Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Patrick Watson first came to international attention in two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven when his album Close to Paradise won the
Speaker 2: Polaris Music Prize that's Canada's most prestigious award for Canadian artists.
Speaker 2: Over the course of his career, the Montreal based singer
Speaker 2: and composer a built a devoted following through his orchestral
Speaker 2: pop arrangements, his remarkable tenor voice, and live performances that
Speaker 2: blend intimacy with a theatric sensibility. Watson's music has found
Speaker 2: his second life far beyond his core fan base. His
Speaker 2: song Jette Lacere des Mont became a viral phenomenon years
Speaker 2: after its release, accumulating hundreds of millions of streams after
Speaker 2: being discovered by a new generation on social media. His
Speaker 2: songs have also found their way to television shows like
Speaker 2: The Walking Dead and Grey's Anatomy, bringing his sound to
Speaker 2: audiences worldwide. On today's episode, Bruce Seldom talks to Patrick
Speaker 2: Watson about making his playful and adventurous new record uh Oh,
Speaker 2: an album he recorded after recovering from a vocal cord
Speaker 2: hemorrhage on tour. Because of his injury, Patrick chose to
Speaker 2: feature a ton of guest artists on his new album
Speaker 2: in the style of hip hop features This is broken record,
Speaker 2: real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce Headlam speaking to Patrick
Speaker 2: Watson to begin with the performance of a song called
Speaker 2: House on Fire featuring Ariel Engel also known as La
Speaker 2: Force sitting in.
Speaker 3: I'll be ro and yoube right.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's all right.
Speaker 4: I keep trying to see your side, even though I
Speaker 4: just I don't know.
Speaker 5: How we are words, we are stones, swirls down silver weed,
Speaker 5: areful wain did all go?
Speaker 4: How'd your eyes got?
Speaker 3: So you can wrap your truth and riveted bows? But
Speaker 3: I just don't know how to be alone? And I'm
Speaker 3: a man made out of homes. But tell me something
Speaker 3: loud already I'll be wrong, You'll be wrong. I don't
Speaker 3: mind it's wrong. I just want to make and man.
Speaker 6: Just can fly his.
Speaker 3: King cross while said our house so far, our.
Speaker 5: House is a very fine out speak got housh we
Speaker 5: gole you take your hands and cuppy wars screams so
Speaker 5: loud that the neighbors.
Speaker 6: Can be.
Speaker 3: But I don't want you this. I was yours, your man.
Speaker 3: There was so much on the line you're not keep
Speaker 3: chance your sad.
Speaker 7: Es.
Speaker 3: Here's some Milosnamaker.
Speaker 4: Drank the rain and bent to the sun.
Speaker 3: When we will now we're counting down, when.
Speaker 4: We can take the pictures off the walls, the budgets
Speaker 4: in the hall, when we walk down the doors.
Speaker 3: I don't love you anymore? Can't you hear those voices called.
Speaker 6: Can't you hear.
Speaker 3: Those voices called? Can't you hear those voices called?
Speaker 6: Fall?
Speaker 3: Love to break this.
Speaker 6: Fall, love to brig this, fall.
Speaker 3: For love to break this. I'll be wrong, You'll be
Speaker 3: right out of my This.
Speaker 4: Is all the most one, and I can't see through
Speaker 4: all the tears. I can't see through all the years.
Speaker 1: I can carry the weight of our lives.
Speaker 3: I can carry all lost lives.
Speaker 4: I can't see through all the tears. I can't see
Speaker 4: through all the years.
Speaker 3: I'll be wrong, you be right out of mine. It's
Speaker 3: all right. I just want a man, right.
Speaker 7: Welcome, Patrick Watson, you're here. Talk about you or your
Speaker 7: ninth album.
Speaker 1: I'm not counting.
Speaker 7: You're not counting like.
Speaker 1: It's bad luck. I'm not sure if it's eight or
Speaker 1: nine because they probably didn't count the book one. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm gonna go with I don't want
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 7: Okay, we don't know what album this is, but we
Speaker 7: do know what it's called, and it's called uh oh.
Speaker 7: And of course you're here with Ariel Engel, who people
Speaker 7: would know from Broken Social Scene from her own and
Speaker 7: you're still performing as Force, Force and Patrick. A lot
Speaker 7: of people would know your music in the States, particularly
Speaker 7: probably from movies.
Speaker 1: To Build a Home was the first one that s
Speaker 1: can really make ways. I mean it was like from
Speaker 1: anything from Gray's Anatomy to like The Walking to music
Speaker 1: and The Walking Dead. This is us when he dies,
Speaker 1: it's to build a Home with.
Speaker 7: The toaster follow really okay, Yeah, it was a song
Speaker 7: like someone dies in a series.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it ruins a serious for me because
Speaker 1: I can't take it seriously. It ruined The Walking Dead
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 7: I couldn't yehause hearing your own song, I couldn't.
Speaker 1: Take seriously after that guy was so into that show.
Speaker 1: And then and then, funny enough, recently, when TikTok and
Speaker 1: Instagram happened, the similar thing happened because a lot of
Speaker 1: my music plays twelve images. And then a French song
Speaker 1: out of the middle nowhere became another kind of song
Speaker 1: that started playing everywhere. So I have a strange career,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well in that song is you have the I
Speaker 7: think the most played French language song on Spotify.
Speaker 1: You have like a.
Speaker 7: Billion first one across a billion streams, which is incredible
Speaker 7: because you're you were born in California, right, I.
Speaker 1: Was born in California. I moved to CA back when
Speaker 1: I was two, so I have very little memory. My
Speaker 1: dad was a test pilot in the desert.
Speaker 7: You're dad was a test pilot. Yeah, you're a rock
Speaker 7: star and you're the second coolest person in your family.
Speaker 1: He literally you know what makes it even worse, He
Speaker 1: won the Top Gun Award and he used to have
Speaker 1: it in my bedroom and it was like this, like
Speaker 1: this kind of a shell of a missile. And then
Speaker 1: we didn't really realize. And then when the movie Top
Speaker 1: Gun came out with Tom Cruise, where because it's all
Speaker 1: about that award, right, realized in our bedroom he had
Speaker 1: actually won that award. And then my other brother is
Speaker 1: cooler than me too, My brother Jamie. He's also a
Speaker 1: pilot and he has the most hours of any other
Speaker 1: C one thirty three pilot in like from like I
Speaker 1: think ninety two to ninety eighty, did Rwanda Sirievo Iraq
Speaker 1: wore he would be that last plane in and out
Speaker 1: or those low level flying He's a very decorated pilot
Speaker 1: and uh and has been through circumstances that I could
Speaker 1: my depth cannot match his depth of experiences. So I
Speaker 1: and then my other brother's kind of coolly just based.
Speaker 1: I think I think of the last of my family
Speaker 1: of the cool cool.
Speaker 7: But yeah, okay, profession.
Speaker 1: I know, I know. This was like a professional figure
Speaker 1: skater for crinel out on the Canadian team. My other sister, Heidi,
Speaker 1: is the one who built all the metro stations, the
Speaker 1: head engineer in Los Angeles and does all the water
Speaker 1: cheating plants and like leads construction sites and she's this
Speaker 1: really lovely lady who just kills it. So I've really
Speaker 1: literally the least cool.
Speaker 7: Wow. Well, let's let's go over some of your underachievements there,
Speaker 7: and let's start with the new album Great, which is
Speaker 7: a very interesting genesis and I'd like you to talk
Speaker 7: about that.
Speaker 1: When I titled uh oh, the original inspiration was at
Speaker 1: one point I had like totally broken my voice and
Speaker 1: we were playing a show in Atlanta, and we were
Speaker 1: playing the song here Comes the River, and I just
Speaker 1: oversang it, especially because when you sing in the South,
Speaker 1: you feel this kind of like this debt to the place.
Speaker 1: So much music that was origining from there, so when
Speaker 1: you play there, you feel this debt that you have
Speaker 1: to pay. And I remember doing that show. It was
Speaker 1: a very small audience, and I was trying to pay
Speaker 1: that debt because there was so much inspiration from the South,
Speaker 1: and I oversang and blew my chords out. We woke
Speaker 1: up in Philadelphia the e and t's like, you've paralyzed
Speaker 1: your vocal chords.
