Chris Taylor of CANT & Grizzly Bear

Chris Taylor also known at CANT strums the bass for the rock group Grizzly Bear. Taylor is striking out on his own for a solo project entitled Dreams Come True.   We chatted with him before his most recent concert at Lincoln Hall in Chicago.

Hi, Chris. Where did the name CANT come from?

I didn’t think too much about it at first. I didn’t want it to be a noun, like The Raincoats or something like that. I wanted it to be a word that was less specific. It has raised a lot of questions.

It doesn’t spell out anything.

No, no. I was trying to de-emphasize the band concept I have only drawn more attention to it. At first I couldn’t finish songs so it was a challenge to myself if I called it this. It was something I tried to do for 13 years. To go about doing this was tough.

You are out on your own.

Which is pretty scary. I like it. I think it is good to be scared and put yourself in uncomfortable situations that make you stronger. This was the next frontier of challenging myself. Definitely as intimidating as I thought it would be,

You have a big musician background. Where did you study music?

I started playing classical clarinet and jazz saxophone when I was 11 or so. I did that until I was 22 and decided that I didn’t want to play jazz anymore so I stopped. I felt the jazz scene was a weird competitive place. I stopped and started playing bass in a post punk new wave band. This was actually with the drummer from Grizzly Bear.

Where did you meet him?

I met him in college back when I was playing jazz. He was another jazz musician. We both came disenchanted with the whole thing after devoting our lives to it and being very serious about it. We did well with it but we both didn’t like the scene. We made a new wave band called Female Jesus. We would crash house parties. I tried to press reset with my whole musical thing. I tried to forget about all of the technique and practiced seven hours a day

Are you still a fan of jazz music?

I still am but I am picky about it in the sense that I have 600 jazz records!

So eclectic jazz like Sun Ra?

Yes, for sure. I am all over the board. There is a lot of jazz that feels a little bit self-congratulatory or distances itself from the listener.

This album was written very quickly?

No. The instrumentals, George from Twin Shadow and I wrote pretty quickly. The instrumentals all together probably took two or three weeks to do. Then I just spent a lot of time on lyrics and tweeking song forms. I had never really written lyrics before so it was a new thing for me, I really didn’t want to write bad lyrics or cover them with reverb so you couldn’t hear what I was saying. Lots of bands get away with doing that. I connect more with music that has a lyrical center to it. I like a semblance of a story.

Did you get to be very experimental with making this record?

Yes, I go to do whatever I wanted to do, which is the reason I wanted to make it. I felt like I had been working in ways of producing in a band where there is really good compromise and a whole dynamic that can develop. I just wanted to pursue my own thing for a second just for fun. I wanted to make something that was really fun for me and something that I loved and could stand behind. That is all it needed to be, something that I enjoyed.

What is the song “The Edge” about?

I had a really poor relationship with my dad.

So a personal song.

Every song on the record is hard to talk about personally. That song is about having a parent and never clicking.

How was the experience of having your own label?

It has been fun. It is rewarding in the sense that we are taking the approach of curating a collection as opposed to a legacy. It is meant to be more as per release instead of signing bands that sound cool and see what happens. We are being very picky and choosing stuff that we really love. Our resources are very modest so we don’t overextend ourselves and put out stuff just because we can. We don’t want to end up with a bunch of records that no one ever hears about. I don’t want to let anyone down like that being a musician myself that is the last thing I want to do. I would feel awful about that.

That is a big difference to corporate music labels.

Yes, I like a very personal relationship with everyone that I work with and keep it that way. We want them to go and be as well loved as possible but we want our experiene with them to be a good one.

These days you don’t have to wait for decisions from a head of the company. Music can be put out right away.

Right, it’s crazy huh? Now you have Spotify.

I was asking about what that was recently.

It is nuts. I have been researching it a lot recently. I wasn’t sure it was legal! Downloading for free is illegal, we all know that but this seems like a legitimate corporation. There is an off line mode where you just download then pay artists fraction of a cent per song play.

I noticed people on Facebook listening to music on Spotify.

Mostly major labels benefit more than artists. Labels were given the opportunity to have eight percent shares in this company Spotify. They went in and talked to the major labels and offered them up to 20 percent of their company. Labels wanted to make money selling music again and circumvent the artist leaving them with nothing. It is a label distributor sort of deal. I don’t think I am okay with it. I am still looking into it. I want to have an opinion but not sound like Lars Ulrich!

Keep me posted about this subject. Do you have music videos for this album yet?

We have three and a fourth one is being made. We are going to do a push to put them all out. The videos are really great. I shot a music video before I left for tour that will hopefully be up really soon.

What song will that be?

The first song off the record. The video for “Believe” will be premiering on NPR. It is a really beautiful and charming video.

Is there more Grizzly Bear music on the way?

Yes, we started writing and recording in June. We had to take a break. My band mate got married and he is on a trip for a few weeks. I get home from tour and he gets home from Italy about the same time so we will get back in there in December. It was planned that way.

So 2012?

If there were a wand I could wave I would have it out by late spring.

Going back to names, is it true that Grizzly Bear was named after Ed’s ex boyfriend?

Yes, he used to call him Grizzly Bear because he was anything but a bear. He was a cub. He was skinny, quiet and Jewish. It was meant to be ironic.

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