Interview with Scott Bryson - Chart Magazine (March
2008)
First: Why’d you leave Canada!? (And are you Canadian born
and bred?):
I’m not Canadian born and bred, no. I was born in London,
England, and moved to Calgary with my mum and brother in
1992, when I was about twelve. Then in 2000 I moved to
Toronto to go to the University of Toronto to do my BA in
English. I moved back here to the UK in 2004 to do my Ph.D.
at the University of Cambridge, which I’m still plugging
away on.
I feel Canadian, though, and tend to introduce myself as
such. London’s exciting, challenging, full of opportunity,
but it’s just such hard work to get anything done here.
It’s expensive, overcrowded, and not particularly friendly.
Londoners keep to themselves; you could probably get
murdered in the middle of Trafalgar Square and everyone
would pretend not to notice. London has lots going for it,
but I miss the community in Toronto, and, although every
non-Toronto-based Canadian will argue this, I miss the
friendliness of the city. That said, London makes most war
zones seem like TGI Fridays.
Musically, there are lots of places to play, but it’s hard
to build a following. On any given night there’s probably
more than 200 bands playing in this city; lazy promoters
will take on anyone that can promise to bring at least a
dozen friends, and they’ll throw on five or six bands in a
single night that have absolutely nothing in common. So
I’ll be playing my bleak acoustic songs about saints and
murder while sandwiched between a metal band, a grime MC,
and, more often than not, three bands that think they’re
The Clash or The Smiths. It makes it hard to pick up new
fans, to be honest. But, still we plug on, ever optimistic.
You’ve been compared to about fifty different
musicians and your music has been labeled nearly every
genre in the book; So what do you
think your music sounds like?
The first review of the new album compared me to Nick Cave
and Tom Waits, and the last one compared me to James Blunt
and Chris DeBurgh. So who knows? I write songs, usually on
an acoustic guitar, sometimes on a piano, that succeed or
fail on the basis of their melody and their lyric. This
isn’t to say I don’t care about performance or arrangements
or groove, but I don’t write with a band, I write
for a band. This isn’t to downplay the
contribution of the people I play with; they’re amazing.
But I do feel like someone else could take my song and
perform it, and whatever it was that made the song
interesting in the first place wouldn’t be completely lost.
I can’t help but think the reviewer who compared us to
Blunt just has a very limited view of what the term
‘singer-songwriter’ can encompass; sadly, it’s a genre that
carries a great deal of stigma. I think it comes from the
fact that when composition is done in seclusion, it often
leads to songs of self-pity and self-indulgence. It’s also
because most of the acoustic music you see at open mikes or
coffee shops is being performed by very young people who
haven’t yet been put through the critical mill that comes
from working with other musicians. I have the same dislike
of this kind of music. Most of the time when I see that
tousle-haired, ennui-laden chap head towards his acoustic
guitar I want to run for the door immediately.
But it doesn’t have to be like that, of course. Believe it
or not, songs can be about anything. This should be
obvious, but somehow it still needs to be said: a song can
be about anything a novel or a film can be about. Always
writing about yourself is dangerous; self-indulgence leads
to a very limited vision. I make a conscious attempt to
write directly about myself as little as possible. All the
songwriters I love, when they approach the personal, do so
with a somewhat objective eye. They also don’t take
themselves too seriously. Even Leonard Cohen is hilarious.
So, basically, I can only explain my music by explaining my
approach to songwriting. I can write lots of different
styles of music – bluesy, folk, music-hall, rock ‘n’ roll,
crooners, gypsy numbers – but what holds them together is a
consistent attention to melody and a story, and a certain
sort of objectivity in the lyric. This is all very vague,
of course, and that’s why people find my music hard to pin
down. I think reviewers might have more success if, instead
of saying who I sound like, they try to understand
who I think like. That may also be the most wanky
thing I’ve ever said.
I understand you took a “self-imposed writing
hiatus” before this new disc. Why the break?