Speaker 7: Now, did you know it when you were singing?
Speaker 1: Yes, I didn't know how much trouble I was in
Speaker 1: because it slowly started to get worse after the show.
Speaker 1: Then when I woke up there was no more sound,
Speaker 1: and there was no more sound for three months. That
Speaker 1: came out of the chords and the other part of
Speaker 1: the genus of the record when we talk about the title,
Speaker 1: because we're working towards the uh oh, is that like
Speaker 1: for the last seven years, you wake up, every time
Speaker 1: you open the newspaper, you're always like, oh oh. It's
Speaker 1: just like we're in this constant uh oh, And I
Speaker 1: thought that that would be a fun way to approach
Speaker 1: a record in these times, just being like, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: what you gonna do about it?
Speaker 7: I'm interested you when you blow out your your vocal chords.
Speaker 7: I imagine given the business you are in, people have
Speaker 7: lots of recommendations like go to this guy he did
Speaker 7: Mariah Carey, or this guy does Celine Dion or something.
Speaker 7: Did you like seek out who you could finds.
Speaker 1: A hemorrhage, you know, like it was on a node.
Speaker 1: It was an operation. Some blood vessels broke out, so
Speaker 1: there was this complete perilous of the chords. So it's
Speaker 1: not an operation you do to fix it. The doctors
Speaker 1: didn't really know if I'd sing again. And then me
Speaker 1: being a little bit of a science chunky, I'd been
Speaker 1: done so much research. We're just like reading science journals
Speaker 1: that I knew that when athletes had really big problem
Speaker 1: they would going to hyperbaric auction chambers. We just put
Speaker 1: you on a pressure because when a diver gets like
Speaker 1: blood poisoning, they found that all the other wounds would
Speaker 1: start to heal quicker when they put them into the
Speaker 1: hyperbaric chambers. So to be honest, like no one told
Speaker 1: me to do that. I'm super clausophobic. It's a little
Speaker 1: glass jar. I was not feeling it, but I tried
Speaker 1: it and I could start making a noise.
Speaker 7: The next day, when you started this album, was your
Speaker 7: voice back?
Speaker 1: It slowly came back. When I did Celencio, it was
Speaker 1: still not really great, and I didn't know if I
Speaker 1: wanted to sing or not. And then I was with
Speaker 1: Nova and we were sitting in this like really beautiful
Speaker 1: apartment above Mamouth in Paris we had rented, and we
Speaker 1: had like two mics and a laptop, like a real
Speaker 1: simple audio setup, and we just talked about she had
Speaker 1: recently not loss of voice, but became very unhealthy. She
Speaker 1: couldn't breathe for like three months because of touring. And
Speaker 1: she's a very sweet and favorite talented person. And then
Speaker 1: while we talked, we had all these conversations and then
Speaker 1: I just started singing again, kind of naturally in a conversation,
Speaker 1: not in an attempt, and it was quite lovely because
Speaker 1: the singing on that song, I'm not really singing in
Speaker 1: that song, you know, it's much more talkie than I
Speaker 1: normally would have done, which was I think a really
Speaker 1: nice accident saying we started that intro in Spanish because
Speaker 1: I loved that language musically. It's one of the most
Speaker 1: beautiful musical languages you can, you know, the world has,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I'd ask Nova originally to sing
Speaker 1: in Spanish because she can do it in such a
Speaker 1: lovely way. So the idea bind the collaborations were what
Speaker 1: can I not do? I didn't want to add to
Speaker 1: what I already do. I would look for people that
Speaker 1: could be a different perspective, more in the tradition. I
Speaker 1: would think of a hip hop feature, meaning that you
Speaker 1: would have like two verses, and the two verses talk
Speaker 1: about two different stories even and it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: And I really admired that freedom they had in that
Speaker 1: strung sure. What I really wanted at the collaborations was
Speaker 1: people speaking over me and maybe not agreeing with me,
Speaker 1: not necessarily singing harmony with me. Laf False I had
Speaker 1: invited because it was the most personal song on the record,
Speaker 1: and I've sing with her years and I don't I
Speaker 1: couldn't really sing with anybody else.
Speaker 7: Some of the songs seem like something close to a
Speaker 7: classic duet. Some of them seem like arguments. It's interesting
Speaker 7: every interaction with the other singer is a little bit.
Speaker 1: Unique to them.
Speaker 7: Unique.
Speaker 1: They're all like people that I would want to sing
Speaker 1: like first and all. And then some people ask me, like,
Speaker 1: why is it no woman? I'm like, listen, I just
Speaker 1: picked the best singers I could find, Like, that's not
Speaker 1: a gender thing. It's like also, it was really a
Speaker 1: question of like perspectives, like Martha Wainwright. Example of Martha
Speaker 1: is that she's fire like I do not have that
Speaker 1: fire that she has behind her voice, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to experience what it was like to sing with someone
Speaker 1: and write with someone with that kind of like bold
Speaker 1: fire that I don't have access to. It's her magic power.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these decisions were based on that.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is like to sing with Martha?
Speaker 6: You like?
Speaker 1: It was very selfish. So land this French singer the
Speaker 1: way she like lands her words. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: sing in French, very hard language to sing in.
Speaker 7: And why is that?
Speaker 1: Because it every bloody word ends with a vowel and
Speaker 1: it takes like fifty words to say the same thing
Speaker 1: it says three words in English, So you really need
Speaker 1: to be a wordsmith to succeed at it. And you
Speaker 1: really have a finesse of any your words is extremely
Speaker 1: challenging for people outside the language to like it. There's
Speaker 1: a few examples, like Gainsbourg, but games Book has this
Speaker 1: lovely He's almost like a Leno cone kind of delivery,
Speaker 1: like really dry and wordy, and it's funny the way
Speaker 1: he finishes his words. And the thing about French too
Speaker 1: is if it's too like if I say I love
Speaker 1: you in French, like as a really kind of on
Speaker 1: my sleeves kind of way meaning it, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: You need to say it in a way that's a
Speaker 1: bit witty and it needs to be a little bit ironic,
Speaker 1: with a little bit of like a little bit tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek for it to have the same impact. So
Speaker 1: we're English, I could say like clouds fire love and
Speaker 1: people make some sort of connection, or French you need
Speaker 1: to be witty as Bob Dylan to get away with
Speaker 1: it or else it just doesn't work.
Speaker 7: It doesn't land for a French audience, it.
Speaker 1: Doesn't land for anybody like. It's not a language that
Speaker 1: works that way. It's a very intellectual language. It's it's
Speaker 1: a language that was developed in literature. English was a
Speaker 1: language developed in trade, you know, it developed in a
Speaker 1: way that you could communicate very easily in multiple scenarios.
Speaker 1: And when you have like Spanish or Italian, these are
Speaker 1: developed in poetry and songs, so that's why they roll
Speaker 1: off the tongue like magical.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Patrick Watson.
Speaker 7: When I listen to your music, it reminds me of
Speaker 7: a lot of other Montreal artists, Leonard Cohens and one
Speaker 7: of them in the Garagols. Yeah, you want to go
Speaker 7: way back, but there are so many influences that you
Speaker 7: don't typically find in I'll call it pop music.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 7: People struggle to label your music. I try not to
Speaker 7: work in labels. But I look it up it's like
Speaker 7: it was a dreamy pop is it folk experimentation? And
Speaker 7: to me, I was like, well, no, that's Montreal just
Speaker 7: has a natural kind of it has all these different influences.
Speaker 7: Now did you find that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean, here's the lucky thing about Quebec or Montreal,
Speaker 1: and what's particular about it is that it's an island
Speaker 1: in North America in a sense where the French, to
Speaker 1: save their language, built these insanely high tall walls around it.
Speaker 1: Culturally speaking, so like you know, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: there was no real labels. There was Constellation in the
Speaker 1: Godspeed guys, but that's very experimental and Godspeed it's another
Speaker 1: great example of what you're talking about too. The first
Speaker 1: time I saw violins with guitar pedals is going to
Speaker 1: be Godspeed. They had orchestral, super cinematic rock. It changed
Speaker 1: my life when I saw them. But there was a
Speaker 1: really strong rule in our city that you don't sound
Speaker 1: like somebody else, and don't you can't be like a style.
