>> PREVIEW
JASON COLLETT
Saturday, March 25
The Hifi Club
Jason Collett is one of those musicians that music journalists dream of interviewing. Unlike some of his bleary-eyed peers, who have bitterly fallen out of love with the craft and exploitation side of the music business, Collett has an intense passion that not even the sleaziest of industry types have any chance of extinguishing.
Before stepping into his own spotlight with 2005’s stunning Idols of Exile, Collett had spent years chasing teenage dreams and truancy, and more recent, by playing guitar in mega group Broken Social Scene.
Collett grew up in Bramalea, Ontario – a small town with the highest suicide rate among housewives in Canada – in a Catholic family attending Catholic school. When dreams of busting out of his sleepy burrow of repression became too overbearing to ignore, he left his home and high school to finish his education in Toronto’s alternative SEED school, with the assistance of student welfare.
Still feeling restless in downtown Toronto, Collett felt that one more move was necessary. He ditched school to board a plane headed for the homeland of his British punk idols, like the Clash and Elvis Costello.
"I was almost 18. I just wanted to travel," explains Collett. "I moved to London and I got a job there. Actually, it was a funny job – it was a big communist bookstore called ‘Collett’s’ actually. I got hired to promote the T-shirt section – they had a couple of shirts with hammers and sickles on them and CCP. My job was to go around town finding artists to silkscreen communist propaganda on a T-shirt. I got the job ‘cause I had probably about $40 to my name… I was pretty desperate at that point (and) when I found out about the job, I lied. I told them I was a member of the Communist Youth Party in Canada. It really took off. Billy Bragg was wearing my shirts on Top of the Pops."
It wasn’t long before the trend died down and Collett returned to Canada to start his own band. He became a regular at Toronto’s Spadina Hotel, where Can-rock legend and soon-to-be pal, collaborator and producer Andrew Cash was holding a weekly acoustic series. Collett would go on to form a band out of Cash’s Skydiggers, called LAZY GRACE. He would prematurely pull the plug on the band to relocate his new family to the countryside, only to abide by his inner compass and return to the city three years later. He played with Cash in rock band Ursula in the early to mid-’90s, but the band ran its course and Collett moved on to solo recordings produced by Cash.
"I ended up in this sort of limbo by the end of the ‘90s of several years of sort of being courted by some majors who just wanted to hear more demos. I was demo-ing for what seemed like four or five years, and I just kind of got ultimately frustrated with the whole bullshit of that, like I think a lot of people did at that time. The larger industry just started to become afraid of plummeting sales – they created a very cynical audience and everything just seemed in limbo at that time.
"What started to happen in Toronto was a lot of musicians seemed to be turning inwards. Or, you got people like Jason Beck, Peaches and Leslie Feist, who left and went to places like Berlin where they were actually interested in music and new ideas. But the rest of us seemed to sort of turn inwards and just play for one another."
That is the story of how Broken Social Scene and the Arts & Crafts label came into existence. A community of musicians – ultimately pushed past their breaking point - emphatically kicked over the game board and established their own world governed by their rules. The Arts & Crafts label would come to boast a roster of incredible artists who, mentally emancipated from the skewed major label world, began capturing mesmerizing moments on CD that bewitched music fans all over the globe. In hopes of getting a bite of Arts & Crafts’ success, major labels offered the label cash to brand mainstream artists with their record label logo. Of course, Arts and Crafts passed, but not before looking at each other incredulously and sharing a chuckle.
"It’s so weaselly, it’s gross, I know, and we just laugh at that stuff. It’s unbelievable how shameless the majors are and it’s unbelievable how there’s such a deficit in their thinking. They’ve created this huge void that indie rock has filled and I’m really proud to be a part of (it). We don’t overhype our shit and we have a really genuine relationship with the people that follow the bands."
It has been a whirlwind education for Collett and his experiences have inevitably made him the resilient and gifted singer-songwriter that he is today.
His heart soars in his music and is as inspiring as his story – Jason Collett’s story illustrates that no matter how restraining life appears, that a new address, disposition, or a change in the dogged record industry can happen whenever you want to make it. |
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