Okay. So, the van pulls over somewhere outside Cornwall, a phone call is made, and the bassist introduces herself: "Hi, I'm Sticky."
Two problems here. What do you really want to know about bass playing, and how do you address someone named Sticky.
Uh, why are so many women playing bass, these days. (Sheesh.)
"Women have to groove, and a bass suits a woman's personality."
How do you mean?
(Long silence.)
"Well, like, I have these great big, monkey paws ... which aren't really good for playing guitar, so Bass suits my hands better."
Weeping Tile is on the road, from Kingston, their home base, to Montreal, where they played last night, to Ottawa, where they play tonight at Barrymore's with local trio Starling ... which is how they came to be doing phone interviews from some place on the 401.
Singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer -- she of the McGarrigle-style, bell-like vocals (which, when they are given an edge can turn powerfully raw), driving rhythm guitar and playful and occasionally mystifying lyrics -- is talking to another reporter on an adjacent phone. Lead guitarist Luther Wright and drummer Cameron Giroux are goofing in the background.
Over the noise, Sticky, patiently sticking with the conversation, explains that Weeping Tile, out on the road to promote their third album, Valentino, is just finishing up in the East, and then will hit the road on a cross-country trek that will take them right over to Victoria.
Then they head down East, take a week off and then infiltrate the U.S.
And that, she explains, is why no one in the band has much of an idea of how well the album -- an engaging blend of roots, country and basic rock that has generally been critically well received -- is doing, saleswise.
Then she hands off to the drummer. (We're working our way through the rhythm section.)
Cutting Valentino, Giroux says, was just about as pleasant as recording gets. The band outfitted a local studio, the Funhouse in Kingston with a load of equipment, and brought "a friend up from Wisconsin," sound engineer Mark Haines, to produce. (They met Haines when they were mixing their sophomore effort, Cold Snap.)
Then they settled in and recorded Valentino in one month, April.
Giroux hands off to Harmer, and she picks up the story from there.
"It was a really fun April," she says about putting down the 13 tracks. Harmer wrote all the lyrics and all the basic melodies, save one, Chicken, which carries Wright's co-author credit. The band was aiming for a rough-around-the-edges sound, she says.
Songwriting, she says, "is always a bit of mysterious sort of thing. I build the words around the melody, which I build on an acoustic guitar.
"The band makes it rock."