Speaker 1: I remember going to Toronto and the bands would have
Speaker 1: like a like a portfolio and a press photo or
Speaker 1: like this kind of idea, and we're like, we didn't
Speaker 1: have any of that because there was no business there,
Speaker 1: and I think with our music was completely isolated from
Speaker 1: that until we would reach a certain point, the breaking point,
Speaker 1: and then tour around the world and then we would
Speaker 1: kind of see that for the first time. But it's
Speaker 1: really important for a Montreal band to be very unique,
Speaker 1: and if you're selling something, it's not a good look
Speaker 1: in Montreal. It's not there's a certain ethics that that's
Speaker 1: unset in Montreal, you know, And I think I would
Speaker 1: say the modern bands that came from Montreal would definitely
Speaker 1: be coming from God Speedy, Black Emperor, and they were
Speaker 1: like very ethically strong about their choices about music, business
Speaker 1: and politics, and so I think you'd be very reticent
Speaker 1: to be like, oh, now I'm going to make like
Speaker 1: a pop song and try to make it on the radio.
Speaker 1: It would be it would not it would be a
Speaker 1: bit frowned upon it in Montreal when I was younger,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not you know, I mean, it was
Speaker 1: not what we were darre doing, you know.
Speaker 7: So you think it's it's more a political attitude.
Speaker 1: Then I think it's a bit attitude.
Speaker 7: To me. It's it's about ears almost years.
Speaker 1: But it's also the French are like extremely inspired by
Speaker 1: very like if I'm like and then like, let's say
Speaker 1: I drive twelve hours of the North, like in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, they're going to listen to like super
Speaker 1: experimental music in a small mining town, Like there's a
Speaker 1: festival called FM where like we did. We did a
Speaker 1: show with Mark Robo. We're like nine hours north than
Speaker 1: a miners town. They loved it. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: everywhere you go where you go to a small town
Speaker 1: where they want to listen to Marcrobo and make crazy
Speaker 1: noise on his guitar or like, it's pretty particular. Most
Speaker 1: of the French Quebec musicians are extremely gifted and talented,
Speaker 1: a bit like when you go to Nashville, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody can play for reels. Yeah, well, I gotta be
Speaker 1: honest with you. When you go to like Quebec and
Speaker 1: the small town like people play for real a bit
Speaker 1: like in that same way, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: that Montreal is this collision of Europe and North America.
Speaker 1: The wall, the cultural walls that the French put up
Speaker 1: to save their language do play a part. And why
Speaker 1: I think Leonard corn All these people are interested. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at Lena Cohn. There is no other Anglophone singer
Speaker 1: that sings about sex the way Leonard Cohen does. It's
Speaker 1: a very French thing to do that, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So and then the Quebecers are like, well,
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen speaks English, he's not French. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: but guys, there's no English singer that is that pornographic
Speaker 1: in their languages other than Leonard because he's living.
Speaker 7: In Montreal, you know.
Speaker 1: So these all these interesting arguments and collisions and it's
Speaker 1: a lovely place. But I do think it's it's an
Speaker 1: attitude of like there was no business there. We would
Speaker 1: just do shows and do improvised, improvised music together and
Speaker 1: there was a real spirit of like you should sound
Speaker 1: like what you sound like and no one else and
Speaker 1: then lots of orchestral instruments mixed into the field. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was a very lucky place to spend
Speaker 1: time make music.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 7: Montreal's also got a really strong classical music, yes, scene
Speaker 7: Montreal Symphonies, big, big recording orchestra, and it's also got
Speaker 7: French Canadian folk music, which isn't like a lot of
Speaker 7: other folks. It's very rhythmic French Canadian folk music.
Speaker 1: Well, when you're going back to the tulute, get down
Speaker 1: the original stuff. To be honest, if you put a
Speaker 1: hip hop eat on it, you'd be a little bit
Speaker 1: surprised that the original they've kind of forgotten that. Like,
Speaker 1: there was this revolution in Quebec that people don't really understand,
Speaker 1: where we kicked the church out because the church was
Speaker 1: making all the French people have like twelve kids, and
Speaker 1: they were getting conservative and there was a they called
Speaker 1: the quiet Revolution and then you have is.
Speaker 7: Like which, by the way, it's the most Canadian title ever.
Speaker 7: We revolted. We just didn't want anybody to know about it.
Speaker 1: They're pretty our core. I mean, French don't don't screw around,
Speaker 1: like when they when when they're when they don't like
Speaker 1: something them, they like, you know, when we win a Stanley.
Speaker 1: When Canadians do well, we burn the city down. I
Speaker 1: mean the French Canadians know how to party. They're very
Speaker 1: fiery and a lot of heart and soul in that
Speaker 1: language and that culture. So there's this whole tradition that
Speaker 1: they've kept and they've poured all they have into this
Speaker 1: small scene that just belongs to them. With all these
Speaker 1: grant money and people talk about public funding, but they
Speaker 1: were an island of French beside America for crying out loud,
Speaker 1: and they had to keep their language. So they built
Speaker 1: these walls and they find out their music in a
Speaker 1: way that I don't think any other place on Earth
Speaker 1: has subsidized, which gives them their own They have their
Speaker 1: own star system for crying out loud. They're eight million people.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's well, and they're very like the French in France,
Speaker 7: they're very chauvinistic about their language and their culture.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I would exist without those walls. Still,
Speaker 1: even if I'm singing English. I think they they I
Speaker 1: don't know like the way that they like. I'll play
Speaker 1: a small town and all those concert halls are all
Speaker 1: subsidized so they can keep on giving good music to
Speaker 1: small towns. And so you play there, and you can
Speaker 1: make a living playing there, and then all the people
Speaker 1: show up to listen to crazy music. It's an example
Speaker 1: of like what subsidy into the arts can do. But
Speaker 1: and you're going against America. America is your neighbor, and
Speaker 1: you speak French, like, can you imagine trying to keep
Speaker 1: your language, you know, six to eight million people beside
Speaker 1: that giant.
Speaker 7: The other way to look at it is that it's
Speaker 7: easier to keep your culture than it would be for
Speaker 7: English Canadians.
Speaker 1: Well you know, and it's I love Cana. I mean,
Speaker 1: Canada's my country, and obviously I would never speak will
Speaker 1: But they just do what the Americans do in a
Speaker 1: way that's I find pressing. I feel like they're a
Speaker 1: bad version of America. Now, like you you go to
Speaker 1: like look at their music scene and it's like, oh okay, well,
Speaker 1: it's like, here's a Canadian version of this American thing.
Speaker 1: I'm like, guys, like, do your own thing, right, And
Speaker 1: I don't even be harsh, and that's it's not my intention,
Speaker 1: but I do think if I look at the most
Speaker 1: successful artistic Canadian projects that actually matter, it's like Kids
Speaker 1: in the Hall. It's like the Tailer Park Boys, jailerbag Boys.
Speaker 1: Most people think they're stupid, right, but when you actually
Speaker 1: watch it, it's brilliant. It's also way before the Office
Speaker 1: with the fourth wall and the cameraman. They invented something
Speaker 1: like whenever Canada does something original and kind of crazy,
Speaker 1: that's when it works. Every time, it's like a cheap
Speaker 1: knockoff of American culture. I don't see the point, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? But and then all they
Speaker 1: do is move, like you know, Drake's Canadian needs he
Speaker 1: move to the US, and Justin Bieber's also Canadian. These
Speaker 1: so there's this cross like that as well, but it's it's.
Speaker 7: Complicated Canadian should I twain?
Speaker 1: Now? Yeah, Sarah McLaughlin, these are big, big American stars
Speaker 1: in a lot of way, you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, although a lot of Canadians knew selin Diana originally
Speaker 7: because she sang French Canadian folk songs before.
