivate over, her solos have been known to cause more than a few actresses sleepless nights. Doubtless Cathy Wilmot slept soundly, because her voice ran headlong through Sondheim’s trademark counterpoint and syncopation without a hint of strain, all the while infusing every line and lyric with subtext. Her Mrs. Lovett is a manipulative liar, sure, but she’s also incredibly lonely and blinded by her romantic obsession with a psychopath. Wilmot got at the murky heart of Mrs. Lovett’s darkest motivations without sacrificing the wonderful gallows humour that permeates even her bleakest moments. —AW

BEST SITE_SPECIFIC THEATRE

Last May, ITSAZOO Productions’ Bridge Mix transformed a city eyesore (a concrete parking garage in the business district) into a place where anything was possible, including a spontaneous street-hockey game, a confrontation between Robert Pickton and the ghosts of his many victims, a choreographed dance-off, and a hilariously sweet demonstration by a little girl who believes she can collect people’s dreams for interpretation. Bridge Mix’s variety and lack of pretension helped showcase the raw talent of Vancouver and Victoria’s emerging theatre companies. That the audience moved between various spots throughout the parkade, with a roving bar never more than 10 feet away, only sweetened the deal. —AW

BEST COMEBACK

A hopeful sign after a bleak period of restructuring, Ballet BC wowed audiences with Songs of a Wayfarer and Other Works, a season opener composed of three new works. Artistic director Emily Molnar continued in her efforts to transform the once-tired group into a truly contemporary ballet company. Her titular contribution to the programme proved playful and intelligent, while choreographer Kevin O’Day brought a fresh, international sophistication to the Queen E stage. The undeniable highlight, however, was Jose Navas’s dizzying The Bliss That from Their Limbs All Movement Takes. Dance fans will also take delight in Navas’s appointment as Ballet BC’s choreographer-in-residence for the next three years. —Jessica Barrett