Preview
RHEOSTATICS
Wednesday, October 27
The Whiskey
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two decades since the Rheostatics unleashed their first album, the ironically titled Greatest Hits. Singer-songwriters Martin Tielli, Dave Bidini and Tim Vesely have played together since high school (and never really by the rules). Embracing wildly diverse elements of pop, rock, jazz, poetry and aural experimentation, they move from impassioned acoustic folk to blaring punk intensities, often in the same song. Quintessentially Canadian, startlingly original and fiercely independent, the Rheostatics’ music was always challenging, melodic and eclectic – occasionally indulgent, but never predictable or ordinary.
Every rocker, major or minor, indie or outie, knows full well that, while singers and guitarists can sometimes fake it, if the drummer sucks, the whole band might as well head for the Hoover factory. That said, despite having had three different drummers, the Rheostatics have never, ever sucked. The latest, Michael Phillip Wojewoda (Voy-ya-voh-da), is no stranger to the Rheos’s work. He’s produced five of their nine studio albums, including the must-have Whale Music, their major-label dalliance Introducing Happiness and their children’s record The Story of Harmelodia. As such, his contribution to their unique sound was well established long before he formally joined the band. On his website, Tielli describes Wojewoda’s innate intuitiveness: "Mike is like a writing partner; he knows how to edit me immediately. His calls are freakishly uncanny. He’ll suggest something and I’ll fight it every time, but in retrospect it’s always an amazing call – not just, 'Oh yeah, you were probably right,' but 'Holy cow, you were so right.’"
As a sought-after super-producer, the creative practice of recording is second nature to Wojewoda. "I’ve been working in production for so long that it’s a blur thing. It’s like driving, so to comment on process is always a bit startling," he says. "Recording has been around for so many years – a lot of people already know what the recording process is all about. I get the feeling that every generation there’s less and less voodoo attached to the whole thing. I think I’m so used to the process that I don’t even see (it) anymore."
Wojewoda was in the final stages of a divorce and had been subbing in as a hired gun for the band after Don Kerr left in 2001. His first Rheos show was the finale of the Vancouver folk festival. (For his second gig, they played for four hours in a tiny restaurant.) Some time later, following a midnight show in Halifax, he made the decision to join the band.
"We finished our gig at 3:30 or four in the morning and we had to be at the airport by five. We got our baggage at the terminal in Toronto, we were stuck in 8 a.m. rush-hour traffic and I told them I wanted to join the band. They said, ‘No, take the money – believe me!’ I said, ‘No, I want to join.’ They said: ‘Great, then you don’t get anything, because we lost money.’ So my official joining was consummated by losing money on the first gig." He assures me that there was no pressure from the others for a long-term commitment. "I think, in a way, they were secretly hoping I would ask to join… kind of like the Stockholm Syndrome in a kidnapping."
In addition to his sonic expertise, Wojewoda brings a totally different drumming style from previous Rheosatics drummers, some serious keyboard chops and a passion for old analogue synthesizers. Although many would consider the Rheostatics well outside the musical mainstream, it becomes apparent, talking to Wojewoda, that they are about as close to conventional pop music as he ever gets. His personal tastes lean towards the avant garde (He lists Steve Reich’s Music for a Large Ensemble as one of his desert-island-album picks) His other band, The Faceless Forces of Bigness, is a multimedia electronic outfit comprised of improv analogue synth players and an experimental filmmaker who manipulates images in real time with a modified MIDI keyboard. In their typically atypical approach, they perform mainly in rock clubs.
For the Rheostatics’s new release, 2067 (the year Tielli celebrates his 100th birthday, Canada celebrates its bicentennial and 45 years before Rush’s 2112), Wojewoda contributes drums, treatments, electric rain, mouth percussion, organ, piano, lots and lots of synths, guitars, glockenspiel, bongos, sepulchral yawns, oohs, whistling, the Polish Fog and even the proverbial kitchen sink. He’s also responsible for a track called "Who is That Man, and Why is He Laughing?," a spacious, mood-altering instrumental that fondly recalls Brian Eno’s early, less oblique compositions.
The album was produced by Wojewoda and recorded in bits and pieces over 18 months in his home loft-studio. "There was a certain element of – I’m going to say this and these guys will see it in print – but a little bit of daycare," he says. "My entire home would be completely commandeered by a session. I don’t record in my home, normally. In fact, the only artist that I allowed that to happen with is the band." The upheaval was, ultimately, worth it: 2067 stands tall alongside the Rheos finest work.
It won’t be encouraging for budding indie-rock stars to learn that despite stadium tours with The Tragically Hip, mountains of critical acclaim and a rabid, ever-growing fan base the Rheos still have their day jobs. "Even at this point it’s not sustainable. Everyone must have another career, it’s a fact of life," Wojewoda states unapologetically. In fact, their other careers are pretty creative: Tielli paints and illustrates and Bidini is an established author who recently participated in Calgary’s WordFest.
Wojewoda is happily perched on his drum stool, eagerly looking forward to touring, playing and seeing the fans’ reaction to the band’s new album – one he is, understandably, very proud of. "My whole gambit is that I wanted to make one more relevant Rheostatics record, that’s all I cared about," he says. "I was hoping it would be a record that still is vital, but that’s not for me to decide."
As a full band member his stake is much more personal this time around. "On this one all the drum parts are my own. It’s a minor thing, but there’s something kind of fun about that idea, because it really is like I’m a member. I’m involved. For the first time I don’t say ‘They,’ I say ‘We.’" |
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