Speaker 1: She was amazing. She's she's like, he's incredible. Slid She's like,
Speaker 1: she's say, she's look what you What you realize about
Speaker 1: Clidion is like when I say the characters I feel
Speaker 1: with like heart and like the heartless sleeves and passion.
Speaker 1: When Celindion bangs her chest when she sings, That's what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Like they have this passion. That's a
Speaker 1: remarkable passion that that has carried my inside of my career.
Speaker 1: I carry that passion even if I'm an Anglophone. I
Speaker 1: grew up with Francophones and they're my family, and I
Speaker 1: speak French fluently, and now my biggest song in the
Speaker 1: I've ever done is in French.
Speaker 7: Funny enough, did you did you speak English at home
Speaker 7: growing up or French?
Speaker 1: I spoken? My parents were English, and then I had
Speaker 1: asked my mom in grade one to switch me to
Speaker 1: French school for some odd reason, and then I went
Speaker 1: there and I'm really happy I did.
Speaker 7: Right, that's before you knew your dad was top gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is true. But my first memory of why
Speaker 1: I think I wanted to go there a valley. I
Speaker 1: went to like a dinner at my first French family
Speaker 1: and they were doing that thing of the fondue where
Speaker 1: if it drops you have to kiss the person beside you,
Speaker 1: which is very never heard that it's a French thing.
Speaker 1: And then my mom was very pretty and then I
Speaker 1: dropped it and then I had to kiss the mom
Speaker 1: on the cheek and she was I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this place is amazing. I've never hanging out with these
Speaker 1: people again.
Speaker 7: Yeah, then you dropped five more.
Speaker 1: Totally, but I mean, I don't know. Yeah, that's where
Speaker 1: my heart's at, you know, with.
Speaker 7: This album, because you went into it not sure how
Speaker 7: much you were going to contribute, but you said you
Speaker 7: literally traveled around with your laptop, two mikes, and two mics.
Speaker 7: First of all, what were the mics.
Speaker 1: They're cheps. They're pretty fancy. The cool thing about sheps
Speaker 1: is like you're in that room, it sounds like you're
Speaker 1: in the room. It's They're incredibly articulate and incredibly lovely sounding.
Speaker 1: And I didn't even have fancy preamps. I literally had
Speaker 1: my Apolo preamps, which are very kind of transparent preamps.
Speaker 1: So like, like take a song like the wandering. That
Speaker 1: whole like song is one take. The structure is still
Speaker 1: structured take with two mics, so you hear the guitar
Speaker 1: and a bit of the drums. So we would do
Speaker 1: like a structural live take, so at least the bassis
Speaker 1: had some real dynamics in life that we could build on.
Speaker 1: But almost every song was like that. I'd make a
Speaker 1: really like real bass track that's live, so all the
Speaker 1: dynamics we weren't trying to like automate them in they
Speaker 1: would just be there, and then we would build on
Speaker 1: the natural autumn, natural ebb and flows.
Speaker 7: So you would have a band in the room with you.
Speaker 1: Well, me Miska did Celencio all by ourselves and Nova
Speaker 1: with two mics that I was just playing piano and
Speaker 1: he was playing guitar, and then we did all the
Speaker 1: whole form, and then that one I added a little
Speaker 1: bit of drums posts, and then the last one Olivia
Speaker 1: came and helped us. But the initial take to the
Speaker 1: whole song was a live take, wow, and the vocal
Speaker 1: beginning still a live take too, like the whole thing's
Speaker 1: very live.
Speaker 7: Were any of these improvised or send me improvised? Did
Speaker 7: you always have a track that you were working with
Speaker 7: with the singers Noah Nova.
Speaker 1: We me and Mishka wrote the chre progression like thirty
Speaker 1: minutes before she showed up the Celand two, and it
Speaker 1: was because that's what that room felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: and we were just trying to match how nice the
Speaker 1: room felt.
Speaker 7: Then we wrote in the room, were you going into
Speaker 7: studios or no?
Speaker 1: Never studios. It's always weird, you know. I've been mixing
Speaker 1: engineering my record since I was like younger, and the
Speaker 1: evolution of recording has been dramatically different, you know. So
Speaker 1: instead of spending on the studio, we rented this insane
Speaker 1: like nineteenth century painter studio above Momart for the same budget.
Speaker 1: But then we were in this most magical place you
Speaker 1: can see with two mics and a laptop. I often
Speaker 1: try to record moments and not recordings. Most of the
Speaker 1: songs of mine that have you know, if I think
Speaker 1: about to build a home, ers, thats a citemo. They're
Speaker 1: not great recordings. I'm the engineer, I mean, I engineered
Speaker 1: to build a home. I was like, what, like, I
Speaker 1: maybe one or two years of experience throwing MIC's up
Speaker 1: and what you hear as a moment, so I often
Speaker 1: put more energy into the moment, and then with the
Speaker 1: modern technology, it can be kind of you know, if
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound good, you can be kind of crazy
Speaker 1: with it and kind of make it sound cool. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm very flexible, and you just try to make things work.
Speaker 1: But the moment for me is still what I'm capturing
Speaker 1: before the sound Like I hate sitting around for a
Speaker 1: kick mic. I hate it. There were the engineers diddling
Speaker 1: around for like the for like three hours by time
Speaker 1: to get to the rum doesn't want to play it.
Speaker 1: It's like, what's the point, right, But it's also easy
Speaker 1: to say in a place where you have a dynamic
Speaker 1: eque like EQS and the plugins have made it so
Speaker 1: I can compensate for that crappy micing very fairly easy.
Speaker 1: It is a new thing that you could have that
Speaker 1: flexibility to this.
Speaker 7: Extent, so you can do it all in post. You're not, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: My post would be like, you know, there's this thing
Speaker 1: called fab filter, and it's just like the difference being
Speaker 1: is a dynamic eque. They've existed for a long time,
Speaker 1: but that one is so useful that you know, if
Speaker 1: I'm missing a bit of kick and I see the pig,
Speaker 1: and I put every time that thing moves, jump that
Speaker 1: up five to bees. I can make it sound like
Speaker 1: an eight oh eight if I wanted to, But it's
Speaker 1: still a live take with the live room attached to it.
Speaker 1: So it's quite lovely, very surreal.
Speaker 7: You know, did you ever feel when you were producing
Speaker 7: that you were changing the room in a sense, or
Speaker 7: we're always trying to preserve what you were hearing at
Speaker 7: the time.
Speaker 1: I think what I do is both I want the
Speaker 1: things sound real and then super sereal at the same
Speaker 1: time that you can't believe it's real. You know, like
Speaker 1: if you look at Peter and the Wolf, it's completely
Speaker 1: surreal kind of mixing, but yet you still have the
Speaker 1: room tone. I think Cilenio, it's the way that drums
Speaker 1: and the guitar in I rack in that room and
Speaker 1: you hear the room. I really love the sound of
Speaker 1: that recording. I think it's one of the best mixes
Speaker 1: I've ever made. You know, the cool thing about modern
Speaker 1: music is that when you record like a piano, you're
Speaker 1: recording a room. When you record an electronic instrument, you
Speaker 1: were moving the room and now the room you're listening
Speaker 1: into it becomes the room. So it was like vacuum effect.
Speaker 1: A great example of like that vacuum effect hitting pop
Speaker 1: music with Billy Elis's first record, It's a Vacuum, which
Speaker 1: is coming from obviously a hip hop tradition and electronics.
Speaker 1: So when she did like folk songs inside that tradition
Speaker 1: of mixing, it was like, holy Moly, and her voice.
Speaker 1: It's in this vacuum where you just you and the narrator,
Speaker 1: all by yourselves. It is a lovely thing, you know.
Speaker 1: So I think you know the evolution of missing and proximity.
Speaker 1: I like, I like to play with all the different
Speaker 1: you know, just like the depth of feels. So some
Speaker 1: moments are incredibly electronic. Someone's a very room. I don't
Speaker 1: think I have a I just follow the story, you know.
