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

Since releasing their latest album Blood, Guts, Bruises, Cuts last summer, The Dudes have been dealt a couple of shady hands, most notably enduring a plethora of injuries. iheartthemusic sat down with them to see just how things are looking (up) these days.

iheartthemusic: I take it you guys are quite accident prone- between broken collar bones and broken moustaches, this past year has been a crazy one for you guys! Tell me, what has been the worst?

Dan: I guess I think mine is worse, but he [points to Scott]  would say his moustache pains were worse.

Scott: [laughs] Well you suffered through pain but I lost my identity! What do you [looks at Dan] think is worse?

Dan: Ya, you’re right. I guess it’s the price you pay when you choose to live the lifestyle we do.

iheartthemusic: Such a great lineup of artists this week [CMW]. Who are you looking forward to checking out?

Dan: Bend Sinister is really great

Bob: Look, I’ve got the T on here

iheartthemusic: I noticed you are giving away a free track on your website. Do you feel that that is a necessary thing to do in today’s dwindling industry?

Dan: Well they [fans] are going to get it anyway. We don’t mind, we have been giving music away forever. I mean the weird thing now is not giving it away.

Scott: You’re in la la land if you think everyone is going to buy it.

iheartthemusic: “Had Enough of it” is a great track on the album with a great guest spot by Lisa Lobsinger (Broken Social Scene). How did you guys hook up?

Dan: Ah, well Lisa is an old Calgary girl and we chilled years ago. We actually tried to release that song like maybe five years ago and it just sort of took that long to get it all together and get it out.

iheartthemusic: Did you write it together?

Dan: No, it’s just that she has the very best voice in Canadian music. We asked her if she wanted to do it with us and she said yes and that was rad. All she wanted in return was one of those bathroom placards (boy or girl) in return. So if you ever see one, just rip it off.

iheartthemusic: [laughs] Tell us what the writing process is like for you guys.

Dan: I write most of the words and then we collaborate.

Scott: Getting loaded in the basement (laughs).

iheartthemusic: When you do sit down to write, do you keep mass appeal in mind?

Dan: I don’t know. It kind of feels more channeled, like the song was already there.

Scott: Definitely not, no mass appeal. We just want music that sounds good.

iheartthemusic: Is there anything you are trying to achieve tonight, i.e.catch the attention of anyone in particular?

Scott: There are some Australians scouting for this festival that is happening in the summer. We can just hope that somebody shows up tonight (laughs).

iheartthemusic: The Dudes, as a band name, has existed since 1996, but the members have changed around right?

Dan: Bob and I have been friends since high school, we were just wee children and now we have achieved our dreams. [laughs]

iheartthemusic: What has been the biggest struggle so far?

Scott: Driving across Canada is probably the hardest part. It is fucking huge!

iheartthemusic: Who is the driver?

Scott: I am.

iheartthemusic: [laughs] Well that explains why you don’t like it! Tell us what your favourite games are to play in the car.

Bob: The alphabet game but that gets old pretty quick.

Scott: Have you ever played Cow/Horse? Crazy good game. [laughs] “cow horse cow horse”, but you know these are all games that come after you go fucking insane being on the road [laughs].

iheartthemusic: Every band has that moment when they realize they are starting to gain momentum and that they must be doing something right. Tell us what that moment has been for you.

Dan: Well I think we have had that feeling from the beginning. It’s like every little bit counts.

iheartthemusic: So I guess you could sum it up as a sequence of mini achievements along the way?

All: Yeah definitely.

iheartthemusic: What are your goals as a band?

Dan: Just to keep doing it.

Scott: You know even if you were to win a Juno or whatever you can still go down the toilet.

Dan: We don’t want to go into the toilet that’s all (laughs). I don’t care where we are until then.

iheartthemusic: Anything you want to say to the i heart the music readers?

Scott: Come to our show, we’d love to show you a good time!

