I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

This band really needs no introduction considering they are one of the most popular and well known groups to come out of Canada, however Alexisonfire have definitely worked extremely hard to get there. With the release of their latest album, Old Crows/Young Cardinals in June of last year, Alexisonfire appear to be striving for a different sound and feel than their previous records. With this album comes a more tender side to the group- which appears to be working for them! Having recently won a Verge Music Award for Album of the Year, we caught up with vocalist/guitarist Dallas Green to learn a little bit more about how these guys view their success.

iheartthemusic: First off, congratulations on your won at The Verge Awards. You must have felt pretty great!

Dallas: Um, yeah!

iheartthemusic: Well fans voted so that is definitely a testament to your popularity.

Dallas: Yeah, those are the only awards that I truly care about. I just feel like panels of people and associations…I just don’t think that means anything . Music is a very personal preference so when a ton of kids get on their computer and vote for you constantly until you have enough [votes] to win, it shows that they are devoted to what you do and that feels great.

iheartthemusic: Absolutely. This award in particular must feel good since you are being recognized for your latest album Old Crows/Young Cardinals, which has been met with some hasty criticism in the press.

Dallas: Yeah, because it is different for us.

iheartthemusic: It is a little bit different for you so what made you switch up your sound for this album?

Dallas: I don’t know really. It’s our fourth album and I think every record we have made has been very different but this one in particular since George has started to try different things. It has kind of thrown some people for a loop but George spent three whole records screaming his head off and wanted to try some different stuff.

iheartthemusic: And give his voice a bit of a rest I’m sure!

Dallas: Well not really. I mean we just wanted to try something else. We [the rest of the band] constantly get to try new guitar things and use different amps and stuff like that, and George was always just screaming so he wanted to try something different with his voice. I am really proud of him for doing that.

iheartthemusic: Well I guess it is important to keep everyone in the band happy!

Dallas: Yeah.

iheartthemusic: Having lived in the UK myself, I had to ask about your trip to Reading this past summer because I have actually had the opportunity to travel to that place and hated it! What was your experience like?

Dallas: Really? I don’t think we ever played in Reading besides the Reading and Leeds festivals.

iheartthemusic: Okay, well then you are safe! [laughs]

Dallas: Yeah, we’ve played in Leeds a bunch, aside from the Leeds festival, and the shows are always great there.

iheartthemusic: You guys played to something like 45,000 people at that festival in Reading. That must have been incredible!

Dallas: It was amazing. But you know what was better? Because we played two shows that day, one at about 1pm on the main stage and then one at about 7pm on the smaller side stage, it was the latter that was truly incredible. Playing infront of 50,000 people is one thing, but playing for like 5,000 Alexisonfire fans singing louder than the PA means a lot.

iheartthemusic: Was that a defining moment in your career?

Dallas: I think that that Friday night show was the best show we’ve ever played in England. It was just so unbelievable.

iheartthemusic: What has been your favourite place to tour so far?

Dallas: Australia. I love it there! It is actually just like Canada but only hot all the time.

iheartthemusic: I think that Alexisonfire as a band have definitely paved the way for many young musicians trying to make it in such a tough industry. Being able to cross the border and be successful on an international front is a huge feat. Do you see yourself as role models to these young artists?

Dallas: I think that the mainstream looked at us and were like “okay, they are kind of cool and kids seem to like them, so maybe we have to start playing their videos”. Maybe that opened the door for kids to write more than just three and a half minute pop songs for the radio and that’s cool to me.

You can catch Alexisonfire on March 28th when they support Billy Talent at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

Ask any Canadian pop/rock/punk band what music festival they look forward to the most in the summer and they will likely say Cutting Edge . Now in it’s fourth year, Cutting Edge Music Festival (CEMF) has been notorious for it’s all-star lineup of bands, great campsites (alcohol allowed!) and fun activities to do in between sets. The weekend-long festival, which is taking over Bingeman’s Fun Park in Kitchener/Waterloo for the August long weekend this year, is quickly becoming the hot ticket for the summer for any concert goer. iheartthemusic decided to get to the root of why this festival is so popular. How did we do that you ask? Well we decided to grab some drinks with two of the festival founders: Jesse Brown and Carey Kurtin and ask these guys exactly what makes Cutting Edge Music Festival so “cutting edge”…

iheartthemusic: I wanted to start by asking how you came up with the concept that is Cutting Edge Music festival?