Speaker 7: The album to me felt very cinematic. So often the
Speaker 7: the mix between say, your voice and any of your
Speaker 7: wonderful collaborators. Sometimes you were singing together, sometimes you were
Speaker 7: singing you were arguing, as you do in your song
Speaker 7: with with Martha Waynwright. But there are times it sounded
Speaker 7: as though one person was in a different room in
Speaker 7: a house. That's what it felt like to me. It
Speaker 7: felt like it wasn't just one's in the background. It
Speaker 7: was like ones somewhere else, someone's around a corner.
Speaker 1: Doesn't make any sense, Yeah, I mean like you look
Speaker 1: at like solantin like Clan, which is seven that French song.
Speaker 1: I wanted to record the first first on a telephone.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably when microphones are the most research
Speaker 1: ever been put into it. But there's this thing that
Speaker 1: when you hear that microphone, it feels like someone's talking
Speaker 1: to you. So the first the first part of that,
Speaker 1: the first verse, and that's recorder on telephone on a
Speaker 1: mic stand and not an offense he mic. So guys
Speaker 1: like so imagine you have two mics and you know,
Speaker 1: the mics are in the room and picking up a
Speaker 1: bit of a Mishki's guitar, a bit of my piano,
Speaker 1: and I put a telephone recording kind of synced to
Speaker 1: my pro tools, and I use my telephone for the
Speaker 1: vocal because it's like, it's not about you know, I
Speaker 1: don't mix to make a song sound good. I mix
Speaker 1: it to make it tell story, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And I come from the tradition of like a good
Speaker 1: example of that historically speaking would be like you know.
Speaker 1: Debus is a classical guy, you know, and he probably
Speaker 1: broke more rules than since Bach, you know, up to up,
Speaker 1: Like from back to Debus, everybody kind of expanded on block.
Speaker 1: But when Debs comes, he breaks like crazy new rules,
Speaker 1: like new voicings, new harmonic structures, new ideas of arranging,
Speaker 1: and partly because he's like, oh I wish the music,
Speaker 1: like did what those waves are doing? Stop thinking about
Speaker 1: music and thought about the narration or whatever, like the
Speaker 1: physical effect of it, and drop like, well, what chord
Speaker 1: is it? And then he broke all these rules by accident,
Speaker 1: and then when you listen to it, it sounds like
Speaker 1: pop music. It sounds very lovely. It's breaking all the
Speaker 1: rules at the same time and you don't even know that,
Speaker 1: but it's changed. You changed music.
Speaker 7: What kind of rules are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Well, like, you know, like usually when you do a
Speaker 1: symphonic structure, you have like you have your theme, it
Speaker 1: develops like much like a pop song or like you know,
Speaker 1: quarterly speaking, uh like when I said that, so what
Speaker 1: those voicings enforced? He like modulates in try tones. He's
Speaker 1: breaking all these like he invented a scale the you know,
Speaker 1: the which is from the Gamalan inspiration.
Speaker 7: So E meant to like always tell me what that
Speaker 7: scale is.
Speaker 1: That's a whole tone scale. It's very open, right, So
Speaker 1: I mean what he's doing is like traditionally in music
Speaker 1: you have like like all the chords make you want
Speaker 1: to go back to that chord. So he's making structures
Speaker 1: that are like the home is now not important. You
Speaker 1: have no pull to the home. You're just being led
Speaker 1: to these new homes, you know. And that is a
Speaker 1: that is a dramatic distance from bach. You know.
Speaker 7: Also, the whole tone scale. You hear that a lot
Speaker 7: in jazz.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they use it. I mean they use all sorts
Speaker 1: of tricks. They do half whole, whole half. Jazz is
Speaker 1: lovely because I mean it's the greatest language to learn
Speaker 1: to learn, like a like a language whre you can
Speaker 1: communicate with others playing music, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's the fastest language to learn and be like hey dude,
Speaker 1: let's jam. Later in my older years, I had to
Speaker 1: go back and learn a lot of classical rules to
Speaker 1: unlearn some of the jazz rules for certain things. Where
Speaker 1: I find jazz, you look really look at a vertical,
Speaker 1: you get a chord, you're like, how am I vertical?
Speaker 1: You're going to decorate this to get to the next chord?
Speaker 1: Were classical? You like, you're looking at it like a
Speaker 1: like six bars from now, the note you played will
Speaker 1: matter as a suspension. You know, it's a much more
Speaker 1: longer play.
Speaker 7: It's a linear.
Speaker 1: But I'll give you an example why that's interesting. So
Speaker 1: if you take like a dashio for strings, like they're
Speaker 1: the saddest string George head Sea string pieces in the world,
Speaker 1: the cord you cry on is B major, which is
Speaker 1: like pretty bright. It's like the brightest chord in music
Speaker 1: you can do, like even worse than C major. And
Speaker 1: that's where you cry. But that's because when you play
Speaker 1: this score, you're kind you're hearing E flat minor. And
Speaker 1: that's because he's setting up a long structure so that
Speaker 1: when you play this, you're really hearing this. And that's
Speaker 1: where the long playing classical music can do something in
Speaker 1: jazz can't, and jazz can do something in classical can't.
Speaker 1: There are two different languages, you.
Speaker 7: Know, now, explain what you mean in jazz how you're
Speaker 7: decorating the chord up top?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I mean, I'm not like I'm a
Speaker 1: jazz expert. I studied roots kids. So like, usually like
Speaker 1: let's say you're like, let's say you're here here, like
Speaker 1: you're in C minor, right, and you're gonna go you
Speaker 1: want to go to you want to get to there.
Speaker 1: So what you would do traditionally is like a two
Speaker 1: five to one, so i'mn't see minor. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this chord. So it makes you really
Speaker 1: want to hear that, which sets up the next chord
Speaker 1: and why that's important in jazz. So if I'm in
Speaker 1: one here, I'm going like I could to get to
Speaker 1: the F minor, I could do like, so it gives
Speaker 1: you these like acrobatic ways of sow and around notes
Speaker 1: to make these really lovely improvisations. But it's very vertical.
Speaker 1: I see, there's a much more vertical.
Speaker 7: Structure, and they're not chord tones there.
Speaker 1: There are chord tones, but they're helping you get to
Speaker 1: the F minor. But they're all little short battles, where
Speaker 1: classical is like over the longer battles for a different
Speaker 1: kind of results.
Speaker 7: Right, and so, but in jazz it's using an eleventh
Speaker 7: or thirteenth.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's you're using it just to like to
Speaker 1: find the most interesting way to get there, Like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, You're like, hey, I'm here and
Speaker 1: I gotta go there. What is the funnest par also
Speaker 1: way I can get there? And then then that's why
Speaker 1: these subsidue chords are these two five ones are there.
Speaker 1: So if you're playing, if you're just going like it's
Speaker 1: kind of boring. But if I'm like, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a nice long way to get there, it's quite lovely,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's that's what's lovely about you.
Speaker 7: And the tension is always like what if he doesn't
Speaker 7: get home? And Jay, what if it doesn't come back?
Speaker 1: It's amazing. It's an incredible language, like it's it's magical,
Speaker 1: and it's a great language to learn. I think first,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a good communication basis for playing
Speaker 1: with other people, and you know what I mean, And
Speaker 1: I think that that's a really good thing to have.
Speaker 1: I think both are really good. But you know, I
Speaker 1: tell you one thing recently, during COVID, I went back
Speaker 1: to a block because a lot of the classical music
Speaker 1: that I do really like really depends on this very
Speaker 1: subtle voice leading, you know, and not to be too
Speaker 1: nerdy or nothing. But you know, voice leading just means
Speaker 1: like when you have like chords, your top note and
Speaker 1: your bottom note high, he gets the next chord. They
Speaker 1: made these rules that if you follow them, the music
Speaker 1: just feels like it moves better, where like instead of
Speaker 1: just jumping to like you would have to be like
Speaker 1: like closer. And when you follow those rules, it's just
Speaker 1: music sounds like it has more depth. And if I
Speaker 1: take like modern neoclassical music that is really lovely, it
Speaker 1: sounds a bit more pop And then I listen to
Speaker 1: the same amount of notes, but it's ava part. Ava
Speaker 1: part makes me feel like in my church in a
Speaker 1: way that's the other ones don't. It's mainly because he
Speaker 1: has a deep knowledge of voice leading. Another great example
Speaker 1: is rich You Sakamoto. Reach Your Sakamoto solo piano work
Speaker 1: is outstanding because his voice leading is outstanding. It's very
Speaker 1: difficult to do well. To do well, it's the most
Speaker 1: difficult thing to do. You know. A good example of
Speaker 1: someone who I think has great voice leading and does
Speaker 1: contemporary classical is Carolyn Shaw. She does She's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite arrangers in the modern day. She does her
Speaker 1: voice leading and the string courotests are magical listen to.
