Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Author: Kaitlin Fontana

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Fresh at Twenty Kaitlin Fontana

ECW

Copyright © Kaitlin Fontana, 2011 Published by ECW Press 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2 416-694-3348 / [email protected] All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The people interviewed for this book recreated experiences, places, people, and organizations from memory and to the best of their abilities. Taking the view that how we remember things can be as interesting as what actually happened, the author kept these memories largely intact. Rock ’n’ roll has never really been about fact, after all. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Fontana, Kaitlin Fresh at twenty : the oral history of Mint Records / Kaitlin Fontana. ISBN 978-1-77041-004-6 Also issued as: 978-1-77090-053-0 (PDF); 978-1-77090-052-3 (EPUB) 1. Mint Records—History. 2. Mint Records—Interviews. 3. Record labels—Canada—History. I. Title. ML3792 F67 2011

338.7’617802660971

C2011-902831-X

Editor: Jennifer Hale Cover and text design: David Gee Typesetting and production: Rachel Ironstone Printing: Transcontinental 1 2 3 4 5 The publication of Fresh at Twenty has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, and by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. We also acknowledge the ﬁnancial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit. The marketing of this book was made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Printed and bound in Canada

Contents Foreword

By Nardwuar the Human Serviette

v

Introduction

Let’s Wreck the Party: 1980–1986

vii

Part One This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

1

Chapter 1

To Have and Have Not

3

Chapter 2

A Terrible Thing to Taste

21

Part Two cub Pop: 1992–1997

53

Chapter 3

Oh La La Ooo Eee Cha Cha

55

Chapter 4

Locked and Loaded

87

Chapter 5

How Does that Grab You?

Part Three Lookout! Below: 1994–1997

105 119

Chapter 6

The Smug in Smugglers

121

Chapter 7

Alternative Is Here to Stay

136

Chapter 8

Get Outta Dodge

156

Part Four All the Wheels Fall Off Except for One: 1997–2000 Chapter 9

171

The Virginian

173

Chapter 10 You Gotta Go

188

Chapter 11

201

Party Girls

Part Five Mass Romantic: 2000–2005

211

Chapter 12 It Came Out Magical

213

Chapter 13

255

Housewrecked

Chapter 14 There Is Nothing I Can Do

283

Part Six Oh Be Joyful: 2005–2010 Chapter 15

Two Places

303 305

Chapter 16 Failsafe

331

Chapter 17

350

They Know Me

Epitaph

369

Discography

371

Acknowledgements

379

Sources

381

Photo Credits

385

Foreword by Nardwuar the Human Serviette

Seeing as this here book, Kaitlin Fontana’s Fresh at Twenty, is a massive oral history of Mint Records, I wanted to begin the foreword with a couple of quotes. Thankfully I will not have to transcribe them, as others before me have preserved them for history. Who might these characters be? Ladies and gentlemen, ﬁrst up in our examination of Mint Records, let’s drop the needle for Aleister Crowley and Andy Warhol: “Vancouver presents no interest to the casual visitor.” — The Confessions of Aleister Crowley

“Nobody in Vancouver buys art.” — The Andy Warhol Diaries

As you can see, Mint Records never really should have stood a chance. Both Satanists and art legends alike would have found the notion to base an indie record company out of Vancouver frankly stupid. But Mint Records is still in the game after 20 years and 160 releases. Who can we turn to put this all into perspective?

v

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

I’m going to now dig back into my own vault of interviews and pull out a few words from a conversation I had with none other than Snoop Doggy Dogg: Nardwuar: So you made up with Tim Dog? Because he had that song called “Fuck Compton,” which really wasn’t too nice to the West Coast. Snoop Doggy Dogg: No, this was a different Tim Dog. The other one that you’re talking about, he ain’t even in the rap game no more, so he’s not a problem. That, to Snoop Doggy Dogg and me, Nardwuar the Human Serviette, is the most important thing of all: keeping “in the game.” While dozens of indie labels that were contemporaries of Mint Records have dropped off the map, Team Mint has forged ahead, with no major label funding, distribution, or backing, to create a legacy of deﬁning moments in the Canadian rock sphere. In that momentous occasion department, I will never forget that Mint Records has helped secure gigs for my band the Evaporators with everyone from Anal Mucus to Sleater-Kinney to the Whack Attack Puppet show. If that ain’t enough to whet your appetite and start bustin’ open Fresh at Twenty, here’s another personal Mintish-related momentous memory. Ready? Flipping the dials one night just in time to see Carl Newman of The New Pornographers on John McEnroe’s shortlived TV show doing “The Witch” by Tacoma (home of Neko Case!), Washington’s legendary garage rockers the Sonics. What made this even more incredible was that McEnroe was actually playing guitar with Carl. And the Rev Al Sharpton was a special in the house! Seeing as how Sharpton is a deeply religious man and not so friendly with Satan, and Carl Newman lives in New York City, home of Warhol’s Factory, let me now repeat the opening line in Cub’s “My Chinchilla.” “Satan sucks, but you’re the best!” R.I.P. Andy Warhol. R.I.P. Aleister Crowley. Let’s hear it for Vancouver music, art, and you guessed it, Mint Records!

vi

Introduction Let’s Wreck the Party: 1980–1986

Heavens to Betsy, Come on let’s see, What could be worse than the wheel of history? — “The Body Says No,” the New Pornographers, Mass Romantic

vii

There is a mythical Vancouver that we who came to this city late in the game mourn, though we never lived it — a Vancouver with a scrappy attitude, a Vancouver that sprang eternal and loud from deep in the West Coast’s bowels. A Vancouver that not only heard what was happening out there in the world but felt it, too, even more acutely than other places. An isolated, eager-to-prove-itself, brash Vancouver. A Vancouver that was messy and proud of its mess. A Vancouver perched on the precipice of a new era. A Vancouver that celebrated both its beauty and its darkness. And from this Vancouver, the Vancouver sound. I speak, of course, of Loverboy. Okay, no, I don’t. I speak of punk. I speak of Young Canadians, Subhumans, and, most proudly, of D.O.A., held up across the board as the discerning punk’s punk band, even all these years on. There are other great punk bands from here, too, of course. There was a deﬁnitive punk period in Vancouver, which this book is not about, but from which the main parties in this book got ideas, which led to thoughts, which became actions. Let’s just say that punk provided the prime directive: make good music happen here. Vancouver’s punk era properly began when the then actually alternative local paper the Georgia Straight published its punk issue in 1977, placing hometown hero and D.O.A. leader Joey Shithead on the cover, his name at the end of a list of scene luminaries like the Clash and Patti Smith. (If you’d like to read about this era, I recommend Mr. Shithead’s awesome book, I, Shithead.) While punk was

ix

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

already happening on its own, most notably in venues like the Smiling Buddha downtown and the WISE Hall, this recognition of its residence on our shores (and of D.O.A.’s preeminence in the hardcore scene) began a golden age in this city that would last as long as the movement itself. It helped that D.O.A. toured the crap out of this continent, demonstrating Vancouver’s potential for punk dominance to people from L.A. to

NYC

and back again. It was the ﬁrst time any music from

Vancouver could really lay claim to ripping into and changing a scene from the inside out. Young Vancouverites in the city at that time couldn’t help but be drawn to the energy this music brought. It was at some of these early punk shows that Bill Baker and Randy Iwata, the eventual founders of Mint Records, would be moved by the power of a great band, a great show, a great moment. These shows were also attended by people who would go on to form bands, write about music, host television and radio shows about music, and produce and engineer great records. It’s not unlike that seminal moment in Manchester’s music history (which, incidentally, was around the same time) — when the Sex Pistols played a show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall to an audience that (supposedly) included eventual members of the Buzzcocks, Joy Division, the Smiths, and the Fall. Like hundreds of cities around the world, Vancouver was aligning itself with punk’s force and spirit, and thousands of minds across this city were being warped and changed by it. At the same time, wherever punk was taking root, there were those — speciﬁcally, those with power and money — who saw the movement’s danger, chaos, and ability to rally the youth. These people, called “adults,” as dirty a word as there ever was, pushed back on punk, trying to wrench the power from the broiling anarchy that threatened to take hold. In Vancouver, this manifested in a few ways, most notably in the descent of Transpo, a.k.a. Expo ’86, the transportation exposition, which was built to put a shiny, industrially progressive face on the city. In the months leading up to Expo, which fell on Vancouver’s 100th anniversary, our leaders stripped resources away from the city’s most destitute people to put toward

x

Let’s Wreck the Party: 1980–1986

impressing the world. With international recognition comes international money, and Expo’s organizers wanted to capitalize on that potential, no matter the cost. So began the towers of glass, the displacement of the addicted and mentally ill, the end of a proudly messy era and the beginning of a shamefully messy one. Punk’s death in Vancouver — spiritually, if not ofﬁcially — occurred when Expo ’86 left its massive footprints across the sleepy little port city Mr. Shithead and his companions called home. Of course, since then, Vancouver has made and continues to make terriﬁc music; it produced and still produces great acts. It’s just that there’s something about that time we cling to, a powerful moment in our city’s cultural history that we just know we’re never going to get back. The more time we spend here, trying in vain to save our beloved venues, publications, and record stores, the more obvious it becomes that that time is gone. We can feel the power of it still, as though it’s been sealed into the streets and live music venues that used to throb and thrash with great, weird, scary music and now merely hum with the sounds of lattes being made, or condos being erected, or — horror of all-too-common horrors — DJs spinning Top 40 music. Watch us, the desperate culture seekers, as we gravitate to the east side from our safe little basement suites near the university and the beach, not just because of the cost of living but because of some trace of a more interesting city we keep trying to create or unearth (and sometimes, boldly if misguidedly, legislate through city hall). But we won’t ﬁnd it among the towers of glass and concrete — it’s gone. Trucked out of here on the last tour bus. Disappeared quietly like the toxic soil that used to be underneath all of Yaletown. Cleansed and scrubbed and sprayed down to a gleaming, boring sameness. It’s not just us, either: cities around the world are clawing for some semblance of their great music past. Back in Manchester, cornerstone new wave and punk venue the Haçienda is now condominiums, the only sign of its former life a timeline of shows engraved in tiny font across a side wall. And let’s not forget that CBGB

xi

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

is now an upscale clothing store. No, Patti Smith does not shop there. Yes, the demise of our dirty and interesting collective punk past is total. Ah, hopeful Vancouverites say, but what of grunge? Punk was not the most recent interesting music movement, and not even the one nearest to us! Grunge happened just south of here, yes? Grunge was a big deal! Yes, it was. And don’t we know it. Nothing kills the potential of a great emerging scene faster than a nearby new scene beating it. Seattle having grunge is like your older brother being a football star — Vancouver never stood a chance at impressing mom and pop with big brother lobbing all those minor-chord classics through the pipes. This book is not about grunge, either. But something interesting happened while grunge was growing just beneath us. While everyone was pawing at Seattle, Vancouver was suddenly free to be whatever it wanted. And thank god for that, because it was in grunge’s great shadow that Vancouver grew an interesting little personality of its own. Before now, you haven’t heard much about this time in pop music history. But you have heard the music. The New Pornographers, Neko Case, cub, the Organ, the Evaporators, the Smugglers, Young and Sexy, the Pack A.D., and many others have sprung from Vancouver’s pop music moment, a moment created — quietly, effectively, and indelibly — by Mint Records, whether or not they’d like to admit it. Bill Baker and Randy Iwata, who founded the label, would never agree that they’re so inﬂuential. That would be a lot of pressure, after all, and they have other things to worry about. What it comes down to is this: there is a huge risk in consigning our best music to that punk moment and to the white-ﬂag waving that consignment implies. The risk is that we stop looking at all the great music and musical moments that have happened here since. Vancouver’s very good at looking out and saying things aren’t good enough here; we’re a young city, it’s what young cities do. But a recent

xii

Let’s Wreck the Party: 1980–1986

rash of writers and artists have rejected that notion (Doug Coupland, Charles Demers, etc.) and I would like to join them. Fresh at Twenty: An Oral History of Mint Records is ﬁrst and foremost the story of an independent record label and the people who helped build it. But it’s also the story of a time in popular music and a place in that time — namely, Vancouver through the 1990s and 2000s. Mint not only shaped the sound of Vancouver at the end of the 20th century but also helped usher in a golden age of Canadian popular music that still thrives today (the likes of which the country hadn’t seen for a long time before that, perhaps even since the Band’s rise to success in the 1960s). These days, Canada is considered a boomtown when it comes to producing the best music, and Mint Records deﬁnitely played a yet unheralded role in making Canadian — particularly western Canadian — bands and musicians both accessible to tastemakers across the world and ready to take on the world’s stage. In all of their own words (and a few of mine), this is the story of Mint Records. It’s a story that could only have happened when it did, to the people it did, where it did. While we were still out looking for our punk past and wrestling the gravitational pull of grunge, a little revolution was taking place. How Vancouver of us not to notice — not to celebrate — what was, and is, happening right under our noses. Better late than never. Punk is gone. Grunge is dead. Long live Mint Records.

Kaitlin Fontana, November 30, 2010

xiii

1 This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Randy Iwata: We haven’t had a very exciting twenty years, I think it’s safe to say. Bill Baker: I think that’s what we think. Randy Iwata: Like, it’s not the Mötley Crüe book, you know? — The ﬁrst interview, May 2009

1

Chapter 1 To Have and Have Not

Late 1980s. Vancouver, B.C. The city was still recovering, in ways tangible and intangible, from the shock of Expo ’86. Day to day, however, there wasn’t a lot about the city that looked different. Especially not for two young guys attending the University of British Columbia and hanging out at the university radio station, CiTR. For them and many like them — music nerds with more knowledge than social skills — most days were spent sitting on the well-loved CiTR couches talking about music, drinking beer, and occasionally doing something resembling work — programming, writing stories for the station’s music magazine DiSCORDER, or DJing a show. It would be easy to say that Expo ’86 and the future of the two guys in question are not causally linked. And yet, in the days following Expo, one story

3

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

kept resurfacing in the halls of CiTR and parts beyond: the Slow Riot. Vancouver’s best and heaviest band Slow had played at the behest of Expo organizers as part of a concert series meant to display the city’s independent music scene. This is somewhat bafﬂing in retrospect, but one thing’s for sure: no one really bargained for the results of a collision between Vancouver’s underground music darlings and its general public. Vancouver’s punk past was well known and, by then, celebrated; D.O.A., the Pointed Sticks, and the Young Canadians had most deﬁnitely made it into that chapter of music history. But this next phase of music, dirtier, less speciﬁc, unnamed, was just beginning. To say that Slow was grunge predates the grunge movement by a few years; however, as noted in the Canadian rock history book Have Not Been the Same (named after Slow’s seminal song, no less), “Slow . . . epitomized many of the elements that would comprise the ‘grunge’ movement of the early ’90s.” In other words, they fucking rocked, and everyone knew it. Still, the leap from there to Expo is a funny one. One imagines some Expo organizer having seen the cover of Slow’s I Broke the Circle, a 1985 Zulu Records release, on his teenage son’s ﬂoor: “If my kid likes it, then maybe he’ll bring twenty of his buddies down,” or something like that. Regardless, a culture clash of epic proportions was in the cards. On that night, the Xerox International Theatre reserved for the “Festival of Independent Recording Artists” was packed with fans and curious onlookers when the band began their signature live show, a rather un-P.C. spectacle that, in dark clubs and basements, was wildly appreciated. This time, however, the open-air nature of things meant the audience was more diverse than usual. The band erupted into a shuddering, growling, loose come-on of a performance that shoved everyone under the age of 18 into a frenzy. It was, one can imagine, threatening to the image of Expo and its attempt at showing off Vancouver’s serene potential for business. It had to be stopped, no matter what. And the band had to be blamed. A Montreal Gazette article dated August 8, 1986, with the unfortunate headline “A bum rap?” details events of that day: “The incident began when singer

4

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Tom Anselmi stripped to his shorts and pranced around the stage.” Anselmi and Slow bassist Hamm may have also mooned the audience. In some reports, Hamm allegedly exposed himself. As a result of the mayhem, Expo cut the power and cancelled the set midway through. What happened then varies from retelling to retelling, but almost every account uses the word “riot” in a way that Vancouver would not use again until the Canucks playoff fracas of 1994: audience members leapt onstage and refused to vacate, they protested loudly and vehemently, and they swarmed and so disrupted the on-site BCTV news tent that the broadcaster was forced to end its live feed. This led to Expo cancelling not just the night but the entire slate of performances for the rest of the festival. Fourteen groups in total lost their shows, and the ensuing negative attention, along with the band’s self-destructive nature, contributed to Slow’s demise thereafter. The Expo organizers’ response to the incident seemed, at least to the independent music community of Vancouver, totally overblown. Not that “parents just don’t understand” is news to any kid who wants to rock; that’s not the point. It was the feeling of an authoritative force that could and would giveth and taketh away high-proﬁle shows at the drop of a hat, without mercy or explanation. Their willingness to do so stunned the local community. This wasn’t 1955, after all. Didn’t they know, went the common wisdom, when they booked us? Didn’t they know what they were in for? Wasn’t it cruel and unusual, not to mention hysterical, to punish every other band on the bill for the acts of one? A chance for Vancouver’s indie community to come out into the light of day had been, in essence, cockblocked by the Man. As a result, the scene went even further underground. At CiTR in the late ’80s, the Slow riot story quickly became currency. The station had already been championing the plight of underground music in this strange, small, rapidly changing port city, where gigs and venues were hard to come by and would only grow more so over time. The Slow incident lent the band and the scene a whiff of infamy that indie kids crave — Vancouver underground

5

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

suddenly had a cause célèbre to rally around. An argument could be made that this moment, more than any other, was the catalyst for Vancouver’s current underground music climate. No scene is a single moment brought to bear, of course, but maybe, just maybe, this is where our story starts. Whether or not Bill Baker and Randy Iwata internalized the Slow incident, they were certainly around when the conversations were taking place. (Baker, for his part, was at the show itself. He says he was drunk and doesn’t remember it.) Perhaps subconsciously they took in the importance of this moment. Perhaps not. Regardless, one of their label’s ﬁrst signings as Mint Records would directly connect with it. But that was a ways off yet. First, let’s meet our heroes. Bill Baker was born and raised on the west side of Vancouver, an only son to parents who divorced when Bill was ﬁve. By the time he was in university, he’d already developed the acerbic wit and self-effacing humour for which he would become known. Randy Iwata, on the other hand, was born to Japanese-Canadian parents in southeast Vancouver. He and his sister Robynn, who would go on to form the band cub (much more on that later), shared a love for music. While quiet and somewhat unassuming, Randy could hold his own against Baker’s volleys. You could ﬁnd them, in 1986 or so, sitting on the saggy CiTR couches and availing themselves of the beer machine (yes, beer in a pop machine). At that time, the words “Mint Records” had yet to be uttered.

Bill Baker: I used to listen to CiTR every once in a while. It’s funny, too, because I lived within that little zone where you could hear it, but I didn’t listen to it too much. I was much more into records and tapes. Randy Iwata: For me, CiTR at UBC was many years in the making. The station had such a small wattage that you could only hear it, basically, when you got west of Cambie Street or Granville. My sister and I, as kids, if we had the chance to go to that part of town, we would tune in. It was the best stuff. You’d get this foreign, weird, neat music.

6

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

And it all began the ﬁrst week that you attended university. You join CiTR, and you don’t leave there for ﬁve years. CiTR tends to lengthen your time there. In September ’84, I believe it was, I went there and plunked myself down and started to become useful. Bill Baker: I remember in about 1981, seeing a Marx Brothers movie at the Ridge Theatre and there were all these punk dudes sitting in the front row acting so crazy. But it seemed really appealing and fun to me. And I turned to my friend and I was like [in a high-pitched voice], “Let’s go home and cut our hair!” I don’t think we did it, but it made us look into another type of music. I very quickly got involved in that, and of course all the shows, back then. That was where I cut my teeth on music, the local music scene. There were things you’d read about a record and a show and that sort of thing. And there was a record store right down the street. A Charles Bogle Phonograph Dispensary, right down the street from my house. It’s long gone, but they had an excellent selection. They had a whole shelf that was just bootlegs, which I thought was really cool. I would go there at lunch from school. Randy Iwata: I remember being at a Black Flag show, and there was this guy in the pit, with spikes in his hair, and spikes in his shoulders. These honking huge nails; they were so obnoxious. I’d never seen that before. Half of us were trying to get away from him. Bill Baker: My ﬁrst big punk show was at Cambrian Hall. It was No Exit, Insex, and D.O.A. I was totally mortiﬁed. I didn’t ﬁt in. But immediately, it was so exciting. There was this band No Exit, and they weren’t really that good, but the singer had amazing energy. I didn’t really know much about it, when I went, either. I just kind of had the Quincy punk episode in my mind. [Baker is referring to an infamous episode of the NBC drama, which ran from 1976 to 1983, about the titular L.A. County medical examiner. The episode is remembered as one of many examples of mainstream culture misrepresenting punk.] It was really cool that this was happening. Just seeing that crowd, the energy in the crowd. It was just this crazy explosion.

7

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

The only bummer about it was, it got kind of late, and we were young, and didn’t really know any better, and we were like, “Oh, let’s just wander around.” And we wandered down Commercial Drive — I don’t know how we got to Commercial Drive. Somewhere they were showing that Sex Pistols Tour documentary, D.O.A., and so we went in to watch it. But then we didn’t go back and watch the actual band D.O.A., and it turns out that was the last time the original lineup of D.O.A. played. And I was so, so upset. Partially because that’s the most deThe record business is hard: Bill Baker breaks into a piggy bank, 1994.

pressing suicide-themed movie. It’s so awful. I went to University Hill Secondary at that time, and it was a very

liberal school; they really encouraged kids to be different. There was this whole crowd of people talking about the show. I remember being really excited, being able to talk to all those kids who’d been there at the show. I went to CiTR not because of music but because I was following a girl. That story has its own legs. That’s actually a good angle, though I hate to admit it. I had been in the station, and it seemed like a pretty cool place to me, but honestly, it’s because of Laurel. I had a big crush on this girl Laurel in my Women’s Literature class, and so I didn’t join CiTR until the late fall of 1986. Randy Iwata: Laurel was very involved in the station. Bill Baker: I just have this memory of being up there and watching her do her radio show, and then she left to go do something and I took over, even though

8

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

I didn’t know how to work anything. And I remember getting in some serious trouble for that. It’s probably a good thing that I was blinded by my crush on Laurel, because it was a pretty exclusive environment at the time. If you were inclined to not feel welcome, that was a place to really mess with you. I was pretty oblivious to that [laughs]. But it wasn’t long before I started getting involved. Something about it just spoke to me. And then, same thing as Randy, I immediately started making myself useful. And yeah, I don’t think I basically set foot outside of there until ’91. Deﬁnitely ended up being the place I would go to, much more than to my classes. By far. There were lots of times I would get up at six thirty or seven to get to an eight thirty a.m. class and then pop in to check something, and just never leave. It was deﬁnitely the kind of environment where if you were motivated to do something, you were the only person to stand in your way. People would broadcast all kinds of things. It [was] just completely unstructured. There were people that used to volunteer there, and then they would just come back. They’d get a job working for a radio station or a record label or something, and they’d be so defeated because they weren’t allowed to do anything, while at CiTR you could basically do anything you wanted to do. Randy Iwata: We were all studying English Lit. Bill, me, my sister, CiTR’s station head was in English Lit, Bill’s girlfriend after Laurel [Lisa Marr], who he lived with at the time and who began cub with Robynn — all English Lit. What kept us at CiTR, too, was the beer machine. Bill Baker: Oh, come on, that’s not what kept us there. Randy Iwata: You just plugged in your quarters. There weren’t loonies then. You could only put in quarters, nickels, and dimes. The going rate was a dollar twentyﬁve, and it had a lottery channel that was ﬁlled with light beer and the occasional Heineken or something. Bill Baker: That was a good thing. That’s not what kept us there. Come on. But that is what introduced us to one another.

9

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Randy Iwata: Yeah. There was one memorable time — and this is quite telling about our characters — we sat there from ten a.m., basically, in this building, and just drank, in our station. And that was pretty much it. We still do that now. Bill Baker: I just remember that afternoon, because everything one of us would say, the other one would echo it. It would’ve been great if it was a date. It would’ve been the best date ever. Like, “Oh my god, you toooo? Oh my god!” It was like that. Randy Iwata: That’s true. Bill Baker: It was unbelievable, how many things would come up. I would just pull something out of thin air and you’d be like, “Oh yeah, I did that, too.” Or, “I was there.” It was just that conversation, and then more beer, and then more of that conversation. But I think that was how our friendship started. It was very quick.

Around the same time that Bill started at CiTR, a young annoying kid who talked fast and always had a bunch of records in his bag showed up at the station. In high school, he’d already organized concerts and interviewed rock stars, against their better judgment — of these, the most talked about was with Poisoned. That’s right, Poisoned at a high school assembly. Not only that, but the skinny weird kid had ﬁlmed the whole thing and snagged an interview with the band’s singer, Art Bergmann, to boot. Who was this kid? His real name was John Ruskin, but he’d started calling himself “Nardwuar the Human Serviette.” He was at UBC to major in history, and he loved history and politics almost as much as he loved rock ’n’ roll. In 1987, he started hosting a radio show at CiTR that exists to this day. Nardwuar ended up playing a huge part in Mint Records in the future, but for now he was just trying to make friends in a new environment, something he’d found a bit easier back in high school.

Nardwuar the Human Serviette: I was president of the student council at Hillside

10

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

High School, so I was in charge of organizing music for the dances. And I knew nothing about bands, so I just went to people and said, “Hey, what band should we get?” People would say, “D.O.A., Pointed Sticks.” Well, Pointed Sticks had broken up, but there was an offshoot band of theirs called the Frank Frink Five, so we got them to play a dance. Somebody said the Enigmas, so we got the Enigmas to play. And I would go and buy their records at local record stores, so that’s how I got all into it. Just by people saying to me, “Check out the Enigmas, check out D.O.A., check out the band the French Letters, there’s a great ska band called the Villains, go get them to play at dances.” So I’d get them to play the dances. It was my job, and I wanted to do a good job, so I’d ask everybody. I remember this band called Hand of Fate, and they were not indie, they were not punk, they were probably just aping the Grateful Dead. But that’s what the kids wanted, so we got them for a dance. I was just trying to please everybody. I still am, right up to today.

One of Nardwuar’s classmates at Hillside was a fellow music lover who was a few years younger. Grant Lawrence had an equal passion for live shows, particularly those that his band was playing in. As teens, Lawrence and Nardwuar started a lifelong friendship based on a mutual admiration and love of music. While still in high school, in fact, Lawrence formed the garage band the Smugglers. As part of his extensive road life with the Smugglers, Lawrence began calling in to CBC shows from points across North America; the CBC brass came to enjoy his particular storytelling prowess and wit, and eventually he found gainful employment with the nation’s public broadcaster, namely, hosting indie music stalwart CBC Radio 3. Between then and now, however, he also played a huge role in the Mint story all on his own, as an employee, friend, and foe.

11

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Grant Lawrence, Host of CBC Radio 3: I have a theory. We do this thing on CBC Radio 3 called “Fourteen Forever.” And my theory is that age fourteen is kind of a tipping point for people, if they’re music lovers. Age fourteen is kind of a pivotal age where you either go arts or you go sciences or you go sports, as a kid. And at fourteen, I went arts, very radically. And got into music heavily. Started off with my parents’ record collection, you know, ﬁfties, sixties stuff, and really, really got into it. Had a few musical mentors, like Nardwuar. He was already called Nardwuar then. His band, the Evaporators, were three years ahead of me. They were playing garage and punk rock songs. And I thought it was just the coolest thing that they had a band, and so I started working on forming a band in grade nine, working with all the music I loved from my parents’ record collection, and also the crazy punk sounds that I was hearing. Nardwuar: The Evaporators started in February 1986 in high school. And when I started organizing gigs, that’s where I met Grant, because he was in high school with me and he wanted to play. And when I graduated from Hillside, he still was in high school and he still wanted to do gigs. So he helped out with that, and he actually phoned places, like rec centres and stuff, and said, “Hi, I’m phoning on behalf of the Serve Youth organization” — because, you know, Nardwuar the Human Serviette — and I think he wrote a few letters, maybe, on his mom’s letterhead. His mom belonged to a church group. So that helped get us in there, because that was a lot easier than me trying to phone. When I would phone it would be like, “Hi, it’s Nardwuar, we’re, uh, a punk gig, can we put a —” And they would say, “We’re not gonna have any of that! Click!” So, Grant was smooth, even back then, and was able to get us these places. I still have these contracts, too, which is pretty hilarious because some of them are like, “You shall only have a hundred people,” and we were able to jam in three hundred. Grant Lawrence: Whereas all the other high schools would have disco dances, Nardwuar would bring in the coolest acts from downtown Vancouver to play our

12

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

high school dances. So we had the Young Canadians and we had Go Four 3. The Grapes of Wrath played our high school as well. Very cutting edge, new wave, punk rock, ska bands. And so a whole generation of kids that came out of those years of Hillside Secondary all got into music. Because of Nardwuar’s visions. I mean, he even attempted to book the Dead Kennedys to play one of our high school dances. And Jello Biafra actually wrote him a personal letter, saying, “Sorry, you know, we can’t play, but thanks a lot for the offer.” And that was up on the wall of the student council ofﬁce. And what was amazing is that Nardwuar not only went on to become friends with Jello — very good friends — but the Evaporators ended up putting out an album on [Biafra’s] Alternative Tentacles Records twenty years later. So, it’s really crazy how the world works. Nardwuar: When I got around to writing up contracts, I was really bad. Like when I approached Art Bergmann of the band Poisoned to play, they said, “Fourteen hundred bucks,” and I said, “What about thirteen ninety-eight? That sounds a bit better.” He said, “Okay.” So I talked him down two dollars. And as soon as that gig ended, I did an interview with Art Bergmann, and that was the very ﬁrst interview I ever did. That was on September 26, 1985, right after the school dance at Hillside Secondary School. I’d been inspired by local TV shows that had been on the air, one called Soundproof. And I thought, “Well, I’d like to do some interviews just like they do. Like Dave Toddington and Martin Stubbs, Buzz Miller — I’d like to do interviews like them.” Grant Lawrence: Nardwuar was very intense, very positive, very energized in high school. We were sort of attracted to each other and our similar energies right away. And he deﬁnitely got me involved in all this stuff, and then when he went to UBC, for that ﬁrst year, which I guess was in 1987, that’s when he adopted the Nardwuar thing. We didn’t think much of it. We were involved in music culture where pseudonyms were totally the norm. We all loved the Cramps at that time, the New York/L.A. psychobilly band. And there were members of that band with names

13

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

like Lux Interior and Poison Ivy. So, obviously not their real names, but really cool rock de plumes. Like, in the Gruesomes, we thought for sure it was a fake name: Bobby Beaton? We just thought that was too cool of a name to be real, but it was his real name. And then, you know, Joey Ramone and Iggy Pop. Joey Shithead. There were all these cool names. And so Nardwuar adopting “Nardwuar the Human Serviette” was kind of a punk rock thing to do, you know? And then he put on “Nardwuar the Human Serviette presents . . . ,” this series of famous all-ages shows that ran from about 1987 to around 1998 or so, about ten years. Between one and three times a year, always all-ages, and always with some weird title. And they went from small shows of about a hundred people attending to shows where, you know, I think our biggest was Fugazi, when about four thousand showed up. I did all those shows with Nardwuar, and it was . . . stressful. My parents’ phone number was the information line the whole time. “Info: 926-9444.” And when it got to the level of Fugazi, the phone was just ringing off the hook all day. “Are there tickets available? Are there tickets available?” And my mom would basically have to deal with a lot of that. Randy Iwata: Nardwuar was this impresario entrepreneur with no proﬁt motive. He put on shows. His thinking was then as it is now: it’s always about putting on a good show, and doing something good, and worry about paying the bills later. Bill Baker: The ﬁrst time I met him, I had already read his name on posters, and when I actually met the guy, I thought he was pretending to be the guy on the posters. Because I thought, “There’s no way this idiot can be putting on a show.” And I was very snotty about it, too, and then everybody said [whispering], “That’s really him.” Randy Iwata: That feeling exists even now. Bill Baker: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s true. Nardwuar: The ﬁrst thing that Randy Iwata said to me was quite interesting, because I walked into CiTR, and I said, “Hi, I’m here for the training, and I’m looking for a guy called Steve.” And Randy was in the [station’s music magazine] DiS-

14

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

CORDER room typing. I don’t know if he even turned around, he just kinda said, “He’s big, and he’s tall, and he answers to the name Steve.” And then I continued down the hallway. That’s kind of how people talked back then. That was the alternative speak, wasn’t it? “He’s big, and he’s tall, and he answers to the name Steve.” Bill Baker: He didn’t have a radio show at that time. He begged and begged and begged and ﬁnally . . . it started with one minute. He was allowed a one-minute radio show. Because they just wouldn’t let him have a show. And then it just grew and grew, but he’s been in that same time slot for twenty-ﬁve years. Like I said, it’s the kind of place where if you have the initiative, you can take it as far as you possibly can. He’s done twenty-four-hour shows, kind of . . . sneakily. Randy Iwata: And then played his record release afterwards in the Student Union Building ballroom [adjacent to CiTR]. Nardwuar: Bill had a show called Expo 66, and his show was around the same time as my show. And I saw him bring in Joey Shithead as a guest on his show, so I’m like, “Oh my god, that’s Joey Shithead of D.O.A.” And I started saying something to Joey Shithead, and Joey Shithead said, “Nardwuar. Nardwuar the Human Serviette. What is that, something you wipe your ass with?” And I ended up getting that clip and putting it on my ﬁrst record I ever put out, Oh God My Mom’s On Channel 10! So if you see Nardwuar vs. Joey Shithead, that whole thing was generated by Bill Baker, because he was on the air talking to D.O.A. and I just happened to kind of wander in there. And I was like, “Oh my god, Joey Shithead said my name!” That started the tradition of me putting interviews on the records.

Once the initial shock and annoyance Randy and Bill felt at Nardwuar’s presence wore off, they settled into a sort of friendship, one predicated on CiTR and a love of music. When Nardwuar decided to put out an Evaporators record in 1989, he got Bill, Randy, and Randy’s sister Robynn to help him put together the record. It was their ﬁrst foray into making records.

15

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

The poster, drawn by the Evaporators’ Scott Livingston, for the record release party for Oh God My Mom’s On Channel 10! Nardwuar’s mom hosted a local cable access show about Vancouver history; she was, literally, on channel 10.

Bill Baker: Since the beginning, we’ve done almost every record cover for him. Nardwuar: The ﬁrst Nardwuar Records release was 1989, and Bill Baker helped out with that, and Robynn Iwata helped out with the booklet that went into the LP. So that’s kind of the beginning of Nardwuar Records. And Nardwuar Records still

16

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

exists. It’s not as proliﬁc as Mint Records, but we still do one record a year, or one release a year, from 1989 on.

With a few future Mint pieces in place (much more Grant and Nardwuar to come), Bill and Randy continued on. Randy was, at various times, music and programming director of CiTR and worked on CiTR’s music magazine, DiSCORDER. Bill eventually helmed a nighttime radio show or two, including the aforementioned Expo 66, and served as volunteer coordinator at the station. Both became proﬁcient and proliﬁc at desktop publishing and design, a skill that would carry through to Mint and beyond. After graduating in 1988, they continued to work at CiTR in these various capacities. Soon enough, however, reality set in: eventually they would have to leave the safety of the station. And then what? At the very least, they knew that they wanted to be around music. They bandied about several ideas that never materialized, but one night in 1991, an idea that had been in the back of both of their minds ﬁnally surfaced.

Bill Baker: The initial conversation of “let’s start a label” happened in the parkade at the Student Union Building at

UBC,

after we were leaving work. I think Randy

was giving me a ride home that day, and we talked a little bit about it, and then we went for beers at this place on Tenth Avenue called Culpeppers, which isn’t there anymore. And we hashed it out a little bit, just talking about it in more realistic terms. And then he gave me a ride home and I just remember . . . we’d had a lot of conversations about things we could do and then never did anything with any of them. And I remember us agreeing, “You know, we should really actually try to do this one. Instead of doing the thing we always do.” I feel like it was probably me who said the idea out loud, but I have no actual memory of that. It’s usually me that comes up with some sort of hare-brained

17

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

scheme and then makes Randy turn his life upside down to accommodate it. So it’s entirely likely that it was me. And I don’t say that because I thought it was my genius idea so much as that’s kind of my move — to posit some sort of goofy idea and then make Randy follow me through to hell.

CiTR then, as now, received bucket loads of recordings from across the world. Witnessing this ﬁrsthand, Bill and Randy learned the ways of indie promo — what looked good, what sounded good, what sold. What the college circuit was about. Some seriously eye- and ear-catching records coming in to CiTR in those years were from one speciﬁc source: Seattle’s Sub Pop Records, which was then still in its infancy. Sub Pop would become a model of sorts for the early Mint days; it was, in fact, the existence of Sub Pop that would plant the seed for the guys to start their own label. In some ways, this was how Sub Pop itself had begun. Michael Azerrad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981–1991, calls Sub Pop “more calculated than any previous American underground indie.” Its founders, Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman, “studied the successes of early indies like Sun, Stax and Motown as well as contemporaries like SST and Touch & Go.” That a ﬂedgling indie just hours north might do much the same, then, is not altogether surprising. (Poneman and company declined to be interviewed for this book.) While at CiTR, Bill and Randy were on the receiving end of Sub Pop Records releases from the likes of Mudhoney and Nirvana. They looked at any and all releases that crossed their desks, but they paid careful attention to Sub Pop’s output.

Bill Baker: As music and program director, Randy received every possible kind of mail-out and promotional nonsense. We had a pretty good idea of what people

18

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

would pay attention to and what they wouldn’t. I think that played a huge part in our early days. And we knew somebody at almost every campus or community radio station in Canada, through our involvement, so that was really a step up. We didn’t have to cold call these people. They’d know it was us. We might not have been friends with them, but at least we knew a name to call, or someone we’d met at a conference or whatever, that we could press into service a little bit. Then we did that mail-out to the American stations. Randy Iwata: We didn’t have a release yet, but we had a questionnaire. “Want to receive music?” Bill Baker: “How would you like to receive music?” I think that’s it. So we could save on postage, we drove down to the University of Washington in Seattle and found an empty classroom. We were going there, anyway — once a month, Randy and I would take DiSCORDERs across the border and distribute them in Bellingham and Seattle. We bought a bunch of stamps. I remember getting so sick after licking a hundred and ﬁfty stamps, just ugh! — an awful stomach illness after that. But we got a fair number of those back, too. I was very pleased at how many people actually took the trouble. That has always played a part for us. I can’t say we’re super media savvy, but I think having an awareness of how not to do it from seeing stuff come in to CiTR helped. We used to drop off a stack of DiSCORDERs at Sub Pop, anyway, so we hooked up with a friend of Grant McDonagh’s — Grant of Zulu Records — Jean LeGault. She worked at Sub Pop and she agreed to give us a little tour of the operation on the weekend. It was probably all of twenty minutes that we were there, but to us, that was a little bit like being led into the inner sanctum. It was pretty exciting. I don’t know that we really came away from it with a great deal of concrete knowledge or information. But it still was pretty neat to see. We were still in fact-ﬁnding mode, then.

19

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Mint’s “alternative speak” ﬁrst ad in DiSCORDER, 1991.

