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

What started with a bunch of friends coming together to play in support of the launch of a magazine, Blues in D have grown into something so much more than an “opening band”. With the tragic loss of band member Dylan Ellis in the early stages of the band’s existence, the remaining members were pushed to continue on their musical path finding even more motivation to continue to do what they do best: bring blues-inspired tunes to the mainstream. Frontman and founder Ben McPhee sat down with iheartthemusic before their set at the PEACE DOT LOVE music festival: a festival that is in support of local anti-violence initiatives that work towards preventing random acts of violence – a cause that is important to the Toronto five-some.Ben shared with us the inspiration behind the group that is Blues in D today…

iheartthemusic:  How did you come to be?

Ben: Myself, Dylan and Oliver ran an online magazine for a couple of years called 2point0 and to raise money to try and get it to print, we started to throw parties. We had this one party in February 2008 that we knew we needed some music for. I had been playing with Dylan and his brother Cody for a while, just dicking around on the guitar and we were like “why don’t we just play”. So we found a drummer and opened up for this band and ended up playing a bunch of blues tunes for fifty people at this party. We named ourselves The BDC Blues Band and that went really well with people suggesting that we play another show. Unfortunately shortly after that we lost Dylan and that gave us more motivation than ever to keep it going. We got a new bassist, another guitarist and started hitting the stone really hard; practicing a lot and doing a lot of regular gigs and charity shows. Now we are Blues in D.

iheartthemusic: Is the “D” an homage to Dylan?

Ben: Absolutely! Our signature stuff is a bunch of blues tunes and we always close the show with the first song we ever played together that we wrote. We started off as blues and now we are doing a lot of our original rock stuff.

iheartthemusic: Where did the blues influence come from?

Ben: I had been playing guitar for a while and when Dylan started to pick it up, the first stuff that I started playing with him was blues music. He kind of gravitated towards that, so whenever we would sit and jam in his basement it was blues stuff. Then when he started teaching Cody how to play it was blues as well. So when that first show came around it seemed like an obvious fit or choice for us to play. I also just happened to have a voice that suited that genre and so that’s where it all started.

iheartthemusic: Any musical influences then?

Ben: I’ve got a bunch; Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden…

iheartthemusic: Soundgarden has not been a name I have heard in a while!

Ben: I love complex music and melody and lyrics that actually, when it all comes together, sound fairly straightforward. I think they are the geniuses of that.

iheartthemusic: Do you all come from different musical backgrounds?

Ben: Yeah. I’ve had training on piano and drums and am self-taught guitar and singing. Cody is self-taught guitar. Andrei and Tura are self-taugh bass and drums. The only one person that has formal training on the instrument they are playing is Nick, our other guitarist. The musical background is the coolest part of the band because I’m really into rock and alternative rock and hip hop and funk. Nick is really into hippy-shit. He’s into Grateful Dead. Cody is into straight blues, Andrei is into alternative rock and Tura is into to funk and Caribbean stuff.

iheartthemusic: We’ve got no punk in there!

Ben: Yeah, there’s no punk!

ihearttthemusic: Maybe I should join the band with the cymbals! [laughs]

Ben: I’ve had a couple of offers to play emo punk stuff for fun and it got shot down pretty quickly. It’s the one genre we can’t agree on!

iheartthemusic: Is it tough for an unsigned band to get noticed?

Ben: It is for a number of reasons. I mean we aren’t really going full bore into being popular, we just want people to enjoy our music.

iheartthemusic: Okay, but is this something that you hope to do as a career?

Ben: I would depending on how much of a pain in the ass it really was. The problem isn’t how easy it is to get your music in the world, it’s just how much noise it creates on the shitty end of the stick. There is so much brutal stuff out there and I hate to put people down who are working really hard, but it’s an industry with a lot of great talent but also a lack of talent. A lot of bad noise gets out there and people hear that and sort of get disenchanted with the entire music genre as a whole. Like, a lot of people base what’s happening with music on what’s on the radio. There isn’t anything that sets people apart which is why you find sex symbols at sixteen years old; selling all the records because that’s an easy sell. The other thing is our genre, we are very very classic rock- we don’t want to sound like anybody else. When we recorded our EP over the summer last year we were so happy to hear the guys in the recording studio be like “we can’t pinpoint who you guys sound like”. That was it for us- mission accomplished. I don’t care if it makes us not sell a lot of records because the idea is that we want to sound like our sound and we want to bring originality to music. I think that right now the instinct is to go with what is easy to hear or popular, and we are going with what we love and think would be original for peope to listen to.