Speaker 7: Part of pop music though, is making those big jumps
Speaker 7: right now.
Speaker 1: The Beatles voice leading is outstanding there. George Martin does
Speaker 1: the reason why you remember all the songs that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like they're they're constantly conscious of they have a
Speaker 1: third in the base or the fifth and the bass.
Speaker 1: And I think the Beatles are the greatest example because
Speaker 1: as you get older and you see that and you
Speaker 1: actually read the charts and you see what's at the
Speaker 1: bottom and the voice leading going on, you realize that
Speaker 1: Paul McCarney and George Martin really knew what they were doing.
Speaker 1: Nickame the voice leading, and it's it's actually a great
Speaker 1: example of like how important it is.
Speaker 7: How do you because if you know that you know
Speaker 7: these languages, yeah, you know classical theory, where is your
Speaker 7: music fit in? Where how much jazz is in what
Speaker 7: you're doing? How much classical? How much pop?
Speaker 1: I don't know where that line starts it begins. I
Speaker 1: know that if I'm doing research and I want to
Speaker 1: introduce elements into my music, I'll do like like, for example,
Speaker 1: there's like the way I make so the way that
Speaker 1: my vocal sits I was very inspired by people like
Speaker 1: Little Sims and Kendrick Lamar. But I obviously I don't
Speaker 1: do hip hop, but that would mean that I would
Speaker 1: have done, like secretly, like you know, twenty five demos
Speaker 1: of that style of music to learn when they need
Speaker 1: to learn. So only two to four percent would show
Speaker 1: up in my naturally inside me for real, and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't hear me like immolating them. You would just hear
Speaker 1: that they had an intrinsic internal, structurally different. So when
Speaker 1: I do it, you don't hear it. I constantly once
Speaker 1: a month take a classical piece apart. I had a
Speaker 1: great piano piano teacher. He just said, like, improvise a
Speaker 1: lot like talking. So if anything I remember for my
Speaker 1: jazz lessons, it's like have a conversation, have like commas,
Speaker 1: have a sentence, leave space for the person to respond.
Speaker 1: It's an organization of like how you communicate. So where
Speaker 1: the jazz line ends and begins is that tradition of communication.
Speaker 1: So when the drummer says something, I listen to what
Speaker 1: he said, and I answer him and respond to him
Speaker 1: as a communication. And when you watch us on stage,
Speaker 1: the one talent we have as a bands were great listeners.
Speaker 1: You know, great musicians, great listeners. I'm constantly responding to
Speaker 1: my bass player, Mishka, constantly responding to my drummer. So
Speaker 1: that part of the tradition of jazz is very, very
Speaker 1: evident in our live shows. But that doesn't mean me
Speaker 1: swing or play sevenths on everything. It just means that
Speaker 1: we found a way to be influenced without trying to
Speaker 1: immolate something.
Speaker 2: After a break, we'll be back with Patrick Watson.
Speaker 7: This is gonna sound like an odd question. Let's hear
Speaker 7: it just playing a pop song at that point, because
Speaker 7: you've done stuff that's closer to straight ahead pop. Yeah,
Speaker 7: of course, does it feel a little too simple?
Speaker 1: No, I look at music like food. Sometimes you need broccoli,
Speaker 1: sometimes you need dessert. Sometimes you need like cheeseburger, sometimes
Speaker 1: you need French fries. It's what you need in that moment.
Speaker 1: So sometimes you need a pop song and just piano
Speaker 1: and voice, no fancy colors. If you put a seventh
Speaker 1: or an eleventh, it totally kills it. It totally kills
Speaker 1: tension of just a simple chord. And sometimes you need
Speaker 1: those colors, and sometimes you need you push yourself with
Speaker 1: a depth that you need the the eleventh and sevens
Speaker 1: to kind of say what you need to say, and
Speaker 1: they're not nothing's right or wrong. It's just what do
Speaker 1: you want to eat today?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to have like pop music,
Speaker 1: super pop. I think like people like Tyler Swift are
Speaker 1: incredibly important music, and sometimes you need that. It's really important,
Speaker 1: and I think it's amazing that people do that, you know,
Speaker 1: And I'm really happy to exist and then equally happy
Speaker 1: that when I listened to like Reagi Sakamotose Weird Noise
Speaker 1: electronic records, sometimes I need, you know, sometimes people need that.
Speaker 1: And when people listen to heavy metal, it's because they
Speaker 1: need that to feel something. They need that piercing volume
Speaker 1: to get to where they need to get to. It's
Speaker 1: not a style of music or a taste. It's like, dude,
Speaker 1: you just listen to what you need to get through
Speaker 1: the day. It's not a competition, you know, Like you.
Speaker 7: Know, one of the songs, Choir and the Wires, I
Speaker 7: did think that was your most Leonard Cohen sounding.
Speaker 1: Oh, I know, it's so funny. I realized that after,
Speaker 1: I mean, I had worked a lot with I'd worked
Speaker 1: on a Leonard record, on top of I produced a
Speaker 1: song for Make It Darker called the Hills and he
Speaker 1: as constantly floats in my life from Montreal and I
Speaker 1: and I had been the last eight years reading a
Speaker 1: lot more than I used to, so my lyrics dramatically
Speaker 1: got better in the last eight years because of that.
Speaker 1: And it's uh and I don't It didn't cross my
Speaker 1: mind until much later, and so I'm like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that sounds so much like.
Speaker 7: How was it to work on that song with him?
Speaker 1: Well, I was far away and it was interesting. My
Speaker 1: mom was like a huge Leonard Cohen fan, like she
Speaker 1: loved Leonard, Like, you know, she would have left my dad.
Speaker 1: Probably would be a good idea even but at that
Speaker 1: point the date Leonard and I grew up from a
Speaker 1: sonic more of a sonic place when I was a kid, right, So,
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen I didn't really understand when I was younger.
Speaker 1: And here's a coincidence. The first time I heard my
Speaker 1: voice was right before I produced that song. And when
Speaker 1: I did that song, I wanted to do that song
Speaker 1: for my mom more than for Leonard to do this
Speaker 1: thing for her, to make her, you know, And she
Speaker 1: had passed away already. Yeah, so I'd heard my voice
Speaker 1: and then I had his vocals isolated. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much how much fun it is to have, like
Speaker 1: to have Leonard's voice all by itself is a very
Speaker 1: special moment. And then when you listen to that, you're like,
Speaker 1: the only thing I can do is kind of ruin this.
Speaker 1: And then underneath I had his like midi saxophones on
Speaker 1: the Casio arrangement that was originally intended for the song,
Speaker 1: which was the reason why I could never connect with him.
Speaker 7: But then before he loved he loved that like cheap cassio.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well then I understood why. And you know
Speaker 1: it's in hindsight, you know, I have mixed feelings about
Speaker 1: how I think about it. But so he was like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to ruin my words. If I put
Speaker 1: like good music. It makes me think of the Saint
Speaker 1: Augustine quote. You know what that is? So right in
Speaker 1: the church when they invented polyphony, this monk lost their
Speaker 1: mind because like everybody's coming to church because the polyphony
Speaker 1: is stronger than what we're talking about and we need
Speaker 1: to ban it. And inside the Council of Trent, when
Speaker 1: the Protestants and the councils were separating the church. There
Speaker 1: was two composers on that panel that saved Polyphany because
Speaker 1: one of the arguments was that singing two notes at
Speaker 1: once make it makes Jesus seem small, like it was.