With their knowledge of Sub Pop internalized, and with surveys coming back from interested stations, Bill and Randy’s plan to create Mint Records began in earnest. The name grew out of those same kinds of conversations they’d had since that day on the couch at CiTR. To them it meant something fresh and new, something no one had heard before. The fact that they hadn’t yet snagged any bands didn’t matter; they had a mentor (Sub Pop) and they had the beginnings of a plan. The rest, they felt, would come in time. As they were about to see, bands would come (and in some cases, go) faster than they expected.

Nardwuar: I was wandering through CiTR one day and I saw a little pile of stuff in the DiSCORDER room. I was like, “What is this?” They said, “We’re going to put together a label.”

20

Chapter 2 A Terrible Thing to Taste

As mentally prepared as Bill and Randy may have felt to get their new project in gear, a record label isn’t a record label until it puts out a record. With Sub Pop as their model and the early ’90s scene as their inspiration, Bill and Randy naturally gravitated toward those acts that sounded like the bands on Sub Pop. Lucky for them, there was no shortage of similar groups out there; unlucky for them, many of the people in these bands were über-cool and aloof, a characteristic of the “alternative movement” but a quality that Baker and Iwata didn’t exactly possess in spades. They certainly weren’t as cool as another newly launched local label, Scratch Records, whose owner and manager Keith Parry not only knew the underground

21

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

scene but played in it, with well-regarded Vancouver bands Silent Gathering and Superconductor. Still, Bill and Randy were no strangers to the local scene by then, and they tentatively began shopping around to ﬁnd bands they liked and wanted to sign. In typical Bill and Randy fashion, there were no direct discussions about a desired “sound” or style of act; instead, they put feelers out in all directions. The annual battle of the bands competition, SHiNDiG, thrown by Baker and Iwata’s beloved CiTR was one place that was then — and still is — a guaranteed hot bed for exciting new acts. For a few years, Baker hosted SHiNDiG (and demonstrated his rapier wit during the traditional Jokes for Beer portion of the evening). Then, as now, the family trees of most of Vancouver’s bands were intertwined, and in 1991 a few such acts were being whispered about: ﬁrst, there was a rock band called Windwalker, which sported a frighteningly charismatic, goth-like frontman named Stuart Oijen (Oijen, in turn, had played with Scratch’s Keith Parry in Silent Gathering). Another band, the heavier sounding Tankhog, sported two-quarters of the legendary lineup of Slow (Stephen Hamm and Terry Russell), plus a recklessly energetic, punk-style singer named Bruce Kane, who’d made local waves as leader of the TV Repairmen. Both bands would drift onto Bill and Randy’s radar before long, but ﬁrst the guys had to test the waters.

Bill Baker: When it came time to put out a record, we ﬁrst approached Lung. I don’t even remember how we came to know them, but I remember phoning them. I think they had a tape cassette, because it deﬁnitely wasn’t a record. Just phoning them up and being like, “Hi, you don’t know us, but well, we’re a record company, and . . .” was a pretty nerve-wracking experience. And they said they were jamming and that we could come out to their practice space. They’d just recorded enough songs for a 7-inch record, and did we want to come listen to them? I seem to remember it was in North Van.

22

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Bill Baker in front of the Mint ofﬁce (the Dominion Building).

That was one of the most awkward experiences of my entire life. It was just walking in to see these three guys. And they were already playing when we got there. And then they stopped, and they played us some of their music. It was really awful to sit and listen to their music while they were looking back at us like, “So . . . ?” At the time we didn’t actually have a contract. We had written out a short list: here’s what we’ll do, here’s what you’re expected to do. And we left these two sheets of paper with them. Eventually, they decided not to put out a record with us, though they never told us why. They ended up putting out the record on Scratch Records. And later, much later, when we moved into our ofﬁce in the Dominion Building, Scratch was just downstairs, underneath where our building was. And there was kind of a rivalry between those guys and us. It came from the fact that they thought we were dorks. And this Lung contract was a piece of paper that proved that we were.

23

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Keith Parry, Owner of Scratch Records: We joked about Mint being a little more mainstream, a less cool record label, but at the same time they were trying to sign one of the bands, Lung, whose record we ended up putting out. I still have a copy of this long contract that they sent to Lung to do one 7-inch record. It’s been a laughing point for many years. I used to fax it to them just to remind them that I had it. I think the last time we moved a dozen years ago it was ﬁled in a box, so they’re lucky that’s stopped. I wouldn’t have thrown it away. Bill Baker: Every six or eight months, our fax machine would ring, and that contract would come out, because the guys in Lung had obviously gone to [Scratch] and said either, “Ha ha, look at this” or “Can you do better than this?” or whatever, but for some reason, Scratch ended up in possession of our little deal proposal, and they kept it for years and years, and it would show up every once in awhile. We ended up ultimately working with Scratch. They started doing distribution. It was always kind of friendly. But Randy and I both have a childhood history of being picked on, so it was hard. Especially because, you know, we were putting ourselves on the line by going out in public and declaring that we were a record company. Keith Parry: To be frank, they put out more college rock stuff. Stuff cut out with a notion of selling records. Like Windwalker — I played in the very ﬁrst band that Windwalker was born out of, a band called Silent Gathering. To me, Windwalker always seemed like a cleaned-up, softer version of the band it grew out of. But I think at least one of them has to love a release to put it out. Bill Baker: Windwalker . . . I really liked Windwalker. Philippe Doebelli, guitar in Windwalker: Me and Glenn [D’Cruze, drummer] had been in some bands in high school in Kerrisdale. It was a Catholic private school. We put an ad in the Georgia Straight for band members, and that’s how we found Anthony and Stuart. Anthony Hempell, bass in Windwalker: I was in a band called Guano Blitz when I was in high school. And one of the big moments for us was entering SHiNDiG

24

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

when we were sixteen. We got put on a bill at the Savoy. And we went down there, at sixteen years old, and played in a nightclub. We just kind of went in at sound check and didn’t leave, so that we wouldn’t get ID’d. You know. My dad came down. We thought we were gonna be so awesome, and we got booed off the stage. We played our whole set, but we had never encountered drunk adults before. And it was pretty eye-opening [laughs]. I was pretty upset afterwards. It was one of the very few times I can remember where my dad had a real fatherly talk with me, like, “You don’t give up. You know? You don’t let stuff like that get you down. You guys were great and you went up there, you played your stuff. I was totally proud of you. You guys gotta keep on.” So we did. After high school, though, we broke up and I went away to Banff for six months to work. When I came back to Vancouver, I started looking around for someone to play with. There was an ad in the Georgia Straight for [Windwalker], and there were some bands that I liked that they were citing as inﬂuences. They were looking for a post-hardcore thing. Exu Nazares, formerly Stuart Oijen, vocals in Windwalker: I had moved to Vancouver from Victoria, and I was kind of starving, homeless, not doing too well. I got a job working at McDonald’s, but then applied to cooking school and got in. I was so happy, but about a year later when I got out, I realized you don’t make very much even if you’re a good cook. I was playing in the band Silent Gathering, with Keith Parry from Scratch. After we broke up, I was still going down to Keith’s store, because I still shopped there. And I saw this poster there for a band looking for a singer. The poster just listed off, like, a hundred bands or something. I was like, “Oh wow, I like that. No . . . no . . . no . . . yup . . . yup,” like that. And I thought, “Well, there’s enough in there that I like. I’ll try it out!” So I phoned them up and they said, “We were going to call you but we heard that you were unapproachable, and didn’t think that you would go for it.” Anthony Hempell: This guy shows up with this long black hair and leather pants

25

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

on. And he starts singing. This guy could sing. And that charisma. Like, the aura, it just ﬁlls the room. Philippe Doebelli: We went through a few singers, tryouts. When Stuart came in, something just clicked. He had a lot of intensity. I liked his voice. Exu Nazares: When I ﬁrst saw them I thought: they look young. And really cleancut looking. Totally straight-edged. But I was used to being the only freak in town, so no biggie. Anthony Hempell: Stuart was always getting his phone cut off. And so I would always have to, you know, ride by his place and stick a note on his door telling him when practice was. I think at the beginning, and all through the time that we were together, there was always this tension between us and Stuart — he’s like this wild man of the woods, from Vancouver Island, this half-Native guy who seems like he just grew up on his own. He comes to Vancouver and he feels like a total outsider. He’s got all this stuff inside him that’s gotta come out. And we’re all just West Side kids. We just want to play rock. We want to play loud. Glenn and Stuart were like oil and water. Glenn’s very tightly wound, very quiet, very precise. He was the guy who Gavin Brown, who hosted a show at CiTR, called “the most punk rock dude I’ve ever known, because he walks around in a K-Way jacket, with a Safeway bag ﬁlled with all of his shit.” Glenn was so uncool that he was cool. And, you know, an absolutely fantastic drummer. Bill Baker: I’ve never in my life [seen] somebody who was obviously not thinking about playing the drums at all (well, maybe Kurt Dahle [from the New Pornographers] comes pretty close). There would always be a time, like in the middle of the song, where [Glenn] would remove the nut from a cymbal and do something, put it back on, all while playing with his other hand. He just had that kind of quality. I’ve never seen anybody play drums like him before. He was a good drummer, too. So, so good. Anthony Hempell: Glenn and Philippe and a whole bunch of those guys went to Vancouver College. Catholic School. So there’s this kind of subculture within that

26

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

of the punk rock guys who wear their hair as long as they could get away with. Philippe wasn’t religious, but Glenn was our singing Catholic. He still went to church every Sunday. And here Stuart was this . . . Wiccan guy. He was totally into witchcraft. It was very hard for them to see eye to eye on things. Bill Baker: Stuart used to own a witchcraft store on Hastings Street. We went down when they played in Seattle, and then we gave them a ride back in Randy’s van. And as we got to the border, they were talking about how Stuart had a bunch of bones [laughs] he had to bring back. Animal bones, for his store. Like, “Oh, fuck. Thanks for telling us now.” I don’t think we declared the bones. Philippe Doebelli: Stuart was older than us. He had lived more of a life than we had, too. Even though I’d been in a band before, I was a pretty down-to-earth guy. I wasn’t going to party every weekend. In the Windwalker days, I never drank before a show. I was a very serious person. Whereas I think Stuart had lived more, partied more. That also brought us an edge that we didn’t have before him. I think a lot of what we were doing before was safer. Stuart would go off on tangents, musically, and I think the balance of that and the structure of me and Anthony would come together in something that would work. Anthony Hempell: I remember Stuart needing a few weeks. Saying, “You guys are just too different. I don’t think you’re getting what I want to do. This just isn’t going to work.” And convincing him to stay, and saying, “Look, we don’t have to be the band that agrees on everything. We can be the band that all likes a bunch of different stuff. We all like a lot of similar stuff, so let’s focus on that. And if you want to do all this other stuff, you can do side projects. We think that what we’ve got here is really, really good.” Exu Nazares: It took a few practices to start gelling but after about three practices, you could hear us getting really intense together. Bill Baker: Their live show was amazing. Stuart was so energetic and so completely fearless and crazy onstage. And it was sort of similar, again, to the Sub Pop kind of music that we liked. But Stuart’s vocals were very . . . I was going to say melodic,

27

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

but [laughs] I don’t know if that’s the right word. Whatever it was, it was very compelling to watch. Anthony Hempell: We were practising at Fir Street Studios and we decided to record our demo there. It was just a shitty building with a bunch of rooms that they put together. They eventually put a recording studio in there. We had a room, set up a bunch of mics, just did it live to the board. And the cool thing was, everything bled into everything else. It had this really good sound. There was reverb on the vocals. It sounded pretty low budget, but it still sounded good. We started to send the demo out and it was hitting number one on CiTR within a couple months. I’m pretty sure Randy Iwata was music director at the time. Bill was doing a show, working on DiSCORDER. Bill’s girlfriend Lisa Marr was DiSCORDER editor. Robynn Iwata was running SHiNDiG. So there you have the Mint inner circle right there. And so, we entered SHiNDiG that year, in 1990. I don’t even remember who we played against the ﬁrst time but we kind of walked away with that. The semi-ﬁnal was the most . . . dramatic. Exu Nazares: I had planned to do something a little different. I just wanted to have something theatrical and sort of over the top. I didn’t want it to be funny. I wanted it to be little frightening, a little bit shocking. Anthony Hempell: So we go into the semi-ﬁnal. And we know it’s against Superconductor and there’s a bit of a rivalry there because Keith [Parry] from Stuart’s old band [Silent Gathering] is in Superconductor. Bill Baker: I was the host of SHiNDiG, too. [Laughs] Oh, I forgot about that, because that’s when the rivalry really got to a high-fever pitch. They were playing against Superconductor, which featured both Keith and Carl Newman from the New Pornographers. Keith Parry: We were always nasty to Bill or always playing jokes on him. Well, I like Bill, but Carl and Bill — I don’t know if they were ever the best of friends. And during the Jokes for Beer, Carl on more than one occasion got up to the microphone and said, “I think I have a joke for you: Bill Baker.” Like, really mean-spirited.

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This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Carl Newman, New Pornographers: I remember Bill Baker hosted SHiNDiG. He did that for a few years. And for some reason, in my young, drunken state, I decided he was going to be the guy I was going to harass. I think for a couple of years, Bill might’ve hated me. It wasn’t until years later that, you know, we became friends. It was a kind of friendly, drunken harassment, but I remember I might’ve taken it too far a few times. I don’t recall. It’s all hazy.

An early Windwalker promo shot, in that rarest of Vancouver weather: snow. L-R: Glenn D’Cruze, Philippe Doebelli, Stuart Oijen, and Anthony Hempell (between Stuart’s legs).

Anthony Hempell: Before the SHiNDiG show against Superconductor, Stuart said, “So, in this song I’m gonna do something. I need the strobe light and we’re gonna just cut the strobe light at this one part, and I’m gonna do something, and whatever you guys do, just keep playing.” Philippe Doebelli: I knew he needed a smoke machine and a strobe light. That’s all I knew.

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Anthony Hempell: We’re all looking at each other and we’re like, “Uh oh. What is this?” And Glenn is just like, “I don’t wanna know.” Exu Nazares: I had to ﬁght sometimes for my ideas in the band, especially with Glenn there. So I thought, “I won’t even tell them.” I said, “Whatever happens, just keep playing.” It was during “Homecoming,” that song. Anthony Hempell: During a quiet part of the song, Stuart pulls out a pig’s head that he got from some butcher, a full-on pig’s head, and a machete. And he hacks the thing onstage. Exu Nazares: “Homecoming” is about my hometown, Ladysmith, and about being driven out of that town. And I was like, “Okay, this pig’s head is going to represent these motherfuckers.” I bought it at Save on Meats. It was only ﬁve or ten dollars. Anthony Hempell: There was a strobe light going off, which makes it really hard to play. So I was just trying, and wondering why Philippe’s guitar had cut out. Then I realized that Stuart had hacked his patch cord with the machete. Philippe Doebelli: I remember him just going for it. I saw the machete, and I don’t think I knew what he was hacking, but I remember going on and just being into the music at that moment. I think he took out someone’s patch cable, but I think we were still playing. Who knows? We played so loud that even if we lost a mic or a guitar it didn’t matter. Exu Nazares: I chopped through my mic chord at one point. And then my mic wasn’t working anymore. Anthony Hempell: My friend Graham, who was there, says that there was a visible shockwave that went through the audience [laughs]. Exu Nazares: When I brought the head out, one table got up and left. And all the other people moved up to ﬁll the space and started standing up. Four people left; they couldn’t handle it. The rest of them were loving it. It was very theatrical. It’s supposed to be an event — you’re supposed to be trying to win this thing. For me, it was part of the performance. Performance art, trying to mix it with the music. Sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes it does. That time it worked. Strobe lights

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This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

were going off in my eyes and people were like, “Throw me the pig’s head!” I threw them the pig’s head. Philippe Doebelli: It deﬁnitely worked. I thought it was quite cool. I don’t know if Glenn liked it, in retrospect. I still don’t know how the whole SHiNDiG thing worked or how we won. I don’t know if it was some of Bill’s inﬂuence, as well, because he was so involved with CiTR. But it worked out ﬁne. Bill Baker: Windwalker won. The funny thing is, we played no part in their winning, but I can see why it looked ﬁshy. I remember Carl Newman hollering out some very rude insults to me. But at that point, I also remember having the feeling, unlike all the other times, of “I’m up here talking into a microphone and you’re down there.” [Laughs] Like, “Shhh!” Anthony Hempell: When you’re twenty, you don’t know how stuff actually works. You think that just by making good music you’re gonna be famous or it’s all going to become successful. And for a while there, we were just rolling from success to success to success. Like, it started taking off on CiTR, then we were getting shows. People started coming to the shows, people were telling us how great we were. And then SHiNDiG. And Mint Records was talking to us, Nettwerk was talking to us. Bill Baker: I phoned Philippe and asked them if they would like to get together, and they were totally into it. They were a lot more compatible with us [than Lung]: they actually wanted to sit down and look at a piece of paper. They seemed much more nerdy compared to those other guys. We had a good meeting with them, I remember, at the White Spot on Granville and Broadway. Anthony Hempell: The ﬁrst ofﬁcial thing I remember doing with Bill and Randy was going to the Denny’s on Broadway for a meeting with them. Just to sort of discuss possibilities, as far as I remember. I think it was everybody in the band, and I remember being very excited because I got to order a big ice cream sundae and Bill paid for it [laughs]. That was my ﬁrst taste of the rock ’n’ roll fairytale, and about where it ended.

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Philippe Doebelli: The conversations all went pretty well and they seemed to get what we were, so I wasn’t overly worried. I wasn’t thinking about millions of dollars or anything like that. To a degree, you didn’t even need a contract. I always got a good feeling from Bill. I think we had the discussion at Baskin & Robbins or something. Exu Nazares: I liked Bill and Randy, that’s why I signed with them. I was suspicious of every label at the time, but they were nice people. Easygoing. Honest. Bill Baker: I actually had the contract and I had given it to them. The only thing I really took away from that meeting was that I needed to know more about what this contract actually meant. We’d gone to my uncle’s lawyer friend and said, basically, “Here’s what we’re doing, we want something.” It was quite thick, as I recall, in the twenties of pages long. If you were to do a skit about undecipherable legalese, that’s pretty much what it was. And I remember a lot of times being asked questions, like, “What does this mean?” and me saying, “You know? I will get back to you on that. Good question!” Like, “Oh god, I’m failing so badly.” But, you know, they went for it. Anthony Hempell: Before that we had only interacted with Bill when he was

MC-

ing at SHiNDiG, which was always a little bit funny because he was in his fullest sardonic sense of humour, and also pretty drunk, I think, every time. So we didn’t really know what to make of him. And Randy would just not say anything. Or he’d say a couple of things. He’d mumble something we couldn’t understand or say to Bill, “No. That’s not right. Change that.”

With the Windwalker album set to be the ﬁrst

CD

release for Mint Records the

coming year, Bill and Randy decided to release a split 7-inch between Windwalker and the band Tankhog as an advance promo. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, 7-inch singles were commonly used for this purpose. Tankhog, as mentioned, was made up of the rhythm section of the aforementioned Slow: bassist Stephen Hamm

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This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

(he of the Expo mooning, and more commonly known as Hamm) and drummer Terry Russell, plus enigmatic singer Bruce Kane and guitarist Shane Davis. Bill Baker had gone to high school with some of the band members. Tankhog was just as heavy as Slow, but with more punk edge, particularly because of Bruce’s voice. Tankhog had just released their ﬁrst album on Zulu.

Stephen Hamm, bass in Tankhog: I met Terry when I was a kid, and he had long hair for the time, 1977 or something. And he was like, “Yeah, come over and watch TV.”

They had cable. I was like, “Well, this guy’s pretty geeky.” And he was into

things like peeing into Dixie cups and watching cars run over stuff [laughs], and I was like, “This kid’s kind of weird.” But he had cable, and my strict German parents were like [deep voice], “No cable!” So I went and hung out with Terry in his

Tankhog onstage in Toronto, 1990. Photo by Juliet Wilson.

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

house on Point Grey. The previous owner had built a tiki lounge in the basement. There were these stinky old couches, and Terry’s brothers always had harsh parties in the basement, and there were black light posters, like Supershark and Hendrix. His two brothers were total stoner-rocker guys. They had this huge wicked record collection. They were all really into the Guess Who, particularly Burt Cummings. They were really into CanRock, so that’s how I got into rock ’n’ roll. They were also into Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, and Neil Young, but also the Dickies. They were getting into the punk rock thing. Terry and I started played together when we were thirteen. Our ﬁrst band was called Weed. The only song we knew was “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road” by the Beatles. I played piano and Terry played drums and sang. Our second band was called Chuck and the Sucks. Terry Russell, drums in Tankhog: We once got asked to play our old elementary school, Queen Mary Elementary. They paid us ﬁfty bucks. We used the school’s PA, with a big honking chrome microphone. And they set it up like an assembly, with the kindergartens in the front with the grade ones, and so on. And the neighbourhood bully wanted to be our bouncer. Stephen Hamm: He was like Nelson from The Simpsons. Terry Russell: [Laughs] Yeah. He was. He had the high voice and everything. By the time we were halfway through the ﬁrst song, everyone up to about half the grade ﬁves had left the gym. It was like a ﬁre drill. The teachers were waving them along, counting them off, and they couldn’t turn the power off because the only way up to the stage was either through the front of the stage or the one back door — which was blocked by the school bully — Stephen Hamm: Who was looking for any excuse to get into a ﬁght with a teacher. He was a big boy, even then. He was like, “If Principal Laurie comes up to me, I’m going to fuckin’ kick her in the crotch.” Terry Russell: That was our ﬁrst real show and our ﬁrst taste of power. We cleared that room. That was awesome.

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This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Stephen Hamm: And that was about the time that I met Bill [Baker]. We went to high school with Bill. Bruce Kane, vocals in Tankhog: Terry and I were actually in a band with Bill called Holly and the Slaughterhouse. Shane Davis, guitar in Tankhog: I also went to high school with Tom [Anselmi], who sang in Slow with Terry and Hamm. And Bruce and I played in a band together when I was in high school. I was recruited to play guitar in the TV Repairman. Terry Russell: I remember the ﬁrst time I saw you playing. It was at Stalag 13 down at Cambie and Seventh.

Hamm.

When we were in Slow together, that was where we played our ﬁrst gig. Stephen Hamm: Stalag 13! Yeah, in the midst of the condos there. It used to be all warehouses down there. That was one of the few places to play in the early eighties. It was in the basement of the audio repair shop. Bruce Kane: It was bleak. Shane Davis: It was fucking bleak. Bruce Kane: I just remember pools of water onstage and shit. It was brutal. Terry Russell: It wasn’t waterproof, and yeah, Slow’s ﬁrst show was there, which was our second show altogether. Shane Davis: That was a great show. Terry Russell: It was just pissing rain. Bruce Kane: That was a fucking unbelievable show. I loved that show.

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Shane Davis: You could cram about hundred and some odd people down there in the basement. Stephen Hamm: Oh, at least! Bruce Kane: Two hundred. Stephen Hamm: Two or three hundred. Shane Davis: The body heat from everyone would just make the condensation drip off of the ceiling. Stephen Hamm: It would rain inside. Shane Davis: And the stage was two or three feet off the ﬂoor, because parts of the ﬂoor I think were dirt. [Laughs] It had a dirt ﬂoor. The mosh pit was kind of a mush pit. Stephen Hamm: That was amazing. That place was awful. Shane Davis: Yeah, that was my ﬁrst live gig ever. Terry Russell: I had known Chris Thorkelson [from Slow] since kindergarten. Then Hamm came to that school in grade six. And then Hamm and I went to one high school and Chris went to another one, and we didn’t really hook up until about grade twelve. And then we formed Slow, and that’s when we got to know Tom [Anselmi] and basically got to know these guys [Shane and Bruce]. Stephen Hamm: Terry and I were really into getting drunk and these guys were into getting stoned. Then we taught them how to get drunk and they taught us how to get stoned. It was totally East Side versus West Side. Terry and I were West Side kids, and these guys were East Side kids. Shane Davis: And Tom was really big into getting us all to hang out. Tom was my best friend in high school, and he said, “You should really get to know Terry and Hamm,” and I was like, “I don’t know, man. Those guys are weird, like, the guy with the tiki basement? I don’t know, man” [laughs]. And then I remember one night, we all went and exchanged all our knowledge about drugs. Tom and I climbed this tree. We were on

MDMA,

and Terry and Hamm were

standing on the ground. And we felt bad because [laughs] they couldn’t get up the tree. So we climbed down, Tom and I, and helped Terry and Hamm get up in

36

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

the tree with us. Hamm’s always been a big boy, and I remember Tom and I on the ground, these scrawny little guys. We’d already gotten Terry up the tree and we were like, “Oh, now we gotta get Hamm up the tree.” And we held our hands together and helped Hamm up, and then we climbed the tree, too. And then we sat there for I don’t know how long. It seemed like an eternity. And that was when we really bonded with each other. We were like, “Yeah, man, we’re all in the tree . . . and we did it together.” And I was like, “I love you guys.” Bruce Kane: I used to party in Terry’s basement. The tiki basement. Stephen Hamm: Yeah. I partied in Terry’s basement from the age of fourteen. I pretty much lived in Terry’s basement from the age of fourteen to twenty-two. Tankhog didn’t really practice there, though. Terry Russell: I was revisiting one of our old practice spaces the other day, because it’s just a few blocks from where I work, over on Fifth. Stephen Hamm: Oh, the one with the iguana? Shane Davis: We used to take money out of vending machines at UBC and buy beer with it. We snuck into this one building and there weren’t any vending machines, and we had gone to a lot of trouble to get in. “Sneaking in” is putting it nicely [laughs]. So we [were] walking down this hallway and we realized it was the biology building, and there were all these inset cages in the walls in the hallway. One had a sign that said “Galapagos iguana” and I said, “You know, we didn’t ﬁnd any vending machines but we should be able to get some money for this.” It just had this wimpy clasp on it and we had crowbars and stuff for the vending machines, so we just popped it. It was huge! We found out later it was twentyone years old or something. It was an old dude for an iguana. We took it on the bus, wrapped up in a coat. We didn’t have any money for the bus, either. The bus driver said, “Whatcha doing? What’s in there?” and I said, “It’s my cat. It’s sick. I gotta take it to the vet.” And then this tail came out and whapped the fare box, and he looked at the tail, and I said, “Yeah, he’s really sick. All his fur fell out, man.” And the driver said, “Okay! You guys can get on.”

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

We took him to this one friend’s house, this guy Paul, and we put it in his bathtub. We didn’t know what to do with it. Paul’s mom’s boyfriend was this giant cockney English guy, and he came downstairs and saw this thing in the bathtub, and he said, “Whut the fook? Whut the fookin’ ’ell is this?” He picked it up by the tail and he was swinging it around, yelling at it, and we were like, “Holy shit, that’s our investment, man.” He basically threw it across the room. We grabbed it and took it to Terry’s house, and eventually we moved it into our practice space. Terry Russell: And it lived there for months. Shane Davis: Because we couldn’t ﬁnd anyone to buy it. Eventually, our friend Lev’s girlfriend bought it. She gave us two hundred bucks for it, and we were like, “Right on! Two hundred bucks. That’s better than any vending machine.” So Tom and I spent the money. Later, we were at a Hüsker Dü show and I came home — I think we were seventeen — and my mom said, “Yeah, the cops were here. Something about an iguana at your rehearsal space.” And I was like, “Holy shit, Big Brother is watching us.” Tom and I decided to cook up a really good story and we turned ourselves in to the cops. We came up with this story that we bought the thing off this punk rocker named Off Braino, who had it living in the back of his car. We said he was hanging out at the Smiling Buddha. We had our stories down completely. We rehearsed them because we knew they would separate us. We said, “He was six foot two, he had a black mohawk and he wore a black leather jacket that said ‘Fuck the Pigs’ on it.” We made sure that was in the story. So they had us separated and we recited the whole story: We traded the guy a six-pack for this iguana. We were just completely innocent, all we were trying to do was save this iguana from this guy Off Braino, and we had moved it into our practice space. They bought the story and it was pretty funny at the time. But really the thing was dying, because he was living in a rehearsal space with three punk rock bands. Stephen Hamm: The iguana survived in the end. He was returned, and now there’s a note by his cage. “I was kidnapped, and I lived with . . .”

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This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Terry, sweaty after a show.

Shane Davis: Well, we didn’t know it was big news out at UBC, because apparently that building and the engineers have this rivalry, and they thought it was the engineers who’d stolen it. Apparently, it was all over the UBC paper: “Where is Iggy?” Bruce Kane: His name was Iggy? That’s cool. That’s a decent name. Terry Russell: We called him Jimbo the Lizard King. Jimbo! Shane Davis: We were degenerate. I’m sorry. Stephen Hamm: Our degenerate nature really came to fruition in Tankhog, I think. More than any other bands we were in. After Slow dissolved, because of egos and people being fucked up and shit, at the end of it, it was sort of like, “Well, who’s left?” Tom and Chris had gone off to L.A. to do Copyright, and it was like, “Well, you got us!” We were sort of the dregs, which led to incidents like the iguana thing. Bruce Kane: And these guys called me up and said, “Hey, we’re starting a new band. Why don’t you ﬂy back here and sing?” I was living in Massachusetts and I

39

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

said, “Well, yeah, I’m not doing much in Massachusetts. I might as well ﬂy back.” Shane Davis: We auditioned all these singers and they were all really bad. We kept thinking about Bruce because he was in the TV Repairmen and he just generally had what we wanted — some crazy guy that looked cool to scream and jump around. Stephen Hamm: And could write lyrics. Good lyrics. Shane Davis: None of us had much to say, really. Other than, “ARRGHHH.” Our name shows how debauched we were. It came from hufﬁng nitrous oxide. We used to steal tanks of laughing gas from hospitals. Our friend Bob showed us how to do it. He had some bolt cutters. It was kind of easy. I personally felt a little bad about it. Like, maybe someone in the hospital actually needs this stuff, and we shouldn’t be hufﬁng it, but we all really liked hufﬁng it. Then I noticed on one of the tanks a label that said where it came from, so we decided, “Well, screw the hospital, we’ll just go right to the source.” So we went in a friend’s pickup truck, and we used the bolt cutters, and we opened up the gate. And we loaded up the whole pickup truck with four-foot tanks of nitrogen. And the small portable party tank, as we called it. Bruce Kane: We’d just come back from Victoria where we’d played a show without a name for our band, and at the ferry terminal somebody thought they’d open up a tank in the car and roll up all the windows. They thought that would just be the best. Shane Davis: Because when it comes out of the tank, it’s really cold, and it freezes your face. When you pass out against the frozen gas, it really does damage to your lips. So it seemed like a great idea to just turn the tank on and just sit there. Bruce Kane: I walked up beside the car and I saw that all the windows had kind of frosted over from the inside. [Laughs] I opened the door and Shane’s girlfriend fell out onto her face. It was brutal. Shane Davis: It was noticed at some point during this thing that we were always the ones that were hogging the tank. So someone said, “You guys are a bunch of tank hogs!” And we’re like, “Hey!”

40

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Stephen Hamm: So we put out an album on Zulu Records, and we toured with Skinny Puppy because Rave [the “unofﬁcial fourth member” of Skinny Puppy] had produced our album. The ﬁrst fucking night of that tour, Ogre [Skinny Puppy’s singer] came up to me and said, “Hey man, how are you doing?” And I said, “Good, man.” And he’s like, “You wanna bottle of Bushmills?” I said, “Yeah, sure, that’s great.” And every night he would bring me a fucking bottle of Bushmills. Finally I said, “What’s up with the bottle of Bushmills?” and Rave said, “Well . . . ” When I was in Slow we had played at the University of Regina, and Slow had played the night before Skinny Puppy was supposed to play there. I had written on the dressing room wall something like, “Dear Ogre, I’m gonna rip your head off and shit down your throat. I mean it. Hamm, from Slow.” [Laughs] All these years later, he ﬁnally met me, and he was like, “Oh, fuck.” Shane Davis: We did other things on tour besides just drink. Stephen Hamm: Like go to waterparks. In Edmonton, we blew the clutch out of the truck, and the mechanic said, “This is going to cost you two hundred and twenty-ﬁve bucks.” And we said, “Okay, we only got two hundred bucks.” Then we remembered, “Terry’s got twenty-ﬁve bucks, and he’s going to go spend it on the waterslide!” And I remember hooﬁng it to the mall, and I was like, “Don’t do that. No, no, no!” And then just seeing Terry going, “Whee!” all the way down the waterslide. And thinking, “Oh no! What’re we gonna do? Fuck!” Shane Davis: Once we couldn’t ﬁnd parking in New York, and our van got towed. Terry Russell: We said, “How much do you charge to impound it per day?” And they’re like, “It’s like ten dollars a day.” “Is it safe there?” “Oh yeah, it’s covered and supervised.” “Can we leave it there for the week?” “Sure.” We had been trying to ﬁgure out where to put it for another week. Shane Davis: Parking problems were solved. That was a fun tour. Stephen Hamm: And when we came back, Zulu wasn’t interested in putting out any more records for us.

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Shane Davis: [Laughs] We’d spent all their money. In Reno. And San Francisco. We spent about two grand. Stephen Hamm: So we sort of burned our bridges, which is what we were good at doing, but Bill Baker was like, “Yeah, I wanna start managing bands!” or something. So he was our tour manager. This was before Mint, in about 1990. Shane Davis: When Bill was managing us, we went out to Winnipeg, or Toronto, or something. And he printed off this tour itinerary. It had a border around it and the border was really tiny printing. Subliminal messages. “Do not spend all your money on beer.” Terry Russell: “Do not buy beer. Go to sleep.” Shane Davis: “Leave directly after the show and drive to the next town.” All these positive afﬁrmations that we never really heeded. Although we never missed a show. Terry Russell: No. Basically, our goal was to arrive and do what we had to do, so we could get loaded afterwards. We were always mindful of our obligations. Bruce Kane: It was on that tour that we got introduced to Ministry. Which kind of ties in to the whole Mint thing. Stephen Hamm: We started playing “So What” by Ministry in our set, because it was a heavy song, and we were into it. I think that was probably one of the best songs in our set at that point. Shane Davis: Well, we combined it with a Link Ray song. Terry Russell: And Madonna. Shane Davis: Yeah, because we’re into Link Ray, Madonna, and Ministry. Terry Russell: We called it Midonnastry. Bill Baker: Windwalker did a Ministry cover, and so did Tankhog, some of the members of which I knew from high school. I remember being at [renowned local bar and music venue] the Cruel Elephant talking to Shane Davis. [I said], “If you guys do a Ministry cover, and these guys do a Ministry cover, we should put out a split record.” And that was where that record came from.

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This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

We actually wrote to Ministry to get lyrics for the song. That’s how we learned about the whole world of the mechanical royalty, which we had only guessed at before. The royalty rights organization that handles things didn’t have Ministry as a songwriter in their database, and they said, “You have to make the deal directly with the artist if we can’t handle it for you.” So Dave Ogilvie [Rave], from Skinny Puppy, he knew those guys, and he put us in touch with the people at Ministry. I remember we had to send them a fax or something asking for lyrics. And they did send lyrics back. We only asked for lyrics for Windwalker, ’cause the guys from Tankhog had made up their own version. It was a combo of that and a Madonna song. I remember Bill Rieﬂin from Ministry just saying, “Why would anyone want to cover these songs?” [Rieﬂin now plays drums for R.E.M.] Terry Russell: I mean, the recording was cheap. And they paid for it. Stephen Hamm: Yeah, but the split album with Windwalker, The Mint Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, was pretty much Bill’s idea, because he liked our version. “Why don’t you cover it?” Bill Baker: We went completely batshit on that record. We have not put as much effort into the concept of a record since as we did with that. On the front of the Ministry record we were rifﬁng on, The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, there was a head. So our concept was to have each band come up with some kind of interpretation of that for their side of the album. We tried to copy the Ministry font at the bottom, which we didn’t get right at all. And mint green vinyl. The label was green to match the vinyl. Stephen Hamm: I found out that we could get cheap pig heads up at Beefway Meats, which is still there. And on Tuesdays back then, you could buy a pig’s head. So I was always like, “Oh, we got a show coming up, better buy a pig’s head.” And then, yeah, the cover came together. The cover was pretty great. Terry Russell: The cover was a way better production than the recording. Stephen Hamm: Yeah. The recording was sort of done in a couple hours. But the

43

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

cover was the most fun, putting that whole thing together, getting Bill’s mom’s cooler and draining out the pig’s blood. Bill Baker: I remember getting the ﬁrst pressing back. In some cases, the vinyl squirting machine didn’t properly mix the colours, so we’ve got a few of them that are different. One of them’s transparent blue — it’s very rare.

Mint ended up putting out another 7-inch single with Tankhog — a pair of songs called “The Freight Train Song” and “Jealous Trains” — before the band broke up.

Stephen Hamm: Things never really moved forward because we thought everyone hated us so much. We wouldn’t ask, “Hey, you wanna put out another record for us?” It was really awesome that Mint put out the two singles for us. We were fucking terrifying. Because we were full-blown fucking drug addicts and drunks. Shane Davis: And I think ultimately that was kind of our demise, right? Stephen Hamm: No, you got a wife. That’s what happened. Shane Davis: Well, I quit drinking and I got married, and I couldn’t handle being around you guys anymore. And you guys probably couldn’t handle being around me, either, because I was miserable. No one would sign us and we thought everyone hated us. Terry Russell: We also had a lot of good material. We had an album’s worth of material that just never saw the light of day. Shane Davis: But the “Train” single was fun. One of the best reviews of it that I’ve seen says, “The insert features a nude photo of this less-than-attractive band.” I was like, “Whoa. I thought I looked pretty hot in that picture, man” [laughs]. I’m not sure if it was entirely my thing, but I remember thinking about some Tad album cover. There was a nude photo of him and I thought, “Big guy. Nude. How about a band with big guys and two little guys, nude. That would be good.”

44

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Stephen Hamm: And then Robynn did the cover. And she did such a good job with it. She did a wicked job on the cover. It was just sort of joyous. Terry Russell: At the end, Mint was basically the only label that would talk to us.

A few months after the 7-inch single with Tankhog came out, Mint released Windwalker’s debut, Rainstick. The band had recorded the album with their SHiNDiG winnings.

Outtakes from the Windwalker photoshoot.

Exu Nazares: We were the ﬁrst band they signed before they had any cash. Ultimately, it ended up being a negative for us because we didn’t have an album that was done right that was multi-track. How many live-to-tape albums have you heard on the radio? Anthony Hempell: Phil had been in a band before that and had recorded an album. They’d been signed to this label in Europe and they’d basically gotten kind of screwed over. And so he was a lot more, “Let’s try and keep all of the costs down. Let’s try and not blow the money.” Because you understand that, really, the band–label relationship is like a bank. They’re loaning you money, they’re going to recoup everything from all the money that you make. And the chance of you actually seeing a dime from anything is pretty low.