Jesse: There is a third person who we also work with named Ryan Kruger. Ryan and myself have been doing Destiny Events, which are electronic music based events for the past several years. We used to put on the World Electronic Music Festival and a couple of years ago we thought that we would try and take it to the next level and break into the rock market. That was the year that the “Cutting Edge” stage appeared at WEMF back in 2006. We had Broken Social Scene and Tokyo Police Club before they were known. So it went kind of well and we decided that maybe it would be better if the following year we made a rock-only festival and still do our other music on the side. Long story short we’ve since dropped WEMF with last year being its final year, and now Cutting Edge is what remains and is what has leapt off. We wanted to do a kind of festival that involved camping and getting away from the city and so we tried to look at what we could do to make our festival more unique and more fun. We wanted it to be more of a summertime memory that people would look back on and I hope that this will be one of the top memories of the summer for people.

Carey: Cutting Edge, I think, stands to definitely take that light. This year a huge piece of Cutting Edge is that we have incorporated the electronic side and given people the opportunity to basically party until four in the morning. So when the main stage is done, we offer an indoor stage that stays open until 4am. It really gives you that extra edge.

iheartthemusic: So literally you are partying for 48 hours!

Carey: Yeah! It gives you the opportunity to do something that no other festival in Ontario offers.

iheartthemusic: With so many festivals going on in Ontario over the course of the summer, what is the one thing that makes Cutting Edge stand out?

Jesse: Ultimately I would like to say it’s the vibe and the participation we get from everyone involved; bands don’t just come and play their set and get of there. With Cutting Edge we encourage all the bands that play for the weekend to stay and camp and do crowd participation things. For instance, last year we had anything from rock and roll jeopardy to a VIP bbq lunch that had Axl Rose flipping your burger to illScarlett doing the 420 olympics and participating with the crowd. Any little extra thing we can do to make this festival stand out we try and do and this year with our new venue we are also introducing a full water park, go-karting track and paintball. You can go for the weekend and check out lots of bands, check out the dance stage and go go-karting all in one.

iheartthemusic: Calling yourselves “cutting edge” music, what is the criteria that you follow when you are choosing bands to play?

Carey: We have had different methods that we have used. Obviously with the headliners you go for it would be someone unique every year, but they also have a similar vibe and even hit the same market or groups of people. We appreciate great music and try to keep a very diverse lineup throughout the years. I mean we have Andrew W.K. this year who is playing his first live performance in five years! I think that’s great! We are really trying to change what’s going on from standard festivals. Obviously it takes some time to grow, but I find it very unique what we are doing.

Jesse: The beauty of doing a festival too versus a one-off live show is that a festival gives you the chance to have lots of bands. This past year we did our search for the next cutting edge artist and we had various bands compete from all over Ontario for a chance to win an opening spot at this year’s festival. This year’s winner is this band called DAME, most of them are about sixteen or seventeen and they push themselves really hard. Again it was just another way for us to discover other bands and  we are looking for bands that want to participate in the festival more than just play and promote themselves. We are looking to grow together and do something as a music community.

Carey: That search is actually how we discovered Gentlemen Husbands as well. They were the first band to play at the battle of the bands and it was a little painful for them, but we were all floored by them and that’s how you discover great bands.

iheartthemusic: So are you looking for more local acts for your festival then?

Carey: A certain amount of Canadian talent I think is very important, especially for doing a festival up here, but if you are trying to push the envelope and are calling yourself “cutting edge” you can’t just stick to one market. We try and get world acts because that is what cutting edge music is all about.

Jesse: We are bringing in international talent from England this year too on the dance side with Lady Sovereign and so we have expanded. We have never marketed ourselves as an all Canadian lineup. We will always have the Canadian element, but we hope to expand and just showcase music from all over; whatever we think is good and what we think people will enjoy.

iheartthemusic: Over the past few years I am sure you boys have seen your fair share of shit happen, so what is a memory that stands out for you?