Speaker 1: People were only going for that, and Leonard Cohen's argument
Speaker 1: for the casio was the same argument. He's like, if
Speaker 1: I make the music any more powerful, you're just not
Speaker 1: going to hear my words. And so when I arrange
Speaker 1: your hills, I decided not to pay attention to that
Speaker 1: as to run the experiment of like to try to
Speaker 1: let the music be as powerful as words, just for
Speaker 1: the experiment at all. I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: do it the same way now in my in my
Speaker 1: in my wiser years, but I did try for fun,
Speaker 1: and it probably drove him crazy, because I know when
Speaker 1: Adam brought it to him, he's like, I was a
Speaker 1: very strong lots of.
Speaker 7: Where's the cassi.
Speaker 1: He's like, he's like, I'm sure drove him a bit crazy,
Speaker 1: But I mean I was running an experiment, you know,
Speaker 1: That's what music for me. I don't get too crazy
Speaker 1: about it. You just run an experiment. Sometimes it works
Speaker 1: and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 7: I've always thought one of the great missed opportunities. You know,
Speaker 7: there are all these Leonard Cohen tribute albums country music
Speaker 7: should do a letter Gone. Yeah, And he lived in
Speaker 7: Nashville for a while. He was very conscious of how
Speaker 7: the lyrics were pushing it for at the same time.
Speaker 7: And you know, one of the best covers of Leonyard
Speaker 7: Cohen is Trisha Year would cover well coming Back to You,
Speaker 7: which is fabulous.
Speaker 1: I think the country would be. Yeah, that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: I mean I tried to even like put, I tried
Speaker 1: to shift the pocket to be in somewhat of modern
Speaker 1: R and B, slightly mor and B on the hills.
Speaker 1: That's what I was kind of trying to do, to
Speaker 1: see if I could make it feel like it kind
Speaker 1: of hit like on that modern edge of the where
Speaker 1: the snare sits and the kicks and it was running
Speaker 1: an experiment. I'll tell you a funny one that I
Speaker 1: did that with. You know, you know last thoughts on
Speaker 1: Woitty Guthrie by Bob Dylan, You ever listen to that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I was not a Bob Dylan fan until
Speaker 1: I heard that once again because of music, and then
Speaker 1: when I heard last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie. It blew
Speaker 1: my mind and I ran it. When I was like
Speaker 1: studying how to mix hip hop as a as an
Speaker 1: educational thing and just to learn what I could learn,
Speaker 1: I did like this strange hip hop version of Lassaus
Speaker 1: on Woody Guthrie, just to run the course and in
Speaker 1: a kind of a double time, you know, like when
Speaker 1: gets stopped and you really fast.
Speaker 7: It worked like effortlessly, I was going to say, with
Speaker 7: in choir in the wires. So it does have this
Speaker 7: uh slight Leonard Cone vibe, if I can say that.
Speaker 7: But then it's got that. I mean, that's got this
Speaker 7: beautiful brass. You you take the brass figure that's that's
Speaker 7: behind theco lyrics, and then and then you you bring
Speaker 7: it out, so it's actual interlude in the.
Speaker 1: Piece that that trumpet player is one of the best
Speaker 1: trump players in Mexico. He's one of plays in all
Speaker 1: the Pixar films. He's a maria he's one of the
Speaker 1: best mariachi players in Mexico, and which I always forear
Speaker 1: his name, and I gotta strut to memorize it. And
Speaker 1: that choir had showed up by accident because I was
Speaker 1: running an audition because I didn't know if the false
Speaker 1: would be able to join us on the next tour.
Speaker 1: So I was going to audition a couple of singers
Speaker 1: to see if anybody want to come sing, and they
Speaker 1: all showed up at the same time. So it was
Speaker 1: incredibly uncomfortable. So I just told Miska. I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: you go in the other room with Aliva write something
Speaker 1: like this. I'm gonna work on lyrics with them. And
Speaker 1: we wrote that on the spot. So we started off
Speaker 1: with all the Spanish words, and we had conversations about
Speaker 1: I always felt when I was in Mexico City, when
Speaker 1: you look at the wires and all the infra structure
Speaker 1: that's in the sky, you just see so much life.
Speaker 1: It looks like this. You just see every millions of
Speaker 1: life just hanging in this like the weight of all
Speaker 1: the wires around the city. So I had presented that
Speaker 1: impression to them and then I let them answer that's
Speaker 1: impression in their own way, and then we wrote. We
Speaker 1: recorded that thing in like two hours, written recorded, and
Speaker 1: then then we brought the Then we brought in the
Speaker 1: next day the horn players just like and then they
Speaker 1: blew our minds on that, you know. So it was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite moments of this record because like
Speaker 1: you're translating different languages and there's like trump playing. I
Speaker 1: just like the whole chaos of it.
Speaker 7: You know, mm hm, tell me about the wandering the wandering.
Speaker 1: We This is one of the houses we rented, so
Speaker 1: we decided to be really funny to rent like a
Speaker 1: really obnoxious mansion in the hills of Hollywood as just
Speaker 1: like the Paris Department. Because we had a show. We
Speaker 1: had two days off, like let's rent once again, use
Speaker 1: our studio budget, rent like something has a pool, like
Speaker 1: totally ridiculous kind of So we were sitting there just
Speaker 1: hanging out and Olive started to play that guitar part,
Speaker 1: who's the drummers, I mean the top player, and I
Speaker 1: was like, that's a really and then we just started
Speaker 1: it just started coming together. So we wrote the music
Speaker 1: part I had the melody, not the words, Like within
Speaker 1: like six hours we had written and kind of recorded that.
Speaker 1: The basis of that the chord structure with Mishka and
Speaker 1: Oliva and the lyrics were like I was, we were
Speaker 1: sitting in this absurdity of this silly mansion in the
Speaker 1: hills of Hollywood. And I've been touring since I was
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. You know, it's a it's a long
Speaker 1: time to tour, and you're always just like this ghost,
Speaker 1: and you're always this wandering kind of observer in all
Speaker 1: these places. And here we are sitting in this ridiculous
Speaker 1: place again as as the observer. And even my earliest
Speaker 1: memories as a kid, I just I just remembered always
Speaker 1: feeling like a ghost in a lovely way, wandering through
Speaker 1: strangers and just being the observer and capturing this thing.
Speaker 1: And so I felt like when that song kind of
Speaker 1: came to fruit, I thought that would be really fun.
Speaker 1: So I just tell stories of being the want, the great,
Speaker 1: you know, the wandering. And then what was fun is
Speaker 1: that they had a Brazilian undertone, and I thought of
Speaker 1: my who's a Portuguese singer, not Brazilian, but singers in
Speaker 1: Portuguese immediately, and she comes from like generations of fado singers,
Speaker 1: so you know, those are some of the best singers
Speaker 1: of all time. So she I think she's like a
Speaker 1: modern iteration of generations of fado, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I thought about her immediately because to kind of celebrate
Speaker 1: the bazilion and the Portuguese kind of undertones of the song,
Speaker 1: and that naturally it had. It's just since I was
Speaker 1: a kid, it just felt like a ghost. And the
Speaker 1: two people that one the two people is not two people.
Speaker 1: Is that when you travel a part of you separated.
Speaker 1: You become two different things, a traveling version of you
Speaker 1: in the home version of you, and that traveling version
Speaker 1: of you becomes your companion. You travel with that, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're high fiving because you're always in crazy places together.
Speaker 1: And I think that song is about being your best
Speaker 1: travel companion as all the different people you need to
Speaker 1: be to walk through all these different landscapes of people.
Speaker 1: Will be in the Deep South in places that people
Speaker 1: have really different radically politically different ideas, will be in
Speaker 1: Asia with different radical and you know, I find that
Speaker 1: as a musician you have this multi pass this passport
Speaker 1: you're welcome through everybody's door, and with that it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you need to agree or validate, but you
Speaker 1: are kind of the observer and of these different things.
Speaker 1: So when I sing, I'm singing about all these people
Speaker 1: that have pushed and pulled my imagination me as myself.
Speaker 1: It's not very interesting. But I've had the fortunate life
Speaker 1: to meet very very interesting people, like throughout my history
Speaker 1: of traveling in remarkable ways that money can't buy, and
Speaker 1: not because the famous. Like I remember this soldier if
Speaker 1: I was in Vietnam with these painters, invited me there.