45

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Exu Nazares: With the winnings we got from SHiNDiG, we had forty-eight studio hours total and I wanted to do live to multi-track and then do overdubs and vocals, and everybody was like, “No, we can’t do it in that much time, we have to do liveto-tape.” When it was time to record, we went through each song about ten times until each guitar part was right, every drum part was right. But I had no voice left. I was totally unhappy about it right from the beginning. My voice sounds like crap on it: I’m tired, burnt out, my vocal chords are developing nodes by that point because I’m screaming twenty times. And Glenn’s like, “Oh, I just missed that one cymbal that time, got to do it again.” Anthony Hempell: We’d done our demo live-to-tape — it sounded great. We thought, “Why don’t we do that? Why don’t we record it live-to-tape, and that will be our ﬁrst album?” The ﬁrst Jane’s Addiction album was done like that. And really we were a tight band. I mean, we could pull it off. So we tried to do it. But we were going from a small room with a bunch of mics that you could mix to Mushroom Studios, which is a big room. And it’s actually a pretty difﬁcult room to manage. We had the same engineer that we had with the demo, and it was one of his ﬁrst times working at Mushroom, if not his very ﬁrst. So, I don’t blame him. I don’t think anybody’s really to blame. A lot of reviews say the production was just not up to snuff and it’s true, it’s not. Philippe Doebelli: Well, hindsight’s easy. I would have liked to record it more isolated, as we did later on. The album’s a little muddy sounding. But it kind of sets a mood, too. So, I still think it works. Bill Baker: Ric Arboit at Nettwerk wanted to buy that record off us. Anthony Hempell: It’s hard for me to think back about a lot of the decisions that happened, and whether if we’d made a different decision anything would have turned out differently. I don’t know. I don’t really have that commanding feeling of, “Oh, if we’d just done that.” For example, we were basically offered a contract with Nettwerk. Philippe Doebelli: Nettwerk wanted us on their label, but we were already with

46

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Mint. We decided to stay with Mint. The way I remember it, we thought, well, Nettwerk’s more powerful or whatever, but then again we’re one of a bunch of bands, where with Mint we were basically the band. Us and Tankhog; cub hadn’t even started to come on yet. Anthony Hempell: For a long time Philippe said, “You know what? If we’d taken that contact with Nettwerk, we just would’ve broken up within six months.” And I can see his point, and he probably could’ve been right, but if I knew then what I know now . . . Philippe Doebelli: You got the feeling that Mint knew us and understood us and just accepted us for what we were. Whereas Nettwerk, you got the feeling that they thought we were neat, but they would have tried to push us some direction, I think. Exu Nazares: I was so upset about the recording, and then Mint said, “We don’t have money to do another recording.” Which was my big beef with them and why I almost wanted to go to Nettwerk. I did want to, actually, except I still had my concerns about that. I didn’t want to say, “Oh thanks for believing in us, now screw you.” I had my loyalty, too. And I like Bill and Randy. Anthony Hempell: At our release party, we thought there should be at least some kind of party element. So we got a piñata. And we also got a smoke machine. So instead of a pig’s head and a strobe light, we had a piñata and a smoke machine at this one. During the last number, we were pumping the smoke out of the smoke machine and we dropped this piñata down, and Stuart took out this cane and was whacking the piñata — it was full of candy and stuff. The song ﬁnished and the smoke cleared, and there were these two guys standing there in front of the stage and one of them had blood dripping down his face. These two guys had come in from Surrey for the night, and they were just having a great time and had gotten accidentally whacked by Stuart’s cane. I don’t think the one guy knew that he was bleeding. So we took him back into the kitchen, cleaned him up, and gave him a free T-shirt. And he was just like, “Wow, that was awesome!”

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Over the years, Bill would come to be known for his propensity for sending out bands on terrible, long cross-country tours. Most people couldn’t really complain, because they were getting shows and many times Bill would be the one driving them. Both Windwalker and Tankhog were subject to the soon-to-be-infamous Mint tours from hell. Regardless of their geographic intensity, however, said tours were also highly educational for the bands involved.

Anthony Hempell: We did a little trip to Calgary once. Our ﬁrst road trip. We wanted to leave early — you know, it’s a twelve-hour drive to Calgary. Philippe wanted to leave at ﬁve o’clock at night to try and get a head start, but Glenn had a playoff hockey game. And Glenn’s like, “Well, I want to play my hockey game ﬁrst, and then we can go, after I play my game.” I said, “No. We gotta hit the road. And, you know, we’re a band. We’ve got this thing booked. We gotta do this together. Sorry, but you have to make some sacriﬁces somewhere — this is one of them.” Exu Nazares: Glenn changed everything, even the artwork on the album, on the basis of what his parents would say. What they could and couldn’t see. I was thinking, why are you in this band? You should join a Christian rock band or something like a Rush tribute band — something he was into. I tried to get along with him, but it was hard. We didn’t have much in common. Nothing. Anthony Hempell: Glenn’s like, “No, I’m going to my hockey game.” So we packed the whole band in, and Glenn pulled out his hockey bag and stuffed his bag and sticks in there. We all got in the van and went down Highway One and Glenn said, “If we don’t go to my hockey game, I’m quitting the band.” So, you know, we were getting to that Sprott Street exit that goes to 8 Rinks, and Phil turned the van off the ramp. And dropped Glenn off. We had two hours to kill — we went bowling. [Laughs] And then we picked

48

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

Glenn up and pretty much nothing was said about it. Then off we went and did the show in Calgary. Philippe Doebelli: The lyrics were one thing with Glenn, but the other thing was we did a beneﬁt for Rape Relief. And he didn’t want to do it because Rape Relief supports Choice. So then he didn’t want to do it. And we said, “Well, we’re doing it.” I think that was the nail — that was the end for him. Exu Nazares: It started building up with the rest of the band because they started realizing that the democracy wasn’t working. Shortly after the hockey game gig, I think we were ready to give him the boot, and [Anthony and Philippe] got together with Glenn and played really wildly for one last time, and at the end Glenn said, “By the way, I’m quitting.” It’s lucky that they could have a good jam. Anthony Hempell: So we got Brendan, who was the drummer in Philippe’s old band, and who’s really good, and was much better at dealing with Stuart. You know, he could do some pretty good banter with Stuart, back and forth. It relaxed a bit after that. Philippe Doebelli: We did [CBC Radio’s rock ’n’ roll show] Brave New Waves. So they brought us in, and I think we had, like, two practices with Brendan before we did it. It was pretty good. You can hear we’re a little shaky because we’d only had a few practices. Especially on “Rabbit Hole.” Because of Brendan’s background with me from the metal thrash band . . . I mean, Brendan can take off on the drums, speed-wise, and you can hear it sped up quite a bit. But it was good. And the other thing I remember from that session: because it was the CBC, it was unionized. So we played for a while and then we had a coffee break and then lunch. We were like, we’re musicians — you just keep playing until you’re done, and that’s it. But the engineer had to take his break. Anthony Hempell: We went on tour in the summer of, I think, ’91? Maybe ’92? Basically the Hard Core Logo tour to Winnipeg and back. Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg. And then Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, then back. We had a totally awesome show in Edmonton. Just fantastic.

49

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Probably the best show I’ve ever played. Philippe Doebelli: I remember this show in Saskatoon, at a place that was a Mexican restaurant during the day. But I remember that show just being so good, because we’d been playing so much together, and we just clicked. And there are other moments, like at the Commodore, we extended “Homecoming” and did this completely improvised, heavier, metal thing at the end.

High on the success of the tour and subsequent shows, Windwalker decided to start working on a follow-up to Rainstick. It would never be released.

Exu Nazares: All the [new] songs were written together, each of us writing our own parts. That was a very trippy album. More conceptual, in a way. More cohesive and ﬂuid. Philippe Doebelli: It could be I’m overanalyzing, but I think when Glenn left, that cut Stuart loose to a degree, because there was no counterbalance. So that’s when the lyrics became more voodoo and stuff like that. Actually, on tour, I remember Brendan and Stuart partying together. I remember packing the equipment and then going to sleep, because I’d had enough. Whereas, Stuart and Brendan hit the town. Exu Nazares: We started practising less. We weren’t playing enough with Windwalker anymore for my drive. Anthony Hempell: At that point, we had a one-album deal with Mint. It was kind of a one-off. So there was no contractual need for us to produce anything else with them. Basically, the sales of the

CD

were pretty lukewarm. We weren’t touring,

outside of that one tour. It just totally ﬁzzled. Exu Nazares: I just wanted to get an album done with the band that represented us more. I was just happy to get that record done. Then whatever happened,

50

This Band Probably Won’t Be Your Life: 1986–1991

happened, but it was at least a record of when we sounded best. The music we recorded then was amazing. It was really smooth and an had amazing sound. Anthony Hempell: We went in the studio and recorded all that we had, which wasn’t much. But it sounded good. Unfortunately, we gave the DAT [digital audio tape] to Brendan and he lost it. But Philippe has a cassette somewhere. I’ve got a very bad, very worn out version of the cassette. But, you know, that was it. I read that book This Band Could Be Your Life. Holy shit. Reading that — those bands, they had nothing else to fall back on. So they were going to be in that band touring, all the time, because otherwise what were they going to do? That’s what they had to do. I mean, I’d had a little taste of that. There was this place in Regina that was in this crappy basement with no air, and the band slept in [the] backroom where somebody [had] built a half-pipe. And the rest of it was just junk. It was like the toilet in Trainspotting. Not that bad but, you know, it was gross. There were a couple of really disgusting mattresses. I put my sleeping bag on them; it was awful. I just wasn’t cut out for it. I’m just too soft. I look at other bands, the Smugglers and whoever, and they toured a lot and toured hard, and I’m not really sure how they did it. I didn’t have any money. I was living totally hand to mouth. I was working at CiTR, actually, a job that Bill got me. Philippe Doebelli: I think we were gearing up for a local show, and that’s when Stuart decided to go on vacation. The guy had worked maybe three months the whole time I knew him. In my head I was like, “Fuck.” I had had it. Brendan was in the band, but he was the second drummer. He wasn’t with us from the beginning, he was never a driving force. So basically it would come from me or Anthony. I think Anthony was maybe a little tired, too. Anthony Hempell: Everyone [except Stuart] had day jobs and couldn’t really take vacations. So it kind of came to that point. Are we going to tour or not? Brendan left because he realized we had to tour. We weren’t on Mint anymore. We weren’t really going anywhere, but we were writing all this stuff and we thought it was really good.

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

So we ended up trying to book our own tour, which we did through [Vancouver booking agent] Feldman. We auditioned a bunch of drummers and we got a new drummer who was actually really good. And in the summer of ’93 we were going to do a one-month tour of North America. And then this drummer just backed out. I think he’d gotten spooked by the fact that we were doing some warm-up shows in Vancouver and nobody showed up. Philippe Doebelli: I think if we had gone out on tour there, that may have pushed us to that next level. I quit music, actually, not too long after that. I ended up selling my amp to Robynn from cub, whom Anthony was dating at the time. Anthony Hempell: Bill always seemed to have some previous band that had caused him grief or fucked him over that he always used as an example to the next band. For us it was like, “Don’t be like Tankhog. Don’t do that.” I talked to somebody else who was on Mint, and I said, “I’ve always wondered. Does Bill talk about Windwalker? Does he tell you not to be like Windwalker?” [Laughs] Shane Davis: Mint didn’t seem to have a plan, as far as we could tell. Cub was just a total accident. Terry Russell: They just got overwhelmed by cub. I remember Bill saying, “You know, those girls are keeping us busy.” We didn’t really do anything after that, because they had their hands full. Stephen Hamm: Mint’s direction changed a bit after Tankhog and Windwalker. All of a sudden, cub was huge and it [was] like . . . Terry Russell: Cuddlecore.

52

2 cub Pop: 1992–1997

“Bad as they may have wanted to be, cub landed squarely on the side of the angels. And that’s totally punk rock.” — Marc Horgan, pitchfork.com “This is my theory: If you’re in a band, and you’re a girl, and you’re strong-willed, you go to Mint and say, ‘Randy, you fucking put out an album for me.’ And they’re like, ‘Okay, you’re a cute girl.’ I think that’s how a lot of this stuff happened.” — Stephen Hamm

53

Chapter 3 Oh La La Ooo Eee Cha Cha

By 1992, Mint Records was ofﬁcially a label. Before long, however, both of its founding bands, Windwalker and Tankhog, had broken up. Bill and Randy were gradually growing away from the primordial swamp of CiTR, but they were still very much engaged in the community there, when not busy trying to keep their label aﬂoat. Nationally, the scene in Halifax had just begun to brew, and its centrepiece band, Sloan, would soon start Murderecords to nurture the burgeoning crop of bands there. In late 1991, Geffen released Nirvana’s Nevermind, beginning a snowball effect in the majors that would echo through to the late ’90s, arguably longer. (It’s worth noting that Sloan released their ﬁrst full-length album, Smeared, on

55

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Geffen in 1992. They would eventually part ways with the label.) Before long, “alternative music” would go mainstream — for better or for worse. Over on the West Coast, a hair above Seattle, Mint’s then tiny catalogue was grunge-ﬂavoured, if not categorically grunge. This wouldn’t last. Bill and Randy have never been the type to ponder the meaning and nature of their existence for too long, but as luck would have it, there would be no need to do so in the immediate future. In Mint’s next ﬁve years of existence, two major ﬁgures would force an evolution on the nascent label: Lisa Marr and Grant Lawrence. In 1992, Bill Baker was living with his girlfriend Lisa Marr and some of their friends in a house near the university. Lisa had moved from B.C.’s interior to the West Coast to study law at

UBC

in the late ’80s. The hyper-intelligent Marr culti-

vated her political interests by joining CiTR and hosting a radio show dedicated to the work of Amnesty International. While at university, she also switched career directions, from law to creative writing.

Lisa Marr, bass and vocals in cub: Growing up in Vernon, there wasn’t a whole lot going on culturally, so you kind of had to make your own entertainment. You know, there were a lot of bush parties up there, a lot of drinking, hanging out, hockey games. It was very rural. I never really felt like I ﬁt in there. I always wanted to get to the city. I started a philosophy club and we’d meet and talk about issues. That was sort of the intellectual life of my teenage years. I was also a writer. I would write short stories and plays and poems, and things like that. But people were into mainstream entertainment and didn’t really want to get out of that small town. So if you had even an inkling of stuff that was beyond Vernon it made you kind of strange. When I got to UBC, it was like, “Wow, there are all of these politics going on, and there’s these clubs that you can join,” and it was more about changing the world. At the time, I was dating the music director of CiTR, Don, who was in my cre-

56

cub Pop: 1992–1997

ative writing class. And there was another woman in my class, Laurel [Bill Baker’s then girlfriend], who was also at CiTR. I’m sure that Don was probably just encouraging me to do more, to get more actively involved. It became this family, my new circle of friends. I left the friends I had moved with from Vernon. I don’t know what they ended up doing. That was really the end of that part of my life and the beginning of a new part. I met Bill in the fall of 1986 when Expo was on. We met in an English class. It was a ﬂuke because he wasn’t supposed to take the class, but he’d gotten sick right before registration and he missed it, so he ended up having to just take what was left.

They began dating shortly after. Thanks to CiTR, Lisa would become more and more enchanted with music and would leave behind the Amnesty show in order to host a music program called The Betty and Veronica Show. At the station, Lisa also met Randy and Robynn Iwata.

Lisa Marr: Robynn was doing a show at CiTR, kind of a local music show, called Hanford Nuclear Pizza Pie. There was all this northwest music, so that was kind of our entry into that whole scene of going down to Seattle all the time and meeting all these bands, like the Fastbacks and the Screaming Trees, and going to see Nirvana shows, and all that stuff. Bill was doing Expo 66 and then Hootenanny Saturday Night. Once in a while, we did this show called the Steve and Edie Show, a one-off about lounge music. He was really into going to look for records at the Salvation Army. Bill Baker: We all lived in this big house together, a bunch of us. Lisa and I included. Scott [Chernoff] and I built a practice space in the basement to rock out in. It basically consisted of coming home from a show, wasted, and deciding to play

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

music. We liked complex tunes, like “Wild Thing” and stuff like that [laughs]. Lisa Marr: I wanted to be in a band because I’d never been in a band. Nardwuar said, “Okay. The Evaporators have got a show Friday. You’ve got ﬁve days to learn ten songs, here they are. And get an outﬁt.” The outﬁt was as important as the playing, undoubtedly, for him. So that was it. I didn’t have time to worry about it that much. Our roommate, who was Bill’s partner on the radio show, Scott — he had a bass, showed me how to play a little bit. I got some Ramones records, listened to them, learned how to play, and then did the show. Bill Baker: She basically just had the idea, “I want to be in a band, and I’ll play bass, and what band can I be in?” And that’s how that happened. That would’ve been ’91, ’92. Then she was in the Bombshells. They got together, and they practised in the basement of the house. Lisa Marr: The Bombshells were an all-girl group, metal and punk. It just wasn’t my thing, ultimately, so I ended up leaving. I was in some weird band called the Indecisives for a little while. Things were percolating. I think Mint was starting around that time. And early on, my job was just to go to the ofﬁce and stuff records and all that. I wasn’t a partner — it was Bill and Randy’s thing. Robynn Iwata, guitar in cub: One of the job positions I held early on at the label was the mail order maven. I use the term “job position” loosely because back then roles and responsibilities weren’t as clearly deﬁned as they are now. Everyone voluntarily took care of whatever needed to be taken care of at any given moment, but I ended up tending to most of the mail order biz. I also did a lot of hand lettering and drawing graphics for Mint releases, advertisements, and assorted other promotions, as I still do today. Valeria Fellini, drums in cub: I came here in the eighties and I met Bill Baker pretty much as soon as I got here. And then maybe within the ﬁrst two years of living here, Lisa, Randy, and Robynn were all people that I met through CiTR. Lisa Marr: I took on the editorship of DiSCORDER. We’d spend all weekend, once a month, just focused on getting the paper out. Robynn, Randy, Bill, and I spent a

58

cub Pop: 1992–1997

An early cub promo shot. L-R: Valeria Fellini, Lisa Marr, and Robynn Iwata.

lot of time together then. I think I was still looking for a new project and the idea for a band just came up. I knew Valeria played drums, and Robynn was kind of yakking about wanting to play guitar, so. It just seemed like the thing to do. Robynn Iwata: Bill gave me my ﬁrst guitar, a beautiful, red hollow body with a big whammy bar that I sadly never used. Scott Chernoff gave me my one and only

59

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

guitar lesson. He taught me a handful of major chords: A, D, C, E, and G, the staples of many cub tunes. Bill Baker: The big thing was Robynn could only play the guitar sitting down. And by the time it got to them playing shows, she still wasn’t comfortable standing up, so that was an inadvertent piece of schtick that we milked to death. It was pretty charming to see this girl sitting onstage, cross-legged. [Laughs] It was pretty good, actually. More gutsy than anything. Valeria Fellini: Lisa Marr had come to see a band I was in called Speed Queens. And we were awful, I’m proud to say. I could barely drum. But it was fun. Anyway, she came to see us and thought we were hilarious. And at that point she must’ve started thinking of asking me to be in a project with her. She and Robynn put together a project and asked me to be the drummer. It’s sort of amazing that anyone ever asked me to be a drummer in their band because I’m self-taught, I’m a really bizarre player, and I never got very complex. I could never do big ﬁlls or solos or anything. “Idiosyncratic” would be the word [laughs]. Lisa Marr: We would play three times a week. We had the ﬁrst show in the basement. That was in May of ’92. We’d either had eight practices or we’d been practising for eight weeks or something before the show. I was working as a secretary — that was my day job — for this place downtown. And I had just started writing songs during my downtime. So I think I had a few songs just ready to go. Bill Baker: Valeria had this look. The goth look, that was very interesting. Valeria Fellini: But people would just keep asking me to be in their bands and I’d say, “Are you sure?” And then I would kind of go for it if I loved the music. It had to have what I would call an innocence, and real good lyrics. I listen to the lyrics like a writer would, rather than just having a voice say some junk to ﬁll in that melody line. Lisa was a writer, so as soon as I read her lyrics, I was like, “Fuck me! These are brilliant.” In a simple way, she hit on some pretty dark themes. And that’s what I always liked about it. Probably our biggest hit was “Go Fish,” which sounds like a happy, cute kids’

60

cub Pop: 1992–1997

song until you start to listen to it, and then it has frightening, weird themes around death. So I liked that, and that was the beginning of cub. Bill Baker: They hit a nerve with people very quickly because they were kind of an antidote to grunge. It was not over the top in any way whatsoever, and despite the reality of the people involved, the lyrics were very childlike and innocent. Valeria Fellini: Any time Lisa brought in a song, we would just be so delighted. We would be screaming with laughter, or we were like, “Lisa, that’s really powerful.” She was a really good, funny frontwoman, too. She has this very direct quality. When she sings, it’s kind of like when a kid gets up to sing at a party to show the adults. If they got up to sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” they’d just kind of belt it out in an unaffected voice that’s really charming. But she can hear the notes as well. It’s not affected. Bill Baker: When they ﬁrst started, none of them, especially Robynn and Valeria, knew how to play. That used to cause a lot of consternation with people, too. By then, we were starting to get demos from people, and for all the people who really loved them, for whatever various reasons, there were a lot of people who really hated them. These were people who had been practising for years and wanting to do this, and suddenly it’s like, “Why is cub being interviewed on

CBC?”

It was insulting

beyond belief to people. Lisa Marr: And then this whole cuddlecore thing happened [in ’93] because this guy Nicolas Bragg, who was from the radio station [and Zulu Records] and also in bands [like Destroyer], was just joking around, and he said, “There’s emocore and there’s, you know, hardcore. You guys should be cuddlecore.” It was totally a joke. It was one of those things. So we wrote a song called “Nicolas Bragg” as thanks. That was one thing that Mint was very good at. They would grab these catchphrases or whatever and they would get them out there. There’d be a press release, a postcard, a sticker, or something. Just constantly contacting all of these stations and media outlets; Mint was very good at that. Cuddlecore caught on. We thought it was funny.

61

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

I remember a really early interview with Tom Harrison from the Province, and he asked me what my parents thought about us playing shows in clubs. He thought we were in high school. I was twenty-six at the time. So we went with it and said, “Oh, well, we think they’re ﬁne with it.” We would just let it roll. Tom Harrison, music writer, the Province newspaper: The women in that band, when you talked to them, you always got that they were doing a lot of what they were doing in the spirit of, “This’ll be fun.” Bill Baker: The band being on Mint? Yeah, I think that was me and Lisa. It’s funny, it’s not common sense to work with your girlfriend like that. But I’m glad we did work together. I think it was just sort of assumed. They had a band; we had a label. Valeria Fellini: I think Mint’s ﬁrst release was Windwalker. I liked that band. I thought Mint might be kind of a darker punk label at ﬁrst. And we were sort of lightweight. I wouldn’t have expected to be on Mint. Lisa Marr: We recorded in August at this guy’s house in his bedroom. His name was Adam [Sloan], and he also was from CiTR. He was quite a bit younger than the rest of us. He had this rap act with his sister. Her name was Terror T and he was the Beat Assassinator. [Laughs] This brother-sister rap act was pretty amazing. He had a little studio — he had an eight track and was technically minded. We asked Jean Smith to come in from Mecca Normal because she’d been at some show that we’d played at the Starﬁsh Room. And she was into it. I think it was just kind of a goof. She’d never really produced anything, and we were this young upcoming band, and that seemed interesting. So we sat in this guy’s bedroom for four hours and recorded six songs.

Mint released cub’s ﬁrst 7-inch, Pep, which included “Go Fish,” “Motel 6” (the ﬁrst song Lisa Marr wrote for the band), and four other songs, on October 16, 1992. They shot a video for “Go Fish” in the aforementioned basement practice space, which received some light airplay. Shortly afterward, Bill and Lisa broke up, and

62

cub Pop: 1992–1997

Bill moved out. Robynn moved into the house in Bill’s place.

Bill Baker: December of 1992, I left. The breakup was the catalyst — I just bailed on Vancouver and went to Toronto. I did the cover art for [cub’s second 7-inch] Hot Dog Day from my apartment in Toronto. It’s fortunate because it was just on the cusp of when things could be done entirely digitally that couldn’t have been done a year or two before. So that kept me ﬂoating there for all of four months, until I got homesick for Vancouver and came back. Hot Dog Day came out in that time, though, because I remember hearing a song from it that was about our breakup — hearing it on the radio, just bawling my eyes out in Toronto, like, “What the fuck am I doing here?”

Hot Dog Day came out in May 1993. It included the now legendary song “My Chinchilla,” which starts with Lisa cheerfully singing, “Satan sucks, but you’re the best.” The video for “My Chinchilla” was allegedly made for just $20.53, and it began to get airplay on the then adolescent music station MuchMusic. This was due, at least in part, to the station’s compliance with CanCon regulations. As the writers of Have Not Been the Same note, “Any Canadian artist with a halfway decent visual idea suddenly had a national audience.” “Go Fish” also got a bump, and soon the band was gaining fans across the country, both via Much and on college radio. They started to chart in the Indie Street section of Sam the Record Man, which brought them to the attention of Yvette Ray, whom Bill had met during his stint in Toronto.

Yvette Ray, former Mint PR guru: I had gone to Ryerson University and got involved

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with the Ryerson radio station, CKLN, so that’s where the music stuff really started. Then I got a job at Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street around the same time. I was the Canadian department head and the indie buyer. I set up the indie department and called it Indie Street; I did all the indie stuff on consignment for the store. And then we set it up in a bunch of stores across the country as well. We all kind of kept in touch, all the buyers, asking each other, “What cool bands do you have in your city?” That kind of thing. This led to each store doing their own Top Ten chart. I heard about Windwalker and that they were going to be touring with Change of Heart. And I was like, “Oh, I should check them out, get them in the store, buy some of their CDs.” So that’s how I ﬁrst contacted Mint, ordering Windwalker CDs. People were starting to pay more attention to the indie scene, whether it was just on the retail side of things, being able to do the Indie Street thing, or the instores. We had tons of in-stores at Sam’s, too. Or just media attention. We had tons of our bands on MuchMusic back then. Now you can’t get your band on MuchMusic. But I used to have bands going in there and doing interviews all the time. I’ve got photos of cub there, doing a big contest giveaway with Sook-Yin Lee, where we gave away a record player.

Ray’s Indie Street idea, and the sales chart it spawned, meant that Sam stores across the country started stocking indie bands from different cities. For years to come, small bands with little to no exposure outside of their hometown would go on their ﬁrst cross-Canada tour and discover a copy or two of their LP, cassette, or CD

in cities they’d never been to before. At the time, this was revelatory.

Yvette Ray: So I called Mint to get some Windwalker CDs and was told, “Oh, Bill’s in Toronto right now, he can come into the store.” He brought me some cub 7-inches,

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and the Windwalker CD, and we just talked a bit about the label. He said he didn’t know anybody in town, and I thought, “Well, call me and we’ll hang out or something.” We ended up going to lots of shows together. So he was my friend. I started to help him out a little bit. Lisa from cub came to town for a while to visit, so I helped set up an interview at

CKLN

for her, and I

actually did an interview with her myself for one of the ﬁrst issues of Exclaim! magazine. The one and only time I wrote an article. [Laughs] I just kind of helped out, like I would help out any friend. “Oh, you should send a

CD

to this guy. He

said he’d review it.” It wasn’t until Bill decided he was going to leave and go back to Vancouver that he said, “You’ve been so helpful. Toronto’s actually really important, there’s a lot going on here, do you think you’d wanna help us out in Toronto?” I was ﬂattered and said okay. Bill Baker: The day I left, Yvette gave me a CKLN T-shirt and said if we needed any help, she’d be happy to help out. And that’s how she ended up getting sucked into this vortex. By then, cub was getting all kinds of attention. That’s when I heard them on [CBC Radio].

Nightlines was hosted by veteran

CBC

broadcaster David Wisdom. He also hosted

Radio Sonic and Radio On. Wisdom’s love of and curiosity about the Canadian independent music scene helped propel many indie bands into the public eye. His shows ﬁlled a niche similar to CBC’s Radio 3 today.

David Wisdom, host of Nightlines: I was interested in cub. That they were three women was a bit odd. And I had a show where I was suddenly given a budget so I could record bands and put their sessions on the radio across Canada. I could record

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any band I thought was good, and the bands I liked were those that were simple and straightforward and unorthodox, and not show business-y. The producers at

CBC

were a little taken aback because they wanted a slicker presentation, a mainstream approach, and I said no, this radio program is going to be championing bands just like cub. I thought they were just right for the times. I liked the people in the band. And Bill and Randy were just really sweet, straightforward guys. Randy Iwata: Over time, there would be some complaints from people that suggested that David was showing us favouritism, that he was pushing us to the detriment of everything else. It didn’t make any sense, really. David Wisdom: I seemed to like just about everything [Mint] put out during my tenure on the air. I liked the variety of acts that they recorded and signed and put out there, I liked the fact that they would take chances on oddball stuff, and I liked the fact that they cared not just about the music but also the product: the singles, the look of the singles, the way the covers looked, coloured vinyl. Things that were lovely, beautiful artifacts and objects unto themselves — they cared about that aspect of records and music. They loved the idea of records, not just music. And cub was a very do-it-yourself band — that was one of the great things about it — which was the essence of punk. Years after punk, they were still carrying on a great tradition in a fresh way. I loved it. Valeria Fellini: I liked the idea that somebody would invite us on a radio show and not try to manipulate the image or make a statement about it. We were constantly besieged by questions like, “Are you lesbians?” or “Are you feminists?” And David was like, “What’s your new single?” He’s far more interested in the music. Bill Baker: David Wisdom’s interest in cub kind of blew my mind. And they were topping the college charts, which to us was just unthinkable. Because as much as we enjoyed Windwalker, that record really didn’t do that much. I think it actually got somewhat high on the charts, it may have even gotten to number one. But cub was just — we were completely unprepared for the level of attention that cub received. You know, the phone calls had started coming, and interview requests,

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and people wanted them to play shows and be on compilation records, and it was just this whirlwind. Randy Iwata: There was this cub show at the Cruel Elephant down on Cordova that was sold out on a Tuesday, with no posters and no advertising. It was packed. Bill Baker: I remember initially thinking, “It’s not likely that this is going to be very popular.” Even though people locally were very into them, it was only after that record came out that I think we realized that we had something with them. Because they didn’t take it seriously, either. It wasn’t like, “Put out a record of this incredible band.” It was more like, “You’re my boyfriend. You have to put out my record.” It was very much lighthearted and intentionally sort of corny — that’s not the right word, but you know what I mean.

As cub grew in popularity, Valeria grew increasingly uncomfortable in the band.

Valeria Fellini: The turning point for me was, I think, Canada Day. Bill Baker: There was a big concert for Canada Day at Thunderbird Stadium at UBC. Randy Iwata: I remember going there and they were on the side stage, but the side stage was jammed. Robynn used to say that she could always gauge how big the audience was based on where I would stand, because I would always stand at the back. And I was way back. It was this huge crowd of people for them, on the side stage. Lisa Marr: Snow was on the main stage, and everybody hated Snow, so everybody came over to the side stage. Valeria Fellini: We had no idea that a few videos and minor airplay were going to mean a ﬁeld full of people on Canada Day singing the lyrics back to us and screaming like we were superstars. And at the end of that gig, we were still onstage and I turned around on my drum stool because I actually couldn’t handle the response,

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A set list from the Hot Dog Day tour.

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cub Pop: 1992–1997

I didn’t know what to do. So I was kind of turned around on my drum stool, and I found that I was looking Bill Baker in the eye. Bill and I were just looking at each other, and he was calming me down, and I said, “Holy fuck.” [Laugh] And he said, “I think we’re going to make a lot of money.” And that’s when he decided to put out Betti-Cola. Bill Baker: There were probably a couple thousand people watching them. Which at that time, just ﬂoored me. And Robynn was still sitting on the stage. Lisa Marr: That was the day where Valeria was like, “Whoa. This is not what I signed up for.” That spring was

Robynn, Lisa, and Neko show their sensitive sides on the road, 1994.

the ﬁrst tour we’d done. It was a West Coast tour. And she’d just refused to go. So that was the tour where Dave [Carswell, from the Smugglers] drummed, and that’s when we met Neko.

Neko Case, then a visual artist and ﬂedgling musician living in Tacoma, WA, had ﬁlled in for Valeria on some of the band’s ﬁrst tour. She was already active in the Tacoma scene, most notably for the Girl Trouble song that’s named after her, “Neko Loves Rock ’N’ Roll.” Case go-go danced for the band at shows, which is where she met many early Mint players, including the Smugglers’ Grant Lawrence and her soon-to-be boyfriend Dave Carswell. Some of her drum parts, and some of Carswell’s, would make it on to the recording for Betti-Cola. Reportedly, Case sang

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live for the ﬁrst time with cub at a show in Ohio. Neko Case declined to be interviewed directly for this book. She instead issued a statement about her time with Mint Records: I met the folks at Mint kinda by accident, but within three months of that meeting (1992??) they would all become integral parts of my life and in many ways, the drug-dealers of my destiny. I mean that in the best possible way. I went on tour as a ﬁll in drummer for cub, and I was hooked. Touring and playing live shows was the life for me. From that point forward I was in or a temporary part of ﬁve different bands on the label, so needless to say, we were in each other’s lives in a big way. Robynn Iwata became my best friend and still is to this day. We haven’t lived close to each other since the ’90s but I always look to her for inspiration and guidance about everything artistic in my life. We are never really apart. I was roommates with Robynn and Randy at different times, and saw Bill, Grant, Yvette and all the bands and employees constantly. They are all friends to this day, though sadly, I don’t see them near enough. I honestly can’t say what my life would have been without this connection, but I would never do a thing different. Finding and making family with people who share your passions makes you feel healthy and loved, it makes you brave, brave enough to do seemingly impossible things like go on tours around the world and make records in people’s basements. I have no regrets about my time with Mint, only love. The late nights, the hilarious deadline crazies in the ofﬁce, the handson, tape gun footwork. I loved it all. Mint always treated me fairly and with respect. It’s so hard to properly express my gratitude to everyone involved. Mint was the gateway to the path I’m on

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now. Thanks to them I have a life in music, and they didn’t ever ask me to compromise myself or “sell” anything. They are good people and they have imprinted some of that goodness into my own

DNA.

I can’t think of a kinder process. I’m SO grateful to

know them.

Bill Baker: I met Neko in my kitchen, in 1993, because she was going on tour with us. We borrowed the drums from the Smugglers, because Dave was in the Smugglers. We were touring together. So all we had was Lisa’s bass, Robynn’s guitar, two amps, and a bunch of boxes of records and T-shirts. I guess we’d made the cub Pop T-shirts by then. [In an uncharacteristic bout of self-awareness, Bill and Randy created shirts for cub in the style of Sub Pop’s logo, subbing a c for the s. They sold out fast.] And, yeah, we borrowed Lisa’s dad’s Buick. That was our tour van. I just remember leaving the house, and there was so much shit in that car that the back of it was low as it could go without the wheels scraping. Honestly, that was just the craziest, funnest adventure ever. Poor Randy got the joy of me phoning all the time and saying, “Oh, we’re having a really good time here!” Lisa Marr: That tour really whetted my appetite for touring. I thought, “This is great. This is amazing. We gotta do more of this kind of stuff.” But Valeria had no interest. She just did not wanna see the world that way. She made it very clear. So as time went on, we were playing higher proﬁle shows and she was just not into it. She had the candy store [Lee’s Candies, which she managed and worked at from the mid-’90s to the early 2000s, when it burned down] and that was kind of her ﬁrst love. She was not into people coming up to her, or autographs, or anything. Valeria Fellini: I kind of cheated Robynn and Lisa. I never told them that I was sick, hurting. Alpers’ disease ran in my family but they would tend to get it more in their sixties or seventies. I was starting to have arthritis in my spine and hip when I was maybe thirty. And I was in extreme, purposeful denial, like, “No, I’m

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not sick. I don’t care.” It was almost like I had a ﬁre lit under my ass to do so much. A typical day for me would be putting in hours at my own business and then getting on my bike and riding to Stanley Park and running around the park, and then later on that night I’d go to band practice. Because I just thought, “I’ve gotta fucking do this while I can move,” but never admitted that in the forefront of my mind. I think I was an awkward member, anyway. I didn’t like publicity, I didn’t like photo shoots. I’m not that crazy about the media. And sometimes I would go against band ideas. The example I can give, that they would probably remember, is that we wanted to do a photo shoot at the zoo. And my instant response to that was that it’s basically an animal concentration camp. I think it’s a bad image. I hate it there. And I could tell they were like, “Come on. Again?” Lisa Marr: We played I can’t tell you how many pajama parties, dog shows, all these weird little shows. Which were incredibly fun, you know, but once it started getting to, like, “We want to play this club, we want to play with this band and that band,” Robynn and I were just, “Yes, yes, yes” and Valeria was more, “No, no, no” as time went on. So it just became clear that it wasn’t gonna work.

The band continued to tour without Valeria, including a cross-country jaunt with Grant Lawrence’s band, the Smugglers. By then, Lawrence was booking cub’s tours from the Mint ofﬁces. Cub also began playing “Killed by Death,” a cover of the Motörhead song, on tour. At the same time, Bill and Randy heard a version of “Ace of Spades” played by local goth-pop band Coal. An idea struck: if there were enough bands around covering Motörhead, they could release a 7-inch similar to The Mint Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, with Motörhead subbing in for Ministry. The Mint Is Still a Terrible Thing to Taste came out in September 1993. Coal’s singer, Nicole Steen, lent a haunting quality to “Ace of Spades” that led to the video being shufﬂed into medium rota-

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tion on MuchMusic. (Reportedly, Motörhead’s Lemmy once heard Coal’s rendition and called it “crap.”) Cub’s ﬁrst full-length, Betti-Cola, was released on October 1, 1993. It included most of the tracks from the ﬁrst two 7-inches and more recent recordings. It also featured a cover image drawn by Archie Comics artist Dan DeCarlo.

Bill Baker: We had a friend called Betti Colatrella, who lived above Maxwell’s Bar in Hoboken, New Jersey. On one of the ﬁrst tours, we went to Hoboken, and we spent a couple of days there, staying at her place. There were the Smugglers, which was ﬁve; cub, which was four; and me, so that’s ten people in this grubby little apartment above this bar, and we had such a great time. Betti was a waitress at Maxwell’s, and it was famous in Hoboken. She was just such a great person, and that’s why they came up with the idea of calling it that. And for the cover, we sent a fax to the Archie Comics company. And we said, you know, “How much would it cost to get some original artwork done?” They wrote back and said, “We usually charge ﬁve hundred dollars for original artwork.” At that time, that actually was a bit much, but we said, “Okay, great,” and then I think he faxed us some proofs. Oh god, do you think they’re still around? Randy Iwata: I think they’re gone. Bill Baker: Oh, fuck. That is a shame. Because we sent them photos of what the girls look like. And he basically sent back these pictures that were slutty versions of what they look like: super-low-cut tops, huge boobs, and the shortest shorts imaginable. I can’t look at an Archie comic, even today, without thinking, “What goes on in that place?” But it was really exciting when we ﬁnally got the real thing. For years later, I’d be in the supermarket and I’d see an Archie comic and be like, “That’s the same guy!” I still ﬁnd it quite thrilling. And also typical of how we did things back then: a little overkill, a little gimmicky.

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The success of Betti-Cola meant that cub was in greater demand than ever on the road. Neko would again sub in on one of the cub tours, this one going even farther into the United States. In Houston, an unruly drunk male fan hurled a series of insults at the band. Neko punched him in the face (a “roundhouse right” reports Exclaim! magazine in a 2009 timeline of Case). Case’s reputation as a rough-andtumble, no-nonsense gal was thus cemented. The cub tours were just the beginning of Case’s relationship with Mint, and with Vancouver. Soon after, she would move north to attend art school at Emily Carr, and would start her own girl band, Maow. In the meantime, however, cub continued unabated. One of the tour drummers that the band kept coming back to was Lisa G. As Valeria’s touring issues compounded, the band began to use Lisa G. more.

