Four or five years ago in Toronto, there were a handful of bands that ruled the local club scene: kind of group that could do the Lee's - Clinton's - Ultrasound weekend circuit, packing the bars month after month with the kind of twentysomething beer drinkers club owners count on to pay the bills. Back then, sitting in Clinton's on a Friday night, you might have seen a girl called Sarah Harmer sling on a guitar and take the mic for a song called "Don't Get Your Back Up". It would ache from those guitar strings, as the girl with a not-quit-country twang poured her soul out for a band called the Saddletramps, then sat back, smiled, and said "Thank you". She had a megawatt smile.
Flash forward to 1995: I'm on a train to Kingston, chasing a conflux of thunderclouds. It's a miserable morning in the fall, and as we snake our way around the Great Lakes, the fire-coloured leaves of the trees are brilliant against grey sky and greyer ground. Every ten miles or so, the chase of clouds, thunder and sun throws a rainbow in the sky above the treeline. I see six arcs of colour, seven, half of an eighth as the train rolls into Kingston's station. Three quarters of Weeping Tile are waiting in the one-room station for me, their coat collars turned up against the cold. Sarah Harmer, this band's singer and songwriter, takes one look at me and pegs me as the one she's been waiting for.
"Hi," she smiled. "I'm Sarah." For a greeting committee, she's got a smile that could melt snowflakes. And today, the day of the release party for her band's major label debut, Cold Snap, and a day where being this country's "next big thing" is starting to sink in, she's got a few reasons to grin.
"Is it okay of we take you home?" Sarah asks. "Don't mind all the junk in the van." "Home" is actually her older sister's place, which is a short drive through the rain. As Weeping Tile's bassist, Mary's downtown home (and the practice space two flights up) is the unofficial band headquarters. Today, it's Martha Stewart central, as the band and friends are cooking up spanakopita and garlicky hummus to serve at their record release party.
"We were out last night at a local jam," explains guitarist Luther Wright (who will be called Lou, Luther, and Ross by various band members over the next several hours), "and everyone got invited to the party that hadn't already. I guess we didn't want to offend anyone."
The more the merrier to celebrate the fact that this Kingston foursome (rounded out by newest member "Cap'n Cam Giroux" on drums), with barely two years and an EP under their belts, signed to Warner for an impressive three-album deal (with an option for two more). Also, Tag, the upstart Warner seed label in the U.S., is releasing Cold Snap across America in February. Sure, it's cool, but how's it happen? Luther yawns ironically at my "Interview 101" question.
"They gave us money; we made an album," he dismisses it.
"Well, actually," Sarah and Mary correct him in unison, "we made an album, then they gave us money."
The album was a follow-up to an independent, untitled cassette the band used to sell from the stage at gigs. As part of their deal, Warner also picked up the EP (which the band coyly christened eepee) for distribution in remastered, CD form. For fans new to Weeping Tile, the two simultaneously-released products have caused a little confusion.
"Yeah, I was in an HMV in Montreal," Cam tells his bandmates, "and they had the CD EP racked way at the back, in the independent section!"
Sarah Snort with laughter. "Wrong. We're very dependent."
That's probably the closest thing to cynicism you'll hear from this group of emotionally grounded artists. In going from EP to LP, their sound became a little more sophisticated, a little more oblique, a little less heart-on-your-sleeve but one small detail connects the two products: the hand-drawn logo of the band, scribbled by Sarah in her distinctive scrawl.
"We were almost done the design [for Cold Snap]," Sarah recalls, "and I remembered: 'oh shit, the cover!' I started drawing out our name over and over, and finally Richard [the designer] said to me, 'Okay, Sarah. Is this the one? Can we scan this one?' And I said, ok It didn't sink in until later that this was the one that would become our image, our logo. That we'd see it over and over on posters and storesÉ"
Her voice trails off, half-embarrassed that she's so enthusiastic about this little detail. But it's that attention to the small points of their craft that reveal Weeping Tile's refreshing lack of artifice or ego. The new album comprises 12 songs and two interludes: a crackling, diverse selection of songs that run the gamut from acoustic folkpop to more rocking electrical riffs. All of it is anchored by the distinctive voice of the younger Harmer, and her oblique lyrical musings that can be both ethereal and quietly endearing. The album's title track is one of the strongest blends of sweetness and dark in the dozen.