We wish this hard working band the best of luck. Considering the chain of events they endured subsequent to the release of their album, hopefully they will choose their next album name more wisely

interviewed by Catherine Russell

photography provided by Mike Palmer

With tons of new releases set to explode onto the music scene this spring, it is hard to decipher what is listen-worthy and what is not. One way that artists are giving fans (and critics) a taste of what is to come is by sampling tracks off their future releases during their live shows. The Russian Futurists aka Matthew Adam Hart appear to be doing exactly that; showcasing a few songs off thier highly anticipated album The Weight’s On The Wheels during both CMW and SXSW. Matthew caught up with us right before he was set to take the stage during CMW.

iheartthemusic: So, you’re from just outside Toronto, and you’ve been doing shows all over Europe and the UK, does playing CMW feel like “coming home”?

Matthew: Well, we havent played now for a while. Our last real show was in Tokyo and that was a year and a half ago, so it feels great to be playing again and building up again. When you go away for a while, it’s not like you just jump right back to where you were in terms of popularity. We’re having to re-build our status in Toronto. It’s not like the old Toronto where we used to play every couple of weeks; it’s new, and it’s good and it’s humbling and you have to be good and work hard to succeed. We’re trying to do that.

iheartthemusic: Do have a venue or spot in Toronto where you like to play best?

Matthew: I really love the Mod Club in terms of sound. But we always seem to do really well in Victoria B.C for some reason. We always do really great shows there and the fans are so supportive. It’s the small shows that I think they’re really appreciative of.

iheartthemusic: I wanted to talk a little bit about your name. “Russian Futurism” was an artistic movement in early 20th-century Russia that dismissed the traditional, old, static forms of art in favour of those more representative of dynamic, forward-looking, urban, modern life. The parallels between this concept and your music cannot be a mere coincidence, can it?

Matt: Actually yeah! (laughs) My brother took a Russian History class in University, and we used to talk about shit he was learning, and I just really liked the sound of it. It’s funny cause now I get asked questions about the significance behind the name all the time, and I’ve had to do a little reverse engineering and be like, “Yeah, there are definitely parallels”. But originally it was just a name – it was like calling yourself “The Corvettes” – but I liked how it sounded phonetically.

iheartthemusic: How hard is it to pick a name?

Matt: Really hard

iheartthemusic: I mean, I spend at least ten minutes in the produce section of the grocery store trying to decide between red or yellow peppers! I can’t imagine trying to choose a name for my musical baby.

Matt: I say it’s at least as hard as being a doctor (laughs). No, but it’s hard to pick something you’ll like forever. You call yourself something really dated like when it was all “The Vines”, “The Shins”, “The Strokes”, “The this and that” – that seemed to be a real trend. Instead, I wanted to pick something that people would really remember. I’m glad I didn’t put any thought into it at all, it just kind of stuck.

iheartthemusic: In the beginning, The Russian Futurists was all you. It was your baby, a creation that you have developed from scratch. Recently that has changed, and you have added some band members – especially for the live shows. Other than in the literal sense, how has The Russian Futurists changed; how has it affected your sound?

Matt: I still write and record everything myself. It has changed in the sense that, for a lot of years I didn’t like playing live – at all. I was pretty reluctant and got really anxious, and didn’t want to be up there. I was just like, “let’s get this shit over with”. Now that I’ve got a live band that I’m really excited about, it’s cool being up there. It’s like in hockey: you play better in front of a goalie you trust, and it’s the same with the live band now. I really trust them and they’re really excited about it. It’s just a good bunch of new energy in the band, and it’s totally made me more into playing live, for sure.

iheartthemusic: First and foremost you’re a hip-hop fan, so who’s your favourite hip-hop producer? Premier?