Speaker 1: I go up to this gentleman's house. It's a middle
Speaker 1: of the ized twelve. He's like you a musician, He's
Speaker 1: like yes. On his wall he had this like a
Speaker 1: blanket over the wall, and we pulled the blanket. There
Speaker 1: was like thousands of vinyls on the wall, and each
Speaker 1: one of those vinyls he had taken from an American
Speaker 1: soldier during the war.
Speaker 7: Oh vinyl, every.
Speaker 1: Vinyls so CCR. It's like he was just from the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War. So what he would do is rate the
Speaker 1: bases or they would play. Yeah. So this guy in
Speaker 1: his wall was a collection of records that he had
Speaker 1: stolen from other soldiers that they had killed in the
Speaker 1: in the meantime our basis they had raided.
Speaker 7: An incredible story. Yeah, and what was the stolen music
Speaker 7: of the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: Why that was really interesting is that I was there
Speaker 1: a week after September eleventh and why that was interesting
Speaker 1: is that a lot of old ladies would come up
Speaker 1: to me saying, that's so sad, because they just assume
Speaker 1: I'm American. It's so sad what happened, and knowing anything
Speaker 1: about that war, I just didn't believe them at first.
Speaker 1: And so when I was with that gentleman with this wall,
Speaker 1: I felt comfortable enough to be like, Hey, I want
Speaker 1: to know for real, do you really feel that empathy
Speaker 1: or is that like just for money? Like what is?
Speaker 1: I just want to know, you know, And he's like
Speaker 1: every time, like, if I carry any anger whatsoever about that,
Speaker 1: it means the war is still happening, and that war
Speaker 1: is finished, and I don't want to ever go back there.
Speaker 1: So it's when the lady feels empathy and she feels sad,
Speaker 1: it's because she has no interest in carrying that war
Speaker 1: another day. And what he was these things, they legitimately
Speaker 1: felt bad, and as you know, it's a very complicated place.
Speaker 1: So it was a very inspiring moment that like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's that's nothing to do with me. I'm a Canadian
Speaker 1: small town boy, but I am a receiver of these
Speaker 1: incredible scenarios like this that become when I open my
Speaker 1: mouth and sing. I carry the weight of these interactions
Speaker 1: in people, you know, I carry the responsibility of carrying
Speaker 1: the depth of these interactions.
Speaker 7: Now, is there a particular song that addresses that incident?
Speaker 1: I mean yes, in a way that I never saw
Speaker 1: the world the same. I can tell you that much
Speaker 1: Big Bird and Small Cage was some same trip and
Speaker 1: that we was a real story, like we went to
Speaker 1: the musician's house. There was six generation musicians and they
Speaker 1: literally had a collection of birds in the back, like
Speaker 1: a hundred songbirds, and literally there was this like really
Speaker 1: tiny cage in the back of the room that had
Speaker 1: the biggest bird all stuck in it. And he's like,
Speaker 1: why would you do that? It's like, if you put
Speaker 1: a big bird in small cage, he sings all the time.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yes, he's going around. Sorry, he's crying
Speaker 1: for help, you know, obviously see. But it was I
Speaker 1: thought that was like a really lovely idea for music,
Speaker 1: and yeah, so I put that in my pocket. And
Speaker 1: then funny enough, I was traveling in New Orleans after
Speaker 1: that in the collision of those two places. Maybe really
Speaker 1: like that really allowed me to give birth to that song.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't usually write right away. I let
Speaker 1: it like sit in my pocket for five six years
Speaker 1: when it's an idea like that big, and let it
Speaker 1: collide with life a bit before I write.
Speaker 7: The heaviest emotional song on this album I think would
Speaker 7: be House on Fire, Yes, or at least that's it's
Speaker 7: hit the highest sort of pitch. Tell me about that song.
Speaker 1: How's the fire? It's complex because I co wrote it
Speaker 1: with Martha, and initially I had that chorus and a
Speaker 1: lot of the ideas of the song before a months
Speaker 1: I showed up and I was hiring her because she
Speaker 1: has like fire and she like fights and I don't
Speaker 1: have that. And then my biggest mistake in the album
Speaker 1: was having too much of an idea to bring to her,
Speaker 1: which in fact was a bit rude in my way,
Speaker 1: especially because the nature of the song was complex. The
Speaker 1: nature of the song, the original intent was, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you have two truths, you know, if you've been
Speaker 1: through divorce or different different parts or different complicated moments
Speaker 1: in your life. And then at one point to those
Speaker 1: two truths matter if it means the whole house is
Speaker 1: going to burn down, you know. And I thought and
Speaker 1: during like COVID and all these like really important conversations
Speaker 1: that we've been have in the last six years. It
Speaker 1: keeps on making me think a bit of my childhood home,
Speaker 1: where you have these like these colliding truths and at
Speaker 1: one point do you want the whole house to burn
Speaker 1: for one to be right? And at what point is
Speaker 1: it better to let two truths exist and not burn
Speaker 1: the whole house down?
Speaker 7: Which was that a feature of your upbringing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, to some extent, I mean I watched them burn
Speaker 1: down the house and in certain ways for certain truths
Speaker 1: to exist, and I don't know if they were they
Speaker 1: were a fight that was worth losing that battle, you know.
Speaker 1: But then that's a very obnoxious subject to bring to
Speaker 1: a woman's perspective because often those two truths had like
Speaker 1: is the way they've been silenced, and like it's in
Speaker 1: fact worse than you. But I was not referring to
Speaker 1: those situations. But she was coming from a totally different perspective.
Speaker 1: So she's like, no, I'm not singing that idea like
Speaker 1: that because I don't have that same experience as you.
Speaker 1: So then we try to find a way for the
Speaker 1: two realities that co exists in the song where we
Speaker 1: can still sing together and she could still have her
Speaker 1: perspective as clear as day, and I have my experience.
Speaker 1: So in the end, it kind of worked out great
Speaker 1: for the song being what it was, you know, but
Speaker 1: it was a learning experience. I mean I felt a
Speaker 1: bit silly after that. I would have tried to bring
Speaker 1: that to Martha. I did it because that melody. I
Speaker 1: was like, no one will sing that melody like Martha.
Speaker 7: There's amazing performance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's just like that's what That's the only person
Speaker 1: could sing the song for me, you know, in the
Speaker 1: way it was written.
Speaker 7: But you know, she does come from a family that
Speaker 7: literally works out their problems in songs. So I think
Speaker 7: she's actually the ideal person, isn't she Because she's the
Speaker 7: person who can sing this song and then her brother
Speaker 7: sings this, you know famously. You can tell the whole
Speaker 7: You could tell the whole family's relationship just jumping from
Speaker 7: one song to another.
Speaker 1: Well that's an amazing Well they're amazing. They're all amazing.
Speaker 1: Rufus isn't a very talented I mean I was young
Speaker 1: in Montreal looking up to these people like I would
Speaker 1: look up to Martha, you know, I'd see her on
Speaker 1: stage and dream that I'd be on stage fly curs,
Speaker 1: you know. So to sing with her is quite a
Speaker 1: lovely experience for me, you know what I mean, and
Speaker 1: very humbling experience clearly. And Rufus I mean, I played
Speaker 1: piano and sing. I thought I'd never have a career
Speaker 1: because he because he did it first, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm on, there's no point of media in this anymore.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he's done it.
Speaker 1: Yeah I gotta quit, you know.
Speaker 7: So, Yeah, thank god he went to write operas.
Speaker 1: Thank God to save me.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I went much more towards experimental music
Speaker 1: at that same drift, probably probably because of Rufus quick,
Speaker 1: probably because I was like, what's the point He's got
Speaker 1: that gig already. I better do something different.
Speaker 7: It's just been delightful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super fun conversation.
Speaker 2: An episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist
Speaker 2: featuring our favorite songs from Patrick Watson, including this new album.
Speaker 2: Be sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken
Speaker 2: Record Podcast to see all of our interviews, and be
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Speaker 2: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with
Speaker 2: marketing and help from Eric Sandler and Jordana McMillan. Our
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Speaker 2: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.