I got a bit dispirited by the period following the release
of the first album. I’d been writing songs since I was 15,
and spent pretty much my entire youth daydreaming about
making a record, finally getting on tape what I heard in my
head, and sharing it with other people. The record came
out, and, to my infinite disappointment, the sky didn’t
open up and I wasn’t bathed in a golden light. All that
happened was that I made a record, maybe a good one, but
still just a record. And some of the people who heard it
liked it, and some of them seemed to like it a lot. But
that was it. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was
expecting more than that.
Dave Gooblar, our bassist and front-man of the great
power-pop band Gooblar, suggested to me that the problem is
that we, as musicians, want to make people feel the way
that we’ve been made to feel by the artists we
love. For instance, I’ve met Jeff Tweedy twice, and both
times I was shaking, completely overwhelmed by someone
who’s music has meant so much to me. But, try as I might, I
couldn’t articulate that to him, probably because it’s
impossible. He’ll never know how he’s made me feel, just as
I’ll never know how my music has made other people feel (if
anything).
This crushing realization meant that I had to stop making
music until I could find another, better reason to do it. I
realized that I had to stop thinking about my music in
relation to other people, and just start doing it because I
like to do it. The reality check I received when I didn’t
achieve my teenage dream of ‘making the big time’ made this
endeavor a whole lot easier. I stopped writing music for
validation. I honestly didn’t think about whether people
would like this album while I was working on it. I just
wanted to make something I like. I didn’t care
that my odd little interests in saints and mysticism would
turn some people off. I didn’t include happy upbeat songs
just to keep people happy or for the sake of variety. I let
go of my fear of being judged by my listeners; to be
honest, the logic was, hell, no-one’s gonna listen to it
anyway. But, believe it or not, some people have listened
to it, and most seem to like it. Not that I care, of
course.
You assembled a new band for When The Saints Go,
right? How’s that working out? Did you know these musicians
before your move to the UK?
I love my band, although The Right To Die is
quickly becoming a bit of a revolving line-up! I knew my
brother, of course, who’s drumming. We go way back. I
always wanted him to be in my band, because he truly is the
best drummer I’ve ever played with, but it’s never worked
out until now. This is how good he is: even the two
negative reviews we’ve had on this record single out his
drumming for praise. How often does that happen? Dave
Gooblar, our bassist, is a close friend; when I first
arrived in London, before I put together my own band, I
played electric guitar and sang back-up in Dave’s band
Gooblar (which also included my brother on drums). Dave has
the most incredible gift for melody, and writes the most
addictive and sweet songs you can imagine. He brings his
melodic sense to his bass playing. Lucy Jordan, who played
keys and sings, used to be my roommate, and I love her to
death. Sadly, due to recent and unfortunate
Rumors-esque events, she’s currently taking time
out of the band, but hopefully she’ll come back at some
point. Her singing on Visions of Jehovah is one of
my favorite things about the album; she just nailed it.
Maya Ahuja, the violinist, left the band shortly after
recording the album. I loved her playing – really dark,
expressive – but we just couldn’t get on. As she put it,
she’s a metal person and I’m a folk person; there was never
any hope for us. Sebastian Dilleyston, a friend of Lucy’s,
is currently playing violin with us, and he’s amazing, a
real virtuoso. Recently, my friend Neil Leyton, who I
played with in Toronto and who runs Fading Ways Music, the
label that put out the first record, is moonlighting with
us, which has given us a bit more of a punch live. He’s a
proper rocker, and he’s brilliant.
How’d the name The Right To Die get chosen?
My friend Edward came up with it a few years
back over a few beers in Soho. It was during the whole
Terry Schiavo thing. Me, Ed, and my friend Dan were looking
at the newspaper, and having a conversation about the whole
debacle, when Ed, in a rather characteristic non-sequitur,
just said ‘Jim Clements & The Right To Die; that’d be
an awesome band name.’ We all fell over laughing, and it
stuck. I love the name because it’s patently ridiculous.
There’s something deeply amusing about taking a complex
political issue and using it as a band name ‘because it
sounds cool.’