Matt: Yeah! I mean I love Premier. Right now I love Alchemist, he’s like, my dude now. There’s so many. I really like early Rakim production, early Hieroglyphics stuff, Souls of Mischief…I mean I’m a really big east coast hip-hop fan, so lots of Premier, even early Mob Deep. I grew up doing that kinda music, makin’ beats like that. My first music gear was a sampler, and still, most of my songs are built around samples.

iheartthemusic: Do you have any plans to make an album more fully grounded in hip-hop?

Matt: You’re definitely not gonna get me to spit a verse (laughs)

iheartthemusic: That was my next question! How come you sing and don’t spit rhymes?

Matt: I do a little bit, but it’s with my little brother. He’s got a few different hip-hop crews, always centred around a theme. Like he’s got one about having the best gadgets, like cell phones and shit, and they’re called “The Mad Gadgets”. We just did a track together about fishing, and ONLY about fishing. So we do hip-hop, but it’s not about a big concept, but something really specific. It’s just-for-fun, but I do the beats for those guys.

iheartthemusic: Back to electro. A far as my knowledge goes, electro is a very studio-specific genre in terms of the heavy production involved, the layering techniques etc. It’s music meant for the album. Are there any aspects of your recordings that don’t carry over into the live performance?

Matt: Well, there’s just some stuff you cannot reproduce. It’s a lot of samples and stuff like that, and even if you have a band to reproduce it all, I’m not crazy about seeing people reproduce everything. We still use backing tracks and samples cause you kind of need to, and I don’t want to totally abandon that. You just need to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not going to create something live exactly like it is on the record. Once you get over that, it’s fine.

iheartthemusic: Well, you have been doing this for a long time now! I mean, you’ve gone from producing in your bedroom to the studio; from just recording to being thrown into the whirlwind of the music industry – with all international touring, the notoriety etc. What’s that transition been like for you?

Matt: I’ve been doing this for 10 years now! And I got lucky that my first record was picked up in Europe, and was over there right away. So, we were really lucky and didn’t really have to ‘pay our dues’ by driving out to like, Saskatoon. We got to go over to Spain pretty early on and do a lot of tours in Europe. It’s kind of been gradual. I take it for granted now because back then, it’s just the way it was for us, and I thought every band did it like that. (Our success) wasn’t out of nowhere, I really like that it’s built slowly as opposed to being really popular for two years and then no-one gives a shit about you after that.

iheartthemusic: Can artists separate the desire to make art from the desire to make it big?

Matt: Yeah, I think so. I’m always 10 steps ahead of what’s happening. It’s never like “this year my goal is to play here”, but you do have loose goals. Basically you just gotta check your email everyday and you get some weird shit, some cool opportunities, and just hope that they keep coming.

interviewed by Brittany Smith

photography provided by Aaron Alleyne

Originally from Manotick, Ontario and currently living in Montreal, Hollerado is a fun group of guys making a fun kind of music. The four-piece band is comprised of Menno (guitar), Dean (bass) and brothers Nick (guitar) and Jake (drums). Seeing one of their shows or hearing the album makes you want to smile and dance… ihearthemusic learned that having dinner with them has kind of the same affect when we all met to feast at New Ho King in Toronto, the night before they left for their tour of China.

iheartthemusic: How did you guys get together as a band?

Jake: Over beers…

Menno: Summer 2007…0r 6… One of those summers living in Manotick, we were all just kinda living on our street. They were our neighbours.

iheartthemusic: Where did the name Hollerado come from?

Menno: It’s imaginary. We had a moving company called Haulerado, it’s true, and that’s where it came from.

iheartthemusic: Your iTunes genre tag is alternative, what’s with that? If you could create a genre tag that speaks specifically to your music, what would it be?

Menno: Alt.Alternative

Jake: Lame. Purple Monkey Dishwasher, classic answer.

Menno: Progressive Christian Rap… or…

Dean: Newskool Funk Opera

iheartthemusic: So who does the songwriting for you guys?

Menno: It’s collaborative. Nick and I do the most, but there are different ways we go about it. No two songs are the same.

iheartthemusic: Do you guys want to talk a little about your album, Record in a Bag?