Lisa G., second drummer for cub: I answered an ad in the paper to help start a women’s issues zine. From that meeting I made a few friends, and we created a fan zine called Self-Esteem Queen. Lisa Marr was one of those friends. But then it wasn’t until one night at the Railway Club that Lisa said, “Do you want to join my band?” At that point, I had just bought a drum kit. I remember being a little bit drunk, sitting around at the bar, and then suddenly I was on the road with them. Valeria Fellini: The band was going places. And they had a drummer who could do the touring and was already perceived as part of the band in eastern Canada and the States. It would’ve just been so dumb to say, “No, I still want a position in this band.” I kept thinking that they were probably just hoping and waiting for me to say, “Yeah, I should be out of here.” When I left the band, there was no explanation. There was a joke explanation that Valeria can’t travel anymore, it’s the cofﬁn, something like that. Making a goth

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joke about it and no explanation given. Lisa Marr: Valeria was certainly very mysterious to me. And still is, you know? She seemed very private and very proud. She’d never admit that she was in pain even though you knew she had umpteen operations and there was this kind of shadowy past. She was intriguing, and probably one of the kindest, most loyal, most giving people that I’ve ever known, really. Lisa G.: The ﬁrst time playing with cub was a little bit intimidating. Valeria has a very different style. I would call her a little more jazzy. I found it very difﬁcult to try and play like her. So both Robynn and Lisa were like, “Why don’t you just play how you want to play?”

Lisa G. takes a drum hiatus.

And that was obviously a lot better. I was a little bit more straight-ahead, and a little bit more obvious. At the beginning I played the same beat with all my limbs [laughs]. But I was learning as I went. My day job was welding furniture at the time. So my friend at work would show me a few drum manoeuvers after work. And then I would practise so I would be ready when I went to the studio. I remember that. Being in a band is a lot of sitting around waiting. And being the drummer, it seems like you wait even more.

At this point, cub had a reputation as an inclusive, friendly band, the kind of cute girls you could get crushes on and trade tapes with. Aside from touring constantly

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— with Bill Baker as their tour manager and driver — they also had a fan club called the “cub Kids’ Club.” Members were privy to limited edition mail-outs and personalized postcards sent to them from across the continent. In the early days of the label, bands did much of their own promo, including stufﬁng records and sending them out.

Lisa Marr: If we were gonna do this, we were going to do it right. I think that was just our personalities. We were those kind of people. And it was pre-Internet, so that’s the way you contacted people. Bill Baker: With a few exceptions, there’s never been a band we’ve worked with where we did less of the work. Because Lisa and Robynn both spent so much time in the ofﬁce, they knew what they needed to do. And it wasn’t a matter of asking us to do something, it was more like, “Let’s all just push forward in this.” We were all very close, so that made it easy, too. But they took care of their own business. They self-managed in a way that we’ve very seldom seen since. Lisa Marr: You know, when the Kids’ Club started, there were eight members. And then there were, like, ﬁve hundred members and we’re sitting in the van just writing these postcards going, “Fuck. If I have to write one more postcard. . . .” You like doing it, but then all your time starts being taken up with this stuff. We’d just be shoving these postcards in mailboxes, like stacks. [Laughs] We’d be shopping for postcards and trying to ﬁnd cool ones, but we needed ﬁve hundred of them. And like everything else with the band, it just took on a life of its own at a certain point. It started to just take over everything. But that was what we were working for.

Cub released their second full-length, Come Out, Come Out on January 15, 1995. It was the ﬁrst album with Lisa G. on drums and would go on to become the sig-

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cub Pop: 1992–1997

nature cuddlecore cut. If Cobain and grunge were the ’90s yin, then cub’s brand of pop was its yang, the echo of Sub Pop’s Seattle to Mint’s Vancouver. While they at ﬁrst embraced the moniker (Come Out, Come Out’s liner notes include the words “cuddlecore ’94”), the concept of cuddlecore eventually became tiresome to the band. The “cuddlecore curse” also led some listeners to miss the dark lyrics lurking behind the light pop hooks. “The unﬂinching optimism which fuels Come Out, Come Out is infectious to say the least,” wrote seasoned DiSCORDER reviewer Les Vegas in 1995. “Combine

A cub Kid’s Club application letter.

that optimism with a few sharp hooks and bingo! — you’re blissing out in the cozy conﬁnes of cub’s cuddlecore universe.” Some did get it, however. “Cub’s popularity shot up really fast,” observed another DiSCORDER writer, Heather Lawrence. “But [it] seems to be leveling out now with fans who truly understand the intricate knowledge buried beneath the simple surface.” By 1995, cub was still spending most months on the road, but at home the impacts of the release were beginning to be felt.

Lisa Marr: The recording of Come Out, Come Out was done in this guy’s basement over a series of weeks. Kevin Rose, who was in Coal. He was a very good guitar player. He and Mark Lesparance worked on it together. And that was when Mint didn’t know that you were supposed to master a record after it was recorded. Kevin

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and Mark were like, “You didn’t master the record?” They couldn’t believe it. And we had no idea. We didn’t even know that such a thing existed, like, “What are you talking about? Aren’t we done?” So that’s why the ﬁrst two cub records were not mastered. It was only later that they went back and did that. Bill Baker: We used to consign our records directly to the record stores here in town, instead of going through a distributor, and I vividly remember walking up to Sam the Record Man, and I think I had maybe a hundred copies of the CD. It was the third time in two weeks that I had brought a box of a hundred CDs to that same store, and I remember just thinking, “Oh my god, this is really working!” Lisa Marr: Touring then was a hard job and we were very demanding people. All people were getting paid was, like, ten dollars a day. And I think we would pay the person’s rent for the time that we were away. But every penny we made went back to the band. It was this incredible business model — if we traded records with a band at a show, we had to pay. Not just wholesale, but retail, back to the band for that record. So you weren’t just giving stuff away, because you were responsible for every record that was given away. That kept those impulses in check.

Cub photo shoot outtakes.

When we went on tour, everything was paid for by the band: toothpaste, tampons, every hotel room, every tank of gas. We’d pay ourselves a per diem, but we never made any other money. We didn’t split the money from shows. The money went back to the band. Always. So I think that at the height of our career, we were able to pay ourselves ﬁve hundred dollars a month. And that was it.

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cub Pop: 1992–1997

Because of the growing time commitment, Bill Baker decided to step away from cub’s road life. The band hired a driver — a friend of a friend — to get them out to the CMJ Music Marathon in New York, a destination for up-and-coming bands. But the cub touring unit was a tight ship, and he wouldn’t last long.

Bill Baker: They ﬁred him on the ﬁre escape of the famous Chelsea Hotel, in New York. And they called me and I ﬂew in and took over. Lisa Marr: I know there was one year, probably ’95, where we were on the road about nine months out of the year. And still managing to hold down jobs in Vancouver. I worked as a secretary that entire time. I’ve always had a job. Lisa G. always had a job. Robynn always worked at Zulu. Bill Baker: They were very efﬁcient, cub. You sort of had to learn to do things their way. Lisa Marr: Somewhere in there is the show where Robynn stood up, with Seaweed. That was a momentous occasion, the ﬁrst time Robynn stood up in order to play. I was like, “Wow, we’re really making progress, here.” [Laughs] Bill Baker: Seaweed dared her to stand up, even though the trade off was that she could pick their set list, and she picked all these obscure songs that they didn’t know, because she had played all these bootlegs on her radio show back at CiTR. It was really quite fun. That was a good one. Randy Iwata: Our uncle was going to make a toadstool cushion for her. He never ended up doing it because she ended up not needing it. Bill Baker: Years later, at our tenth-anniversary show [in 2001], Lisa Marr got up to do a song with the Smugglers and they all sat down in honour of Robynn. That was great. The amazing thing about cub was that every time we stopped, the shows got bigger. It was like it built momentum as we went along. Every night was — for

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the most part — bigger than the last one. It was just building. Plus, when you go toward the east you get to bigger centres. I remember being completely swept up. Everybody else was, too. It was amazing. Such an incredible adventure. Lisa Marr: These towns would just be incredible. Like, Edmonton would just be packed. A sea of kids. Lisa G.: Edmonton was a great town. I loved Calgary, too. Because it was the energy of the people, the club itself. And I loved the Pyramid Cabaret in Winnipeg. Lisa Marr: People would make cupcakes and bring cupcakes to the show.

Meanwhile, in 1994, Mint also handled a Lou Barlow (Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh) solo effort, entitled Another Collection of Home Recordings.

Bill Baker: When the Halifax thing was starting up, Lou Barlow or Folk Implosion had played, and this kid had just walked up to Lou and said [high-pitched nasal nerd voice], “Hey, Lou Barlow, I’m a kid from Halifax. Can I have your phone number?” Then he phoned us and said, “My friend Lou Barlow wants to release a record in Canada, and I thought of you guys. So, like, here’s his phone number.” And I totally remember having this moment of, “Whew. Okay.” And phoning Lou Barlow at this home in Boston and saying, “I heard you want to release a record in Canada.” And he’s like, “Yeah, yeah, I do.” And that’s pretty much how it happened, that we got to release that record. That was the second thing after cub that kind of made a name for us, that we couldn’t have done for ourselves. And Lou loved cub. Lisa G.: I loved the shows with Lou Barlow. Those were fun. Lisa Marr: We got to play a lot of legendary places. We got to play CBGB, the Whiskey, Foufones Electroniques in Montreal. Those shows were memorable because they were places you always read about. And we got to play with bands that were

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Cub and Bill Baker outside of the “cub house” (where Baker once also lived).

heroes of ours. The Bombshelter in Reno with Rancid. Lisa G.: Oh my god. That’s right. They were nice. Lisa Marr: We opened for Hole at their request. Someone told us a story much later that Kurt Cobain had been into the band. But I never met him. I don’t know if that’s just kind of a hearsay, after-the-fact thing. Lisa G.: Roseland, we played in New York. That was a pretty big show. Lisa Marr: With They Might Be Giants. That was a huge show. And that was surreal, touring with them, because they would always get hotel rooms. But they also had a bus, so they would just use the rooms for the afternoon, and then they would let us stay in them overnight because we would travel during the day, and they would just get on the bus after the show and go. So we would always order porn and go through their trash. [Laughs] They speciﬁcally told us, “Don’t go through the trash.” So we would always go through the

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trash, and then we’d get some porn, and just hang out. We’d all have our own rooms, which was just glamorous. We’d all be in these rooms calling each other. “What porn are you watching in your room?” And charging it to They Might Be Giants. And we also stayed in weird people’s houses. Sometimes we’d ask for somewhere to stay from the stage and we’d end up at really weird, slightly creepy places, where people would want to play games with us all night, as if we were eight-yearold children. And we would try to indulge them, but sometimes it would be a little hard. We also tried to do as much sightseeing as we could. I woke up one night and we were in Dollywood. Robynn and Lisa were in charge, I was sleeping, and I woke up and there we were in Dollywood. Hundreds of miles off the fuckin’ place where we were supposed to be.

In early 1996 (the post-Dollywood era), cub released their third and ﬁnal LP, Box of Hair. It’s a small departure from their earlier efforts, the band’s attempt to distance themselves from their “cute” roots. A Pitchfork review of the album’s 2008 re-release says, “Box of Hair was cub’s best bet to please people for whom My Little Pony could never be punk.” The album caught the attention of Rolling Stone magazine, which featured them in their “On the Edge” section: “On cub’s third LP, Box of Hair,” says writer Anthony Bozza, “they show signs of more core and less cuddle.” This was also true between band members, for whom the near-constant touring was taking a serious toll, and who longed to step outside the public’s welltravelled perceptions. “Cute is not a bad word,” Robynn Iwata told DiSCORDER in 1996. “It’s just [bad] when it gets connected to things that are incompetent, and inferior.” Lisa Marr agreed: “People want to pin performers down in general, especially women,” she told Rolling Stone.

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Bill Baker: A lot of the image of cub, I think, came from people’s perception of them, not from us. Because in later years, they would be on tour and people would be shocked to see, you know, Lisa smoking. It’d be like, “Oh my god, it’s her! Smoking and drinking!” Lisa Marr: The They Might Be Giants tour was in the winter. We’d already been touring and touring and touring. We had this van that had blown a transmission twice. You start seeing the grafﬁti on the bathroom wall, and you’re like, “I’ve seen this, like, three times already. I’m here again in backwoods, New Mexico, at the same gas station. And it’s winter. And I’m really tired.” And we drove from New York and we had to get to Moscow, Idaho, to hook up with They Might Be Giants for this tour. It was ﬁve days of driving, in the van, and it was Lisa G., Robynn, and I, and we didn’t say a word to each other. Maybe like, “Here’s the key to the motel room,” or “Can you pump the gas?” or “Who’s got the money?” Randy Iwata: It’s crazy to think about, but their life was only ﬁve years long. Lisa Marr: We still had more good times. But to me that was kind of the beginning of the end. Even though, ironically, that was the biggest tour we ever did, with the biggest act. But that wasn’t really our audience. We decided to try it to see if it would make things more interesting. But it didn’t really, because ironically on that tour we sold less merchandise than we’d ever sold. The merch was always kind of what kept us going. We could sell hundreds of dollars of ten-dollar T-shirts and three-dollar 7-inches. Musically, too, I felt like we weren’t really evolving. We didn’t have the luxury of just sitting in a room and working on music. We were always going. We were always playing, we were always touring, we were always making a video. We just couldn’t keep caught up. There were piles of mail, there were four songs that we promised somebody for zines and comps. So we were never getting any better as musicians. Bill Baker: Box of Hair was a weird one. When it came out, they had sort of gone in a different direction. We’d been marketing the whole cute angle of cub, and then,

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like [mock angry voice], now they’re angry! We didn’t really know what to do with that, in a way. Lisa Marr: We were getting tired of being the cute girls. We weren’t the cute girls. Everyone was fed up about hearing about the cute girls. We’d been in every magazine, we’d played in every town. Lisa G.: It was a slog at the end. I fear that I was the decline, just because I wasn’t into the touring by the end. It was the go, go, go. And even recording, we did everything fast. It was very funny to hear other people’s stories of how they would spend so much time in the studio and I’d go, “What?” And part of me was like, “You’re wasting fucking money,” but at the same time it was like, “Wow, how luxurious to spend that time.” Lisa Marr: And how nice to actually consider yourselves worth that time. But it seemed like we were always behind the eight ball. And there’s only so much money, and you had to do as well as you could, fast as you could, and get it out there. And it also got to the point where Lisa wasn’t really into the fame aspect, either. Lisa G.: Yeah, that’s true. Lisa Marr: It started making her sick. The more people would fawn over us, the more she wanted to push them way. Lisa G.: And I had a stalker. That scared me a little bit. He was this creepy guy from Houston. I was ﬁne and I was safe. But a lot of creepy letters. And the idea of somebody knowing everything about me was starting to creep me out a little bit. Lisa Marr: There was some guy who wrote from prison for a while. Lisa G.: And I took him on, because I liked the idea of it. My prison friend. He had a gang writing in the letters. It got weird in the end. Lisa Marr: It always does. When Lisa G. decided she was no longer going to tour, I remember Robynn and I brieﬂy talking about other people, and to me, it just was like, “Who is going to replace her? And we’re going to start all over again with somebody else?” We hadn’t really broken up, but everyone was kind of in this limbo. I was in New York

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and it was our ﬁve-year anniversary, and I just thought, “I’m making the call. Because if I don’t do this, we’re just gonna sit around, and it will never end.” Bill Baker: There were complaints from some of the artists on the label that cub was getting treated better than them, which is completely false. But again, there was a sense that, you know, they were a ﬂash in the pan or a novelty that didn’t deserve the kind of recognition that they received, and that kind of splashed over onto the label as well. But we were thinking, “We’re selling a ton of their records, they’re helping

Cub gets biblical.

us become something.” Those kinds of complaints don’t hit really hard when you’re actually achieving. Randy Iwata: Most bands don’t immediately fall off the map. It takes a couple years before they stop returning phone calls. Bill Baker: But cub, they put a ﬁnite point to the end of it, and said, “We’re done now.” Lisa Marr: For me, there was a phase during those later years where I felt like we weren’t getting the support that we should’ve. That we’d been this kind of ﬂagship band, and that there were these new acts coming up. I think my feelings were kind of hurt, in a way. Looking back at it now, it’s ridiculous. Obviously everyone was doing the best they could. But there were some issues with the way things were, and who’s getting what, and how it went down.

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On one of cub’s tours, Lisa Marr had met Ronnie Barnett of the Muffs. They eventually married and she moved to L.A., where she still lives today. Robynn continued to be connected to Mint but she too relocated, to San Francisco. Lisa G. now lives in Vancouver with her partner and works in and around the ﬁlm industry. In 2007 and 2008, Mint ﬁnally mastered cub’s albums and re-released them. They garnered Pitchfork ratings of 8.0 (Betti-Cola), 8.1 (Come Out, Come Out), and 7.6 (Box of Hair), respectively. In May 2010, for the 25th-anniversary issue of SPIN, the magazine’s staff created a list of notable music genres that have emerged in the last quarter-century, along with the band that best typiﬁed the genre in question — its “essential” recording. There, in the ’90s section, in among rap-rock and industrial-goth was buried a somewhat dubious distinction for Mint and cub. “Cuddlecore,” said SPIN, is “indie pop at terrifying levels of adorable.” And its essential release? Cub’s Come Out, Come Out.

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As cub gained momentum, Mint was scouting for more bands to add to their roster. Bill and Randy were just trying to make ends meet without having to take a shitty ofﬁce job. For those with a background and interest in the music business in Vancouver, the options weren’t nearly as plentiful as they were (and are) in Toronto — even in the heady, golden days of the majors and money-making. For a couple of young guys interested in sticking close to what they knew, the options for making a little extra cash to keep their boat aﬂoat while sticking to familiar waters were limited at best. Vancouver wasn’t big then, and it remains a small community of tightly knit folks, to the point of being cliquey. This is doubly true in the music circles, where

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scenes are segmented to ever-hyphened exclusive extremes. Within these scenes, however, friendship is holy writ — people help each other get day jobs, trade work for album art and recording space, and generally do what they can to help a musically inclined brother or sister out. Thus, back in the ’90s, as now, it was not all that weird to ﬁnd your favourite musicians working the bar at the venues they sometimes played, or to see the guys who ran the indie label slinging records at the best local record stores. In Scratch’s case, this was a certainty, the storefront being the retail arm of the label and, under Parry’s watchful eye, an importer of great underground music from elsewhere. But there was also local stalwart Zulu Records, which had begun, as Scratch had, releasing underground music — including the aforementioned 1985 Slow record, I Broke the Circle — from its perch on Vancouver’s once hippie Fourth Avenue. Over time, Zulu diminished its label arm and focused solely on retail (as it does now, particularly vinyl). Today, the store is managed by Nic Bragg, who also plays guitar with Destroyer, and it’s owned by Grant McDonagh, who once helmed the popular Vancouver punk-era zine Snotrag. One might assert that Zulu has, at one time or another, employed every musician and indie music ﬁgure in Vancouver. It would be an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

Randy Iwata: I used to work at Zulu Records. I was actually hired at the same time as Nic Bragg. Nic Bragg, manager of Zulu Records, guitarist in Destroyer, coiner of the term “Cuddlecore”: I remember when Bill and Randy were going to start their record label, they put out an ad in DiSCORDER announcing the start of Mint and that they were looking for demos. You don’t really open up a newspaper and see that too often. I went to school with the bassist from Windwalker [Anthony], and it was interesting to see them come out. At the time, it seemed like Mint was far more legit than just your average bedroom record label. Our band, we put out our records ourselves,

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and so did tons of other bands. So, really, at the time, it was only Scratch Records and Mint. Mint seemed to have a business model, which was also kind of a rarity back then. With Bill and Randy at the helm, you really had the sense that you were working with a real company, rather than just some guy who put up some money and put out your record. Bill Baker: We didn’t really have a plan. Ever. Randy and I did graphics work, speciﬁcally for major labels, to make ends meet. Randy was still living at home at that time. And I think I was making six hundred dollars a month. We made a fair bit of money off the design work. But that just went back into the label, I think. How the hell did we get by? Nic Bragg: Vancouver was a lot smaller then, and Randy and Robynn were both working at Zulu. They kept ties up and down the West Coast, which certainly meant a connection with Olympia and K Records. Olympia, Seattle, and Vancouver were linked. Same goes for Scratch. They were in a great spot and they also did a really good job. Carl Newman was working at Scratch at the time, as were Sean Elliott and members of Superconductor. They all sort of championed Mint, too. It’s kind of a symbiotic relationship. I would say, at the height of their powers, when cub and Superconductor were the main acts for Mint and Scratch, it was a pretty special time because both bands were recognized outside of the city, and both bands would tour. It seemed like the labels were actually gaining traction and moving ahead.

At Simon Fraser University, Bragg met a girl named Vera Gamboa. She, Brady Cranﬁeld, and Scott Malin were in a ﬁne arts class together. Along with Bill Cook (whom Cranﬁeld and Malin worked with at

SFU’s

radio station,

CJSF)

they would

start a band called Kid Champion. Mint released the band’s one and only record in early 1994, recorded with Adam Sloan.

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Brady Cranﬁeld, drums in Kid Champion: I’m sure that I probably approached Mint, just because, you know, in terms of Canadian indie infrastructure, especially at the time and particularly in Vancouver, there weren’t a lot of options. Although we were kind of friends with people who were involved with Scratch and the bands they had, it just didn’t make any sense. The next most likely place was Mint. Scott Malin, bass in Kid Champion: I know they came to us with the contract. [Laughs] Bill Baker: We were still slogging that contract. As long as the Bible. Randy Iwata: We just changed the name. Bill Baker: The Kid Champion experience was the ﬁrst time that we thought, “Maybe we ought to get this redone. Because this is ridiculous.” I didn’t want to look like they were right when they were saying, “Is this really necessary?” “Of course it is!” When the real answer is “No, it’s not at all!” Brady Cranﬁeld: I remember thinking that it seemed much more serious than I was expecting. I had these fantasies of a sort of touch-and-go handshake, or whatever. No expectations other than the excitement of having a record put out. Vera Gamboa, vocals in Kid Champion: I just remember Brady telling me to sign something. And then that was it. I’m not happy with the cassette, because we recorded it after about three practices, I think. Those songs became something else after playing them live, after months. I really liked them afterwards, but there’s no documentation of those songs from that time. Bill Baker: I found that to be a great record. It made me think of My Bloody Valentine, at the time, which I was quite into. Brady Cranﬁeld: I remember Mint wanted a photo from us and Bill Cook was really adamant that we would be obscured in it, in a sort of My Bloody Valentine–esque way. Do you remember? Vera Gamboa: Yeah, well, I agreed to the obscuring only because I don’t like photographs. [Laughs]

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Kid Champion’s one and only photo shoot: waiting at the hyper-mysterious, My Bloody Valentine–style bus stop.

Mint wanted us to tour. But I — I wouldn’t call it stage fright, just a profound discomfort at being onstage [laughs], requiring a little bit of drinking beforehand. Brady Cranﬁeld: We talked about touring. I know Bill Cook and I were excited about it, especially with the 7-inch. We had no idea how to do anything like that. Bill Baker: They hardly even played. I remember seeing them one time. Vera Gamboa: Yeah, we didn’t tour at all. I wish we had, but we were probably on our last legs before any of that started to come together. That may actually be part of the reason. We were only together for a year and a half or so. Two years? Brady Cranﬁeld: Yeah, and it’s not like it was an issue of bad friendships. I think it was just that once it became more real, it made it seem less . . . it just seemed more like stress. Randy Iwata: You know, there was supposed to be more. But like so many bands it ﬁzzled away. Brady Cranﬁeld: I still feel like it’s such an odd record for them, like it doesn’t really ﬁt into virtually everything else they do. We and Windwalker stick out as being not especially Mint-like at the time. Maybe now, still. People think cub and the Smugglers.

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At the same time they recruited Kid Champion, the label also became interested in a straight-ahead rock act called Pluto.

Bill Baker: Back in 1994, Randy and I had gone to this CiTR party in some basement on Dunbar. And Pluto played. We were both completely blown away. Justin Leigh, drums in Pluto: John Ounpuu and I had been in a band called Movieland that had gotten some reviews and was starting to book shows at the Town Pump and the Cruel Elephant, places like that. John Ounpuu, bass in Pluto: We weren’t super indie, cutting-edge guys, we were ’burb dudes. Movieland was a garage band thing, because the other dude was a semi-famous guy from the Gruesomes, and that was his thing. But that imploded, because he didn’t want to share royalties with us, which was something Justin was really into — sharing the royalties equally — because he had read that R.E.M. did that. So we moved on. Justin Leigh: I was music director at CiTR and I knew bands that’d put an ad in the Georgia Straight to ﬁnd other musicians, so we did [the same thing]. And we got a call from Ian. Ian Jones, vocals and guitar in Pluto: I had just moved to Vancouver, I didn’t know anybody, and I was working at a recording studio. And then this guy that I’d taken a course with wanted to start a band. I was like, “Yeah, well, I can kind of play the guitar.” So then he brought a friend and I brought a friend, and his friend was Rolf [Hetherington, guitarist for Pluto]. I think we might have played one show. We were called The End. That band broke up, and then we responded to an ad that John had put out. John Ounpuu: We met Ian at the McDonald’s in Richmond, near our practice space. He brought Rolf without telling us, like, “Oh, this guy used to play with me in a band.” Kind of snuck him in on us. Ian was working at Greenhouse Studios

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out in Burnaby. He had been engineering all these cheesy classic rock records. He was kind of the go-fer, the guy who goes out and gets the pizza and sets up the mics and stuff. So on the one hand it was like, “Oh, he has access to a studio,” and on the other, “Is he going to like the same stuff we do?” Because Justin and I were aggressively non-orthodox in our tastes. We had these quizzes, like, “Are you into this, are you into that?” I think the things we were both into were like the Posies and Urge Overkill. So it worked. Ian Jones: I think when we ﬁrst met, we all inﬂuenced each other because we were all very different people. That’s probably the same for a lot of bands, which then becomes their demise because they’re different people. Justin Leigh: We had a friend out in Richmond whose dad had a chemical company, a soap company. So we would practise there and it stank; we’d get all dizzy and stuff. Our friend got murdered in Mexico, but his family still let us practise there. That ﬁrst practice, we nailed some songs down right away. Right off the top, we were very proliﬁc at songwriting because all of us had songwriting abilities. Ian, John, and myself, and Rolf, we’d all come up with parts and stuff. And because of Ian, we had somewhere to record them. And because of my position at CiTR, we could get them out there. Ian Jones: In the beginning, Justin was like, “This is what we are going to do, and we are going to dominate the world.” And I was like, “Okay!” John Ounpuu: So we recorded a song three weeks later. Really fast. We played two or three times, and Justin was like, “Well, let’s go in and cut ’em.” Then we decided [to do] a 7-inch, because that was the thing then — college radio, you press a 7-inch. So we did it ourselves, just kind of threw some money together, did it. We called our label Popgun Records, which was the name of Justin’s radio show. That was probably his idea. And knowing the inner workings of college radio, we just mailed them off in puffy envelopes and wrote letters to everybody explaining. Justin Leigh: We got this gig, it was at a club called Notorious. Bum was headlining

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it. They were good. The dude from Bum kept going, “No-Notorious” between all the songs. And Randy was there in the audience, from Mint. The other guys weren’t around, so they may not know this, but I walked up to Randy and said, “What did you think of that?” And he was like, “I liked it.” I said, “You want to do a 7-inch?” And he was like, “Yeah.” So then I told the guys, and I called Bill, and I went and met with those dudes. Bill Baker: At this basement party in Dunbar, that’s the ﬁrst time I remember saying to Randy, “We’ve gotta get in touch with these guys.”

Whatever the actual circumstances of the meeting, Mint released Pluto’s 7-inch, Deathstar, on May 26, 1994.

John Ounpuu: “Deathstar” was a song I had written when I was in college. Terrible lyrics. Really awful. English major, you know. It was a poetic tribute to Chris Bell, the dead guy from Big Star, but I never told anybody what it was supposed to be. These Mint guys, they were who they were. These goofy dudes who typically wore shorts all the time. Bill was infamous for wearing these jean shorts that were down to his knees, like, tight black jeans cut off at the knees. And he would wear that year round — in the winter, riding a bike a lot, wearing denim shorts. Randy never said much, just smiled. He was wearing shorts, too, most of the time. Justin Leigh: We did a deal with them, which was basically one 7-inch, one album. That was it. Bill Baker: We did a three-album deal with them. Justin Leigh: We pretty much already had an album done. We had been recording, recording, recording, because of Ian. And we sent it all to them, and they were like, “Wow, this is easy, all we have to do is basically put it out.” It shouldn’t

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have been a deal. Knowing what we know now, we could have worked that deal a lot different. Randy Iwata: That was our ﬁrst experience with mastering and mixing and really changing things and adding weird stuff to it. Bill Baker: Actually, not quite. We did get the concept of mastering halfway through this, and we sent it off to a guy and he did sort of this quick, choppy job. Justin Leigh: We went to fucking Mushroom Studios. Ian said, “We can get this guy Ken Hiwatt Marshall, who’s done a Superconductor record.” A fantastic Superconductor album, which we all loved. And he had also done something for this band called Lung, who were fucking good. So Ian somehow managed to talk to Ken Marshall, and Marshall said for ﬁfteen hundred bucks he would, in one night, remix our whole album. We had these songs done, we weren’t going to have them remixed. Bill Baker: If you listen to the album, it’s as low-ﬁ as anything else. Justin Leigh: Ken Marshall fucked up that album. I don’t know what he was thinking. I walked in that night and Ian had already left. I called and said, “How’s it going?” He goes, “Eh, it’s going pretty good,” but there was something tentative in Ian’s voice. So I went down to go listen to it. It sounded like fucking shit. Ken’s sitting there in Mushroom Studios with one speaker — one mono speaker — on his console, and he was mixing the whole album through one fucking speaker, this shitty little speaker. And I was like, “What the fuck is this guy doing?” And he turns to me and goes, “What do you think?” And I didn’t want to insult the guy, because I know he can do really good work, he’s done awesome shit. But some conversation must have happened somewhere in there, I don’t know if it was between him and Ian or if it was just something he assumed, but he was like, “You guys are playing on college radio, right? That’s all mono.” So he was mixing an album for mono AM radio. It sounded really tinny, it sounded like shit.

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Cool Way to Feel, Pluto’s ﬁrst full-length, was released on April 11, 1995.

Ian Jones: We did the record and then we went out on tour with cub, and Pansy Division. Pansy Division had just ﬁnished touring with Green Day, and cub was getting huge on college radio. We were sort of starting to get played on public radio. There was probably a buzz about us or something. I don’t think we sold very many records, though, maybe a thousand copies or something. John Ounpuu: This one story that sticks in my mind, just because Grant Lawrence loves it so much, was that we had this old van — you know those old retro vans with that engine carriage that goes between the seats in the front, and it’s got snaps and you lift it up and there’s the engine? So we were dicing along and the cable that connected the gas to the engine broke. Rolf was a mechanic, so he opened the case and ﬁgured out that you could pull a cable and make the gas go. So somebody had to wear a work glove and pull the cable. And this was on the highway. The fumes were getting in the van, up to the top bunk where I was. I was getting lightheaded and feeling kind of sick. But we couldn’t open the back window, so it was all getting trapped there. It was awful. We were only halfway to Montreal at that point. I almost quit. Ian Jones: We played this huge showcase, North by Northeast, and we rocked. We were wicked, and every label was there. So then all these labels wanted to sign us, but we were like, “We’ll see you later, we are going back on tour.” And then that was weird, because we were basically doing a record deal while we were on tour. John Ounpuu: Ronnie from the Muffs was with us on tour, with cub, which we thought was so cool. I remember Lisa G., the cub drummer — we would bitch to each other because we both hated touring. And then Dustin [Donaldson] kept thinking we were fooling around, but it was just bitching. Commiseration was the

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basis of our relationship. For Lisa G. it was also lame because one girl had a boyfriend, the other girl was falling in love, and then there was her. Bill Baker: What’s signiﬁcant about that Pluto record is a man named Geoff Kulawick at Virgin Records really fell in love with this band.

John Ounpuu, Lisa Marr, Mike O’Neill (Inbreds), Robynn, Bill Baker, Dave Ullrich (Inbreds), and Grant at the Gastown Music Hall.

Justin Leigh: After the Toronto show, Bill comes up to me and he’s like, “So, got a call from a New York entertainment lawyer who was at the show, and they’re interested in you.” And then the next night they got a call from Virgin Canada. Bill Baker: We heard that Virgin wanted to buy them out, then all of a sudden there’s this meeting set up. So we called our lawyer. Ian Jones: We signed the deal on the road, on the Mint tour, and then continued on

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this punk rock tour. I remember pulling into Berkeley and playing at a place where Green Day played. At Gilman Street. There was a sign that said, “No alcohol, no drugs, no major labels.” And we were signed but nobody knew yet, so we were kind of like, “Shit!” Justin Leigh: So this New York lawyer comes to town to talk to Mint about licensing these songs. And when he gets there, I’m like, “We own them.” And he says, “What?” And I say, “They don’t own those songs, we do. We own the masters. If you’re licensing them, you should be licensing them from us.” Jonathan Simkin, Mint’s lawyer and owner of 604 Records: I was dealing with those New York weasels all the time. For Mint it was probably more like, “Oh my god.” But I do remember there was certainly a lot of tension because the band really wanted to do the deal. And it wasn’t that Mint didn’t want to do it, but they didn’t have to do it. So more pressure was coming from the band. Because that’s one thing about Mint — they really strive to ﬁrst and foremost make their artists happy, and honestly I think in a way that’s been a mistake because you can’t always make everybody happy. Justin Leigh: I don’t know if Simkin knew this, or if he just didn’t wrap his head around it, but it really was, “You have no receipts for anything that you spent on recording. You didn’t own the tapes. You don’t own the masters, you don’t even have the masters. They’re under my couch.” And Simkin walked in saying, “Well, we’re gonna need this and this and this,” and Nick, our entertainment lawyer, with us sitting beside him, just shook his head. Jonathan Simkin: All I remember about that meeting was things getting a little heated. I can’t remember what the issue was. It wasn’t just the pressure of the deal, it was the pressure of the band, and to Mint that was everything. I would have probably been — like I always am — a bit of the devil’s advocate. “Who cares what the band thinks?” Justin Leigh: At ﬁrst, we went to them and said, “We need to give Mint something, because they were there for us. We could have just left. We could have

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gone to Virgin and said, “Thanks, see ya.” But we thought these guys had spent some money on us, we didn’t really sell any records for them, we just got a lot of hype and airplay. But that didn’t translate into any sales. They should get something out of this. John Ounpuu: It got a little strange because we had to get the lawyers involved with the Mint guys. I think all of us felt a little funny about it. Because we wanted them to be treated fairly, and we didn’t want to be dicks or anything. We appreciated everything they’d done. I felt a little guilty. Jonathan Simkin: I’m a bit of a pit bull. And Mint always had to keep me on my leash and choke me once in a while to make sure I wasn’t representing them in a way they didn’t want to be represented. Justin Leigh: So Nick came in and sat down and said, “You’re going to kill that album, you’re not going to sell it anymore.” Because Nick knew what Virgin wanted, so he had to come and

A promotional Pluto sticker for the Cool Way to Feel tour.

make sure that Mint was going to go along with it. And Simkin was like, “No, there’s all sorts of things to be considered,” and he started just talking a lot of bullshit about the work that had been done, marketing materials, and expenses, and all these things that needed to be taken care of. And basically we’d just offered them forty-ﬁve grand, and all of a sudden Nick just said, “Okay, how about this: how about we don’t give you a fucking dime. You get nothing, we get up and walk out the fucking door.” And Simkin just fucking turned white like a ghost. It just dawned on him,

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“They could just do that. We really don’t have anything.” And it got kind of tense. So we had to call back our dog, pretty much. The four of us and Nick went into the can. Everyone was just standing in the stall, the ﬁve of us, and Nick was like a kid in a candy store. He was saying, “This guy is such a hack! Did you see me beat the shit out of him? Holy fuck, this is awesome. We don’t have to give these guys anything.” I like Jonathan, but at that meeting, he was unprepared, ill-informed, or outclassed. I don’t know what happened. And Bill was sitting there, looking kind of shocked, like, “Holy fuck, these guys are going to fuck us.” So I said, “Listen, these guys are our friends and they’ve helped us out, I want to make sure they get something.” So Mint got a chunk of dough from us, and it helped them out at the time, because that was a lot of money. But Simkin, he had his ass handed to him. John Ounpuu: Kurt Cobain had just died, and in the industry there was a lot of grabbing going on. It was a real feeding frenzy. That moment really was the moment. If it was a year later it wouldn’t have happened. Bill Baker: I hated that meeting. I’ve blocked out big chunks of it from my memory.

In 1996, Pluto released their ﬁrst full-length for Virgin. The album was made up of a mix of remastered tracks from Cool Way to Feel and new songs. The song “Paste” would end up on MuchMusic’s ﬁrst Big Shiny Tunes compilation. That same year, Labatt offered Pluto a reported $50,000 to $75,000 to star in and lend their song to a beer commercial. Thinking it a sellout move, the band turned it down.

Justin Leigh: We had those songs fucking remixed by the Butcher Brothers! Phil Nicolo and his brother Joey mixed them. They had worked with Urge Overkill, so

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it was great. And you know, the difference between how the songs sound on Cool Way to Feel and on our ﬁrst record with Virgin is night and day. People don’t believe that it’s the same recording. We didn’t even do any overdubs or anything. It was just mixed properly as opposed to through a fucking mono speaker. Jonathan Simkin: Pluto was starting to happen, and in a funny way, the major label deal kind of killed it because they took something that was organically growing and tried to shove it down everybody’s throats. Expensive videos, glossy promo pics. And it backﬁred. Bill Baker: Their video budgets were outrageous. Like, you know, ten times what we paid to record that record, for one video. Ian Jones: Deﬁnitely that was the demise of Pluto, when we were on Virgin. We were put on tour with a lot of bands that we didn’t feel we should be on tour with. John Ounpuu: There were some good things — we didn’t have to sleep on anybody’s ﬂoor anymore.

In 1997, Pluto was nominated for a Best New Group Juno Award. Virgin supplied them with a limo for the trip to Copps Coliseum in Hamilton. They lost to the Killjoys.

John Ounpuu: They announced the winners and we’re thinking, “We’re not going to just sit here. If I was home, I wouldn’t watch this show, so now I’m going to sit in the audience and watch it for two hours? Fuck that. Let’s go home.” We went backstage and a couple of journalists thought we were Sloan. So we pretended to be Sloan and did two or three interviews as Sloan and then we decided to take off. And this is the shameful part. I’m not proud of this. As we were leaving, there were a bunch of rock fans outside the place trying to get a glimpse, and Ian and I sold a couple of guys our backstage passes for twenty bucks or something. They were so obviously not in bands, with their hockey jackets and baseball hats. And

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we looked back and saw them getting turned away. I felt like a real dick, and we ran away and got into the limo. Ian Jones: I think we sold the passes for ﬁfty bucks, maybe each. It was awesome. We had to run away from the guys. And we were the ﬁrst ones at the EMI party, so we got drunk before anyone else.

