PREVIEW
LORRIE MATHESON CD Release Party
Thursday, December 5
Liberty Lounge (MRC)
It seems no mere simple twist of fate that when I arrive at singer-songwriter Lorrie Matheson’s Inglewood home, the Nay-shun’s Muzak station is airing Spinal Tap. The aim of the satirical rockumentary on the music industry is still true and we are mesmerized by it, although we’ve likely already seen the thing more often than we’ve voted.
When it’s over, Matheson mentions a Web site, The Mixer Man, which updates the sad facts regarding an unnamed band aspiring to be the "Next Big Thing," as reported by an anonymous recording engineer in LA. The lead singer disappears every 20 minutes to check his hair and the drummer (dubbed Dumbass by the engineer) is so incompetent that a drum editor is secretly flown in from Nashville to slice and splice 180 edits in a three-minute song – it seems that the effigy of Spinal Tap was raised in vain.
Is there room for Matheson in an industry that has become so inbred that specialists like "drum editors" have regular work? After all, Matheson left his home on a Saskatchewan farm in the late ’80s to come to the big city and establish hard-working bands like Fire Engine Red.
"We all came from the punk rock thing where you don’t make any money," says Matheson. "Working ’til five, driving to Edmonton, playing a gig, getting paid 50 bucks and driving back to be at work the next morning was normal. You didn’t even think twice about it."
While bands like Fire Engine Red and, later, National Dust seldom veered anywhere close to Spinal Tap territory, they sometimes went a little off course in maintaining personal relationships. Although Matheson and former Fire Engine Red colleague James Hayden have since shared licks in Hayden’s project Thousandsticks, Matheson didn’t talk to Hayden for two years after Fire Engine Red’s breakup. And by the time the sweetly chaotic National Dust had settled after their final gig last Easter weekend, the band members, who had started out as friends, were no longer speaking.
"It would have been different if I’d called it The Lorrie Matheson Band from the beginning. (Drummer) Ross (Watson) and (guitarist) Tim (Leacock) would always say from day one, ‘This is your band: It should have your name.’ It was me being (idealistic), utopian. In reality, I betcha if it had started off with me saying ‘OK, this is my fucking band, we’re going to do it this way, end of story, I’m not going to ask for your opinion,’ that it would have worked out better."
Well, ashes to ashes and National Dust to dust. The wild-haired singer admits that his new solo album, You Should Know By Now, was possibly the last straw for the band – he recorded it prior to Dust’s break-up. But in spite of the fact that the record includes performances from Lester Quitzau’s rhythm section (drummer Lyle Molzan and bassist Greg Johnston), as well as guitar licks from Stew Kirkwood, hard feelings soften.
Matheson has a knack for luring former band members back with his breadcrumb trail of clever lyrics, bittersweet melodies and that honest punk work ethic. Thus, former Dust guitarist Gord Adam offered to put together a live band for the CD release, at which Watson, who laid down 15 new studio tracks with Matheson during two days this month, will also drum.
Of his new album, which proves that no one is as skilled as Matheson at turning a cliché inside out, the singer says, "I could go and tour it, but where? Like I’m going to send the CD to some folk club in Brandon, Manitoba, and go ‘Yeah, I want to come play a solo acoustic gig.’ When I did it, I did it for kicks. There was no sort of ‘How am I going to market this?’"
The free-flowing songs, featuring some of Matheson’s most finely crafted writing to date, are captured so firmly that even a former Dust member labeled the album Matheson’s best work.
Watching Matheson with only his guitar and harmonica onstage for company, delivering song after song at a downtown bar on two consecutive Saturday nights recently, the idea of a solo tour doesn’t seem too farfetched. In four sets, some of which last nearly two hours, he seldom dips into Dust material or even into songs from his new record. Instead, Matheson is well into the utterly fresh material he and Watson recorded in the studio the same week.
Although drunks and former bandmates often seem equally represented in the audience, no hard feelings are present.
"For everybody concerned, it’s better off to not be in a band together. I came from a completely different world than those guys. I never played covers – I never did the bar circuit. I’ve always been in a situation where it’s fuck the audience, you do what you do, and if they come along, they come along.
"You don’t sit there and be a dancing monkey, and that’s the Elvis Costello, punk rock way of looking at things. I wish I could have Tim (Leacock’s) attitude, which is ‘I get paid to play my guitar, and hundreds of people would love to do that. It beats swinging a hammer or digging ditches.’ But I don’t.
"Those guys (National Dust members) loved The Clash, The Replacements. But I remember, we were playing in Kananaskis one time, and there was no ashtray on the stage and I put my cigarette on the floor and stepped on it. Tim freaked out on me, ‘What the fuck did you do that for? They’re paying us good money and that’s disrespectful!’ And I’m going ‘What would Joe Strummer do?’ He would have punched him right in the face.
"I’m not cut out to be a band guy. It is egotistical, but if you aren’t egotistical, you shouldn’t be doing it anyway. I have a hard time writing songs with people because I think my stuff is better than their stuff anyway." |