These guys are planning to release a full album by the end of August/beginning of September.

photography provided by Matt Vardy & Carl Heindl

Chicago, Illinois is known for many things: it is the third largest city in the US, it is often referred to as the “Windy City”, it is the place that Oprah Winfrey calls home, however one thing that it is not normally known for is its vast musical talent. Well that is about to change with the growing success and popularity of Chicago-based band Maps and Atlases. This foursome are known for their spazzy guitar riffs and voice-driven melodies that speak stories. However, it is their technical skill that truly impresses, as they finger tap at such a rate that it is hard to maintain where their fingers end and the strings begin. After catching their set at the El Mocambo in June, it was great to be able to chat with Dave (guitar/vocals) and Erin (guitar) for a bit about where this technicality comes from, what’s in store for the future and why their live show can’t be beat!

iheartthemusic: You guys are known to be more of a technical band, so when you are writing is that a major factor for you or is it more of an organic process?

Erin: It’s definitely an organic thing, I mean we all studied music theory but we are at a point now where when we are writing music, it’s not really  something we think about. It just kind of happens and we don’t think about it while it is going on.

iheartthemusic: From everything that I have read on you guys, it appears that your live show is where it’s at. Why do you think that is?

Dave: I think that really from our EPs there is definitely a certain amount of precision that came with the recording of them. We recorded relatively fast and since we did it ourselves, the emphasis was basically on being able to do it as good as possible. When you do hear the record version of the song that you haven’t heard in a very long time and it hasn’t sort of taken on that life, its like “oh yeah this is how it is supposed to sound” because we’ve been speeding it up or slowing it down live. I really appreciate that and I think that we all sort of emphasize the differences between the live show and the record.

Erin: It is always really funny to listen to a song that when we play it live, we play it a lot faster. I think it also has to do with the fact that we can be pretty loud sometimes.

Dave: Yesterday was really interesting because I feel like we played everything way slower than we had ever played it before. We played at this art gallery and it sounded crazy in there because it was such a small room. We also didn’t have a set list and just played whatever.

iheartthemusic: Describe the progression your band has taken musically from each album to the next.

Dave: It has been different for every album that we have done. For the first record and everything that sort of preceded that it was definitely a lot more of us just sort of stumbling upon things- which was a great process. We really never set out to be a technical band and never necessarily thought of ourselves as that at first. The last EP was sort of us acknowledging the things that we really liked doing and the things that we did well on the first EP and tried to do what we knew we did well and expand upon those layers. So songs started out as more simple ideas and then we worked in more layers here and there. With the newest album, its been a really interesting process but also really fun. Definitely the most experimental thing that we have done so far!

iheartthemusic: Really? How so?

Dave: We purposely started off with really simple ideas and then through the actual process of recording it was great to just see how it paned out.

Erin: It’s the first time we’ve left songs unfinished going into the recording process. I mean the song was done with all the melodies, but it was basically like we had bare guitar parts and all the lyrics and then left it up to the recording process to finish it. It’s also the first time we’ve ever had songs that are all strings or chords.

iheartthemusic: So when can we expect that album out?

Dave: It’s actually most of the way done so we are going to try and finish it as soon as possible.

Erin: It will hopefully be out late fall.

iheartthemusic: You recently played SXSW- what was that like?

Dave: It was really fun! We’ve played it the past three years and it has always been super crazy. I think that our perspective on it is that it gets consistenly more and more fun. The first year we sort of had a real serious perspective on the industry and then the past couple of years we’ve set out to have fun and do what we wanted to do.

Erin: We totally embraced the fact that it is the music industry’s spring break.

iheartthemusic: Were there any bands that stood out for you guys this year?

Erin: This year we were down there and then did a West-coast tour right after, so we pretty much got there and played a few shows and then left. We didn’t have enough time to actually go check anyone out unfortunately.

iheartthemusic: [at this point the boys have been discovered by fans who keep telling them how awesome they are] What was it like the first time someone came up and recognized you?