Shortly after, Pluto began work on their second full-length for Virgin.

Justin Leigh: Everything was so lined up for us at Virgin. And then the bottom fell out. Virgin U.S. had a major shift, and they brought in these U.K. guys that looked at all the indie acts and said, “We don’t know these acts. We have our own acts.” So they wiped us out and put in Massive Attack and the Spice Girls. I knew when we lost the Americans that we weren’t going to get a push in the States. I tried to tell the guys that. And then the royalties thing happened. Ian Jones: What happened was, on the second record John and I were writing everything. Justin was off in Toronto hanging out with his girlfriend, saying, “Hey you guys ﬁnished writing yet?” And we were like, “Fuck you!” Justin Leigh: What really happened, if you talk to Rolf and I, is that Ian and John got greedy. They’ll admit it, they should. John probably won’t, but Ian will. They got greedy and they called a band meeting and said they wanted to start taking a bigger piece of all the songs. Ian Jones: We had always split everything fairly, twenty-ﬁve percent each. Justin Leigh: If I’m helping you write the songs, don’t think I’m gonna take anything less than my quarter. And if you want me to take less than a quarter, then you guys better write an album. I’m going to go skimboarding in Toﬁno, you call me when the album’s done, and we’ll put it together as a band. Because that’s what you’re paying me for.

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John Ounpuu: There was some tension, because the songs didn’t sound of a piece. We used to write more together and kind of jam it out. This was more like I had my songs and Ian had his songs and Justin wanted to get his songs in there now — he was starting to write. We did it, we had fun doing the record and we were mostly happy with it, I think. Justin Leigh: The reason that Pluto worked was you had four songwriters. And the minute the band stopped treating itself like four songwriters, and someone wanted to be a principal songwriter, it was like, “Well, okay, go ahead. I’m not going to ﬁx your stuff anymore.” So in my opinion, that’s what killed Pluto. John Ounpuu: We had arguments with the label about singles. That relationship was getting a bit sour. We were kind of seeing through them a little more. The romance had worn off. You saw them for what they were and they saw you for what you were. We didn’t feel they were really behind us, and they weren’t. Justin Leigh: I signed off on it, the royalty split, because the label had invested so much in us. But for me, I checked out the fucking nanosecond that that happened. Ian Jones: Music was changing when we put our second record out, and I think we were already falling apart when we were writing that record. Actually, we had fun recording that record. If I did it again, though, I would keep a twenty-ﬁve by four split because we weren’t making that much money, anyway. John Ounpuu: We went to the CMJ conference as a last ditch effort to pitch the record. The show was really poorly stage-managed and we were quite late on the bill, like one a.m., which ended up being three a.m. Every band of the night was going later and later and I remember that the only ones who stayed around to watch us were the Smugglers. After, we had to leave town — we couldn’t get a hotel in New York and we had to sleep in New Jersey. And they had lost our reservation and they could only ﬁnd one room. I was on the ﬂoor in a sleeping bag, going to bed at ﬁve a.m. in New Jersey. It was a depressing night and I was thinking, “That’s it.” Justin Leigh: Those guys [John and Ian] fucked it up. Ian will admit it.

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In 2008, Virgin hosted a concert in Toronto and paid for Pluto to reunite. All four original members showed up, and the general consensus was that they had a good time. Plans for further gigs were circulated, but Rolf and Justin declined.

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Chapter 5 How Does that Grab You?

In 1994, as previously mentioned, Neko Case moved to Vancouver on a student visa to attend Emily Carr art school. She had played a few tours with cub on drums and dabbled in other bands before she decided to start her own band with fellow Americans Corrina Hammond — with whom she’d studied visual arts at Emily Carr — and Tobey Black. Initially, they called themselves Meow, but when a New York band with the same name protested, they changed it to Maow. By then, with three years of history behind them and twenty-two releases to speak of (many of which were part of the Lookout! deal, detailed in the next chapter), Bill and Randy still hadn’t come around to just what the “Mint sound” was. This would become a recurring theme in the label’s history, but even so there were

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success signposts that they could keep coming back to. One of these was cheeky, subversive girl pop-rock, which was usually in high supply and high demand, speciﬁcally in the riot grrrl fuelled northwest of the early ’90s. In a sense, Neko, Tobey, and Corrina were the perfect inheritors to the cub throne, at least on paper.

Tobey Black, guitar in Maow: We lived in Canada, but both my parents are from the United States, and then they divorced and my dad went back to the States. So I sort of split time between the two places. I started playing the guitar when I was pretty young. It was just something to do as a hobby. It just so happened that Corrina asked me if I wanted to play in Maow, if I wanted to start a band, and I was like, “I guess. I can play John Denver songs.” Corrina Beesley-Hammond, bass in Maow: I grew up in the Kootenays and went to university in Texas. My parents moved back to the States. They were U.S. citizens, and my dad’s a draft-dodger, so he just went back when he could. Tobey Black: I remember, when we were going to shows and watching our boyfriends and our friends, the feeling of “I don’t want to just be there watching.” Corrina Beesley-Hammond: I also had a pretty bitter experience at Emily Carr. I graduated with my BFA in painting, in the studio program, and by the time I was done, I just hated the arts. It was all so stuffy, so serious. It was a bummer. So I really wanted to distance myself from it and have some fun. I knew Neko because she was dating Dave from the Smugglers and I was dating Beez. She decided to go to Emily Carr, and I said, “Okay, well, you should come up and be the drummer.” Tobey Black: I hadn’t really met her. I met her with Dave maybe once or something, but I didn’t really know her. And it just worked out.

The girls wasted little time in getting themselves out there — almost immediately,

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they began playing gigs under the moniker Meow. They played their ﬁrst gig in the backyard of the “House of Rock,” which was home to many band members, girlfriends, and hangers-on. Beez from the Smugglers lived there, as did members of Nomeansno.

Tobey Black: There was this thing called a Debut-B-Q, it was a backyard barbecue where they debuted all these bands. Everybody who played there had never played before, so it was our ﬁrst show. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: It’s seared into my memory, because Grant Lawrence actually wrote a review of it, too, for DiSCORDER. So it was amazing to see something about us in print. And the police came. Beez and I have a friend from Portland who’s a lawyer. He’s quite a bit older, so he has an authoritative presence. When the police came, he talked to the police, and they all just . . . watched. Tobey Black: I remember putting on my guitar, and walking out — Beez had tuned all of our instruments for us. I was wearing my fuzzy cat suit, basically half-naked. And then I put on my guitar and walked out the door, but I didn’t lift up the neck of the guitar, and I walked into the door. The guitar was wider than the doorway, and I knocked everything out of tune. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: I don’t remember playing at all. That’s the funny thing. Tobey Black: We were so nervous. And it sounded horrible. You’re outside, there’s not good sound, and we played so fast, like, “blalalala!” Just insane. And Neko’s drumming, and she’s bustier than us, and her costume’s falling off. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: Then we did a 7-inch. Tobey Black: Brad Lambert recorded it in a warehouse. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: Yeah, and then my brother-in-law put it out on his label in Texas. Bill Baker: Back then, Neko was just a crazy broad from Tacoma. She’d come up

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to go to Emily Carr at that time, and they put this band together just for fun. It’s funny, because we always try to mention it in this sort of Beatles–Rolling Stones kind of way — cub and Maow. Indie, three-piece, all-girl, whatever. They had put out a 7-inch single on a label from Houston. The label, Twist Like This, was run by Corrina’s brother. We did the graphics for it, so we knew about it. It was the best mix tape ever, and on it you could hear Neko singing. It was such a fantastic surprise revelation. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: We had this piece of paper with chords written on it. Tobey Black: Yeah, G, C, and D chords, super basic stuff. I couldn’t play bar chords at the time. I could barely play an F chord. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: And then there’s that hump of playing and singing at the same time. Not that I was ever much of a singer at all, but I wanted to be able to at least have something coming out of my mouth while I was playing notes. To be able to play and sing at the same time was really exciting. So empowering. Bill Baker: Neko couldn’t sing the songs live because she couldn’t play the drums and sing at the same time. So when they’d do the ones that were on the record that I love so much because of her voice, I’d say, “Why can’t you sing live?” Tobey or Corrina would sing them, and she just couldn’t do it. And classic Mint philosophy — instead of being forceful and saying, “You know what? You should sing something,” we just said, “Well, I guess we’re never going to hear that!” It’s so sad. Randy and I talked about it, like, “Wow, listen to that voice! It’s perfect. Too bad we’ll never get to hear that live!” Stupid. Tobey Black: We entered SHiNDiG and we won. I think it was perhaps slightly scandalous that we won, because we were competing against a bunch of bands that were pretty proﬁcient musicians, whereas we were obviously just fooling around. We didn’t really know how to play, we wore crazy outﬁts, we were cocky and having a great time. We put on a good show, for sure. There were guys who were pissed off because they took it a lot more seriously, and we just thought, “Okay, let’s enter into a competition, maybe we’ll win.” We

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Maow, looking very Bond girl–esque, in some marketing for The Unforgiving Sounds of . . . 109

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didn’t care. So we kept advancing, and I thought, “Holy shit, we’re actually winning this.” And then we got the free recording time when we did win, so it was easy for Mint to put it out because they didn’t have to pay for any recording.

It was indeed somewhat of a scandal in the community when Maow (then still Meow) won SHiNDiG. A January 1995 DiSCORDER review of the show at the time said, “Meow were bad. Really bad. I had seen them once before in the preliminaries and at the time I thought they were entertaining enough to forgive their musical incompetence, but on this night I was not amused.” At the time, Meow/ Maow often wore fur bikinis onstage, reminiscent of Josie and the Pussycats. The reviewer, Dylan Grifﬁth, goes on: “Listening to their clamourous cacophony was bad enough, but watching the undersexed nineteen year old boys dance and drool at their feet was just plain embarrassing. BUT THEY WON!!!!” Grifﬁth concludes that the judge’s decision that night was a “travesty of musical justice.” (Similar sentiments with regard to early-era cub had been circulated but never committed to print as such.)

Corrina Beesley-Hammond: We got to record at Mushroom Studios. And we went into Mushroom after Heart. Their lipstick was still on the microphones. Tobey Black: And we were crazy, we were just drinking and high-ﬁving each other. “You’re amazing!” “I know! You’re amazing!” Corrina Beesley-Hammond: “Listen to this note I can play on the bass! Doo doo doo doo doo.” Tobey Black: I’ve gone on and played more music, and I’ve played with men, and . . . there’s no high-ﬁving. It was really fun because everybody was super encouraging and supportive and we were just having such a good time. We didn’t put a lot of pressure on ourselves. I never felt, like, “We have to be famous.” It was just,

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“Whatever, now we’re going to do this.” “Okay, let’s do that.” Corrina Beesley-Hammond: It was so much slicker than the 7-inch that Matt, my brother-in-law, had done. He liked the raw sound, so he was disappointed when we kinda cleaned up our act. Tobey Black: I think mostly it was driven by what we were capable of at ﬁrst, and then we deﬁnitely all improved pretty rapidly, from being almost incompetent to pretty good. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: Neko did always like country music, though. So if she could get a twang in anywhere, she was going to get the twang in. Tobey Black: But you know, I bet in other bands you bring something in and it’s like, “Oh, you gotta remove that verse or that chord because it’s not good,” or “Where’s the hook?” Nobody ever said that stuff. We just said, “Okay, let’s play it.” Corrina Beesley-Hammond: Originally we were spelled Meow with an e, and then as soon as stuff started happening, then this band from New York was pissed off that we had the same name as them, so we just changed it. And then we didn’t dress like cats anymore. Originally all the songs that people had written, our friends had contributed, they were all songs about cats, and it was all kind of a cat theme. We started wearing weird outﬁts, like a sexy nurse or a cowboy outﬁt or, yeah, whatever. We felt like we should put some effort into an outﬁt. It’s a show, so you dress up.

The rechristened Maow released The Unforgiving Sounds of . . . on May 27, 1996. Maow had previously played gigs in and around the city, including dips into the States. With the record out, they began to tour properly.

Corrina Beesley-Hammond: I remember the show in Bellingham was packed, and so was the one in San Francisco because we were opening for the Phantom Surf-

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ers. Sometimes, though, there would only be, like, ten people at the show. Tobey Black: But in our minds, there were hundreds. We were just still having such a good time, high-ﬁving. I wasn’t really paying attention to what other people were doing. It was the three of us that mattered, and we were having fun. But we did some of the cross-Canada tours, and I remember some of those got a little bit harder. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: We needed a certain amount of money. Tobey Black: Yeah. There were times when it was deﬁnitely less fun. We’d stop and think, “Why did we just drive for twelve hours and now there are ﬁve people here who don’t give a shit?” Corrina Beesley-Hammond: We also liked to eat good, healthful meals. Tobey’s always worked in the restaurant industry, and Neko is . . . picky. And that was tough on the road. We were always trying to get good water and good food. Tobey Black: I remember one guy being like, “Well, you can have as much beer as you want.” But we’d been drinking enough beer. We needed to eat something. We all lost weight. Corrina and I both lost probably ten pounds, and we’re both pretty thin people. And I was covered in zits. When we got back from our ﬁrst tour, we looked horrible, like we had half died out there. We just drank and ate candy. We could barely keep ourselves alive. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: There were some great shows in there, though, like the Horseshoe [Tavern in Toronto]. That was the one with Joey Shithead, remember? Tobey Black: No! What? Corrina Beesley-Hammond: We were on tour with [Nomeansno side project] the Hanson Brothers, and he was there. He came out and played with you. I remember because you were still playing that little Framus, and he dwarfed it. Tobey Black: I don’t remember. But it was ﬁfteen years ago! Corrina Beesley-Hammond: I think the girl band thing bugged Neko, because she had toured with cub, but she didn’t want people to think that she was trying to be cub-y. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We all liked cub.

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Tobey Black: Yeah, they were great. It’s just weird to have people talk about that. I found that you really notice the way that club owners and sound people — and even patrons that are there to see you — act strangely. I remember one show in particular in Saskatchewan or something, somewhere in the prairies, and it was, like, a bar bar. People weren’t there to see us necessarily, they were just there drinking, and it was mostly men. And we came out to play, I think wearing slutty nurse outﬁts, or whatever, some slutty outﬁt, and we kind of got heckled when we were approaching. Like, “Oh, chicks are playing, fuck this, this is stupid.” And then we rocked it and guys after were saying, “Wow, you guys are actually good.” Men would never get that.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, the girls would react to this type of attention by “toughening up” their image. Both Neko and Corrina boxed, so the cover of their album shows the three of them in a boxing ring. And a classic photo from the time depicts them astride a motorcycle, all sporting Fu-Manchustyle moustaches.

Corrina Beesley-Hammond: We were all tomboys. Tobey Black: We’re not very sweet, nice girls. None of us are that. I don’t think it was an image that we tried to portray, I think it’s just who we are as people. If somebody’s going to fuck with us, I think we’re going to ﬁght back.

Hell’s Angels? They wish! Maow, Fu-Manchu’d and ﬁesty atop a motorcycle. Just your average Mint photo shoot.

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There was one show when we played early, and the club was going to turn into a dance bar later, and so all these people were waiting for us to basically ﬁnish so that the dance bar thing could happen. I went out and played guitar, and there was nobody on the dance ﬂoor. And we were sort of mocking the crowd, like, “You guys are losers.” Then some guy started fucking with me and Neko stopped playing and picked up the snare drum, and was like, “You want to fucking go?” She said it with the snare drum still on the stand. We stopped playing and then I remember thinking, “Oh, shit.” Corrina Beesley-Hammond: And then there was the time, we were at a legion, and I kicked a guy over. He had been leering and being kind of gross, this old man, and then in the meantime, had passed out, I guess, standing up. So I went and put my foot on his leg or something, and he was actually not even awake. And he tipped over.

Maow’s toughness was equalled by a particular band member’s tenacity to get things done.

Corrina Beesley-Hammond: Tobey and I didn’t know what was happening half the time, but Neko was down there [at Mint]. Tobey Black: Neko’s a very driven person, and I think she maybe had different ideas of what her trajectory in life was going to be. And even though we were all having a good time, I think maybe she had a plan for herself. Beyond Maow. And I think that she probably learned a lot because she was so active on it. She worked Mint hard. Bill Baker: Neko used to come to the ofﬁce and avail herself of our phones. We had a long distance plan and she would use it. It’s interesting, because cub was never on the cover of Exclaim! but Maow was.

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It was quite controversial, too. They were wearing nurse’s outﬁts, but they were all covered in fake blood, and Neko had these prosthetic boobs.

Maow also grabbed the attention of Terry David Mulligan, then host of MuchWest on MuchMusic.

Terry David Mulligan, broadcaster: At the time, MuchMusic was calling itself “the nation’s music station,” so I phoned them and said, “You cannot call yourself the nation’s music station — I know it’s a catchy phrase, and it works for marketing, but you are nowhere to be found on the West Coast. And you can’t send a reporter or a producer and a host and a camera to Vancouver once every three months and say you’re covering the west, because you’re not. And Moses [Znaimer, then head of Much] came back at me and said, “Well, put up or shut up. What would you do, what’s your answer to all this?” And I said, “It’s a show called MuchWest, and it would be shot out of Vancouver, but it would be Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Regina, as best as I could get out there if there’s budget for it.” But there were no cameras. Their suggestion at the time was, “Yeah, see if you can ﬁnd somebody to shoot for you from

BCIT

[Vancouver’s technical college].” I went, “No, come on, man! Would you use a BCIT student at MuchMusic in Toronto?” Again, we were second best. I liked how stubborn Mint Records were, I liked how tenacious they were for their acts, and for the label, and for their releases. They were funny, clever. They poked fun at themselves. They were the ﬁrst ones to seriously reach out and keep the industry involved in what their acts were doing. Like, constant updates, newsletters. I would get phone calls: “Such-and-such an act is playing Friday night at seven o’clock, you’re on the guest list.” And I really liked the music. It reminded me of a slightly more approachable Sub Pop. I really remember this one band, a

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girl band with Neko Case in it? Maow? They were clever and funny, not just giving the standard answer. You know, they were in a male-dominated business, and they were outspoken because they were very conﬁdent in their abilities.

As the media attention increased, Maow headed back out on the road, this time for a major U.S. tour with the Hanson Brothers. At the time, it was not unusual for musicians to lie (or at least, commit a sin of omission) at the border; everything from “visiting friends to jam” to “recording an album down there” (i.e., “leaving my money in your country”) was used as an excuse, and often bands squeaked by without consequence. Now, borderguards can use the Internet to ﬁnd out if you’re lying about your van full of instruments, but in the halcyon days before 9/11, the rules were lax and the guards, for the most part, were easy targets, leaving bands to freely make money south of the 49th. But this was not always the case, and Maow was about to prove that. It would be the band’s — and Mint’s — ﬁrst real taste of the dangers of cross-border travel in the music industry.

Corrina Beesley-Hammond: I have some regrets related to that last tour. We accidentally fucked over the Hanson Brothers. Tobey Black: They took us out on their tour, and those guys were all serious musicians, like with children and wives. And that’s how they paid for their homes in Burnaby, their mortgages. And we were partying. Basically what ended up happening is, we got to the border at the same time as them, and we didn’t say anything about being a band. Everybody got turned away and equipment was seized. Bill Baker: They had hidden their merch, but in her notebook, Corrina had this unﬁnished postcard. It wasn’t what it said on the postcard, which was like, “We’re going to be in Detroit tomorrow!” It was that their faces were on the front of the postcard.

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Tobey Black: They were like cartoon caricatures that Mint had made up. Mint was really good about putting out a lot of promotional stuff. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: So I’m all, “I’m not in a band, no I’m not in a band,” and then ﬁnally the border guy pulls out the postcard — I guess he had it behind his back — “Whooo’s this?!”

The little postcard that caused big trouble at the border for Maow.

Tobey Black: And then I just burst into tears. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: I started laughing hysterically. Tobey Black: I was like, “I quit, I’m fucking out of here, this is bullshit.” Which was not a very band way to behave. You’ve got to stick with people through the ups and downs. My ﬁrst instinct was “I have to get out of here, this is too much stress and I can’t deal with it,” and . . . that’s not good. Bill Baker: That incident actually led to us being very careful about the border and

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getting all the right paperwork. The funny thing is, they were technically all American, so they might have just been able to say, “I’m going home.”

As a result of the “bust,” Maow and the Hanson Brothers were turned away at the border, costing them much in tour revenues and — in the case of Maow — in goodwill revenues. They continued to tour cross-Canada, but a cave-in of sorts had begun. A super-stressed Tobey asked to be dropped off at a rural airport and she ﬂew home. Neko moved back to the States. And for Maow, that was that.

Tobey Black: Neko recently went across that same border and they recognized her. Corrina Beesley-Hammond: No! Tobey Black: Yeah, they recognized and remembered her. Bill Baker: Some people might listen to the Maow record and think that we didn’t make good business choices. But we put out the records that we wanted to put out. Not only do I still love that record, and so do many other people, but it was because of it that we engaged professionally with Neko. So for me, that record is still close to my heart. Pretty much everything that happened in the two to three years after that is because of Neko, and because of the Lookout! deal.

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“We call it the Grant effects pedal. You have to realize what you’re hearing is ampliﬁed several times.” — Lisa Marr on Grant Lawrence, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 1996 “Like most underground labels, Lookout began as a devoutly homegrown affair that held disdain for major-label greed and stood for DIY punk ideals like fairness and friendship before commerce.” — From “Kerplunk: The Rise and Fall of the Lookout Records Empire,” by Rob Harvilla, East Bay (CA) Express, 2005

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Chapter 6 The Smug in Smugglers

Mint’s ﬁrst ofﬁcial ofﬁce had been Randy’s father’s travel agency, after hours. When the label outgrew the space, they moved into the Dominion Building in downtown Vancouver, where they still are today. Over the years, they would move ﬂoors and ofﬁce sizes on a fairly regular basis. The joke was always that the higher the ﬂoor and the bigger the ofﬁce, the better Mint was doing. In one of their early Dominion ofﬁces, around 1992, Bill and Randy began to have a regular visitor: Grant Lawrence. In the years since he’d left high school, Lawrence had been touring and releasing albums with his garage rock band, the Smugglers. As a side gig he booked shows for bands, including cub, a skill he’d cultivated back in high school helping out Nardwuar. He used the Mint ofﬁces as a

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home base and generally opposed his substantial will on Bill and Randy.

Randy Iwata: One thing you learn early with Grant is to take everything with a grain of salt. He’s full of hyperbole — you have to get to the truth. Bill Baker: I was going to do the Smugglers record cover. And in exchange for the graphic services, Grant was going to do chores for us, like go to the mailbox and stuff like that. But you know, back in the late eighties Grant used to call CiTR and harass us, hang up on us. Randy Iwata: Grant was the biggest prick in the world, wasn’t he? Grant Lawrence: Back in the eighties, I didn’t know who Bill Baker and Randy Iwata were. But they worked at CiTR. So I’d call up and I’d say, “Hi, is Nardwuar there?” And they’d mess with me on the phone. They thought I had a bit of an attitude when I called up for Nardwuar and I’d be like, “Well, could you take a message?” and they’re like, “He’s not here.” They would fuck with me, they’d leave me on hold, or they’d hang up on me, and stuff like that. I would get really pissed off. And I’d be like, you know, “Fuck you guys.” Like, “Who the fuck are you losers?” And then the Smugglers were in SHiNDiG. I hate that contest, by the way. I don’t think arts should be that competitive. It breeds contempt, that contest. So, the Smugglers did it. We thought, “Oh, you’re a young band in Vancouver, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” So we went in it. The problem with SHiNDiG is — as a journalist, I believe in accountability. I’ve never done anything under a false name. It’s always been Grant Lawrence, no matter what I’ve ever done. And SHiNDiG, they allow the judges to mark their comment cards anonymously. These people have the freedom to be the biggest assholes they want to be. So when the Smugglers went in it, we got a comment card back that was like, “You guys are the worst band I’ve ever seen. You’re terrible. Blah, blah, blah.” And the judge had drawn us, as a band. I still have this comment card. He drew a checkmark beside the drummer, a checkmark beside

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this guy, and with me, he drew a circle and a big X over me. He did it so hard, it went right through the paper. Years later, when I was putting together the artwork for Selling the Sizzle, I was getting all these cool gig posters and stuff for the inside jacket. So I brought out those SHiNDiG judging cards. I pulled out the one where I had been crossed off, and Bill Baker looked at it and said, “Oh my god.” And I said, “What?” And he said, “That’s my writing.” I said, “WHAT? You were the judge that wrote all that on this card?” And here it was seven years later. “Oh my god, you asshole.” But by that point we were really good friends. You know, now it’s just a joke. And so we put it right in there, in the Selling the Sizzle liner notes. Bill Baker: We didn’t have the Smugglers on Mint at that time. And at the time, if he had asked, I would’ve said, “Over my dead body.” There was another rivalry there, one that was based on total bullshit. We actually ended up getting along really well with the Smugglers. They’re great people. So we did the art for the Smugglers album, and Grant came in to do errands, and he never left. He had worked with Frank Weipert at Teamworks [a tour booking company] in high school. Grant was kind of the pointman, or whatever, for so many of these shows: Mudhoney, Posies, bands like that. He booked the ﬁrst Nirvana show in Vancouver, which is pretty neat. And I think that’s how he got into the business part of it. But he was doing the Smugglers then, too. I think before that he was just a nerd. A mean, rich nerd. Randy Iwata: The Smugglers, like cub, were another very self-made band. Bill Baker: And that whole tour booking thing — I wouldn’t have ever thought that we could do that, or that we would know someone that could do that, or how people even did that, really, at the time.

In those days, when Grant wasn’t in the ofﬁce, he was usually on tour with the Smugglers.

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Grant Lawrence: The Smugglers had gone to Calgary a couple times, and we were like, “What the fuck. This is a twelve-hour drive, across this outrageous mountain range, a twisty dangerous road.” Then we thought, “You know, Seattle is three hours to the south of us. It’s ﬂat all the way, and the entire world is breaking down there.” Mudhoney and Nirvana and the Young Fresh Fellows and the Posies and the Screaming Trees. There was sort of a garage scene breaking there, too. And so we thought, “Why the hell are we busting our ass going to Calgary, where nothing is going on?” It was a dust bowl. “Why don’t we go to Seattle?”

Grant gets some attention in the tour van; Neko (above) supervises.

Kevin “Beez” Beesley, bass in the Smugglers: I had played in the Sarcastic Mannequins, and I was older than these guys. They were eighteen and I was twentyeight, and they were going on a weekend tour: Thursday, Calgary; Friday, Regina; Saturday, Regina; Sunday, Calgary. That was their tour. The bass player quit on

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Tuesday, I think. They said to me, “Would you play bass for us on these shows?” I was like, “Oh my god. I have to learn those songs in one day?” And they had this terrible van, it had no heater. By the time we got into the mountains, the thing had frozen over so bad Grant was holding a lighter under the windshield to create a hole for them to look through while they drove. I’m just in the back, going, “Oh my god. . . .” Bill Baker: When the Smugglers went on tour, they played with all these incredible bands all through the States. And Grant booked all these shitty little shows, for weeks at time, and they’d come back with, you know, a bunch of records. So many great bands that you’d never hear about otherwise.

On one such tour, in 1993, the Smugglers took cub along for the ride.

Lisa Marr: Cub learned about touring from Grant. He was the model of strict. Like, you had to be very professional, you were always there on time, you always did the sound check, you always had the merch. He ran a tight ship over there. Grant Lawrence: Lisa Marr came to me and we had a meeting at Jackson’s Beef House. She had the same level of ambition as me. She said, “Look, we wanna go on a Canadian tour.” And I was kind of cocky at this point. The Smugglers had already toured a lot. I said, “Well, we might be able to take you along for the ride.” You know, we had never toured with a support band, and we were sort of ﬂattered that we were being asked, but at the same time I was kind of holding her at arm’s length. I said, “Yeah, we do pretty well across western Canada. We could probably help you out.” So we did. We ended up taking cub on tour with us. And that was a humbling experience for the Smugglers. Nick Thomas, guitar in the Smugglers: I’m sure Grant’s already told this story. “Sure, we’ll take you guys on tour with us.” We considered ourselves veterans at

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the time. We weren’t that popular, but we said, “We’ll see what we can do for you,” that sort of thing. But right as we made this egotistical decision to help them out, their record just started going boom, on all the college charts, and we were heading across Canada, and it was quickly obvious that were becoming eclipsed by this new phenomenon. And we were having a hard time with that. Our fragile male egos were getting really beaten down. They were selling so much more merchandise than us on a daily basis. And occasionally they’d get to headline and we were just, “What do you mean, cub’s headlining?!” It’s funny — a few years before that, at a party, I met Lisa Marr and Bill, and I didn’t know they were a couple at the time. I had just come back from Europe. Lisa was a very pretty girl, and she was being very ﬂirtatious with me in the kitchen. We started to kiss — this was the ﬁrst time I met her. And then, right at the end of the evening, she was like, “Okay, I’ve gotta go, my boyfriend’s in the other room.” And that turns out to be Bill. So Bill did not like me for a while. And I totally understand that, but I didn’t know at the time. Grant Lawrence: Bill Baker from Mint Records was on that tour, as “roadie” for cub. His fashion sense then was disgusting. I remember one of the ﬁrst shows we played was Nelson, B.C. I think it was, in fact, the ﬁrst show. And the guy shows up, and this was his look, from the bottom up: Red Converse low-tops, tennis ankle socks, acid-washed jean shorts tightly rolled up his thigh, a sleeveless shirt, where the sleeve was cut out all the way down to the torso, and then the sides of his head were shaved, and he had long hair on top in a ponytail. So we’re like, “Who the fuck is this loser?” Like, he looked like a cross between a grunge soundman and Cyndi Lauper or something. A fashion crime. But then, we kind of got to know Bill, and we thought, “Actually, this guy’s pretty funny. Quite witty and quite quick. He’s actually a nice guy.” And we really got to like cub. And that’s when the humbling process started. We had been playing with the Hanson Brothers and Seaweed. Then they left the tour, and the crowds just evaporated. But the kids that were there were really

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Dave and Grant onstage.

excited about cub. We played a show in Chicago that was supposed to be with Reverend Horton Heat. We get there and there’s a note on the door that says, “Due to illness, Reverend Horton Heat won’t be playing. But Smugglers still will be.” And we’re like, “Uh oh,” because we hadn’t done that well in Chicago so far. Cub wasn’t supposed to play that night, but the promoter said, “Oh, you have another band with you? Sure, they can play.” And cub did really well that night. They started selling lots of stuff. I got really drunk that night and I think I was so frustrated that I threw an empty pint glass at Robynn or something. Bryce Dunn, drums in the Smugglers and programming director for CiTR: Here’s three cute girls playing in a band, singing about candy and kitty cats and sunshine and lollipops. How can people not enjoy this? I don’t think I looked at it in the same sort of ego-crushing way Grant and Nick did, but I certainly thought they were a band that was going to do some amazing

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stuff. They were a little bit ahead of the curve, which is unfortunate because that whole cuddlecore, twee-pop stuff really only started to take off in the mid-nineties when K Records was really at its climax.

Classic Smuggler formation.

Beez: There’s a certain expectation that you have, that the more work you do, the more reward you will get. That’s not really true in music. It’s true in life. My musical career is probably a minor footnote in history. But for my life, it’s really important. Because all the things it’s created — values, history, community — all those things are so amazing. So you get rewarded for that. But you also think you’re going to get rewarded ﬁnancially, and you think you’re going to get rewarded in praise, you know, in status.

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Nobody wants to be playing for nobody. What’s the point? Why don’t they stay home, then? Play with your friends and why try to put on a show? When your world view gets upset, when you’re that young, that really gets you mad.

A man-tastic Smugglers tour sleepover (L-R: Graham Watson, Nick Thomas, Dave Carswell, and Beez).

Grant Lawrence: We played a lesbian bar called the Spotted Dog in Windsor, Ontario. And Beez looks out from the stage and sees a lesbian pointing at a Smugglers shirt, which is hanging up. Cub’s selling merchandise at this point — we sold for them, they sold for us, when one another were onstage. And we see this person pointing to a Smugglers shirt, and we see Robynn or Lisa shaking her head, and then holding up a cub shirt. And then the person going, “Yes, okay.” Robynn Iwata: There were some accusations ﬂying that the merch seller (who

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might’ve been Bill) was pushing our stuff over the rest. Grant Lawrence: And Beez, from the stage, yells an accusation at cub. And I’m like, “Beez!” And we went on, we played the show, and afterwards, where we stayed, we had a huge ﬁght, accusing cub of pushing their merchandise ahead of ours. It got to the point where Neko got so angry she punched Beez, and Lisa Marr was crying, and Robynn was crying, and we were all yelling at each other. It turns out that the woman who was buying the shirt wanted size small, and it being the early nineties and baggy grunge and all that, we only had shirts in large and extra large, which now you would never imagine doing. Extra large? Who wants that? So she pointed at a cub shirt, because they did have smalls. We found this out, and we were like, “Oh my god. We’re so embarrassed.” Bill Baker: I spent a lot of time ﬁxing that one. Nick Thomas: There’s usually about a week into every tour where you hit a low. You hit a weird low where you just get depressed. Even if the shows are going great. I don’t know why. You’ve gotta make that transition into that workhorse that you’ll have to be on tour, and you always get this strange low after a week. And that happened to combine with this Madison, Wisconsin, show, where we looked at the board at this club and it was written in felt, and it just said “cub.” We weren’t even written in there. I said, “I can’t believe this. What fucking effort does it take to write us in felt pen?” There was barely anybody in the club, anyway, and Grant decided, “Fuck it. I’m not playing.” He wouldn’t even come to the club. There were a few people there — the show must go on. That had always been Grant’s motto, too. Basically had that tattooed on his ass up until that point. His ego had just been popped and deﬂated. He couldn’t go in there. And so we sort of organized this set, without Grant, that combined cub and the Smugglers. And even Bill Baker played.

The story of the clashes between cub and the Smugglers grew in the months —

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and even years — following that initial tour. It helped that Grant Lawrence kept telling the story, and that cub’s fame grew thereafter. In an article in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix dated October 10, 1996, writer Cam Fuller asked Lisa Marr about the incident. It was a full three years after the tour happened. “Lawrence likes to say that cub and the Smugglers hate each other,” Fuller writes. “The rivalry really started when the upstart cub started out-selling merchandise on their ﬁrst tour opening for the Smugglers, Marr said. Even so, there’s no bad blood. Best to take what Lawrence says with a grain of salt.” An Exclaim! timeline of the Smugglers sums it all up succinctly: “Smugglers offer an opening slot on a Canadian tour to a young, green band called cub. Crowds go crazy for cub and snap up all their merchandise, leading to some ugly jealousy and a much-regretted drunken confrontation.” Once back in the Mint ofﬁce, Grant’s role at the label grew.

Grant Lawrence: When I started working at Mint, I ﬁrst stuffed envelopes, and then I took a shot at writing a few one-sheets, and then I basically started running the Smugglers out of there, too. I also got an email address for the ﬁrst time, an AOL email address. My ﬁrst press release for cub was about the punch. In Houston, Texas, some guy was yelling, “Show your tits.” And Neko, at the time, was taking boxing lessons in Vancouver. She got so sick of this guy yelling this, so she got off the stage, on the dance ﬂoor in Houston, went up to the guy, and punched him in the face, punched him right out. The guy just went down. Lisa called me the next day and told me about this. I immediately wrote up a press release, and the headline was, “Cub Hits the Road; Hits a Fan.” And that story, because it was so ironic that this cutesy, cuddly band would punch a fan, just made news everywhere. It solidiﬁed Neko’s reputation as kind of this tough, no-nonsense girl, like a real strong personality, and it got cub headlines everywhere.

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It also made me realize, from a publicity standpoint, that people are hungry for that kind of gossipy news. A sort of ﬂamboyant, sexy story. Not so much just “Eh, we’re putting out a new record. Come, we’re going on tour.” I was able to get a lot of bands press for things they did that weren’t necessarily music related. Duotang hit a deer on a tour. And I still have people at CBC quoting back the headline, “Duotang Dents a Deer.” Bill Baker: Grant’s experience from working at Teamworks was a huge deal, when he brought that into it. And he’s a publicist! I mean, he’s a great talker, he’s always been a good talker. His ﬁrst press release was for Kid Champion. He didn’t like them. Randy Iwata: There’s a pull quote from the press release that Grant wrote: “Music to fall asleep to.” Bill Baker: Yeah. “Don’t listen in your bathtub.” The thing was, with Grant — Randy, you have to admit this, and it’s still true today — we had a great rapport with him. He was funny. When Grant came into the ofﬁce, it livened things up. There were a lot of laughs, but a lot of shit got done. And he had a lot of ideas that we never would’ve had. He wasn’t a big Kid Champion fan, though. [Laughs] Randy Iwata: Grant brought us a lot of music that we might not have heard otherwise. He was the one who went out a lot. It’s funny, when we would open the ofﬁce door in the morning, he would be there hurriedly trying to clean up after having passed out on the ﬂoor the night before, or something, you know. He was the one who went out. We didn’t, so much. Bill Baker: Neither Randy or I would feel comfortable enough playing music for a third person, so Grant started controlling our stereo. “Remember those guys that you like so much, that you’ve been listening to for the last year? Guess what, they have a record.” Grant loved to be the DJ.

Grant’s commandeering of the stereo with records he’d picked up on tour eventually resulted in Mint signing a little-known band from Glengarry, Ontario, called

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the Stand GT. It was the ﬁrst time (other than the pseudo-deal with Lou Barlow) that Mint signed an artist from outside of Vancouver. A 7-inch, The Cracklefan, was released on May 27, 1995.

Bill Baker: Grant was very passionate about us putting out this Stand GT 7-inch. He had this shtick that Glengarry, Ontario, consisted of a post ofﬁce and a seedand-feed and that was it, and so all the press releases focused on that, asking, “How could there be a rock band in this town?” Chris Page, guitar in the Stand GT: That 7-inch is one of the best things the Stand GT did, in my opinion. The planets lined up for that one. The recording was great — it was Mr. Kurt Bloch [Fastbacks, Young Fresh Fellows]. Grant did a hilarious poke-fun-at-the-hicks send-up on the back cover and Mint spent the dough to have it properly mastered by John Golden. Great care was taken putting that one together. We were also on this label TDR, and we wanted to tour the U.S., but the support wasn’t there. Then we made our second record, Apocalypse Cow! and we met with Mint hoping they would release it, but for different reasons it wasn’t meant to be. I remember being extremely disappointed that Mint didn’t want to put it out. Bill Baker: I think we were supposed to do another record with [Page], weren’t we?

By the time Grant began hanging out at Mint, the Smugglers had already released a handful of 7-inches and a few records’ worth of energetic garage rock on a couple of different labels, including Nardwuar Records (aside from the Smugglers, the roster of Nardwuar Records at the time consisted solely of Nardwuar’s band, the Evaporators). Through a conﬂuence of touring and drinking friendships — the Smugglers formula, if there was one — they had also hooked up with PopLlama in the United States.