Do you miss nights of solo recording, hunched over
Protools?
‘Sort of’ is the best answer I can give. I
had a brilliant time recording the first album. Steve
Payne, the producer, is one of my best friends, and that
record was made in the evenings at his place, over endless
cigarettes and countless bottles of wine. It took about a
year to record, because it was all overdubs; at no
point in the entire recording process did two musicians
play at the same time. We never even rehearsed
together. I played guitar to a click at Steve’s house, and
we found Nathan Lawr, a brilliant musician and a great
drummer, to play on it. He put drums on top of my guitar
track. Then we rerecorded the guitar. Then we added and
removed various musicians one by one until it sounded the
way we wanted it to sound. I loved hearing it come together
like that, and I really liked having all that time to play
and experiment. But the downpoint is that the record sounds
too hygienic for my taste; it’s pretty but inorganic. I
also think I got a little carried away with the
instrumentation; Protools gives you too many options! So,
in a nutshell, I liked the freedom of creativity, and I
liked the relaxed pace of the whole process. I loved my
smoky drunken evenings hanging out with Steve. But I wasn’t
totally happy with the end product. Which is why we did
things differently this time.
How does the new disc differ, musically, from Kill
Devil Hills?
I’d been listening endlessly to Dylan’s
John Wesley Harding, and I was in love with the
almost ascetic purity of it. I’ve read, although it could
be a rumor, that it was supposed to have been filled out
with lots of overdubs, but Dylan was so happy with the bed
tracks – just bass, drums, guitar, and harmonica – that he
decided to leave it unadorned. It works. It’s all
atmosphere and that rough voice, right up front. It suited
the religious undercurrent of that record, and I thought it
might suit us too.
So we used a similar approach, although we weren’t quite as
strict as Dylan. This record is a lot more sparse than
Kill Devil Hills. No mellotrons, no string
quartets, no accordions, no additional percussion, no
harmonica, hardly any guitar solos. The whole record is
acoustic guitar, violin, piano or organ, bass,
drums. It’s exactly what you’d hear if you came to see us
live. The only exceptions are the overdubbed saw, played by
Gene Hardy on ‘The Bottom Feeders,’ and Dean Drouillard’s
slide guitar on ‘St. Christopher,’ both of which were
recorded in Toronto, and sent to me in London via the
internet.
I doubt that any future records we make will be quite so
bare bones, but it suited this one for some reason. Plus it
gave us some practical restrictions; by limiting ourselves
to such a small musical palette, we were forced to be a lot
more creative with what we had to work with. There were so
many instruments on the first record that I sometimes think
that I wasn’t as careful with the compositions as I could
have been; as if having a Mellotron on a track was enough,
and to hell with what it was actually playing. This record,
in comparison, despite its rough edges, sounds more
carefully crafted to me. There’s nothing extraneous; no
gilding the lily. I’m very happy with it.
I understand it was recorded live off the floor;
could you say now that it’s your preferred recording
method?
I think, next time around, I’d prefer to do something in
between the two ways I’ve recorded. I’ve discovered how
important it is not to overdub everything, to get, at the
very least, the rhythm section playing together in the
studio so that the recording sounds like an actual band
playing together. That said, recording everything
live off the floor, particularly if you have a limited
budget and limited time, can be pretty stressful. If we had
the financial freedom to do it, we’d spend a month or two
in the studio playing live together, working at our own
pace, until we get something we’re truly content with. But
I can’t see that happening anytime soon. So, next time
round, I think we’ll do a few days in a proper studio,
recording basic tracks as a band, and then do overdubs at a
home studio.
Why the choice (partly at least) to have this disc revolve
around the theme of saints/religious symbolism?