"I used to always have this recurring dream when I was a kid that little boys were burning our house down," Sarah explains of the song's genesis. "Right outside our window. I actually wrote some of that song back at my mom and dad's farm outside of Burlington - and I wrote some of it at your parent's place, too," she says, gesturing to Luther. "I guess it reads like a pretty private song, but it's really fun to play live. It's a song with so much energy." With crackling puns on phrases like "fire drills" and "frigid air", Sarah manages to make every word - even "mausoleum" - sound practically perky.
That farmhouse that never quite did get burned down during Sarah and Mary's childhood happens to also be the site of the album's first video for the song, "U.F.O. Rosie", an oblique tale of extraterrestrials and January heat in the American south. Out there in the Harmer cornfields, the band plays in a smear of rural discontent, some intangible brooding irony beneath the surface. It's that somehow "Canadian" quality to their earnest rock that puts them in the league of artists like (ok, it has to be said) fellow Kingstonians The Tragically Hip, or Blue Rodeo, or Gordon Lightfoot. In a country that often looks south for its rock 'n' roll mythology, Harmer and co. spin tales of hiking on the Canadian shield or Westray mining disaster.
"It's not intentional patriotism," Sarah muses. "It's more of a belief in the truism that you should write about the familiar."
"And it can be exciting," adds Luther, warming to the train of thought. "For instance, reading Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, set in Toronto. I remember reading that novel for the first time, and having that recognition - yeah! I know where this is! - and in getting excited about that feeling, I realized how much I am missing that, by being exposed to so much American culture. There's that sort of insider's pleasure you can get from stuff set in a town or place that you know, that is familiar."
Next frame: the release party is held in a friend's hair salon on a downtown Kingston corner. The vegetarian buffet is spread out on an island among the mirrors and styling chairs. Sarah and Mary's parents were flown in from their farm by a Harmer brother-in-law, and assorted aunts, uncles, grandparents, and kids mingle in the salon. When the band takes the makeshift stage and barrels through most of the new disc, even the grandparents are tapping their toes. I corner Lou after the performance. "Sure, we're happy to be throwing this party here," he grins when I mention the noticeable absence of..shall we say, industry weasels. "These are the people we care about: the people who come listen. I don't want to play for people who are just showing up for the beer." I wonder if the band has any visions of grandeur on this night, when they're glowing under a pretty warm spotlight.
"It's not brain surgery, you know," Luther teases. "I think sometimes music is made to seem more philosophical or 'deeper' than it really is. After all, it's only rock 'n' roll, and rock 'n' roll is constantly being displaced and renewed."
"Also, I think you need to examine the assumption that music has to be huge for the masses in the first place," Sarah says. "Music can be regional. Small bands can entertain people within their own communities. There don't have to be supergroups, except that we're conditioned to expect them."
Final frame: One month later, Weeping Tile are on stage at Toronto's Phoenix club, playing the final date of a tour with the Skydiggers. The club is packed with those twentysomething beer drinkers that club owners count on to pay the bills.
"This song is for Bruno Gerussi," announces Sarah, before the band rips into the Cold Snap track, "Good Fortune". It was just a few days before this gig that the famous Beachcombers actor passed away on Vancouver Island, and I remembered what I had heard CBC Morningside guy Peter Gzowski say about Gerussi's death.
"If this were the United States - and I mean this in the best possible way - we might never have heard of Bruno Gerussi," Gzowski reflected. "But in this country, we Canadians value achievement over personality or fame."
Well, I figured, by those standards of Canadian culture, Weeping Tile are already better than famous.