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Nick Thomas: Scott McCaughey from the Young Fresh Fellows, who’s in R.E.M. now, played piano on [earlier Smugglers release] Seattle Bound and did backups and stuff. It was all kind of exciting for us at the time, because we were playing along with the Young Fresh Fellows. But Conrad Uno [owner of Seattle’s Egg Studios and the PopLlama label] didn’t like some of the stuff on the record. We were young kids and kind of sexist, and politically incorrect and stuff, so Conrad didn’t want to put it out. Scott McCaughey came up with this concept to get around it that he had to explain for an hour, which was basically that we do the record as a bootleg of a bootleg. It’s supposed to look like the Beatles bootleg, Atlanta Whisky Flats. And the cover is almost a direct copy, including the name [with the additional American “e” in whisky]. But if you look closely you can see that it’s PopLlama. That record got reviewed by Rolling Stone, which was awesome. Bill Baker: After Atlanta Whiskey Flats, the Smugglers came to us, and they were, like, bristling to go. They had a few songs, like, “Let’s put this out on Mint.” As usual, we said, “Okay, sure, we’ll do it.” They never signed a contract. It was sort of a backdoor deal. [Laughs]

Mint released the 7-inch Party . . . Party . . . Party . . . Pooper! on February 11, 1994. As a spoof on the KISS members’ solo records circa 1978, the label released the single with four separate covers — one for each member, save a combined Beez-Nick shot. The band, already a well-oiled touring machine for several years, went on the road. Forsaking the “Bill Baker special” (a potentially painful cross-Canada jaunt) they did what they already knew well: a tour of the western United States.

Nick Thomas: I don’t remember what show got Larry Livermore’s attention, but he ﬂew up to Vancouver to see the Smugglers play, and kind of liked what he

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saw, and somehow saw ﬁt to release it on Lookout! Records. Getting onto Lookout! for the Smugglers — it was amazing. But Mint . . . I think they kinda got painted into a corner on that one. Bill Baker: We’re about to get into the Lookout! era. And that’s a whole other story. Lisa Marr: The deal with Lookout! ultimately, from my point of view, didn’t really end up helping us as a band. I don’t know if the label felt it helped them as a label. I mean, I think it was interesting, and that in some ways it got the word out to the States. But it started muddling the accounting, and it started, in some ways, getting all about money, and who was getting what. I think that was kind of the end of their ﬁrst phase as a company, too. And I think, in some ways, that was the end of the pure friendship and the beginning of a more businesslike model for things.

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By the time Lookout! and Mint collided in 1994, the Berkeley, California, label had already been releasing records for almost eight years. They’d become famous for plucking bands from the speciﬁc area around Berkeley and the East Bay, including (but not limited to): Green Day, Operation Ivy, Neurosis, Screeching Weasel, and the Queers. In some sense, Lookout! was like Mint through a California-punk-tinged looking glass, at least early on — from its modest beginnings in the Gilman Street scene of the late 1980s, there was an emphasis on friendship, community, and releasing music for music’s sake, not because it would make money.

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Larry Livermore, co-founder of Lookout! Records and member of the Potatomen: In the late eighties I was playing in a band, and we headed a volunteer-run non-proﬁt project around Gilman Street in Berkeley where we put on shows and other cultural events. It was kind of like, “If you build it, they will come,” because the new bands just came out of the woodwork when they had a place to play, my own band being one of them. It was a really exciting time for music, and I was feeling like the bands we were playing with there were better and more interesting than most of what I was hearing on the radio or seeing in stores. I thought, “Well, if nobody else is going to put out their record, then I will.” I called it Lookout! because my band was the Lookouts and we had a magazine called Lookout as well. That’s more or less how it happened. I didn’t expect it to become any big thing. Bill Baker: Everyone was starting labels then. There was Murderecords, Cinnamon Toast. Zulu was still putting stuff out. Scratch, of course. Sonic Unyon was just starting. Larry Livermore: So the Smugglers came and played in California and my band, the Potatomen, played a show with them and cub. That was the ﬁrst time we talked a lot about Mint. Grant Lawrence: I struck a very good deal for the band with Lookout! Records in the States, a huge pop-punk label. It was excellent for the Smugglers, not so great for cub, and not so great for Mint. Bill Baker: Grant largely spearheaded that whole thing. And you know, cynically, at the time, we would tease him. That he was only doing it because he wanted to meet those people, or that scene, or whatever. But at the same time, I mean, once we met the actual people that ran Lookout! they were really great folks and we hit it off immediately. Larry Livermore: I really admired what they were doing at Mint. I almost want to say it was the same type of label we were, maybe more professional. Real ofﬁces and that kind of thing, but they seemed to have a very similar spirit to what we

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were doing with Lookout! They were very DIY, but they didn’t seem to want to limit themselves to some sort of indie ghetto either. Bill Baker: It was really a perfect ﬁt, attitude-wise, and they were a much bigger deal at that point. They were in that phase where every band they put out, no matter what it was, people were just insane for it. Larry Livermore: The other part was that I wanted to have a partnership with Canada, and Mint was simply the best label I had ever encountered in Canada. At that time, it was really a pain to get bands back and forth between Canada and the United States. American bands did not come up nearly as much as a lot of Canadians would have liked to see them. It felt like a good natural partnership. I grew up just across the river from Canada, so I have patriotism — let’s put it that way. My mother was born in Canada and I spent a lot of time in Ontario as a kid, so it was kind of a project to bring the two countries together. It might sound a little grandiose, but that’s a big part of what it was about.

While the Mint deal was percolating, Larry Livermore brought his business partners at Lookout! — Chris Appelgren and Molly Neuman — into the loop. Appelgren and Neuman had been brought into the label years earlier, in part to handle Lookout!’s new workload and recent, splashy successes. These were attributed mostly to back catalogue sales of Green Day’s ﬁrst few albums in the wake of the major label release of 1994’s Dookie. As reported in a 2005 history of Lookout! published in the East Bay Express, “At its peak in 1995, the label boasted $10 million in sales, astonishing for a small indie label.” Livermore’s employees were impressive in their own right: Neuman had spent the previous few years establishing riot grrrl bands like Bratmobile and the PeeChees (of which Appelgren was the singer), and had been living in D.C. and Oregon. She was also the author of the Riot Grrrl zine, which had given the movement its name. At the time, she and Appelgren were a couple.

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Molly Neuman, co-owner of Lookout! Records: I had just graduated and was working a regular job. But our band [Bratmobile] had gotten a lot of attention for sort of extreme reasons [related to the political thrust of the riot grrrl movement], so I had a bit of experience dealing with media issues. Lookout! was in my community, and they were going through some extreme growth at that time and needed some help. I did all the press, radio, marketing, and ofﬁce manager stuff.

As Livermore took on a background role in Lookout! Bill, Randy, and Grant dealt more regularly with Neuman and Appelgren.

Bill Baker: Most of it evolved over phone calls and fax. But I do remember the ﬁrst actual meeting. Grant and Randy and I all ﬂew to San Francisco and went to their ofﬁce. It was very exciting to have the three of us on an aircraft all at one time. It seemed very professional, and they showed us a hell of a time. It could’ve gone either way, and it went really, really well, and we just had such a good feeling about them. And I still do. They’re good people. Molly Neuman: It was certainly a point in time where their label was going through growth and adjustment; ours was as well. And I think, you know, there was also a nice feeling of camaraderie and community. To be able to work with people who you respect and enjoy, that should be a part of business. It may not always be. They came down quite a bit. And Bill was married to an old friend of mine at the time, so we had a lot of things in common. Bill Baker: I look back with such fondness on that period because Rose [Melberg, Bill’s ex-wife, of Tiger Trap and Softies fame], who’s from Sacramento, she knew Molly and all of those people, completely independently of me knowing them, for completely different reasons. It was a really nice moment, where everything was threaded together. And that was why we ended up going to Molly and Christopher’s

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wedding instead of Beez and Corrina’s [Hammond, from Maow]. Which Beez still gives me grief about, perhaps correctly.

Baker had actually met Melberg years earlier, at a party at the cub house.

Bill Baker: Rose came to this party at our house, and I can’t remember much about the conversation because I was quite drunk, but it was one of those moments. There was this perception that Grant had a thing for Rose. I remember being really disappointed. It was like, “Aww, of course Grant’s going to be doing his thing, here.” And I was completely smitten. She was staying with Robynn, and I phoned Robynn’s place the next morning just to talk to her. Then we didn’t talk for a really long time. And then I went on tour with cub, and when I got home, there was a message that she had called. I think she had been super low and just thought I would be the person to talk to, so she called me. But I didn’t get the message. I was totally bummed. The next time we were on tour, with the Potatomen, they came to the show in Portland. And I was just all excited again. That was April of 1995, and then we got married in October. Even though we didn’t live in the same country. We got married months before we moved in together. That’s kind of [laughs] crazy.

In the meantime, the details of the Mint–Lookout! deal were taking shape. The ﬁrst co-release was the Mr. T Experience, a veteran Bay area punk band of which Grant was a big fan. Mint and Lookout! released Alternative Is Here to Stay on September 1, 1995. They would release a second Mr. T Experience album in July of 1996.

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“Dr. Frank” Portman, vocals and guitar in the Mr. T Experience: We had already released an album on Rough Trade and one on Lookout! I don’t think this will come out sounding very good, but I never knew anything about the Mint–Lookout! thing. I didn’t really pay that much attention the mechanics of it. Maybe I should have. I knew about Mint and I knew about the Smugglers, but in terms of how the licensing and how everything worked out, I kind of left that to the people at the label. That was a funny time in my band’s history as well because we had already been doing this for a long time, and suddenly Green Day was becoming popular, and the East Bay punk rock scene was getting more attention, and we were having bigger shows and everything, and I was sort of feeling neglected by Lookout! I recorded those songs thinking I was going to put them out myself. I think there were a lot of bands taking that attitude, then, that there were more possibilities out there than remaining on the Lookout! reservation. Then there was this effort, all of a sudden — that I believe was probably a play — where they went around trying to be nice to bands. Larry showed up to one of our shows in Seattle, which really surprised me. I had said from the stage that I was going to put an album out, and he proposed putting it out on Lookout!

At the same time, Grant Lawrence came to the Mint ofﬁces with another band pitch: a group of adolescent punks from Langley, B.C., called Gob. Gob declined to participate in this book.

Grant Lawrence: A guy named Sean Raggett, who worked at CiTR, said, “You gotta hear this band, this pop-punk band. They’re doing really well in Vancouver and in the [Fraser] Valley.” And we listened to them. At the time Green Day and the whole punk-pop scene was really breaking, and I’m like, “Yeah, these guys are really

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The promise of future partnership? A promo poster from an early Mr. T Experience show with Windwalker from 1991.

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Lookout! Below: 1994–1997

catchy, and they’ve got some really good pop-punk hooks.” Bill and Randy really liked them, so we signed them. That, in the short term, was really, really great for Mint. But in the long term, it wasn’t, because they just turned out to be . . . basically jackasses, which is really unfortunate. But they had some great singles. And their record Too Late . . . No Friends did gangbusters. I’m the model on the cover of that. Front and back cover. I helped those guys a lot, gave them tons of touring contacts, but they were essentially immature punk rockers, you know? Bill Baker: It was our ﬁrst experiment with working with strangers, and I don’t think we really went back to that for quite a long time until recently. In the absence of huge revenues or you know, massive notoriety, you kind of rely on that ability to just call someone and talk to them as a person. As a friend rather than as a business associate. They were really popular at the time, and took off quickly. But they were difﬁcult to work with, and there was this whole incident. I really have no proof of what happened, but I know that the way we perceived it was that people that were really important to us on the Lookout! side were getting upset. Gob was touring with the Queers, and we’d get these phone messages when we came in to work, from Dave and Joe from the Queers, and it would be, you know, screaming. “These fucking idiots that you’ve got touring with me down here!” It was always about something they’d done, like they had stolen something from a radio station, or they were throwing rotten fruit at people. Grant Lawrence: They seemed young, but they weren’t young. They were older guys. In fact, Theo was older than me. So, it wasn’t youth, it was just immaturity. And they just kept pulling pranks, really nasty pranks on other bands, or at clubs, or on promoters that just kept pissing us off. Bill Baker: It got to a point where we were just like, “Oh god, another thing? What next?” And it just kept coming. In hindsight, most of it was nothing, but we just kept hearing those things, and eventually it got to a point where we had to decide

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whether we could really deal with working with them or not. We didn’t really see eye-to-eye with them on a personal level, anyway. They really wanted to be involved in the Lookout! deal, but Lookout! weren’t interested in them.

A gob promo postcard.

Scott “Ska-T” Stewart, roadie for the Smugglers: We were on tour once, and we were staying at someone’s house and we heard that when Gob stayed there they would, in the middle of the night, ﬁnd some Tupperware, shit in it, and hide it somewhere in the house. I thought it was a funny story and I told some other people this, and then Theo came up to me and was basically threatening me. “Stop telling lies about us,” and I’m like, “Hey, I’m just telling what I heard.” He got really pissed off. The other thing I heard about them had to do with Punk Strikes Back, this huge festival they used to do every year. The money was going towards AIDS. They

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got the venue donated and they got all the sound donated. They had ﬁve or six awesome bands playing. All the bands played for free. It was ﬁfteen bucks a ticket. And there were probably ﬁve, six, seven hundred people there. They donated nine hundred bucks to AIDS. Do the math. Grant Lawrence: That was the only band that we actually brought into the ofﬁce and dropped. We said, “You guys aren’t welcome on the label anymore.” And they were stunned. And really pissed off. And I did it. I had to say it. Because basically I wasn’t afraid of anything. And Bill and Randy were getting intimidated by Gob. They were almost being bullied by them. And I said, “Fuck this. It’s ending.” Bill Baker: They didn’t apologize, but they did ask us to reconsider. But once you’ve gotten to that point, you don’t really go back. They had a meeting that night just among themselves, and interestingly what came of it was that they were going to try harder. They said it was a real shock, and they realized that they needed to step up their game a little bit. I guess they did, because then they went on to Nettwerk. Grant Lawrence: So we dropped them, and then they went on to have some really big-selling records. But I don’t think if you asked me, Bill, or Randy — and by that time, we were like a trifecta — I don’t think any of us would have regretted it. You know, Bill and Randy were two guys that I had hated. I thought they were total geeks. It’s funny how relationships change. I started at Mint, and Bill and Randy and I became very, very tight in the mid-nineties.

The second Mint–Lookout! release was a 7-inch split with the Smugglers and the Hi-Fives, from San Francisco.

Bill Baker: The Smugglers had played a show at the Anza Club, and back then their outﬁt was suits and rubber boots. And somebody said to them, “I was just at the

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Railway and I saw these guys that are exactly like you. They look like you guys, they play the same music as you guys. Completely uncanny.” And those guys, the Ne’er Do Wells [later the Hi-Fives], ended up coming to the Anza show, and it was really true. You know, there were ﬁve guys in suits and there were these other ﬁve guys in suits. John Denery, guitar and vocals in the Hi-Fives: Everyone started wearing suits later on, but at the time there weren’t too many suit bands. We met the Smugglers and then they set up a show for us in Vancouver. That was really fun. We all showed up at the Mint ofﬁces, none of us had been there before, and I remember seeing Grant Lawrence with his legs up on a desk, wearing a Hi-Fives T-shirt, greeting us. We went on this massive tour, which was amazing. Touring Canada felt like we were going from one ski resort to another. It was just so beautiful. You weren’t in congested trafﬁc like you would be in the Bay area or California if you were touring. Somewhere on that tour, we were joined by the Evaporators, and I remember this party where Nardwuar and I went into this room and saw people doing cocaine. Neither of us do drugs, and I remember he was very funny about it. He kept saying things like, “The cocaine people are in the hot tub now.”

The next Mint–Lookout! release was by Bay area gay punk legends Pansy Division. Like cub, the band suffered a particular categorization: queercore. Wish I’d Taken Pictures came out (no pun intended) on February 9, 1996. It would be followed by the band’s tribute to their northern neighbours Manada, in 1997. Manada was a Mint-only release produced by Steve Albini, and featured both English and Quebecois versions of the titular song, along with a Maow cover.

Jon Ginoli, guitar and vocals in Pansy Division: Having a gay rock band was my

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Lookout! Below: 1994–1997

idea. I set out to ﬁnd people who could appreciate the concept and who, hopefully, were gay. That was the initial idea: here’s something I want to sing about, here’s something that everybody else is afraid to talk about. All right, we’ll corner the market, we’ll sing about this and we’ll sing about it in a certain way. There was an idea out there among certain circles like, “God, why is rock music so homophobic? Why are there no out gay musicians?” There were all these

A Pansy Division promo photo.

rumours about people but not anybody who was willing to be out, except for a few disco dance music artists. Rock ’n’ roll means something different in the culture. It’s more mainstream in this country. It’s Americana. It’s something that “normal” people do.

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Our ﬁrst record was done for a year before it came out, and during that time I had sent it to about thirty labels and had barely heard a peep. Then we got written up in [the zine] Maximumrocknroll, and partly because of that, there were three labels at the same time that said, “Okay, we want to put this record out.” We ended up picking Lookout! It was Lookout! versus Alternative Tentacles, and Lookout! seemed to be able to do things more quickly. Bill Baker: Jon Ginoli, he’s fantastic at marketing his band. What is the word I’m looking for, here? I think “activism” might be too strong of a term, but they were very . . . you know, there aren’t very many vocal gay punk bands out there.

Ginoli’s gift for in-your-face lyrics, such as “We’re the buttfuckers of rock ’n’ roll, we want to sock it to your hole,” combined with catchy, tuneful pop-punk jams, propelled Pansy Division to a blush of mainstream fame (touring with Green Day didn’t hurt, either). After leaving Lookout! they would continue to release albums with Alternative Tentacles in the United States. (For more on Pansy Division, I recommend Ginoli’s awesome book, Deﬂowered: My Life in Pansy Division.)

Jon Ginoli: I’m a politically oriented person. I don’t sing a lot about politics, because I think a lot of things are better read about than sung about, but I have been curious about Canada for a long time because there are so many political problems in the U.S. and it seems that a lot of the things we’re arguing about here are not an issue in Canada anymore. So I was interested in going to a country that was so like the U.S. in many ways, but had these signiﬁcant differences. When the second album [Deﬂowered!] was coming out, we decided we needed an agent, and right then somebody contacted us, and he turned out to be this guy, Jay Scott, from Vancouver. Because we had this Vancouver connection he was getting us all these dates in Canada, so we started becoming fairly popular in Canada.

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We went to Canada four times in ’94, twice with Green Day and two other short trips on our own. I’ve seen more Canadian provinces than many Canadians have. So when I Wish I’d Taken Pictures came out, we were already familiar to lots of people. Bill Baker: People knew about Pansy Division. They had quite a following already, before we had anything to do with it. Plus, they put on an amazing live show. They were a band that didn’t require a lot of effort on our part to get people to know about them. Jon Ginoli: I get a lot of people from a certain age who tell me, “I saw you opening for Green Day in Edmonton and it was so great.” So we were able to inﬁltrate. We thought we were making records for adults, though. If I thought in the beginning that teenagers would be listening to us I might have approached it differently. It’s like the movie Hairspray where the white kids go into the black record store in segregated Baltimore and they love the music. We managed to get it out there far enough that people will still whisper and talk about us.

Mint also picked up the Groovie Ghoulies, another Lookout! band.

Bill Baker: The Groovie Ghoulies, though, were more of a novelty, or nerdy, punk rock band. Kepi, bass and vocals in Groovie Ghoulies: We were this Ramones-type band with more scary imagery. Like the Misﬁts. We played around the West Coast for a couple of years and never did any big touring, but we would go up to Seattle and play. Somewhere along the line we ended up in this circle with the Fastbacks and the Young Fresh Fellows and Egg Studios, so we recorded a couple of records at the Egg. It ended up that the Groovie Ghoulies played a show in Sacramento with cub, and Grant Lawrence from the Smugglers was there, and he saw the Ghoulies and dug it.

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Bill Baker: Groovie Ghoulies were from Sacramento, so Rose actually knew them from town. There were tons of things like that, at the time, where the Lookout!– Mint world meshing also worked for me on a personal level. Kepi: There was none of this Hollywood stuff, like, “I’ll get you a show in Vancouver if you get me a show in Sacramento.” Grant was just like, “Oh my god, you guys rock and you have to come up and play Vancouver with cub.” And the Ghoulies had only been to Vancouver once before, so we went up and we played a school. Or maybe even during the day at a community centre or something? My favorite things about my rock ’n’ roll career are when things happen organically. Bill married Rose and Rose was in Tiger Trap. And Lisa Marr ended up marrying Ronnie from the Muffs. All this funny rock ’n’ roll family stuff. So we would go to Mint and there was Bill and Randy and everybody, and then you’d go off to the university and do an interview with Nardwuar, and then you’d come back to Mint and pick up your merch. It’s like family. It’s not a business or a boss.

Mint and Lookout! released the Groovie Ghoulies’ World Contact Day on May 6, 1996. It came hot on the heels of the Smugglers’ ﬁrst Mint–Lookout! full-length, Selling the Sizzle.

Grant Lawrence: We put out Selling the Sizzle, which was ’96, a year that was the pinnacle of the Smugglers and Mint Records, it could be argued. Bill Baker: Selling the Sizzle was the pinnacle of the Smugglers. It’s such a great, great record. In my mind, anyway, just hit after hit after hit. We’d been sort of taking and taking and taking from Lookout! and then that was kind of our gift back. Nick Thomas: Selling the Sizzle actually sold pretty well. It was right at the height of Lookout! and it sold, you know, in all, about ﬁfteen thousand copies. For us, at the time, that was pretty huge.

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But we just weren’t seeing the breakdown of the numbers. We were hanging out with Lookout! a whole lot, having a lot of fun with them, but we were starting to realize that they were driving fancy cars and had constant bells and whistles. Chris Appelgren would come on tour with us to Japan and be kind of living high on the hog, and we weren’t seeing what was going on with the money. Bryce Dunn: The Japanese tour was deﬁnitely a Lookout! connection. It would never have happened if we weren’t on Lookout! Not that Mint wouldn’t have considered it, but they just wouldn’t have had the resources at the time. Japan was mind-blowing. I could not believe when we played shows how many people knew our music, sang every word to every song and just genuinely loved it. And it’s not just that Japanese kids know their music, but they also love the fact that there’s a band that can come from halfway around the world and play for them. In a city like Tokyo where you’d think they should have a huge scene and bands playing all the time, it was exactly the opposite. The niche of kids that came out to those shows was the niche that pretty much sustained that city. So to have these bands that came from halfway around the world to play indie punk rock music, they just thought it was the bee’s knees. We were blown away by the fact that every show was like this — if there were only twenty kids in the crowd, those twenty kids were up front, really wanted to be there, really enjoyed themselves and when you ﬁnished were so thankful, just falling over themselves to say thank you, giving you stuff. We were touring with the Queers and I remember eating breakfast, and Joe Queer would say things like, “I just got this Nintendo from this kid last night at the show, and I don’t know what to do with this thing!”

Mint and Lookout! released the Smugglers’ EP Buddy Holly Convention in October 1997. The title was a reference to the band’s recent habit of all sporting blackrimmed glasses onstage. By this time, however, a nearly decade-long career had left some members with a severe case of burnout.

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Beez: In my mind, ’96–’97 were the best [years] for the Smugglers. We were on our way out. It was too much for me. It was really good, but I had just gotten married, and I was really tired. I was in my mid-thirties and I started feeling like a dancing clown. I just couldn’t be a thirty-ﬁve-year-old man with an eighteen-year-old’s job. And it just got worse and worse and worse. So I had to quit. I quit in ’97. Bryce quit and then I quit. Bryce Dunn: I just was going through some life-changing, life-afﬁrming decisions at the time and I felt that I needed to maybe concentrate my efforts elsewhere. Ska-T: Bryce spent a lot of time ﬁghting with his long-time girlfriend Mary — we’d go on tour, and it didn’t matter where it was, it could be Germany or Philadelphia or whatever. We would be on the side of the road getting gas, it could be three in the morning. And Bryce would be on the payphone, racking up hundred-dollar, three-, four-, ﬁve-hundred-dollar bills. Arguing. Apparently on that Japan tour, which I didn’t go on because I got bumped for that Chris guy from Lookout! there were some shenanigans with Bryce on that tour, and [his girlfriend] was not happy about it. But — I mean, that’s the road. I looked so much like Beez that sometimes I would pretend I was him, just to get some action. Even his wife on their wedding night, at the wedding, came up to me at one point and got us mixed up. Grant, later on, seemed to sort of take more advantage of some action. And Nick always had women all over him, but he was usually just too drunk, he’d be passing out. Anyway, on that tour, some shenanigans happened, and [Bryce’s girlfriend] basically said, “Smugglers or me,” and he picked her. Bryce Dunn: But then, due to Grant’s nagging — not persuasion, but nagging — he managed to get us to record the Buddy Holly

EP

with [John Collins and Dave

Carswell’s studio] JC/DC, and I think that’s one of the best records that we’ve ever put out.

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With a new rhythm section in tow, the Smugglers embarked on a 10th-anniversary tour of Europe. The resulting live album, Growing Up Smuggler, recorded in Spain, was co-released on four different labels: Mint in Canada, Lookout! in the United States, Impossible in Europe, and 1+2 in Japan. Mint — and probably Lookout! — might not have known it at the time, but that record would signify the end of the Mint–Lookout! era.

Bill Baker: We were putting out things that clearly weren’t really Lookout!’s musical style. Obviously, we didn’t expect them to put out some of the stuff that we did. And it worked the same way in reverse, although there were a couple of instances — I think the Queers was one of them — where their record was actually going to be kind of a big deal, and they weren’t conﬁdent that we could do it. At that time, that particular band, they had never met us, they didn’t know us or anything about us. And so they requested that Lookout! not release it through Mint in Canada. And I don’t blame them. Don’t Back Down, it was called. You know, we very badly wanted to release it. But what are we going to do if they don’t want us to? Kepi: I remember after we had signed A Mint special: the cute promo sticker.

on to Lookout! and Mint, we were

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playing in Portland, and some guy from PolyGram came up and he was like, “Hey, I’m from PolyGram and I want to buy you lunch.” And I was like, “That’s okay, I’m happy.” He said, “You don’t want to go to lunch and hear what I have to say?” And I was like, “No, I’m on the greatest label in the world.” I thought that Lookout! Records didn’t get any better. For me at that time, it probably was my favourite label in the world. Everybody was friendly and you could make whatever records you wanted and you could tour with the bands you loved. It didn’t last, but when I said that I meant it. Molly Neuman: We were all a little bit idealistic, in terms of the execution. And you know, that’s why it didn’t end up being a lasting, permanent thing. We didn’t let it go too far before we said, “Oh, okay, this maybe isn’t working.” The economics and all of that. Larry Livermore: I think that, in one sense, the problem was that I let my sentiment and enthusiasm run away with me and it stopped me seeing the practical difﬁculties. One of the biggest problems was that it was somewhat of a mismatch. We were a much, much bigger company. This might sound like a weird analogy, but it’s as if the U.S. and Canada were going to go through some sort of partnership where they were meant to be equal, but one country has got ten times the number of people and probably ten times the wealth than the other. It makes things difﬁcult to ﬁgure out. And — this is probably true on both sides — we were both so enthusiastic about our partnership that we hadn’t thought through some of the practicalities of how things would be: prices, where records would be manufactured, whether we would be getting each other’s records — a whole lot of things like that became issues. I think that my leaving might have created further problems [Livermore left Lookout! in 1997], because the new people that ran Lookout! — I don’t think they had a really clear sense of how to make the partnership work out. Bill Baker: I remember going down there once when they had just opened a storefront and had many employees. It was a rather large concern.

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Larry Livermore: I felt for a while that I had almost caused more harm to Mint than helped it. I’m really happy that they survived and prospered over the years, but I think that attempting to come up to speed in a partnership with a much bigger label almost encouraged them to expand beyond their natural capacity. Ironically, something similar happened to Lookout! with not such a happy ending as a result of Green Day. The owners tried to take it to the next level and eventually went broke.

Back at Mint headquarters, Bill and Randy had released the ﬁrst of what would become a semi-regular occurrence: a Mint compilation. This one, titled Team Mint, after the numbered shirts issued to all Mint artists (Neko was 00) sold like gangbusters, a testament to the appeal of being able to purchase a hard version of what now amounts to an iTunes playlist. In the years to come, compilations — and one compilation in particular — would come to play a large part in the label’s output. Team Mint featured cuts by the usual suspects, some Lookout! friends, and a couple of bands that Mint had scooped from the prairies: Huevos Rancheros and Duotang.

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Chapter 8 Get Outta Dodge

Back in 1995, on one of the many cub tours that ventured across the country, the Mint machine made an interesting discovery: an instrumental surf rock band from Calgary called Huevos Rancheros. They had been making a ruckus locally, and they were starting to garner attention both across Canada and overseas. The Lookout! deal aside, Mint had never before looked outside of Vancouver for bands. That was about to change in a hurry.

Brent Cooper, guitar in Huevos Rancheros: We ended up doing three or four shows with cub: Calgary, Edmonton, Regina. And who was with them but Bill? Bill may

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have been lonesome for some testosterone, so he’d hang out with us. We would tease him about the bandage he had on his knee, which we said was just for sympathy. So for years, whenever anyone had an injury, we would accuse him of having the Mint Bill sympathy bandage. Bill Baker: We’ve been putting out Brent’s records longer than anybody else’s. Brent Cooper: During that time Bill — out of the blue — said, “Well, if you guys are willing to do a record, we’d love to put one out.” Just like that. So we were making a record for a guy in England, and we just phoned up Bill — by this time I may have been aware of Randy, but Bill seemed to be the face of Mint — and we said, “You know, we’re making this record in England, can you guys put it out in Canada?”

Huevos Rancheros.

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Huevos released Dig In! on Mint in May 1995. They had already led a semicharmed life by that point, including an opening stint for Henry Rollins at CBGB in New York, recording with Dave Crider (Mono Men, Estrus Records), and making a connection in England to legendary broadcaster-producer John Peel.

Brent Cooper: We did a John Peel session, and we never got to meet him, but we had a wonderful time with the crusty

BBC

engineers. They claimed to like us be-

cause we could play our instruments, but they also said that three weeks earlier they’d been recording Paul McCartney. We were talking about Joe Meek, the legendary British producer who was crazy. He ended up strangling his landlord and killing himself, and we played a song that he wrote. They bet us that if we could do it in one take, they would take us “round the pub.” We didn’t want to because we were extremely jetlagged, but we did it, and they took us “round the pub,” and back again, and then we shortly fell asleep in the studio. But it was a phenomenal experience — to drive around England and hear yourself on the John Peel show on the BBC. In England, a lot of the rockabillies came out to shows. Some of them even drove ﬁfty miles, which in England is halfway across the country, to see us play. And there were the college kids and the indie kids and the surf music fans and the guitar geeks — they all seemed to like what we did.

Like the Smugglers, Huevos travelled vertically instead of horizontally; they spent much time on the road between B.C. and California, where their surf rock stylings could be best appreciated and their appetites best satiated.

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A Huevos promo postcard, featuring the iconic artwork of Tom Bagley.

Brent Cooper: We used to go across Canada probably once a year, but we often went from Vancouver to San Diego and back because it seemed to make sense. You’d get all the best cities and you could get Mexican food every day. One other thing that Huevos learned to do was to ﬂy to Toronto and skip the drive from Calgary to Sudbury, or wherever. There were actually years that we played Toronto and Seattle more than Calgary. And once you’re in Toronto, if you spend ten days or two weeks, you can play everywhere. In the early nineties, in Calgary, there were a lot of bands, and there were a few good places to play, but what we found is that everybody sounded like somebody else. Everybody was really dying to be famous or something, and that gave us a real good reason to exist as Huevos — because we were instrumental, we were irreverent, we would show up to shows in our pajamas and consume as much beer as possible onstage during our set time, just to kind of thumb our noses at what

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was going on. And it seemed to work, because people really enjoyed us. And you can only take the dark, serious stuff for so long. We didn’t feel connected with a lot of those bands. We also did a beer commercial at that time — apparently the Odds and 5440 both turned it down. It was with Don Ho, the Hawaiian legend, and us. We got treated like stars for a couple of days, ﬂown out to Vancouver, picked up in a limousine, put up in a nice hotel. It was really great. I stepped on Don Ho’s shiny white loafers a million times. He invited us to free dinner the next time we were in Hawaii, which we never took him up on, and now he’s dead.

Shortly after Dig In! a lineup change and a trip to SXSW brought the band around to their second album on Mint, 1996’s Get Outta Dodge, described in press releases as “Grant Lawrence’s favourite album by these dudes, no bullshit.” (This cowpoke language seemed to accompany most Huevos releases.) Still, the band was dogged by fans — and non-fans — who grappled with their lack of lyrics.

Brent Cooper: Luckily, it’s kind of stopped, but people used to say, “You guys would be good if you had a singer.” And I would say, “Did you enjoy what we did?” “Yeah, I did.” “Then obviously we’re doing something right!” It was kind of a battle, those ﬁrst four or ﬁve years. Also we were continuously compared to Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet [of the Kids in the Hall theme song fame]. Which is kind of ﬂattering because they were so good, and pivotal, I think, in the Canadian and even North American independent music scene.

With a hot Calgary band now snug on their roster and the then healthy relationship with Lookout! in full swing, Mint looked even farther east for more bands to

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fatten up their lineup. Their sights landed on Winnipeg, speciﬁcally the unique mod drum-and-bass combo (not electronic drum and bass but actual drums and bass), Duotang.

Bill Baker: The Smugglers played with them in Winnipeg, and Beez brought a tape back to us. He said, “You guys should really listen to this,” and we were really into it. Rod Slaughter, bass and vocals in Duotang: Sean Allum and I were playing in separate bands that we were kind of, you know, half interested in. We shared a warehouse practice space, so Sean and I would often stay late after, just to goof around, drink beer. And I would pick up my bass, and he would be sitting on the drums, and we just started playing a couple covers. I remember one of the nights — it was, like, two in the morning, we were at the warehouse alone, and I said, “Do this song by Galaxie 500.” And he looked at me and said, “I love Galaxie 500!” We knew we had similar tastes in music, but that one particular band was the moment when we both looked at each other and said, “You’re the guy I have to be playing with.” Not that we sounded anything like Galaxie 500, but that was the ﬁrst moment of connection. Sean Allum, drummer in Duotang: It bugged me, at the start, that it was always like, “Oh, for two people, they’re pretty good,” or, “Wow, listen to the sound they get from two people.” But I know Grant at Mint wanted our tape. We mailed it and it took forever. I remember talking to him on the phone and him saying, “What, did you send it by fucking ox cart?” Those exact words. Rod Slaughter: Obviously, at the time, [punk rock duo] the Inbreds were getting big. But we were so ignorant of what was happening on that side of the country, we didn’t even know about the Inbreds. I knew that Nomeansno had started bass and drums. I think there was another band called godheadSilo in the States. But

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we didn’t sound anything like those. We were basically a pop band that made a lot of racket, more inﬂuenced by sixties mod music and late seventies, early eighties kind of stuff. And the reaction in Winnipeg was very quick to [reach] acceptance. Because things happened so fast. Sean Allum: There was a festival in Winnipeg and we heard this guy Peter Jenner

Duotang’s Sean Allum (third from left) and Rod Slaughter (second from right) with Rusty Matyas and the Flashing Lights.

was going to be there. He used to be the manager of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, and the Clash, and now he manages Billy Bragg. And we wanted to meet him, but we didn’t know who he was, just what he’d done. It was weird, too, because I remember watching The History of Rock and Roll, and Jenner was talking about the big happening in London in — I think it was ’67 — then the next day I’m having

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drinks with the guy, and I didn’t even know who he was. Rod goes up to the hotel desk, like, “Oh, yeah, we want to meet Peter Penner,” and this guy turns and goes, “It’s Peter Jenner,” and it was him. Like, “Oh shit.” And we sat down and had drinks with him, and then he ended up coming to the show. He was the one that said, “Wow, these guys are good, somebody should sign them.” Bill Baker: Mint was kind of riding high at that point. I mean, ﬁnancially maybe not so much, but we were feeling very cocky about the future, and that we were a real record label. There was an element of working with Duotang that was really exciting because they were from out of town. I ﬂew out to Winnipeg for a show of theirs, and they treated me just so great. I had a special table at the club and all these people were like [nerd voice], “Are you Bill from Mint Records? Can I give you my tape?” And I was like [deep voice], “Oh yeah, sure, no problem.” Rod Slaughter: Our dream was to be on an indie label, and the best indie label was Mint or, you know, maybe Sub Pop, at the time. And Sonic Unyon was starting up then, too. And so when the Mint thing started to happen, it was everything we could ever want. But we never thought it would be possible, because we were from Winnipeg. We had a great time with Bill, and I think we spent over half the night drinking. Sean Allum: We took him to a rave! Rod Slaughter: Then the next morning we got up, completely hungover, went to a little breakfast dive and signed all the papers. [Laughs] So that was it. We were signed to Mint.

Mint released Duotang’s 7-inch — essentially that initial demo tape — The Message in July 1996. A few months later (and on the other side of cub’s Box of Hair), they released a full-length, Smash the Ships and Raise the Beams. The ensuing PR touted the band’s mod look with Mint’s signature wry wit: “When it comes to style, this is about as good as it gets for Mint Records. Sure, those guys in the Smugglers

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wore suits and stuff, but that’s kinda like putting a clean diaper on a soiled baby, you know?”

Sean Allum: We didn’t know where we were going to make the album. Someone said, you know, “How about [producer] Darryl Neudorf, he’s in Vancouver. And you guys can come down here, and then you can play a show for MusicWest.” We were supposed to see Guided by Voices in Minneapolis, but they were kicked off the Urge Overkill tour. Then we found out they were playing MusicWest with Stereolab. So Mint bought us tickets to go see those shows, which was great. That’s your ﬁrst taste of feeling like a rock star, right? The label’s buying you tickets to shows. Rod Slaughter: The ﬁrst recording process was a lot of fun. We did it with Darryl Neudorf who was in 54-40, and he’s also famous for being the guy who had the guts to sue Sarah McLachlan. Which he lost eventually, but that was going on when we were there. So we holed up in his studio apartment, which was on East Hastings, and we just spent three weeks there, basically living on the ﬂoor and recording, and it was amazing. It was an amazing time, but I don’t think we ever really knew what the heck we were doing, as far as recording. Sean Allum: We started recording the ﬁrst day, and we get a call saying, “Do you guys want to open up for the Flaming Lips?” And it’s like, “Yeah, okay.” And the girls in Maow had a party for us. It was CC [Corrina BeesleyHammond], and Neko was there, and Tobey. The Smugglers were playing a show, so we got hammered and tried to leave for more booze. They wanted us to stay and we said we needed more wine. And CC was like, “Well, here’s some wine.” It was wine they had made for their wedding, but she opened the bottle for us anyways. Then Beez walked in the house. “What’s going on?” He was all mad about the wedding wine, for two seconds, until it was like, “It’s the Duotang guys, look!”

