Tomorrow, October 1st, Brendan Canning (of Broken Social Scene) releases his second solo album, You Gots 2 Chill. The follow-up to Something for Everyone is a reflection of Canning’s more mellow side and comes at a busy time for the musician, who recently revived the long dormant Cookie Duster and scored The Canyons, the new film from Paul Schrader.
Canning took a few minutes recently to speak with Hidden Track about his upcoming release, his love for R. Kelly, and why he’s always excited about what’s next.
On the differences between You Gots 2 Chill and Something for Everyone
You know, they’re different records. They mark different periods in my life. We all have lots of different sides to us, I would hope. I like playing music like that. I also like listening to the odd R. Kelly jam. I’ve got all kinds of sides to me. It’s just like, that’s the music I got. Here you go.
On when inspiration strikes
You know, it’s late at night, you’re just noodling around and it’s like “Oh, this guitar lick is cool.” Before I had an iPhone, I’d call my home line and record it on the home line. And now if I go to my voice memo, I have – starting from 5:05 a.m. the other night – I’ve got like 30 or 40 ideas. When it comes time to record, you go through them real quick and remember “Oh, hey, I wanna work on this idea today.”
On songwriting
All the tunes, they all start with an acoustic guitar lick, and then I just sing over top of it. I wish I could give you some real great story about what a song means, but I just tap into the muse and whatever comes out, comes out.
I’m not really a big planner. I just kind of take the moments as they come. For this record, I worked with an old friend, and we go back like 30 years. We’d get a good guitar motif going and just kind of go from there – color in the lines as you see fit.
When I’m not working on the song, I’ll think about it for an hour after the fact maybe. And then I’m kind of on to the next idea. Once you’ve finished one thing, it’s like “OK, that’s great, let’s do something else,” ’cause whatever I do next is going to be better.
On recording solo versus as part of a group
You’re solo, so you have fewer voices and opinions and ideas floating around, and you’re kind of left to your own devices a little more. As opposed to Broken Social Scene, where you leave the room for two minutes and someone’s going to have an idea to color in the next part of the song.
Sometimes it’s great just to be left to your own devices, and then other times, you’re like, “Fuck, I wish someone else would just figure this song out for me so I can go out and enjoy the rest of my day.”
On composing a score for a movie and capturing someone else’s vision versus following your own
It’s a different animal scoring a film. Like when I write a song, I’m not thinking about the yoga instructor getting killed.
Are you sitting at home writing a song for yourself, or are you worried about really making the cue in the film impactful? Are you really trying to serve the film? Of course you’re trying to serve the film.
You’re not like “I really like this song idea I’ve got of mine, and I want to put it in this movie.” That’s not really the best way to go about scoring a film. You’re listening to the director, and you’re trying to make them happy — because, ultimately, it’s their film.
On the changes the internet and ease of distribution has brought to the music industry
I’m still a bit old school as far as making a body of work and putting it out like that. Because I really feel like having an album and a body of work attaches you – you know, fans of bands can relate to that. There are still music fans that want to buy your album, come and see your gig, and aren’t worried about your latest remix.
But I do, you know, like The Hood Internet mash up of R. Kelly’s “I’m a Flirt” with Broken Social Scene’s “7/4”. Stuff like that is pretty fun.
There’s tons of saturation. Holy shit, there’s just so much music out there. But, you know, either you reach real music fans, who are really into music and have discerning taste or you hop on a fad that is really popular and you’ll get some people along for the ride.
The National or Broken Social Scene, for that matter — or Wilco or Vampire Weekend or any of the popular bands these days that release albums, when the albums come out, it’s still a thing. As much as when the Coen brothers release a new movie.
I think there are certain artists that are looked upon more as, I don’t want to use the word credible, but once you’re an established artist and you’ve released stuff that becomes more of a thing to people, maybe that in some way validates it more.
On the opportunity touring brings to create something new
I’m going to build a band for this tour. I want to not just mirror what’s on the recording but develop those ideas.
You know it’s sort of like when Broken Social Scene released Feel Good Lost. We just recorded that very innocently on an 8-track, quarter-inch machine in Kevin’s basement. Our idea wasn’t to go out and perform those songs live — that was just to capture a moment in time and develop that idea into something else.
That’s sort of where I’m at with this idea. You know, I’ve got like 40 or 50 guitar licks. I could go out and tour, and I’d just be an acoustic guitar player playing live, but I think it’ll be a much more interesting show if I’ve got a five-piece band to sort of fill out the sound and make it a creation of some other order.
One Response
Great interview! Very thoughtful questions. I’ve always wondered whether any of the BSS cats had heard the R.Kelly mashup and now we know!