Four distinct songwriters, voices and personalities came together in Nova Scotia in 1991 to form a band that would become one of the most individual to emerge on the rock scene: Sloan.
And being from our neighbor to the north (a land that Sloan is a star in), Detroit has been a familiar place for the quartet: The 1996 single "Money City Maniacs" (from Navy Blues) was a moderate radio hit, and the band's cult status has been a mainstay with albums like One Chord to Another in 1996.
Sloan's new album, Action Pact, recently was released in America by Koch Records, and sees Chris Murphy (bass), Patrick Pentland (guitar), Jay Ferguson (guitar) and drummer Andrew Scott continue its tradition of retro-influenced rock 'n' roll.
The four lads will play an action-packed show at St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit on Sunday, May 23. Go&Do Editor Nick Brandon spoke with Murphy about the upcoming show, new record and the "other" Fab Four.
NB: It's really good to see you guys back with Action Pact and to have you guys coming to Detroit next week. First off, how's the tour going so far?
CM: The tour's going pretty good; the shows have been pretty good. We don't have a lot of money behind this down in the States, so we rely basically on our fan base to come back.
NB: That's actually one thing I definitely wanted to talk to you about was the history you guys have had with your U.S. fan base. It's been interesting to follow here in Detroit because around here at least, we're pretty familiar -- I think it's the Canada connection. Is this one of the better places to visit?
CM: Detroit is essentially a city in southern Ontario as far as we're concerned, in a way. 89X is in Detroit and they've been supportive of us somewhat from time to time. We sort of have random pockets of support, and we have had money behind us in the States. I don't mean to complain. I think there are some bands that have never had any money behind them, so we have benefited from the machine down here.
NB: But considering all of that, it's pretty cool that you guys can continue to continue around here. Your lifespan has been longer than a lot of other bands -- what do you attribute that to that you guys can continue to do the America thing?
CM: We have a peculiar economic situation because we live in Canada and we benefit from Canadian content regulations, which allow us to be on mainstream media and stuff in Canada. We're on TV, we're on the radio, so we're like a legitimate band that's on the radio in Canada. We've been fairly independent a lot of the time, and the drawback of owning everything is that nobody really wants to put money into you 'cause they don't make as much money off you when you own everything. But we have had a lot of luck in Canada, and that allows us to sort of make a living, and then coming to the States is almost like a luxury. It seems like we do it just to throw our money away because we make money in Canada and lose money in the States. But we do it just because we think it's good for us, and we want to maintain a bit of a foothold in all of these cities and just to keep peddling the bike, as our manager says. Maybe we'll benefit from some kind of timing, which will allow us to get to another level. The other thing that's kept us together is the fact that we spilt all the money we make evenly no matter who writes what song or whatever, any money that comes through we split four ways. So that's kept the band together and interested in continuing.
NB: I want to get to some ideas more about that, but let's first talk about the Action Pact album. The last few albums you guys have made have been interesting progressions; the sound has definitely developed. How do you feel about Action Pact, as far as sonically what you guys did?
CM: We made Action Pact as, admittedly, as an elaborate attempt to get out through RCA in the States and saddle up to some powerful people at RCA. All that went in the toilet, and none of that really worked out. There was a regime change at RCA -- we're not bitter about it, but we ended up with a record that cost way too much. So we took a bit of a gamble that sort of didn't pay off, but whatever -- we're happy about it. We took the gamble thinking when's the next time someone's going to want to spend that much money on us? We're all in our mid-30s, the record industry is going in the toilet, we might as well take the chance. We can always go back to making records cheap, which I kind of prefer doing anyway. So we spent a lot of money in L.A. doing this record. I'm happy about it. It's a bit slick for my taste, but we'll make another record. I don't think it necessarily represents a linear progression towards where we're going, it's just something we wanted to try.
NB: I'm curious as to the songwriting process, if that contributed at all to it.
CM: It's just sort of random. On this record we made more of a conscious effort to make a specific type of record than we've ever made. We never really worked with a producer before. On this record we made a deliberate attempt to make a hard rock record, not getting into the eclectic side of what we do, keeping the pianos out of it and the ballads. It's sort of pretty straight-ahead guitar, bass, drums and not really a lot of switching around, which we tend to do as well. It's sort of a streamlined, specific sound. Andrew didn't write songs for this record, so I miss his contributions. Again, I don't have any regrets about anything. We're going to probably make another one in the fall. It was just a deliberate attempt to be slightly commercial instead of just sort of anything goes. All of the plans that we had with our commercial record sort of went in the shitter, so we'll probably be back to making eclectic-style records next time.
NB: This is probably a frequent question, but when I first started listening to the band back in One Chord to Another times, it was all about Beatles comparisons, a quartet that all write songs and sounds like that. What's your feeling on always being compared to that?
CM: I think it's sort of a bland comparison because you can compare everyone to some aspect of The Beatles because they did everything. You could say that "Rest of My Life" is a sort of Beatles type song. Patrick never liked the Beatles comparison, he doesn't even really go that crazy for them. He's more into Motorhead and Killing Joke or something.
NB: Lots of metal bands?
CM: Yeah, he was never really into the Beatles type thing. I think you could be more specific -- I think a comparison to a group like maybe Cheap Trick is more appropriate, a sort of band that didn't really assign itself with a movement. They were just sort of a band writing songs, you knew all of their names, they just wrote rock songs, they had real pop sensibility and they kind of made it with that live album, but they never really made it. I think that's more our legacy (laughing). A lot of people like us and hold us close to their heart, and that's important to me.
NB: And it's almost better to have a good, loyal following than to just explode and have that be it, don't you think?
CM: Yeah, that's true. "Rest of My Life" was a big hit in Canada, a big radio hit, bigger than we've ever had before, but it didn't sell an outrageous amount of records for us. But that's a scarier place to be, when you're like just a radio hit band but no fan base. We luckily had a fan base before that, so it's fine. My goal is to take our cult status and put it all over the world.
NB: This was even more evident when I finally saw you guys live, but you're four individuals and you're all songwriters but you're very much a tight band musically and it seems otherwise. What can you say about the chemistry between you four? Is it a pretty strong one?
CM: Without joking, the decision to split the money four ways was the best decision we ever made. It kept everyone interested. We don't spend as much time together as you'd think, we don't really hang out at home that much, but we get along pretty well on the road. It's different -- we started out younger. We're at different stages.
NB: The other thing when I saw you guys live, I didn't realize you guys did the instrument switching. I knew you all threw in your hand with the writing, but I didn't know that you were going to go back and start jamming on the drums and do that whole thing. Is that something you kind of dig?
CM: I think it's a cool aspect of our band. Andrew is a wicked drummer and he's also a wicked guitar player, so it's good to show off all of our strengths. Again, that's probably part of what's kept our band together, too. We can sort of keep it all in the family … under the Sloan umbrella.
NB: That must be a good thing creatively.
CM: Often times on the record, Andrew will play drums on his own songs just because he's better than me, and then I'll just sort of learn them and ruin them live. But Sloan is supposed to be an outlet for everyone (where) anything goes -- in that way, we're like The Beatles as you said before. You want to do "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" on the same record, maybe it doesn't make sense, but you can't tell me that was a bad idea.
NB: Again, we're looking forward to having you come back here.
CM: Thank you, we look forward to it. I like playing Detroit. I think we're playing St. Andrew's this time, which we haven't played there in a little while. I like St. Andrew's quite a bit.
Contact Go&Do Editor Nick Brandon at 1-734-246-0861 or at Nick@goanddodownriver.com.
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