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Bill Baker: The thing about those guys is, they partied. Harder than anyone I’ve seen. Rod Slaughter: The tours all blend together, but the one tour that sticks out in my mind was late ’96. We went with cub, which was one of their last tours, I think, or possibly their last tour in Canada. And the second band on the bill was Zumpano [Carl Newman’s band, signed to Sub Pop]. That was just amazing. And that’s when I ﬁrst met Carl and all those folks from that side. Sean Allum: We played a kid’s sixteenth birthday party. I guess his dad had lots of money or whatever, and rented out a hall, and paid us. It wasn’t advertised. It was a guy and his group of friends and these girls. And he pretty much rented us for the night. He had Duotang, Zumpano, and cub play his birthday party. And then we stayed at his house after. There was also one show in Toronto. This is before the album, I think. We were playing a showcase for

CMW

with Hayden, and there was a ﬁght between

the maﬁa and some bikers at the bar we were playing at. One of the bikers had drugged some girl, given her a rooﬁe or something, in the bar. But it was a mobcontrolled bar. And then ﬁfteen minutes later, ten Joe Pescis got out of two cars, with the double-breasted suits and stuff. They kicked the shit out of the bikers, and the bikers didn’t even lay a hand on them. They just took it. So we were like, “Oh, wow, don’t worry, darling,” to this girl, and the bartender was like, “Here, have a shot.” I was like, “Oh god.” I did, and then it was time to play. Bill Baker: They put on a tremendous live show. You can tell the difference between the people who’ve taught themselves to be a drummer and the people who seem like they could be thinking about something else while they’re playing incredible drums, and Sean was one of those kind of guys. Just amazing to watch. And Rod’s a very engaging performer. I thought their live show was one of the best. And, yeah, they did a bunch of touring, mostly in Canada. Rod Slaughter: You go for, like, ﬁve or six weeks and most of the time just the two of us in a van. We would ﬁght, but then you get over it because it’s just the two of you. You can only not talk for so long.

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Sean Allum: We drove back from a show in Halifax and wanted a drink in this bar, Zaphod’s, but it was closed. So we went to the strip bar. Nothing about us, you know, degrading women, but we decided to show up at a strip club. I remember we were sitting near the front, and all of a sudden we hear, “Duotaaaang!” We looked over, and it’s the guys from Chixdiggit. They were playing a show down the street, but they wanted to go to this strip club, Bare Facts. And so we ended up going to their show and getting sloshed, and it was my turn to drive. Remember this is 1996. I would never get in a car drunk now, but I ended up driving for about forty-ﬁve minutes and then said I couldn’t do it. And I cried because [tour manager] Cam got mad at me. “You see, I told you not to drink!” Blame Chixdiggit. Rod Slaughter: At the time, being on a label like Mint was a big deal. Cities would put “Mint recording artist” on the poster and the place would be packed. The whole time, between ’96 and ’98, was just . . . almost jaw-on-the-ground. We just couldn’t believe how easy it was. [Laughs] Not easy. I mean, we were working hard, but everything was working in our favour. Bill Baker: In this period, with the Lookout! thing, a lot of the bands that we were putting out at that time didn’t ﬁt. It was an awkward situation because all of the bands, of course, were like, “Can we be part of this Lookout! deal?” Because, why wouldn’t you? And we’d send them stuff, but that did put some strain on our deal with Lookout! They didn’t want Duotang or Neko or whatever. It just didn’t ﬁt in with anything they were doing.

As 1997 dawned, Mint had their ﬁngers in a number of promising pies: cub, the Lookout! deal, Duotang, Huevos. It seemed a little too good to be true, because it was.

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Bill Baker: At the time, we were distributing through Cargo. Lots of Canadian indie labels were. And then they went bankrupt.

Cargo was an independent distributor that had been running out of Montreal since 1987. Like Mint, it had started as an indie label, with acts like Nomeansno on board. They’d also opened arms Rod (with beer) and Sean in action.

in the United States and U.K., and those were healthy, servicing Blink-182

and others. By the mid-to-late ’90s, rumours and speculation abounded about an imminent collapse of the Canadian arm, which had long been distribution only. Its fate was ﬁnally sealed in late 1997. A Billboard article about the Cargo collapse, dated January 24, 1998, sported the title, “Cargo Files for Bankruptcy; Little Effect on Music Industry Seen.” The article states: “Although unsecured debts will hurt some independent labels here, most industry observers say the company’s woes will have little impact on overall business.” It also lists some of the debts owed to various labels, including, at the top, a whopping $511,000 to Epitaph.

Bill Baker: I mean, the amount of money that they actually took is so small by my standards from today, but it was terrible. It really screwed us over for a long time. The ﬁfteen thousand dollars or whatever that they still owed us, and the eight hours a day, six days a week that I personally spent doing nothing but trying to get our money back . . . and they had an amazing system of just evading, of passing the buck. There was no Internet, no email then, and they’re in Montreal. You’ve got

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somebody saying, “I’m going to mail it. Next Tuesday, the cheque will be in your ofﬁce.” Tuesday comes, it’s not there. We ended up with a lot of bands that were owed royalties, and we weren’t able to pay them. I spoke to each one and said, “Here’s the situation. Can you be patient?” And again we probably only owed them twelve hundred dollars or something, but it still is a big deal to a band. Gob was one of them. There was a clause in our agreement that if either party defaulted on their obligations, you had a certain amount of time to rectify it, or else. So they ended up using that as an excuse to reclaim their record from us. Which was ﬁne. But then they did some math, and were like, “You still owe us.” They were with Nettwerk by then. So we ended up giving them back their masters and paying them.

As a consequence of this — which Bill and Randy are reluctant to discuss further — Gob is the only Mint signing not represented anywhere in the catalogue or on the website. With Cargo out of the picture, the label was forced to restructure the way it distributed albums and dealt with acts. Many Canadian indies at similar crossroads sign deals with majors for their distribution, but Mint decided instead to distribute through other independent channels, including Outside Music and Scratch in Canada, and Nail in the United States. And while Cargo’s demise seriously hurt Mint ﬁnancially and organizationally, it would not be the only chapter closing at that time.

Grant Lawrence: Cub started not doing so well. And cub was kind of the cornerstone band of Mint. Smugglers were all over the place. We were on all sorts of different record labels, but cub was Mint. And in 1997, Lisa Marr came into the ofﬁce a few times and had some real heart-to-heart meetings with Bill, to the point where she was like, “Look, third album, it’s not doing that well. What the fuck is going

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Lookout! Below: 1994–1997

on?” I remember a quote that I overhead from Lisa. She was yelling at Bill in his ofﬁce at Mint, and she yelled, “Look, I just wanna be famous, okay?” About a month, maybe two months after that, cub announced that they were breaking up. They formed in May 1992 and they broke up in May 1997. Exactly ﬁve years. And those ﬁve years were fantastic for Mint. But when cub broke up, it signalled the end of an era for Mint. Bill Baker: Not too long after that, we ended up in mediation with this Allen Fox from Cargo, and it got all settled up, like, “You will pay Mint this week.” And that guy stood there and looked me in the eye and said, “The cheque is coming this week.” We shook hands. And then they ﬁled for bankruptcy. So we were pushing and pushing against this wall, and suddenly the wall disappeared, and we fell through to the other side, and we were like, “What are we going to do now?” We owed bands money, we hadn’t put out any records for a while, the Lookout! thing was falling apart, cub had broken up . . . all the things that deﬁned us disappeared at the same time. Luckily, that’s when Neko reared her head. Grant Lawrence: In around ’97, they announced, “I think we’re going to put out a Neko Case solo album.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? What are you talking about? That crazy Tacoma girl that’s been up here?” And then they played me a couple of her songs. I’m like, “Oh my god. She can really, really sing.” Who knew?

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“Neko was the phoenix.” — Bill Baker “The reason [those songs] were so big and belting is that I was so excited and nervous. I didn’t have too much in the way of dynamics going on because I was scared to death.” — Neko Case in Exclaim!, May 2000

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Chapter 9 The Virginian

In 1997, Mint was suffering. Having lost both money and hope in the wake of the Cargo collapse, with the Lookout! deal fading into the distance (for everyone except the Smugglers, who would continue to release on Lookout! in the years to come), and with their cash cow, cub, broken up and scattered, Bill and Randy were staring down the possible end of what had been a short — but really good — run. The guys were now in their mid-20s, and it was clear that the American music industry was no longer lusting after the new Nirvana. In fact, most were on to the next thing — in 1997, rave culture and dance music had broken through to the mainstream and was ﬁnding its way into pop and rock (Radiohead’s OK Computer came out that year, as did U2’s Pop). In Canada, however, the post-grunge movement was still in

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full swing; in 1997, Our Lady Peace’s Clumsy went diamond. The ﬁrst ﬁve years of Mint had been fast and furious. By April of 1997, the label had released 16 7-inches and 14 full-length albums (plus a Japanese reissue of cub’s Betti-Cola). In major label terms, this was no big deal, but by indie record label standards, this was a near-manic level of activity. In terms of public perception, Mint was still strongly associated with cub and the Smugglers, and now also the pop-punk velocity of Lookout! — pop bands, cutesy bands, punk bands. This, among other reasons, made it all the more strange that Neko Case would come to Mint with a solo country album.

Bill Baker: Right then in Mint’s history was such a sad time, because we had tried so hard to do things properly. Because we didn’t ever approach it with a business plan to start with, it was just accidents. Funny, weird shit happened, coincidences. “Oh my god, things are going so great . . . oh, wow, this is terrible.” And for years after that, it just ended up being the fallback plan. I stopped taking a salary from Mint in 1998 for six or seven years. Grant Lawrence: Back in the eighties, I met this crazy girl from Tacoma named Neko Case. And she loved rock ’n’ roll. She put on Smugglers shows in various venues in Tacoma. She was the coolest girl, and she had a couple of weird punk rock bands herself, like the Propanes and the Del Logs. And we just thought she was really great. She was also super sexy. She ended up being so entwined with Mint, which is interesting to me based on everything she was and everything she is now. Stephen Hamm: A little while ago, Randy was selling his old van. I was interested at ﬁrst, ’til he told me it was a piece of shit. But anyway, that van is pretty famous. Not only did it do all these runs to the States [to deliver DiSCORDER], it was also the van that Randy used to transport Neko Case. And run errands for Neko Case. And do Neko Case’s bidding. Remember what I said about Randy and cute girls?

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Neko’s rider.

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Carolyn Mark, Mint Recording artist: I was in a band called the Vinaigrettes and we played with Maow at the university in Nanaimo. They were always throwing us girl bands together. Anyway, I heckled them, and they heckled me back, and then we became friends. Speciﬁcally, Neko and I became friends. She came to visit me once, in Victoria. Ugh. I’m embarrassed now but, you know, she only played the drums then, and nobody had heard her sing yet, so then I was like, “Neko, this might be boring for you, but I’m going to a recording studio today. You’re welcome to join me.” And she sat there with my magazines, and I was singing, I was recording. I mean, I didn’t know! I should’ve just gotten her to sing on it. The ﬁrst time she sang for me, she was in my room with me and Bridget from the Vinaigrettes. And she was too shy, so she had to stand on my bed and face the bedroom wall corner, with her back to us, while we played the chords. So it wasn’t like she came out swinging. Bill Baker: After the Maow record came out, I remember sitting there — Randy, me, and Grant — saying, “We should get her to sing more songs.” And then a few months later, that’s when she came into my ofﬁce. I had two doors, because it was on the corner, and she closed both of the doors. I never close those doors, so I was a little worried. And she was — I think “sheepish” is maybe an overstatement, but she was very self-conscious about talking to me about it. She asked whether we would be interested in putting out a country record of hers. It was a very short conversation because we just said, “Yes, please!”

Neko stepped into Darryl Neudorf’s studio with several Mint and Mint-related friends in tow, including Beez, Carswell, Carolyn Mark, and Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet’s Brian Connelly. The latter two would soon record their own solo efforts for the label. The Virginian also featured the talents of Case’s “Boyfriends,” the name she gave her backing band, a pack of male players that included Carl

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Newman (who would also help pen a tune or two). By Mint standards, it was a fairly extensive production. By the time the record was done, it included the contributions of more than 20 people.

Bill Baker: She wanted us to go to the studio and listen to what she’d done. Which we’d never done. No one’s ever asked, except for her. I think that’s the only time that I’ve been in a studio while a band’s just making music. It’s funny looking back on it compared to the things she’s done later. You know, I’m very self-conscious about my choice of words. I don’t want to say “corny” because that’s not right, but it’s a lot more derivative and lighthearted than what she does now. But I had no idea what I was going to be listening to. I just remember it was freaking jaw-dropping at the time. I could not believe that’s what she had done. I vividly remember walking back on Hastings thinking, “Oh my god, this is fantastic.”

The Virginian was released on July 15, 1997. In a March 2009 timeline of Case’s career in Exclaim! Bill Baker spoke of the recording’s mystical qualities: “If you look at the body of work of so many of the people you see listed on that record, stylistically it wasn’t anything like that at all. It was almost as if she tapped into some deep longing that all of these people had, to explore that kind of musical style, but they’d never had a way or a reason to do that.” The Exclaim! piece also mentions a telltale Neko moment at The Virginian’s release party, care of Grant Lawrence: “I had a long talk with Neko, going, ‘This is a big point in your career. You’re no longer the punk rocker. You’ve sold me on this country thing, and the album is amazing. I want you to pick out a really nice dress and shock everyone tonight by stepping out on that stage and looking glamorous.’ We got the dress and had it tailored to her specs. The Starﬁsh Room

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An outtake.

[Randy claims it was actually at the Gate] was sold out, and everyone was excited to see the coming of age of Neko Case. She’s backstage and she goes, ‘You know what? Fuck it, I’m not wearing the dress.’ She went onstage in a beer-stained white V-neck T-shirt and jeans. I was devastated, but she blew everyone away with her vocals. It was at that point I realized you cannot make Neko Case do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

Randy Iwata: It was interesting, because that really created that whole second wing for us, whereas up until then it was pop or pop punk, during the whole Lookout! era. And we were so smart we took out a Neko ad in Maximumrocknroll, and they said, “Are you crazy? This isn’t anything. We’re not running this ad.” They were not interested in her music or country music in general. And we were just like, 178

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“Fuck you, but okay, that makes sense.” Bill Baker: Part of what was so invigorating about her, for us, was that we were getting into a habit of sending the record to these same people, the same reviewer, same everything. We really had a system, almost. And then I remember getting a call from John McLaughlin at the Province. He was the country music reviewer, and there was all of a sudden all these people that we’ve never heard of getting interested.

In an article dated August 6, 1997, McLaughlin called Neko “quite the real thing, hewing closer to the intent and soul of true country music than most of what shows up on contemporary ‘new’ country radio.” In the piece, Neko offers that she’s learning to yodel. There is mention, as well, of Mint seeking U.S. distribution for The Virginian.

Bill Baker: It started locally, and then it just spread, and we would get people from publications we had never heard of contacting us. It was really exciting that way, a refresh. And I thought, “Wow, we don’t even know the lingo.”

One such unusual publication was the alt-country magazine No Depression, which featured the album and its singer in its November/December 1997 issue. In the article, Neko expresses chagrin at still being considered the “punk rock drummer [who] sings country.” She also skewers the contemporary country scene (as she did in the Province months earlier): “I know who everyone is among the pantheon of hit makers in Nashville right now . . . I loathe a good portion of them, but I don’t hold it against them.” The Virginian went on to chart in the country/alt-country universe. To Mint’s pleasure, it also grabbed the attention of Chicago’s Bloodshot

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Records, the self-described “insurgent country” label, which released the album in the States. At that time, Bloodshot was home to recordings by acts including Whiskeytown and Old 97s, with both of whom Neko collaborated. For the requisite tour, Case decided to call up a band she’d watched with interest: the Sadies, who’d just cropped up on the scene in the Toronto area. She asked singer Dallas Good if his band might be interested in backing her on tour as her Boyfriends; they agreed. It was a good match and her corralling of a band that already had its own following out east displayed Neko’s career smarts. Grant helped Neko book her ﬁrst tour dates, but she also availed herself of Mint’s hospitality to make her own arrangements.

Bill Baker: Neko used to come in — she’d show up at the ofﬁce at, like, one in the afternoon, wearing pajama bottoms and slippers, off the bus, and she’d come in and just make tour phone calls. We had a special phone code back then, for long distance. I don’t want to say she used used it, but . . . Randy Iwata: I remember seeing Neko play. Her ﬁrst show was at the WISE Hall with Auburn opening, Troy Campbell’s band. Seeing Neko play, singing “Bowling Green” with Carl. Bill Baker: Magic. Still. Randy Iwata: It was pretty amazing. Bill Baker: The funny thing was, even then, she was so nervous onstage. This might be a stretch, but I’d say it was at one of her shows at the Centre for the Performing Arts about three years ago where, for the ﬁrst time, I didn’t feel that she seemed unbearably awkward.

As Neko toured on The Virginian, word of mouth and momentum grew. In a preshow interview with the Edmonton Journal, Case mentioned that she was a stu-

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dent at Emily Carr but had let her visa expire. The article tipped the Canadian government to her lapsed visa status, and when Case arrived in Edmonton, immigration ofﬁcials were there to meet her. The Sadies were forced to play the gig without her, to a none-too-impressed crowd.

Bill Baker: We were thrown into a lather and had to quickly rally every resource we had. I remember sending an email that was very carefully worded. Because I wouldn’t be pedantic to Neko, but I remember sending this email, just like, “You need to go to this immigration ofﬁce, you need to be contrite, you need to apologize, don’t argue with anybody, don’t do anything, just go in and say, ‘This was a mistake’ or something.” It was very point-by-point, like, “Seriously, you’re fucked if you don’t do this exactly right.” And I think that’s what happened. I think she did go and they said, “Okay. You’re not going to jail, but you gotta go.”

With a few interim gigs cancelled (much to the chagrin of Mint as well as her fans), Neko hid out in Washington State until she was able to get a work permit and reacquire her student visa, at a cost of $450. A follow-up article in Edmonton’s SEE magazine ensued: “Following the incident, nasty words were hurled by Case in the direction of Journal reporter Shawn Ohler, but a month down the line, Lawrence is much more conciliatory on behalf of Mint Records. He calls Ohler ‘a big fan’ of Case’s music and admits Case made similar immigration-related comments in interviews that same day with Calgary’s Vox magazine and Vancouver’s Courier.” With Neko back out on the road in support of The Virginian, another long-time friend of Bill and Randy’s came to them with the desire to release an album: Nardwuar the Human Serviette.

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Nardwuar: We had our [debut] Evaporators record, United Empire Loyalists, and Randy helped with all the layout of that record and helped out with some of the mail-out. So when the next record came along, the I Gotta Rash Goblins split record with free

CD

included, I said, “Hey, how about a Mint–Nardwuar release?”

And that’s where it started. Bill Baker: Have I mentioned before that we make weird business decisions? [Laughs] For some reason, we decided to record that one as an LP but then include a free CD version along with it. Right there in the same thing.

Nardwuar: It was kind of stupid, because it couldn’t be stored in a traditional place, like in Sam the Record Man. Because, you know, Mint Records had their own little section of Sam the Record Man, because of Yvette Ray. We’d send Yvette the Evaporators

LPs,

but there was no

real place to put them. They couldn’t ﬁt in the CD section, and people didn’t have vinyl bins at that time, really. They weren’t really into the vinyl at that time. Or if they did, it was at the back, or it was only for the bigger artists. So Mint was really cool, and they took a chance, and they allowed me to release An Evaporators sticker.

something totally unconventional.

While the lineup of the Evaporators had shifted at various points over the years (you’ll recall that Lisa Marr and Bill Baker both had played with them in previous instances), the band had always included David Carswell of the Smugglers and

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soon-to-be-New-Pornographer

John

Collins. Carswell and Collins had also recently begun co-producing bands under the JC/DC Studios moniker, including the ﬁrst Evaporators record and Maow’s Unforgiving Sounds Of . . . The ﬁrst incarnation of JC/DC was in the basement of Carswell’s parents’ West Vancouver home, which Carswell and Collins had insulated with gyp rock. When they weren’t producing or playing in other bands, however, Collins and Carswell were Evaporators.

John Collins, bass in the Evaporators

The Evaporators (left to right: John Collins, Nardwuar, Scott Livingstone, David Carswell).

and the New Pornographers: I had met Nardwuar only a couple of times, really. I headed this weird offshoot band that played only one gig and it was at Hillside, Nardwuar’s high school. We just played “Wild Thing” for twenty-ﬁve minutes, about eight of us, and then afterwards Nard came in and interviewed us with a video camera. That was the ﬁrst time I ever talked to him. I think it was one of his ﬁrst interviews actually, because it was ’85 or so, maybe ’86. I knew Dave Carswell from elementary school, and I sort of watched him in the Smugglers through the eighties and didn’t really keep in contact with him. But a couple of times while I was still [a student] at SFU he called me and asked me if I wanted to come play guitar or bass or something in the Smugglers. And I could never do it, but by 1990, when the Evaporators needed a bass player, I thought, “I

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have a bass,” so I said sure. Right from the beginning it was a total blast. Nardwuar: Because I was working at CiTR and couldn’t really get out that much, I just kind of stayed in Vancouver and kept on doing gigs. Did the odd little trip here and there, but didn’t really do that much touring. In fact, the ﬁrst tour when we went across the country was 1994, and that was around the time of cub’s ﬁrst headlining tour, and the ﬁrst or second time we played in Toronto. We played on a Tuesday night in Toronto at Sneaky Dee’s and on a Wednesday night we played at Lee’s Palace, and we backed up cub. They sold out Lee’s Palace on their second time to Toronto, which is pretty incredible.

Shortly after I Gotta Rash, in 1999, Nardwuar suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on the same night he was to interview Courtney Love. He made a full recovery, and the incident only slowed him down momentarily. For their part, Mint followed up I Gotta Rash with Duotang’s second album, The Cons and the Pros.

Rod Slaughter: Duotang was just touring all the time, and everything was happening so fast. We felt a little rushed to come into the second album, to keep the momentum going. But the thing that saved us was we recorded that album with Brendan McGuire — he works with Sloan, Feist, bands like that. We did a preproduction phase with him in Winnipeg, and he really helped us kind of get our minds to where they should be for the recordings in Toronto. Sean Allum: Brendan is such a perfectionist. I went up to the roof and pretty much almost bawled (this all comes back to me crying all the time, doesn’t it?), because I remember we were doing “The Punk & the Godson” or “The Hedonists Collide.” Brendan kept going, “That’s a swing beat, that’s a swing beat, that’s a swing beat!” and I was just fucking getting frustrated. I play the way I play, but he was telling me it was wrong.

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Rod Slaughter: That ended up being my favourite record. Sean Allum: We saw the emergence of techno during that time. We saw crowds dwindling a bit. Not a lot, but we knew it was taking over, we knew it was coming. Rod Slaughter: It was also getting harder to manage, being on a label that was outside of Winnipeg. If they had a Mint showcase or something, we would have to plan a whole tour around that to get there. Whereas everybody else just walked out the door and were there. It was very difﬁcult. We used to say, “Oh, it’s great, because we’re central.” But shit, you have to drive about eight hours to the next show from Winnipeg, and it makes it really difﬁcult. Sean Allum: The Cons and the Pros is about starting to feel a little bit old, because you’re twenty-four now, or twenty-ﬁve, and the kids going to raves are sixteen and seventeen, and you’re still going to the raves, too. You’re in, but you’re not. It’s my favourite record of ours, for sure. And you know what else is weird? That album was recorded over some of the recordings that [serial murderers/rapists] Homolka and Bernardo made. From what I was told, they used to get a lot of stock tape from CBC. Somehow CBC got a hold of some of that stuff and it was put on analog. And so they just got rid of this analog, and the guy who owned the studio had the tapes, and he was talking about it. He said, “Do you want to hear it?” And we were like, “No.”

The Cons and the Pros was released on May 20, 1998. It went to number one on the college charts, something Mint hadn’t seen since cub. While this and the success of The Virginian bolstered the guys’ ﬂagging spirits, the sales had not yet made a huge ﬁnancial mark. The label was still dealing with the aftermath of the Cargo collapse — the absence of bands’ records in stores, the scrambling to recoup ﬁnances, the ability to manage day to day — nothing was as fun or as easy as it had been in those ﬁrst whirlwind years. Now it seemed as though this thing was actually — gasp! — a business.

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It was then, in 1998, that a combination of personal and professional wear and tear led Bill Baker and wife, Rose Melberg, to move to Summerland, B.C.

Grant Lawrence: Bill is like, “I can’t handle this. I’m leaving.” He goes off and moves to Summerland. So it’s just Randy and I in the ofﬁce, and we used to have Bill there to kind of mediate between us, you know, the introvert and the extrovert. And nothing’s going on. So Randy said, “I don’t think we can pay you, man. We gotta downsize.” Luckily, that’s right when I got involved with the CBC. I’d already been doing

CBC

stuff for a while — calling in to shows from the road with the

Smugglers — but right then it became a much bigger thing.

At the same time, Duotang toured Europe on The Cons and the Pros, with the Huevos Rancheros (who’d just released a 7-inch, The Wedge) in tow. The tour would be a wakeup call of sorts for the band.

Rod Slaughter: We had done this tour of Europe and it was amazing. Like, I had the best time of my life on that tour. You’d ﬁnish a show and the promoter would say, “Okay, now we go to this place, my friend’s place, where he makes Calvados, the drink that’s known in this region.” They’re passionate about showing you their speciﬁc culture. And that was the best part of the trip. Everywhere we went, we’d try whatever food or drink they had in the region, and our hosts would be very passionate about telling us about the history and culture. It was just incredible. That doesn’t happen here. I mean, if Labatt Blue is a cultural phenomenon, then I guess it does. [Laughs] So we came back and realized there’s not much else we could do. At that point, we were inviting a third person along to play a second bass guitar; we were already

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kind of stretching what we were. We ran out of ideas. How far can you take this bass and drums thing? Sean Allum: I remember thinking, “I’m always Sean from Duotang,” you know? Once Duotang’s over, what the hell am I? Sean . . . ? You know what I mean? What am I going to do? Rod Slaughter: It was right around that time, in ’99, when I thought, “I think we’re done.” And we still played a few shows, but then I started playing with other people. And then in 2000, we said, “Well, you know what? Let’s just do one more record and play a little bit more.” And that’s how we did Bright Side, the last record. [The Bright Side was released on June 5, 2001.] Sean Allum: Rod had already started jamming with Novillero, and I admit I was a bit jealous. And so we jammed again, and then out of that, within three practices, we had ten songs. It was the Bright Side of us being apart, you know? That album has some of the best lyrics we’ve ever had. My mom cried when she heard it.

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Meanwhile, in the months following his departure from the Mint ofﬁces, Grant Lawrence was busy — not just at the CBC but with a new Smugglers record, Rosie. The eponymous song was a duet sung by Lawrence and Bill’s wife, Rose Melberg.

Grant Lawrence: Mint and Lookout! put out Rosie, which was a record that did incredibly well for us internationally. For the Smugglers, 2000 was a huge, huge year. Nick Thomas: Grant will admit this: in the studio, we really had to work with him to get everything on key. We had the garage band concept that you should basically

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do everything as live as possible. But if we did that it sounded like shit. [Laughs] So we had to try and balance that, and usually that was getting all our bed tracks done together, trying to maintain that energy in the studio. But Mass Giorgini, one of our earlier producers with Lookout! gave us the “Lookout! treatment.” He’d done some Green Day and he’d done the Queers, Squirt Gun. He did some cub stuff as well [Box of Hair]. It was, you know, the earlier computer days. We were trying to do as much as we could to tape, but Mass was one of the ﬁrst guys who used computer technology to work with vocals and break them down into snippets. And then when it came to Grant’s vocal time, he basically built a lot of Grant’s tracks, as un–rock ’n’ roll as it is, by piecing together his best Grant and Rose Melberg in the studio, recording the Rosie vocals.

takes. And the result was, surprisingly, really good, I thought. For a Smugglers recording.

So, you know, at the time you’re kind of eager to capture the energy. You just want it as raw as you can get, to get it similar to your live show. But then, sometimes that’s not what is good for your history, in a way. It’s always a catch-22, you know? You don’t want to make something too slick, but if you make it too wild and out there it becomes sort of unlistenable. Unless you’re in a givin’ ’er, ripping down the highway kind of mood, you know? We went with Kurt Bloch after Mass Giorgini, and he felt doubling vocals was a very un–rock ’n’ roll thing to do. But for

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some people you need that, to kind of mellow it out, and help balance where things are off key. It’s a good way to work with a vocalist who isn’t necessarily gifted, you know, operatically. [Laughs] So with the Rosie vocals, we didn’t spend the same kind of time. We were trying to get more of an off-the-ﬂoor, rock ’n’ roll feel for Rosie. And I just think that record doesn’t quite stand the test of time that Selling the Sizzle does. Grant Lawrence: We made Rosie in Vancouver at Mushroom Studios. It came out in February, and we toured the United States with the Donnas [then Lookout!’s star act], which was fantastic. We toured Canada and then Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, which just was unreal.

In the years since he’d quit the band, Beez had secured a day job, and was also doing some bookkeeping on the side for Mint. Seeing a shift in his former band, he reconsidered things for the Rosie tour.

Beez: A few years earlier, everyone else was still full-on, and I was like, “Nope.” That’s why I quit. I didn’t want to be slowing them down. And they were doing really well, they were doing better and better. But it was too late for me. By the time I rejoined, though, Grant had his job at the CBC, everybody was a little bit older, and they weren’t as full-on, either. He and I had fought a lot, in those early days. It’s so funny, because he’s technically one of my best friends. Oh, he would piss me off. He’s such a tyrant. And he always had very speciﬁc rules about how things had to be. But then, after I rejoined the band, he relaxed. The bass player they had didn’t work out so well, so they needed another bass player and asked me if I would do it. And I just said yes. Kind of on a one-show-at-a-time basis. “Can you get four days off to do it?” “Well, I can probably do that.” And that’s how things went for the next few years. Grant

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really evolved. From a young tyrant to a sly negotiator. [Laughs] Grant Lawrence: The CBC thing, with Mint and the Smugglers, was tricky at ﬁrst. It could have been a conﬂict of interest, so I was very careful. For the ﬁrst ﬁve years, I was careful never to say “the Smugglers” on air. I didn’t want to seem like a selfpromoter. It was a balance. Beez: Back then, Grant didn’t have that much vacation time. He had two weeks when he started, and we’d book a three-week tour. But he would get all his work done and have his assistant keep it in a drawer. And then, during the weeks he was gone, he would leave his coat and have his assistant move it to different chairs at the CBC so it would seem like he was there. But no one saw him, basically. “Well, he’s here, but I’m not sure where. I haven’t seen him today.” Meanwhile he was away on tour for three weeks.

By 1999, former Smugglers tourmates cub had been disbanded for almost two years. Robynn Iwata was living with her boyfriend, Dustin Donaldson, in California. Donaldson, once the semi-controversial straight drummer in Pansy Division, had met Iwata on a Lookout! tour. He’d begun working on the self-described “multimedia project” that would become I Am Spoonbender in 1994 and, halfway through recording their debut album in 1997, Robynn joined them. In Spoonbender, Robynn went by the moniker “Cup,” a nickname she’d garnered when Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, a friend of Dustin’s, both misheard the name of her former band and confused it for Robynn’s ﬁrst name. “Cup” contacted her brother with a proposal: release my album . . . again.

Robynn Iwata: I met Dustin during cub’s soundcheck at the Starﬁsh Room in Vancouver. It was our ﬁrst show of the cub–Pansy Division–Pluto U.S. and Canada tour in 1995. At the end of the night as we were about to leave, Neko pointed out

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The Smugglers get “tattooed” for the Rosie album photo shoot.

that I should take note that “he’s a stone fox!” I soon also discovered that he is an incredibly imaginative, creative individual, an incredible fountain of vast and fascinating knowledge. We’ve been together ever since. I joined I Am Spoonbender four months after cub ended. We had our own professional recording studio, which might not seem like a big deal these days when everyone has access to the technology to record at home, but back then it was rare and almost unfathomable to do things on the scale that I Am Spoonbender did. We were one of the ﬁrst groups anywhere to utilize what eventually became — once all the technical bugs were worked out — the now ubiquitous DAW recording format. This allowed us complete control and the freedom to record whenever an inspiration hit and for as long as we wanted or needed without having to take huge label advances. We weren’t hindered by clock-watching. The drums and electric bass, though, were done with Darryl Neudorf in Vancouver.

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I am Spoonbender’s Sender/Receiver was released on Mint on September 1, 1999. It had previously been released on San Francisco’s Gold Standard Laboratories in the United States. Just a short ﬁve months later, after an intensive winter recording period, I Am Spoonbender released a follow-up, Teletwin. This time, the album was released by Mint and Little Army Records. The latter released the record on vinyl as a “3-sided 12-inch,” a record “featuring two concurrent grooves on the second side, allowing chance to dictate which group of songs you hear.” Mint was content to just put it out on CD. That same year, Grant having ﬂown the Mint coop and Bill in Summerland, Randy spent increasingly long hours alone in the ofﬁce. It would take another cute girl to draw him out of his shell — Mar Sellars, who was still in high school when she started a radio show at CiTR the late nineties. Shortly before graduating high school, she began working at CBC Radio.

Mar Sellars: I produced Radio Sonic, and then later when they did Radio 3 I produced that. I worked with Grant Lawrence for ﬁve years while the Riff Randells was going on. Randy Iwata: The Riff Randells was kind of a weird band — these girls fresh out of high school [Sellars and Kathy Camaro; they would soon be joined by Anne-Marie], and this one older guy, ten or ﬁfteen years older.

Sean Raggett was already in his mid-twenties and running a vintage clothing store called the Good Jacket, which sometimes played host to live music, when he was approached by the teenage girls of Riff Randells — who were all very shy and reluctant to lead their burgeoning band — about becoming their frontman.

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Sean Raggett: The ﬁrst time I met the girls together, they came into the store somewhat timidly. Mar introduced Kathy and Anne-Marie, and said there would be an audition for the band. It sounded intriguing to me — here were three of Vancouver’s ﬁnest looking women asking me to front their band; I thought I had died and gone to heaven! So I strapped my amp to my back and got on my blue cruiser bicycle to go to this audition. I ﬁgured there was little chance of them wanting an old guy like me, so once we had warmed up to the Pointed Sticks’ “Somebody’s Mom,” I did a quick costume change in Mar’s bathroom, and sang a song in my Speedo. Mar Sellars: I just thought it would be really funny because he was about nine years older than us. He was twenty-eight, and I was, like, eighteen and still in school, Kathy was nineteen, and Anne-Marie was eighteen as well. It seemed like it would be ridiculous, to have a . . . [dramatic voice] man [laughs] fronting our band. And he wore a Speedo under his clothes. He’s mental like that. Our ﬁrst gig was at the Starﬁsh Room opening up for Flash Bastard in August 1999. Which, basically, Danny Fazio set up. Danny from Flash Bastard, he was quintessential in forming that band, because he gave me my ﬁrst bass. He also gave me Anne-Marie’s phone number and that’s how I met her to be the drummer. And he lent me a drum set so that I could have it in my house, so we could practise in my bedroom. Then our ﬁrst gig ever was opening for his band, at the Starﬁsh Room. Pretty much without him, we wouldn’t be a band. Out of that show, we got a gig the next weekend at the Starﬁsh Room, opening for Bif Naked. We played seven days later at the same venue. And back then, that was one of the most professional venues to play in Vancouver. That was where all the touring bands played. So then people just started messaging us [through then nascent MySpace]. We played with the Murder City Devils at the Brickyard. Oh, and that was when Hot Hot Heat was starting out, and I remember we played with them at the Trout Lake Community Centre. That was our third gig. And they’d only been together for about two months.

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While the Riff Randells played a barrage of gigs around town, Randy began to hang out with Sellars. Or rather, Sellars befriended Randy, and he went along with it.

Mar Sellars: Mint back then was just Randy sitting in an ofﬁce by himself. [Laughs] Sean knew him because he was older and he’d been around the music scene [through the Good Jacket’s shows]. So Sean said, “I’m in the Riff Randells,” and that’s when he talked to him about maybe putting out our 7-inch. I think Randy must’ve come to see us at SHiNDiG, at the Railway Club. I had actually met Randy years earlier. My friend Jenny [who would ultimately be in a Mint band herself] and I interviewed Duotang for my zine. We also put on a gig for the Evaporators and Duotang. We were just really young. Seventeen-yearold kids trying to put on all-ages shows. So I guess I must’ve talked to Randy back when I was seventeen. I think he probably sent a bunch of posters to my house so I could help promote the show. And then later, when I was in Riff Randells, Randy and I became friends. Funny how all these things work. Randy Iwata: I helped Mar with her agoraphobia — she was afraid of going outside. I’d pick her up from the CBC in the van and take her to different places. Mar Sellars: Randy became my best friend for a while, when I was about nineteen. We hung out every single day for six months. My mom used to make fun of me. She said, “You spend so much time with Randy. And you’re not dating him. What is it?” And I was like, “We’re just best friends!” He kind of needs younger, more powerful girls to say, “We’re indie! We’re doing this! You’re going to come out of your shell and we’re going to go to this gig and we’re going to have all this fun.” And he’ll do whatever you say, because he’s a workaholic, and he needs someone to jar him.

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Mint released the Riff Randells self-titled debut 7-inch on March 14, 2000. The band quickly rallied for a tour.

Mar Sellars: The Riff Randells tour across Canada killed me. It was awful. Sean Raggett: Touring was fun; we got to see a lot of interesting places. Mar Sellars: You probably shouldn’t repeat this to my [CBC] boss, but it’s okay because it’s been ten years. I booked the tour, basically, at work. [Laughs] I got lots of contacts off Grant, and I got loads of contacts from Bill and Randy. And the fact that we had Yvette Ray as our publicist meant we were in basically every newspaper across Canada, in every city. We were playing North by Northeast in Toronto, at the Horseshoe Tavern, so I booked the tour around that. When I think back to it, I’m like, “What the hell was I doing?” I was the youngest in the band, but I was just really ambitious, and really, really keen. And I feel like I can’t do the same things now that I’m older. I have to play it cool. Back then, you’ve got that young naïveté, that you can just be like, “YEEAHHH!” And people let you do it because you’re young, and they assume, “Oh, that’s cool, she’s only nineteen.” But now if I tried to do the same things, they’d be like, “What are you doing? You’re twenty-nine.”

Despite Mar’s enthusiasm, the ﬁrst three weeks of the tour were rocky for the band.

Mar Sellars: We left Vancouver. We had my mom’s minivan. And there were four of us, and the driver, all of our equipment and all of our merch and all of our sleeping bags in a minivan, which was [laughs] unbelievably intense. And we drove to

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Bill and Rose’s house, the ﬁrst night, and stayed in Summerland. That was the ﬁrst time I met Bill. Then we had to drive to Edmonton for our ﬁrst gig the day after that. I’d never been east of Alberta in my life — at least, not in Canada. We were all really young, and none of us had ever been in a band before. I’ve talked to loads of other bands and everyone has intense, crazy ﬁghts. But I guess we didn’t know how to deal with it in the same way you do when you’re older and you’re an adult. If you talked to all the members everyone would say different things but, essentially, Sean got out of the car on the side of the road. It’s kind of infamous. I just remember that when we came back from that tour, the news was in the Georgia Straight, and everyone’s like, “I heard Sean just quit in the middle of the tour.” I was like, “Yeah . . . yeah, he did.”

An early promo shot for the Riff Randells (L-R: Sean Raggett, Kathy Camaro, Anne-Marie, and Mar Sellars).