Erin: We are never really aware of that. I mean people find out about our music through like grassroots methods- which is amazing! We really enjoy that. Last fall we did some shows in the UK and we were surprised that people showed up to see us play. I mean we were thinking that that was really weird! We’re not even on a label over there so its all been through blogs and the internet.

iheartthemusic: What was the crowd like in the UK in relation to the US?

Erin: It was really crazy! We played with our friends who are maasive over there and so we played to about 2000 people! It was intense.

iheartthemusic: Since forming, what has really stood out for you as a milestone for the band?

Dave: There have been a lot of things that have been really crazy and fun, but I think the tour in the UK was the most surreal thing that we’ve done.

Erin: It was really crazy travelling like that where you wake up in another country. It was definitely was something that we never imagined that we would get to do.

Dave: Another thing was just getting to play with bands that we genuinely really enjoy which has been awesome. I’ve also never been to Toronto at all so we are looking forward to playing here too. We’ve heard that it’s a great city and thus far just being around this block for the past 45 minutes has been really great. I personally really get a feel for a city based on things to eat. If I came back a month from now I would immediately come here and wherever we go to eat I would be able to maneuver around the city based on that. Already, just driving into the city, it looks like there is just so much good food here.

The first ever Peace Dot Love music festival took place during NXNE at the Koolhaus. It was a musical tribute to Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin who were gunned down in a parked car in June 2008, a horrible crime that has yet to be solved. The fest was put on by 102.1 the Edge, D.O. It! (an organization formed to raise funds for youth violence prevention groups), LOVE and Peacebuilders International in partnership with NXNE (as well as some other sponsors, including iheartthemusic).

It began with DJ duo TMDP. Despite their early start time they had the crowd that was there grooving to their tunes. It wasn’t a large crowd, but that didn’t seem to affect the tunes coming off the turntables as these consummate professionals performed with the same energy as when iheartthemusic witnessed them spin to an at-capacity Circa crew. (If you missed them you can see them at the TIME Festival at Sound Academy on July 25.)

Stereos were met with a plethora of pre-pubescent screams from the throngs of teenyboppers who rushed the stage. Personally I thought it sounded like watered down radio dribble with too much auto-tune. However, I also think the latest album from Black Eyed Peas had too much auto-tune and Stereo’s song “Summer Girl” was number one on iTunes so they mustn’t be doing much wrong (but I’d be hard pressed to pick out what they were doing exceptionally right). In any case, the PG-13 prepubescent portion of the Koolhaus seemed to dig it as they screamed and sang along to every song, including “She Only Likes Me When I’m Drunk” (love the title). Perhaps it’s just a matter of taste… or lack thereof.

Feeling Stereo-ed out, I popped through the rabbit hole into the side room where I discovered a polar bear playing bass, an Elton John-looking lead singer and a percussion apparatus that resembled a mix between Dick Van Dyke’s instrumental outfit in Mary Poppins and a medieval torture contraption. The band sounded like a lot of fun… unfortunately no one was able to tell me who they were (if you’re reading this and you know the answer, let us know).

True to form Down With Webster gave a high-octane performance. This large ensemble band is an amalgamation of high energy electro with large doses of rap and rock. One of the highlights was the when the drummer had a fun video game soundtrack solo (the low light was when one of the silly members threw beer on our photographer, not cool dude!). Even when they experienced some technical difficulties they kept the crowd entertained by busting out a freestyle. And they were entertaining, I even spotted some parents grooving to their tunes.

Simultaneously We Are the Take had a work out on the stage next door. These boys played so hard they were quite literally dripping with sweat. The passion in playing engaged the crowd who seemed fully immersed (or should I say “taken in”) by the band. These guys always put on a good show and are clearly garnering a devout fan following.

Dragonette was nothing less than awesome. iheartthemusic had the pleasure of speaking to the husband and wife team before the show and learned that they were truly there to support the cause, which they spoke very well of [stay tuned for that interview, we talked music, fashion and spilling sauce on sneakers in Japan... apparently a no-no as it takes a while for the smell to go away]. Their performance was dynamic and a highlight for many of the festival goers. One word: awesome!

Closing out the night was USS (Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker). Phew, if you weren’t tired already you would have been by just watching these two guys fly around stage, doing handstands and bouncing with the crowd. Lots of energy and a wonderful way to end a wonderful festival. With so many great performances I look forward to see how they top this next year.

Written by Emer Schlosser

Photography by Carl Heindl

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