Nick: We’d love to. We made it last summer…

[At this point we were interrupted by the waiter who came to take orders: a couple Tsing Tao's and a round of waters. Then Menno takes charge and orders up a Chinese feast; his eyes were bigger than his stomach. We ended up with seven dishes! Luckily there were four hungry band boys to meet the challenge]

iheartthemusic: So, you were telling me about recording your album last summer.

Menno: We recorded it in a bunch of different places, so we got to travel a lot. That was awesome! Recording is like the funnest thing in the world. Better than touring.

Nick: Really?

iheartthemusic: Well, you have been doing a lot of touring lately.

Menno: And that’s also fun.

iheartthemusic: Tell me about the Residency Tour you guys just finished.

Menno: We played a different city every night of the week and did that for four weeks. We basically lived in the van.

iheartthemusic: Who came up with it?

Menno: That was us…

[Everyone laughs]

Jake: Sorry to interrupt, but does your recorder have a built-in lie detector? No way we came up with that idea.

iheartthemusic: Would you do it again?

All: Yeah!

Nick: We want to real bad!

Menno: We are actually toying with the idea of doing it in Hamburger…I just said Hamburger… I meant to say Hamburg. In the fall; but just in the one city, and play three sets a day.

Nick: Just to be more like The Beatles. We love them.

iheartthemusic: Do you have other musical influences?

All: Nope… [laughter]

iheartthemusic: Alright then… You were recently at SXSW, how was that?

Menno: Awesome… We were just talking about that in the van on the way over here. It was quite debaucherous….

Dean: But we don’t need to go over it again.

Jake: But we will. There’s this band we were hanging out with there called Magneta Lane; they’re cool and they’re girls. They put up our pictures on the website for SXSW, but the album title was Drunk by More Drunk. I guess that’s how it was for them… It may or may not have been the same for us.

iheartthemusic: So did you find some time to play at all, what with all this debaucherousness?

Dean: Yeah! We got to play three times.

Nick: So that was really fun, and we played a PopMontreal showcase and that was really fun too. We played with some really great bands.

Menno: Really great bands. I love Gentleman Reg, The Boats too.

iheartthemusic: And your next trip…

Nick: China. It’s certainly the furthest away we have ever gone.

Menno: It’s our first time on an airplane as a band.

Jake: I am getting bumped up to Business Class. I am calling that right now.

Menno: That’s fine, as long as you send back that free champagne… [in his best british accent] “excuse me, can you send these flutes back to that scraggly blonde guy, the dark haired gentleman… and Dean.”

iheartthemusic: You’re going with The Stills right?

Menno: No, that’s not happening, they just pulled out last week. They’re all too tired from jet-setting around the world. We’ve played with The Stills a lot in Canada, and it would have been fun, but it will be fun to make new friends while we are in China.

[At this point someone elses dinner goes by.]

Menno: Whoa, pineapple full of beef! Why didn’t we get that? We should have named our album Pineapple Full of Beef. Maybe the next one.

iheartthemusic: Speaking of which, will the next one come in a bag like your EP did and first album?

Menno: No, we’re thinking of moving on.

Nick: …but we’re not sure yet.

Menno: Maybe we’ll put it in a pineapple… with beef.

iheartthemusic: Is there a particular brand of bag you like using best to package the discs?

Nick: Ziploc, seriously… Ziploc are the best. We go to dollar stores some times and we believe that sometimes we’ll get a good batch of dollar store baggies. But they’re never as good.

iheartthemusic: Are you seeking out some kind of sponsorship?

Menno: We would really be down. If anyone out there reading this who works for either Cold-FX or Ziploc, come talk to us.

You can listen to Hollerado’s album Record in a Bag or download it COMPLETELY FOR FREE on their website www.Hollerado.com

Interview by Sam Banack

Photography by Justin Cutler

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