Carey: The first year takes the cake for sure! We did barricades and everything like that which was fine for most of the day and then Alexisonfire comes on to play and kids went crazy. Our barricades were destroyed by the end of it! Every single person working there that day was in the pit with our security catching people crowd surfing and trying to hold the barricades up at the same time. It was one of the most exciting moments.

Jesse: It was a transition from going from the world of dance music to the world of rock music. With dance music you can just have the regular barriers, but with rock music you have to have the riot control ones. The other problem was that our festival being on the same weekend as Caribanna, everything is gone all over the city and so we were cut short. This year we knew to place the order well in advance so we are covered!

Carey: Last year the fire was pretty cool too!

Jesse: Yeah the campers had a huge bonfire.

Carey: It just showed kids really getting into it and having a real party weekend.

iheartthemusic: You switched up locations this year, why?

Jesse: It was mostly because we were having liquor licence issues with the other venue, so we were told it was going to be too difficult to pull it off there. Our options to have it there would have basically been to remove some of the elements that make CEMF special like the BYOB campsite.

iheartthemusic: Most memorable performance in the three years so far?

Jesse: I don’t think I have one. It all just gets mishmashed together because we are always working.

Carey: Down With Webster was really good last year.

Jesse: We could ultimately keep naming off bands.

Carey: Actually I would say Mix Master Mike was my most memorable moment because we really gave the crowd something they had never seen before. You see the look on all these people faces; it floored them, I mean they were there for Alexisonfire and he came out with a good mash up of hip hop and rock and all that stuff together and people were loving it and crowd surfing!

Jesse: It is fun to kind of catch people off guard where they have expectations and that’s another kind of crossover from the dance world to the rock world where they are always used to a full band setup. This was just a single DJ up there and people were getting into it as if it was the whole Beastie Boys playing.

iheartthemusic: Hopes for the future?

Jesse: We would like to continue to grow and be a festival that is unique; expanding our campgrounds and offering more area, more stages and more styles of music. Of course there is a building factor because you can’t just go from A to E, so we are going through the steps and getting there. It’s fun because every year we learn from the past and what works best and what is different. 

Cancer Bats need no introduction. Originating in 2004 with Liam (vocals) and Scott (guitar), these guys have since toured all over the world, shared the stage with the likes of Alexisonfire  and even won some awards in between. Their debut album, Birthing the Giant, was met with huge acclaim and now with the release of their second album, Hail Destroyer, there appears to be no stopping these guys! iheartthemusic caught up with Liam while he was in Toronto for the Rockstar Taste of Chaos Tour and asked him how he felt about being the only Canadian band on the tour.

iheartthemusic: So how’s the tour going so far?

Liam: I really just want it to be over. I mean, we played two and a half months of tour and we finally get to our hometown only to have to leave the next morning? Boo! Although, Montreal is going to rip! The last time we played there it was crazy.

iheartthemusic: Really? A good fan base there then?

Liam: Montreal is a tough city. We started the band when I was living there, actually. Originally the band wasn’t supposed to be full time at all because Scott was playing in another band and I was obviously living in Montreal, so we thought that there was no way that we were going to make it happen. Then the band started to do really well, so I was taking the bus and the train to Toronto every weekend. The good thing was that it didn’t deteriorate my pocketbook since Scott was working for VIA at the time, but it did deteriorate my relationship. In the end my girlfriend broke up with me because she hated the fact that my band was so important to me. Fast forward to now, and my band rules and I have a girlfriend who is amazing!

iheartthemusic:  Well it sucks to be the ex-girlfriend then! Being the only Canadian boys on this tour, what was the response like in the U.S.?

Liam: There were definitely a lot of kids who had never heard of us before, or maybe just listened to our MySpace, so in a way we took on every night trying to impress people and really put the word out.

iheartthemusic: When you returned to Canada it must have felt like a huge homecoming then?