First, it must be said that I’m not a Christian. I have,
let’s say, spiritual inclinations, but they’re my own. I’m
writing my PhD thesis on mysticism and ethics in post-war
literature, so I’ve been reading this stuff endlessly, but
from a safe, non-devotional distance. I read The Golden
Legend, which is a collection of stories of saint’s
lives, and it was just so strange and dark and magical,
like Grimm’s Fairy Tales or the Arabian Nights. What really
caught me was that these writers were only able to conceive
of pure, absolute goodness as something utterly grotesque
and, well, weird. Saints that bleed milk, or befriend
lions, or carry their severed breasts on a plate. It’s the
strangeness of goodness, I suppose. And, really, that’s
what the record’s about; not religion or God, but goodness.
What does goodness look like? What does it mean to be good?
Can we be good by accident? Can we shoot for goodness and
create evil? All of the songs, I think, are about that. In
fact, only a handful of the songs are directly about
saints, and two of them are pretty tongue-in-cheek. Then
there’s ‘Saint Louise,’ which isn’t about a saint at all,
but about the actress Louise Brooks, who I’ve personally
canonized for mostly sinful reasons. ‘Three Miracles,’ too,
is not about religious miracles, but secular miracles, the
small goods that people create day-to-day. The saints
motif, however thinly stretched it might be, gives the
album a sense of cohesion, I think. The first album
contained a random collection of songs I’d written over a
period of about ten years – I wrote ‘So Much Alarm’ when I
was 16 – and it lacked consistency. All the new songs, with
the exception of ‘Mayfly,’ were written in just over a
year. So there’s not as much stuff I’m embarrassed about.
Or at least not embarrassed about yet.
What are some of the subjects the non-religious
songs touch on?
Oh, the usual. Murder, lust, deception,
fish.
It’s been said you’re softening a bit; that
lyrically, When The Saints Go isn’t as rife with evil and
damnation as your last disc. Is that true, or is there
still some darkness?
I’m not sure if that’s entirely true. This
album contains at least three murders, a body disposal, a
bit of sex, one incidence of stigmata, a fight with Satan,
and a beheading. Which makes it considerably darker than
the last James Blunt album. But it’s perhaps not as
bitter as Kill Devil Hills. Life’s quite
good these days. But I’m wary of the McCartney curse: the
happier you get, the worse your music gets. So I’m being
careful not to get too happy. Truth is, I’m far
too neurotic to ever be truly content, and I’m still deeply
obsessed with the weird and horrible things people do to
one another. In other words, I don’t think I’ll be writing
a Frog Chorus anytime in the near future.
Where does your lyrical inspiration typically come
from?
It sometimes starts with a simple phrase or
idea that I then flesh out. My friend Michael capped off a
pretty funny story by saying ‘love makes creeps of us all’
when we were at All Tomorrow’s Parties last year. It made
me laugh, and the song with that title wrote itself.
Sometimes the process is a bit more vague and builds
slowly. I had always wanted to write a driving song, and
already had the saints motif in my head. I knew about St.
Christopher being the patron saint of traveling, and it was
just a short jump to present him in a song as the patron
saint of road trips. Then I did some research and found out
that he’d recently been decanonized, so I wrote ‘St.
Christopher’s Traveling Blues,’ a song in which St. Chris
complains about no longer being a saint, and threatens to
cut the Pope’s brakes. Again, the idea made me laugh;
always a good starting point, I think. ‘Coming Up Roses,’
off the first album, started off as an attempt to defend
myself after being accused by an ex-girlfriend of being a
bit of an asshole. I wrote the song, then looked at what I
had written and realized I wasn’t even convincing myself. I
probably had been an asshole, and it would have been
reasonably obvious to anyone reading between the lines. So
I decided to take the song to its logical extreme and
rewrite the song so that I’m attempting to justify
utterly inexcusable behavior, to the point of an
implied murder.
Any plans to return to Canada for a tour?
I have no doubt I’ll be back in Canada after
I’ve finished my Ph.D., which’ll probably be next year
sometime. I miss Toronto, and I really look forward to
going back. But the cost of getting the band over to Canada
right now is restrictive. I’m thinking of coming home to
Toronto to visit sometime in the Autumn, so perhaps I’ll do
an acoustic show, or get a couple of my old friends to join
me for an off the cuff gig. That’d be great. I’ll keep you
posted.