Liam: It was so wicked because we were getting hometown response in every city, so for us it was really nice to even just show the other dudes on the tour that our band is worth something. We also did a bunch of off-dates too, like Thunder Bay a few nights ago, that weren’t part of the tour. So for those dudes to see us in the smaller towns and still have a good following, I’m just like, “ya, we own Canada”. It’s wicked because it makes all that hard work that we put into it worthwhile so I’m stoked.

iheartthemusic: Having toured quite a bit, what place has surprised you the most?

Liam: I will say that the craziest thing that happened was on our last tour, we went to Helsinki, which we had never been to. You have to take a 10 hour ferry to get there and we show up and it ended up being the best show of our tour.

iheartthemusic: Why was that?

Liam: Kids knew the words to the songs and were super psyched that we were playing and didn’t even care about the headliner. They bought tons of merch too, so all over the place it was a great show.

iheartthemusic: How did you decide on your style of music?

Liam: When we were starting the band we were really into a lot of rock, hardcore stuff. So there were a lot of bands that were doing this kind of thing at the time. It wasn’t like I wanted to copy those bands, but I was getting really excited about that style. We were seeing all these bands doing the hardcore thing, but none of it was done in a way that we wanted to have it. So we had all these ideas for our band to begin with and then we started jamming and it worked and it went from there.

iheartthemusic: You have mentioned before that from your first album to the one you recently released, you have matured a lot. Care to elaborate on that?

Liam: I think from touring so much everyone had really stepped up their game. Also, the fact that we were playing with so many amazing bands and were looking at these dudes thinking that we wanted to play just as good as or better then that. I mean, all across the board, Mikey, Scott and I had that same vibe without even talking about it. I wanted to step up with my vocals, not only just singing, but writing-wise too. So all of us were super excited to prove what we could really do it, which I don’t think we had done with the first album.

iheartthemusic: Well, the first record definitely garnered a lot of attention and you ended up winning two awards: one at the Indies and another at the MMVAs!

Liam: That’s the thing. I don’t discredit that album at all. I think there are some really great songs on it and am psyched on how it turned out, but I think if we were to rerecord that record now I would probably be a lot happier with how it sounds. I know that there were parts on that record where I couldn’t yell as loud as I wanted to or even when we got George [Alexisonfire] to come in and do “Pneumonia Hawk” he blew me away! So he dominated and I was just like, “fuck me, really dude”. I love him and was so psyched and if anything that really made me want to step up even to the point where we are finishing our record and I already want to get better. I’m stoked now because I feel like I can hold my own as singer against those dudes.

iheartthemusic: So was there any reasoning behind getting all these guest spots on your album?

Liam: They had been such a big part of our band. Obviously the Alexisonfire guys have helped us out so much in terms of where we are now by just always throwing us a bone. They took us on tour for three months when Birthing the Giant came out. At the same time you want to have your friends come along and be a part of it because you are excited.

iheartthemusic: Do you feel that there is a sense of community amongst bands?

Liam: I would in Southern Ontario for sure, but also more so in Canada in general. There aren’t a lot of full-time bands in Canada so everyone wants to help each other out as much as possible. It’s tough everywhere right now. I mean, we benefited from the help we got from other people so we want to help out the friends that are doing the same thing or want to be a serious band.

iheartthemusic: With this  new record Hail Destroyer, you mention that you were writing about a lot of personal things, so did that make it easier for you to write?

Liam: To realize that when you write something intensely personal how much other people realate to it is incredible. So many people have come up to me and been like, “that song ‘Regret’ means so much to me”. That’s a really intensely personal experience that I had, so the fact that all these other people had a similar thing is cool.

iheartthemusic: There seems to be a lot of death associations in the lyrics and song titles, is this indicative of the style of music you play?

Liam: I think there is going to be a lot of darker aspects and that is something that I am definitely stoked on. Thinking about it, I wonder if that is something that always goes along with it. Like look at the fact that a lot of punk rock kids skateboard, it’s just like something that happens to go along with it. I think that that’s just a part of the genre that you just classically write about without getting cliché or hung up on it. I do realize that I’m guilty of it as well.

iheartthemusic: So what’s up next for you guys?

Liam: We are going to write our new record this summer because, basically, once we get finished touring we are going to come home and write it for the next few months and put it out sooner than later and then keep touring.

photography provided by Patrick Moore

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