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Sean Raggett: Leaving the tour was one of the most difﬁcult decisions I have ever had to make. Mar Sellars: We were driving to Winnipeg, we had a couple days to get there, and that’s when Sean pulled over on the side of the road, in the middle of Ontario, just north of Toronto. I was sitting up front with him, actually; I was in the passenger seat. He was driving over to the gas station, and I said, “What are you doing? We just had a pee break twenty minutes ago.” He said, “Oh, I just gotta stop for a second.” So I was like, “What?” [He said,] “Yeah. I’m getting out here.” And we didn’t really do much to stop him. I just said, “Okay. Fine.” Sean Raggett: After almost three weeks, the lack of sleep and exhaustion started to kick in. After I left the tour, I took a bus to Buffalo and ﬂew to Denver, Colorado, to start a three-month Buddhist seminary, which had been my plan even before the band started. As a matter of fact, our tour was pushed back slightly to accommodate the NXNE gig, so at that point I was already a few days late for my program. So in some sense, I felt compelled to leave. Mar Sellars: People said, “Oh my god, the tour was so bad the singer had to quit and he’s gone to a Buddhist meditation retreat.” [Laughs] I was like, “He was going to go to that anyways! It wasn’t because of the tour!” But that was the spin on the story, and it sounded crazier than it was. I remember calling Randy from a payphone in Flint, Michigan. “Heeeyyy. It’s Mar. Yeah, Sean just quit the tour.” And Randy being, well, typical Randy. “Oh, okay. Oh dear. Hmmm. This is not good. Hmmm. Not good,” in his Rain Man– esque way. We managed to play the gig in Winnipeg without Sean, because Kathy wrote out the lyrics to some of the songs and taped them to her microphone stand. And Bryce Dunn, who was the drummer in the Smugglers, was randomly in Winnipeg, and we got him onstage to sing one of our cover songs with us. So we made it home like that, playing about half the gigs we’d booked. Sean Raggett: Mar wrote me a letter. The nutshell version was that she was letting me know the band was moving on without me, which I thought was a mistake at

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the time. We were a unique ensemble, which I don’t think the remaining members valued very much. Mar Sellars: When he left, he thought he was just quitting the tour, not the band. “Oh, I’ll just go do my meditation thing in Colorado for the summer,” and then he thought he’d come back and be in our band. I had to write him a letter in Colorado. I wrote him and said, “You’re not in the band. You left us on the side of the road in Ontario. You can’t be in the Riff Randells.” God. And it’s funny that me and him are still friends, after all that. [Laughs] I remember he sent me a postcard that just said, “Are you sure you’re not making a mistake?” One line, that was it, from Colorado. And I thought, “Oh my god.”

In the months that followed, after recording and releasing a second 7-inch with Mint — Who Says Girls Can’t Rock? — tensions ﬂared between the remaining band members.

Mar Sellars: We had this tour with Chixdiggit, which was about four weeks long, and I was just stressed. “I can’t go on it. I’m just too bleugh right now.” So they did this tour without me, and we got Gabby, the driver, to ﬁll in on bass for me. Randy and I ﬂew out together to Toronto, and I played some of the Toronto shows with them. Then I went back to Vancouver and they ﬁnished the rest of the tour. But while they were on the tour we were ﬁghting through email. And then they came back from that tour, and we were supposed to play a gig with the Evaporators, which, of course, I organized. Kathy rang me up and said, “So you know what’s gonna happen, right?” And I was like, “No.” Because I hadn’t spoken to her in about a week or two — they’d been giving me the silent treatment. And then she said, “Right, well, we don’t want you to play that gig on Saturday. Gabby’s going to play it, and you’re not going to be in the band anymore.”

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Friends of mine said, “But you started that band. How did you get kicked out of your own band?” I said, “I don’t know.” It was really teenage and petty. They even egged my mom’s house, which made her cry. Kathy did write me a long letter once, apologizing. Which was pretty intense. She sent it to Mint and Randy gave it to me, saying, “This letter came for you the other month.”

A few years later, Mar Sellars quit the CBC and moved to England, where she still lives today.

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In early 2000, Neko approached Randy (and Bill, in absentia) with her second record, Furnace Room Lullaby. Case had brieﬂy lived with Randy in his apartment, and the album’s name referred to a series of pinhole camera photographs Neko took in the building’s basement heating room. The cover, on which Neko is prostrate on a cement ﬂoor, corpse-like, drew some controversy. Case was adamant that the picture was an outtake she just happened to like better than the “posed” pictures. The album itself ampliﬁed both the message and the method she had begun to cultivate on The Virginian; she again employed the Boyfriends, though this time she added the Good brothers from the Sadies, Whiskeytown’s Ryan Adams, and

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a few others. The songs on the record were all originals, and all were co-penned by Case. By this time, she had moved to Seattle, having completed her degree at Emily Carr and allowed her visa to expire. Furnace Room, however, was recorded in Toronto and Vancouver.

The femme fatale, Furnace Room style.

Shortly after its release on Mint and Bloodshot in February 2000, Case moved from Seattle to Chicago, citing the former city’s stagnation in an interview with Exclaim! writer Michael Barclay. A review in Pitchfork of the record’s 2007 reissue — with a queenly rating of 8.2 — calls it “ﬁercely local.” (There are several songs that make direct and abstract reference to Tacoma and surroundings.) The reviewer praises it as “assured,” an album full of songs “propelled by a peculiar desperation,”

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and “a sense of unspeciﬁed loss.” Given Case’s departure to Chicago shortly after the album’s release, it’s not too much of a stretch to assume that the record is, at least in part, her goodbye to the little Paciﬁc Northwest triangle (Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver) that she’d called home for more than a decade. Romantic, perhaps, but not unbelievable. But Case was not ﬁnished with Mint, at least not yet. In fact, 2000 saw four separate releases with Neko’s name attached. In October 2000, after Furnace came out, Mint released Case’s duet with Carolyn Mark: the Corn Sisters’ Other Women.

Neko and Carolyn, porching.

Carolyn Mark: I used to collect all this corn stuff, ceramic corn doodads with eyes on them and everything. And Neko had this dream that we were in this travelling act called the Corn Sisters, and we wore beauty pageant sashes and tap shoes, and played snare drum and acoustic guitar. So I said, “Well, why don’t we do it?” [Laughs] So we did. We practised a lot — the harmonies and the tap shoes, just the rhythm and stuff. It was the band I played the least amount of shows with. But out of the shows we did play, because of [Neko’s] power — even then — it seems like the most people came. So ten of my shows are worth probably one of those shows. Randy Iwata: The Corn Sisters was my fault. Bill Baker: Yeah, but it doesn’t really count. We would have done it anyway, because of Neko.

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Carolyn Mark: They gave us the money to record, so we went with Mint. [Laughs] The record was done before hers, and before mine, but they held on to it. Scott McCaughey mixed it. He was my hero. He’s in the Young Fresh Fellows and the Minus 5. He plays with R.E.M. now. And I adore him. So he mixed it for me. And Eric, I think, the engineer, he came with some gear. We did three nights of shows at Hattie’s Hat, this tiny restaurant in Ballard, Washington, and he recorded them. We ended up doing this big gig for the millennium New Year’s Eve in Calgary, and we were so nervous about this big show that we didn’t have any drinks on New Year’s Eve. So the next day we got out of the car in Edmonton — and Edmonton’s wild. They brought us a tray of tequilas, to the car. And Neko had one, and I said, “We’re drinking?” Because I was very excited. We did a shot before and after each song we played, and we played thirteen songs. And then she took off her panties, and we were singing to them. It was pretty awesome. I think Neko left with one of the bar staff. And then I got a ﬁve gallon bucket of ICEES

poured on my head. [Laughs]

Carolyn Mark’s own album Party Girl, her ﬁrst with Mint Records, had been released shortly before Other Women, in April 2000.

Carolyn Mark: My friend Sue — I can’t give you her last name for obvious reasons when you hear this story — she’s one of the fabled people that got to the top, actually on the top, of a pyramid scam. [Laughs] And we were roommates for years while I was learning music, and best friends, so she sent me a thousand dollars. She was like, “Make your record. Stop talking about it.” So I recorded one song in each town [I went to] in Canada. The ﬁrst was in Edmonton, and then I went to Ottawa . . . anyway, I used up the thousand dollars

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that way, playing with friends, using a hundred bucks a day. Ending up with ten songs.

While the Corn Sisters on Mint had everything to do with Neko, Carolyn’s place on the label was cemented in a more roundabout way.

Carolyn Mark: In 1998 I went to New York to play guitar with Neko for CMJ, because Bloodshot wanted to see her. I knew none of this, Neko just said that they wanted the Corn Sisters to play in New York City, and I’m like, “Well, how do they know about us?” She’s like, “I don’t know! It’s magic!” So when we got there, my name tag said “Jason Somebody.” I realized she just wanted a guitar player, which is ﬁne, I would be ﬂattered enough to be asked that, too. But the

CMJ

people said, “Can

you step out of the way, ma’am? We’d like to take Neko’s picture,” and I was all grumpy about that. I went out and busked on the street — I had no money because I lost my purse in Vancouver the night before. [Laughs] So I was playing on the street, and Yvette came out and heard me, and then she came to the show. She seemed to be the champion behind signing me to Mint. So I was sort of bitter about going to New York and playing with Neko while she got a record deal, but my own Mint deal was classically happening while I was like [fake sob], “It’s so unfair!” Never be paranoid. Be grateful. Randy Iwata: Carolyn came in to see me about the record. Carolyn Mark: I went to meet with Randy. I had a bunch of questions, because I felt at the time like [aggressive voice], “I’ve heard about you record labels.” You know, I just bombarded him, poor guy. So he answered all my questions, and then I asked, “Is there anything else?” He said, “Yeah. We’d like to hear the record.” I was like, “OH! Oh, that.”

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Born and raised in tiny Sicamous, B.C., Mark had become a staple and leader of the Victoria music scene long before the Mint collaboration happened. She had been hosting a semi-regular old-fashioned “hootenanny” that put on display the strong roots, country, and singer-songwriter community in the Victoria area; it’s a tradition she continues to this day, and one that had a direct effect on Mint in the years to come. Similar to Case’s efforts, Mark’s album inspired “She’s the real thing!” exclamations in press across the country. A Toronto Star article from 1999 went one step further. “Mark is also, simply put, damn funny,” writes Ben Rayner. “She might be honouring the music by playing true to its roots, but the former theatre student’s endearingly ﬂaky persona and the broad grin perpetually plastered across her face suggest she’s also taking the piss out of such an inherently misery-mired genre.”

Randy Iwata: Carolyn’s place in Victoria is quite the hub for musicians. And her utter charm and charisma envelops everybody, you know? They all love her, and they all want to work with her. The nuts and bolts, that part takes a bit. She has to sort of work to get everything happening, but the ideas and the enthusiasm and the ability to attract people — she’s wonderful at that. Carolyn onstage.

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Bill Baker: We went to this crazy Christ-

All the Wheels Fall Off Except for One: 1997–2000

Tolan, Carolyn Mark, and Garth get cozy.

mas party at Carolyn’s house a few years ago, and she laid out her next threealbum plan. Carolyn Mark: So, at my house, there’s a couple of roller derby queens. They’re half-drunk. And I had two fucking wayward Santas, all drugged out, and [laughs] then Tolan, my guitar player, brought out his pellet gun and was demanding Bill and Randy give us cocaine, if they were the record label. They were looking pretty nervous, and then the roller derby girls were taking off Bill’s jacket, they’re like [slurred], “Take off your jacket! We’re going to take off your jacket!” and unzipping him. And I was pouring them wine, and then Tolan kept saying that they should go run around the ﬁeld while he took shots at them, and that’s why Bill would need his jacket on. And then I laid out my next three-record plan for them. So it’s going to be the cabaret-type, ﬁlthy comedy record, and then the really expensive orchestra record,

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and then the record people make to get out of their contract. Like Neil Young’s Tramp or the funky record. And they agreed. And then the next day Randy apologized for drinking my wine. I said, “Why are you apologizing? Tolan was going to shoot you!” He’s like, “That’s right!” So that’s why I like them.

On April 4, 2000, the same day Mint released Party Girl, they also released a compilation of songs played by bands over the last few years at vintage clothing store the Good Jacket. Vancouver Special’s proceeds went to local AIDS charity A Loving Spoonful, and its cover featured multiple shots of its namesake — the ’70s-era slant-roof-style house, ubiquitous across the city’s east side. The record was loaded with songs, a whopping 24 tracks, by bands that had made or would soon make a huge mark on Vancouver’s scene.

Randy Iwata: Sean Raggett [of the Riff Randells] ran the Good Jacket, and he used to have bands play there every so often. He had this idea to do a compilation of bands that played at his store, and among them was Full Sketch [the group that preceded the Organ], the Riff Randells, Destroyer, and Jerk with a Bomb, who became, well, Black Mountain, I guess. Anyway, he spearheaded, and we just sort of helped them, did the things that he couldn’t have. And we had a bunch of beneﬁt shows at the Marine Club, where all the bands played, and a big show at some art gallery that launched the record.

One of the recordings on Vancouver Special was a song by a new “supergroup” made up of Vancouver scene luminaries: Superconductor’s Carl Newman, Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, the Evaporators’ John Collins, ﬁlmmaker Blaine Thurier,

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Fisher Rose on drums, and the vocal talents of one Miss Neko Case. Track two on Vancouver Special (right after Evaporators side project Thee Goblins’ “The Good Jacket Theme”) was attributed to “The New Pornographers and Neko.” Bill and Randy didn’t know it yet, but “Letter from an Occupant” was about to change Mint Records — and Vancouver — for good.

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“The song, the song has shaken me.” — The New Pornographers, “Letter from an Occupant” “The New Pornographers mix the pop purism of the Beach Boys, the power charge of Cheap Trick and the gentle psychedelia of Syd Barrett. Just listen to Neko Case singing ‘Letter From an Occupant’ and discover some of the best pop of the year.” — Neil Strauss, New York Times, “Undeservedly Obscure” list, December 28, 2000

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Chapter 12 It Came Out Magical

If there is such a thing as a Jets–Sharks or Socs–Greasers pairing in the annals of Vancouver indie rock during the 1990s and 2000s, then surely it would pit Scratch Records against Mint. Scratch is deﬁnitely the Sharks/Greasers in this scenario: a little dark, a little dangerous, sexier, a little closer to the edge. Mint, on the other hand, is the sunny, adolescent crew, the “gee willikers,” well-meaning Jets/Socs. If they hurt you (and they did hurt a few people, as the next few sections will show) it wasn’t with malicious intent. It was far more likely that the Mint folks would injure you by what they had failed to do rather than what they intentionally did. Through the early nineties, Carl Newman did time in locally celebrated bands

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Superconductor (aforementioned SHiNDiG challengers to Windwalker), who released records with Scratch (Scratch owner Keith Parry was the band’s drummer), and Zumpano, who signed to Sub Pop in the post-Nirvana era. In the years since Newman had drunkenly tortured Bill Baker on the SHiNDiG stage, not much had changed between the two; it didn’t help that Newman worked in the Scratch store — then located across the street from Mint’s ofﬁce — and he would tease Baker whenever he came in. Inasmuch as two passive nerds with smartass tendencies can be enemies, they were one snap away from a rumble.

Carl Newman: Superconductor was just a joke band. For some reason, we ended up with six guitar players, because so many guitar players showed up. And I became fascinated with playing music, so I thought, “Well, maybe I should try writing songs for this band.” But I didn’t even have a clue how to write a song. And you’ve gotta remember the musical time. There was grunge, and a lot of even more abrasive music was really popular. There was also Killdozer and the Laughing Hyenas, stuff on Touch and Go. So, at the time, it seemed like, “Well, I’ll just play a couple of these riffs, and then I’ll scream over top of it, and that’s a song, right?” So I did a little bit of that, and then I started to get into more sophisticated music. I think right around ’90 or ’91 I became obsessed with Burt Bacharach. Superconductor was highly conceptual. We had the idea that we were going to do a farewell show and then, about four minutes later, do our reunion show. Just to be wise-asses. So we played SHiNDiG, did our farewell show, and won our round, but then we thought, “Well, we can’t come back. That completely destroys our concept of the farewell and reunion show.” So we sent in our stead this band called Twerdocleb, which was a couple of guys from Superconductor. I think I might’ve been the singer in Twerdocleb that day. We just didn’t give a shit back then. We never had a huge amount of fans, but Robert Pollard from Guided by Voices

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was a fan of ours. So he invited us on the tour in 1997, and I thought, “Yeah, let’s do this. Let’s get the band back together and open for Guided by Voices.” And, you know, when they’d come to town we’d open for them. Which was nice. Even though we weren’t doing much else, I think we were known as Guided by Voices’ pet Vancouver band.

Carl Newman speaks.

John Collins: So Carl got Superconductor back together for this Guided by Voices show, but they needed more guitars — so they could have too many guitars — and Dave Carswell and I joined and did that tour with them. After that, I was pals with Carl. We knew each other before, but after that tour, we were all tight. Bill Baker: Carl used to pigeonhole me all the time. I can’t tell you how many times at shows he’d come up to me — while bands were playing, before the New

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Pornographers and when he was in Zumpano — and he’d just say [aggressive nerd voice] “When are you going to put out a Zumpano 7-inch?” I could feel him just spitting in my ear. The whole thing was just so uncomfortable. John Collins: When Superconductor ended, Carl’s other band Zumpano did some singles with me and Dave [at JC/DC Studios]. I guess Carl got a thousand bucks or something from Jonathan Poneman at Sub Pop to record, and he came over to the studio. We did some work on some stuff, but it didn’t really come together. It sort of ﬁzzled. Carl Newman: I wanted to start a “real band” because I didn’t consider Superconductor a real band. I just wanted to try and write some songs that had some craft to them. Zumpano was more of a band giving it the old college try. So in 1993 we made this record and somebody at Sub Pop heard it and liked it, and shockingly they wanted to put it out. And then we thought, “Holy shit, we’ve got it made in the shade. We’ve been signed by Sub Pop.” And that’s when I realized that you can be on a famous label, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be popular.

Sub Pop held on to Zumpano’s ﬁrst record, Look What the Rookie Did, for nearly two years before ﬁnally releasing it in 1995. Their second record, Goin’ Through Changes, came out in 1996.

Carl Newman: We recorded the second record in Chicago. And I remember ﬂying home from Chicago and having that sinking feeling. Like when you know a relationship is ending. “This is going to go on for a little bit longer, but this is going nowhere. Let’s just ﬁnish.”

Back at JC/DC Studios, Collins and Carswell had started work on Destroyer’s City

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of Daughters. Newman would often hang out in the studio with Collins and Destroyer’s Dan Bejar. Carl had also just put time in as one of Neko Case’s Boyfriends for the recording of The Virginian; she and Newman had met years before, in the Maow days.

John Collins: Carl and Dan started talking about doing a record and getting Neko to sing. I was part of the conversation; we were trying to think of who else could be in the band. I think Blaine [Thurier, synth and keyboards] was a shoo-in. A band called Petrolia had come to the studio and done some recording with me and Dave, and the drummer was Fisher Rose. He was amazing, so we got him, and that was how the New Pornographers started.

Once assembled, the New Pornographers set to work recording a four-song demo at JC/DC. The resulting tape included “Letter from an Occupant,” “Mystery Hours,” “Execution Day,” and “Breakin’ the Law.”

Bill Baker: I went to a party at this guy’s house up at a cabin in Whistler, and I got a ride up there with Dave Carswell and Carl. At that time, Carl and I were very antagonistic towards one another, even if it was in a semi-lighthearted way. But the drive up there was just a nonstop comedy routine. It was hilarious. And everybody gave and got equally as good. It was one of the funnest times I’ve ever had. Just constant laughter. And I remember thinking, “Wow, this guy is not bad.” And that’s when he ﬁrst told me about his side project, vanity project, whatever. “Maybe I’ll even get Neko to sing,” and that kind of stuff. He told me that he had a bunch of songs that he was working on, and that turned into the session that “Letter from an Occupant” was recorded for.

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Carl Newman: I think what spurred the whole thing on was the Vancouver Special compilation that Mint put out. We gave that song to them. I had this idea that I was going to remix it, but it ended up being the same version that we put on the album. And then Vancouver Special came out, and we got a lot of attention for that song. I think Mint realized, “Hey, maybe we would put out an album by these guys.” Because it seemed like we were the stars of that compilation. And people started going, “Is there any more of this stuff around?” Bill Baker: That was the song people talked about from that record. When the album was reviewed, it was constantly being highlighted. And I remember talking to Randy about the fact that there were more songs and we should ﬁnd out what happened to them. And one of us — it must’ve been me — contacted Carl to ﬁnd out. Carl Newman: We ﬁnished that tape and just gave it to everybody. That tape was essentially paid for by Jonathan Poneman from Sub Pop. Because when Zumpano stopped working, I said, “Hey, I’m working on this other thing.” I thought it was a solo album initially. But then it morphed into the Pornographers, and so I sent that demo to Sub Pop, and I sent it to my friend Nils at Matador, who had actually worked for Sub Pop. And then I didn’t really hear anything from either of them, although Nils called me about four months later to say how much he loved it. Nils Bernstein, A&R at Matador Records: I knew Carl, and Neko I knew from Tacoma in the grunge days. So Carl sent me a demo, totally out of the blue, for the New Pornographers that had four songs on it, one of which was “Occupant.” It was just a cassette; this was ’98 when everything was cassettes. And it was, obviously, the best thing I had heard in forever. Me and another girl at Matador shared a stereo and we just played that cassette over and over and over again. I said to the label, “This guy from Zumpano has this band and this girl singer who plays drums in Maow is in it.” And the people at Matador were just like, “What are you trying to sell me on? The guy from Zumpano and the drummer from Maow? Who cares?” But over time, people would walk by and wonder what we were playing on this crappy tape that we just played the hell out of.

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Bill Baker: I tried to get the demo through Neko, because back then I was talking to her all the time. And occasionally I tried to contact Carl, just so we could hear the rest of the songs. He was like, “Oh yeah, there’s a tape somewhere. I’ll send it to you.” And then a week would go by, no tape, and there’d just be this endless string of emails asking, “Where’s the tape? Where’s the tape? Where’s the tape?” And eventually Rose [Melberg] was playing at Ladyfest in Olympia, and Carl’s notyet wife, Cindy [Wolfe], was playing at Ladyfest also, so we were both down there.

Dan tells it like it is.

I would like to think this was just coincidence, but something in the back of my mind says this was prearranged. I remember standing in the back alley behind the Capitol Theater in Olympia, and seeing Carl coming down the other direction, and he had a cassette in his pocket. So he ﬁnally gave me the cassette then. But I

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didn’t listen to it until we were driving back after the festival was over. John Collins: Mint didn’t actually seem that interested. We gave them a

CD

and

Randy said he thought it was good. Like, “good job.” It didn’t necessarily turn their crank right away. Neko was also on Mint already thanks to Meow and Maow. I guess Mint was focusing on the more cuddly of the cores at that point. They basically passed. Bill Baker: The tape was incredible, as I recall. Not a sour one in the bunch. Once we got our hands on it, and once we found out that Sub Pop had it, we wanted to get on that quickly. I didn’t want to say to Carl, “Well, maybe you should call them and check,” because Sub Pop could be like, “Oh man, I didn’t see that!” Carl Newman: And I never really heard much from Mint, either. That demo — considering it’s four songs from this record that everyone would later talk about how much they loved — it was like we couldn’t get arrested with it. Bill Baker: I think that history has morphed it into [fake enthusiastic voice], “We just loved that song much!” And I mean, that was true, but in hindsight, that can’t have been enough to motivate them to have a meeting with us. Carl Newman: Nobody thinks of the New Pornographers as writing simple songs, but I was trying to dumb it down a little bit. Like, Zumpano songs were overly complex. So when I wrote “Letter from an Occupant,” I thought, “This would never ﬂy in Zumpano.” Because it’s just a driving 4/4 song. It was four or ﬁve different parts, but they’re all fairly simple chord progressions. I was just trying to go for something a little more driving and immediate. Nils Bernstein: “Letter from an Occupant” is just one of the great pop singles of all time. Neko’s vocals sound really otherworldly, kind of auto-tuned almost. It sounds like they’re really tweaked, but it’s just the intensity of her voice. At the time there was a lot of very intentionally modest, kind of sad-sack “Aw shucks!” indie rock. This was very much the opposite. It wasn’t “bedroom-DIYwhatever,” it was totally maximalist. You know, kind of obsessively orchestrated, and these speedy, thrilling songs. It seemed really possessed in this way that was

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unfashionable at the time. It was so zany, so over the top and almost comical, except it wasn’t comical because they were the most beautiful melodies and harmonies and the most immaculately constructed songs. And really brilliant — “The Slow Descent into Alcoholism” has all these funny lyrics but they’re so smart, they’re just such smart turns of phrase. The songwriting smarts outweigh the wackiness of it musically. Bill Baker: For Jonathan from Sub Pop, Zumpano was a band that he just loved so much, despite that fact that they had very little commercial potential. He was so into them, and he just thought Carl was a genius. I remember there being this surprise about the fact that they’d sent these four songs to Jonathan and he hadn’t been interested, or hadn’t even gotten back to them. John Collins: Vancouver Special got some good reviews, and I think that’s when Mint thought it would be an okay gamble. It was a bit more of a proven quality. At that point, we weren’t really playing too many gigs, either. We didn’t really look like a juggernaut, because we weren’t really trying very hard. After a little while of people not really seeming to care one way or another, we were kind of winding down. And then Mint got interested and started talking to me. Bill Baker: We arranged a meeting with the band at Fisher’s studio on Robson Street. I came in for it. That was one time when I was like, “Yeah, I’ll come into town.” John Collins: I’m not sure Carl loves this story too much, but he lived in an apartment directly across the hall from Randy, the one that Randy still lives in. Randy sent me a contract, and I was living in my parents’ house in West Van at the time, so I printed out the contract at, like, ten o’clock at night and drove to Vancouver. Randy let me in, and then I slipped the contract under Carl’s apartment door, which was a pretty roundabout way to get it from Randy to Carl. It was nearly an inch thick, it barely ﬁt under Carl’s door. I had to open it up and slide it. Carl looked it over and didn’t hate it, and I arranged a meeting at my friend Rodney Graham’s [of UJ3RK5 fame] art studio. Bill and Randy came and they were

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nice and eager, and everybody from the band was there. We hashed out a plan. Bill Baker: Almost everyone there was from the Scratch Records camp. Because we were just sad, insecure nerds, I remember being intimidated by the fact that it was all the Scratch people. Randy Iwata: It was awkward, sitting with each other on all this non-furniture, gear and stuff. Bill Baker: When we had that meeting, they said they wouldn’t tour. They were in other bands, and they weren’t going to quit their other bands. “This is a one-off project, there’s not going to be a second record.” It was everything that would normally be a “no” for us. And then after, we were in the Eaton’s parking lot, I remember so clearly, talking about it. “Well, fuck. Let’s just do it anyways.” It was so good. John Collins: We did four tunes from the album at the Miller Block with my good friend Daryl Neudorf — I was away with the Evaporators playing a show, I think in Alberta, and the rest of the Pornographers did four bed tracks with him. And then we did some mixing, either at Dave’s parents’ basement or at Rodney’s studio.

Of the twelve tracks that made it onto the album, half were written by Newman. The others were co-written by either Case or Bejar.

Carl Newman: Neko had just put out Furnace Room Lullaby, and Destroyer had just put out The Thief. And I thought, “These albums are amazing. This New Pornographers record has to compete with this?” There were all these unreleased Destroyer demos, so on Mass Romantic, I just cherry-picked the songs I wanted. I said, “I want ‘Execution Day’ and I want ‘Wild Homes.’ I want ‘Jackie.’” It’s not like Dan was ﬁghting to get his songs on the record. We never had a plan. We’ve always just gone along, you know? I never wanted it to be a band where it’s Carl’s song, Dan’s song, Neko’s song. I want it to

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all be rather seamless. But it gets harder and harder to get away from, especially as Neko becomes a star on her own. She can’t just be a faceless voice in the band. I joke sometimes about wanting to be Alan Parsons Project. They were popular, but no one knew who was in the band. It was just a faceless band.

Halfway through the recording, Fisher Rose dropped out. Kurt Dahle, who’d already been a productive member of the Canadian indie rock scene for a few years with his brother Ryan (in Age of Electric and Limblifter), joined the band in Rose’s stead.

Kurt Dahle, drums in the New Pornographers: I think I met Carl ﬁrst. I knew Superconductor, and when the Zumpano records came out, the ﬁrst one I liked and the second one I really liked. I was out at one of their gigs once, and I told him I liked his new record. I think he realized early on that I was a rock encyclopedia as well — we both know too much about the history of rock. We’re Nardwuar people. I saw the ﬁrst couple of Pornographer shows; I think they played twice before I joined. I told Carl that if they ever needed a rhythm section, [he could] give me a call. Then Fisher disappeared, and that was that.

While the recording process was unfolding for the New Pornographers, Randy and Robynn’s father Robert Iwata — owner and operator of a travel agency, philanthropist and pillar of Vancouver’s Japanese business community — took ill.

Randy Iwata: I remember coming home from

CMJ

in New York and meeting up

with my dad and mom. My dad was feeling tired, fatigued, and didn’t know what

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it was. That was the beginning of it. And the New Pornographers came right about then, too. He died in June, and their big show was in May, or just right around there. So I was going to the hospital after work, folding one-sheets and doing a bunch of Mint shit beside my dad’s bed. He died on a Tuesday, which is the big ad deadline day for all the one-sheets and stuff. So my dad died at two thirty in the morning and I had to go in and ﬁnish all of my work. Bill Baker: It’s kind of appropriate, in a way, because Randy’s entire work ethic comes from his dad. Randy Iwata: He was always at work. Bill Baker: I’m sure he wasn’t thinking, “Fuck, Randy, why are you folding those things right now, sitting here?” Randy Iwata: There was always that sort of unhealthy obsession, you know.

Between 2000 and 2002, Mint would release a staggering 19 albums, partly — according to him — to keep Randy busy in the years after his father’s death. One of these was the inaugural album by the New Pornographers. After nearly three years of writing, wrangling and recording, Mass Romantic ﬁnally came out on Mint Records on October 24, 2000.

Carl Newman: When we were making the record, I was sitting there with Randy and Bill, and the one thing I remember very clearly — it seems funny now, but it illustrates how modest the goals were for the album — Bill said, “This record is so good that I’m pretty conﬁdent we can make our money back on this.” And I thought, “Really? You think you’ll make your money back? That’s big talk.” When I got the mastered version of Mass Romantic, in mid-2000, I think I was touring with Neko at the time, and I remember getting it and listening to it and just thinking, “Yeah, another shitty record. Another record Carl makes that’s

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just going to get buried in the sands of time.” Thus began the golden days of Mint Records. Bill Baker: I remember Mass Romantic really inspiring responses like, “Wow. This is really great” in the press. Neko was starting to build at that point, too, so a lot of

Neko Case. Photo by Susan Anderson.

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people came at it from that angle. I don’t know that they really meant to do this, but Carl used to say that they would call it, “The New Pornographers and Neko” as in “The Velvet Underground and Nico.” Because at the time she was by far the most well known of them. And a lot of the press we got initially was the, “Wow,

Kurt Dahle, in Slow T-shirt, at his kit.

and she can rock, too” approach, coming at it from that angle. A lot of the early reviews were focused on her and her “different group of boyfriends.” Carl Newman: I remember I went to the Toronto Film Festival because Blaine Thurier [who is also a ﬁlmmaker] was in it. And I was really bummed out while I was there. It was kind of a shitty time in my life. Not for any real tragedy; sometimes you just feel shitty in life. And I was just ﬂipping through one of the papers, and somebody wrote this amazing, glowing review of Mass Romantic. He called it

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a “once in a career lightning strike” and he thought it was the album of the year. That was the ﬁrst thing ever written about it, as far as I can tell. And I was really taken aback. And then a local paper interviewed Dan and Blaine and me, right around the time it was released, and said, “This record’s really good. I think you’re going to get a lot of attention for this. I mean, like, international attention.” And I said, “Oh, get out of here. No, we’re not. Don’t start hoping for things that aren’t going to happen.” Then we started hearing that Aquarius Records in San Francisco, where Robynn Iwata worked, was selling a ton of them. It’s a little record store, but they sold three or four hundred copies of Mass Romantic. And I thought, “God, that’s odd. We should go to San Francisco.” John Collins: Mint had kind of an amazing distribution going for us in the States. Relatively speaking, [Mass Romantic] was in a lot of big chains and they made the price really affordable for most people. It would have been one of the cheaper records just about anywhere you found it, so people were buying it. Bill Baker: That record started to sell right away through Nail, our U.S. distributor, all by itself. They did little trips to the U.S., but that was still when they weren’t able to go on tour, because they all had jobs and other commitments. Carl Newman: At the end of 2000, we got in the New York Times’ “Ten Best Records You Didn’t Hear This Year” list. And I remember that morning that it came out, I was working at Larrivée Guitars at the time, and I think I was on lunch break. Kurt came driving by in his pickup truck, and leaned out the window, and he just said it really quickly, like, “Hey Carl, we’re in today’s New York Times, ten best records of the year!” And I thought, “What?” I remember I just blew off work. I said, “I’m taking an extended lunch hour,” and I went to that big newspaper shop on Broadway near Granville. I bought that day’s New York Times and I opened it, and I was like, “Holy shit. It’s true. We are in the New York Times.” And that was the ﬁrst big one, I thought. Like, we might have something here.

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Mass Romantic hit big in the United States, but it also scored some hometown attention: the album earned the Best Alternative Album Juno in 2000. It was Mint’s ﬁrst Juno win. In the wake of such attention, the band ﬁnally conceded and did a short tour of Canada and the United States through early 2001.

Carl Newman: Although we didn’t really explode, to me it felt like we’d exploded, because we got a glowing review in Rolling Stone, we got a glowing review in SPIN, and we went to

SXSW.

We had, like, a thousand people at our showcase, and we

played a song with Ray Davies [from the Kinks, who’s a fan]. So in the space of a few months, it felt like we went from nothing to this band that everybody was talking about.

Despite the boost, it was still tough to get the disparate members of band together for further time on the road.

Carl Newman: It’s always been a little frustrating being the New Pornographers. Around the point when we were getting the initial attention, Dan got us all together and said, “Hey guys, I’m going to Spain for half a year.” So immediately I thought, “This ﬁgures. The minute we’re gaining momentum, Dan decides to go to Spain.” And when we did our ﬁrst tour, that’s when Todd Fancey joined the band. Even then, I thought, “What are people going to think if we go on tour and Dan’s not with us?” And we were shocked that nobody knew. Nobody noticed that he wasn’t there. John Collins: Dan took off, and that sucked because he told us he was never coming back. But he came back in about a year, which was great. I mean, I spent eight

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hours drinking beer with him last night in my studio. So it’s cool. Kurt Dahle: My brother and I had just made a second Limblifter record and we weren’t getting along anymore. So just as I had joined the NP, I said, “You guys go on tour without me, I don’t want to do it.” I was renting a house on the east side here and I was working on it, trying to make it livable. And I thought, “I’ll just play in NP on weekends and I’ll ﬁnd a new job, maybe I’ll start recording people or do whatever.” And then the next thing I knew the Pornographers had taken off, and here I am. Eleven years later and I’m still doing it. Carl Newman: Our ﬁrst tour was in February 2001. And it wasn’t that long, maybe two or three weeks. When I look back on it now, the shows weren’t that big, but I just couldn’t believe there were so many people. Like, we went to New York and played this club called Brownies that holds, like, two hundred people, and we sold out. We sold out Brownies in advance. I couldn’t believe how huge we were. I thought, “We’re massive. We sold out a two-hundred-capacity club in advance.” And then the next day we went to Philadelphia, and there were probably eighty people at our show on a Sunday night, and I thought, “That’s amazing. Eighty people came to see us in Philadelphia.” And then, you know, Boston. I thought, “Wow, a hundred people can to see us in Boston . . .” And then it just kind of went from there. John Collins: I think in the places where people couldn’t get the album, small towns that didn’t have chain stores, people were downloading it off Limewire. That’s my theory, because people were showing up and nobody had the record there. We were getting maybe a hundred and ﬁfty to two hundred and ﬁfty people a night on our American tour. And that, for us, was kind of astonishing considering it was all new. Kurt Dahle: I don’t think Nail actually worked all that well, really. There was a point when people were coming to the shows and going, “I love your shit but I cannot ﬁnd your fucking record anywhere.” People told me to never talk about this, but because Keith Parry owned

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Scratch, and being in Vancouver and people knowing that he had played with Carl before, he started to get a lot of calls for orders from American record stores. And he would say, “Well, Nail has that,” and they’d say, “Yeah, well, I don’t want to deal with Nail.” So Keith ended up getting product from Mint and distributing it for us. Keith actually sort of saved the day. He’s really an unsung hero for that ﬁrst record. John Collins: With the Pornographers, we had a drummer who had gold records in Canada and was a total rock star, veteran of the EdgeFest tour and everything, and we had Blaine, who had never been in a band that had toured whatsoever, and Dan who had a disdain for touring, and Carl who had played his fair share of shows to ten people and travelled eight hours to play in front of people who just wanted to hear Doobie Brothers covers. So we had a full gamut of people. On our ﬁrst tour we were talking about getting some motel rooms and I was like, “This is going to be sweet, we can get a hotel every few days,” and Kurt was like, “What do you mean ‘get a hotel room every few days?’ Where else would we sleep?” He’d toured so much as a kid in Ontario with his band. Before they were Age of Electric they were a cover band and they would drive to a small town, live in a hotel, and make money that way. So he’d never, ever slept on a ﬂoor. Whereas I toured with the Smugglers, Superconductor, and the Evaporators all in one year and I ﬁgured I slept on probably a hundred and eighty different ﬂoors. And got seven hotel rooms that I shared the whole time. So we had a whole different perspective. It was interesting. There was always somebody who was appalled and somebody who was enthralled. Carl Newman: You know, that’s the most exciting time to be in a band. I mean, we’re more popular now than we were back then, but we felt the most popular then, you know? Because you only get one chance to come out of nowhere and be the new band. So for the ﬁrst couple years, you show up in New York and it’s like, “Wow, two hundred people came to see us,” and the next time you show up, “six hundred people came to see us,” and the next time you show up, it’s “a thousand

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people came to see us.” And then as the years pass, you try not to become jaded, but you get more used to it. All of a sudden, you get to a point where you’re saying, “Only ﬁfteen hundred people tonight? Oh, last time we did seventeen hundred. Not very good.” You forget that that’s pretty amazing, that you can get over a thousand seats ﬁlled. Bill Baker: They toured a little in Canada, but mostly in the States. And I think thirty thousand copies of Mass Romantic were sold in the States through our U.S. distributor, which is probably more than the rest of our records, ever, added together. I mean, it was phenomenal, how much it was selling. John Collins: I guess it was always kind of neck and neck with Neko at that point. It felt like she was always slightly ahead of us in terms of success and everything, but then again she was in the band so it didn’t hurt. We were happy for her. I used to be quite in awe of the numbers that cub had done, and then we started selling more than that and we thought, “Wow, we’re a hit.” Nils Bernstein: I thought it was a horrible shame — no offense to Mint — that this unbelievable record was only on Mint. I thought any number of labels would have been beating down the walls to put it out. It really caught on with fans and press people and radio people and record store people. To that I just credit really devoted, obsessive work by Yvette. She worked her ass off to get attention for that record. I was closely following what was happening with that band and at ﬁrst it was like, “Oh no, that album is so amazing and its going to be totally overlooked, it’s just a Canadian import on Mint,” and then it ended up doing incredibly well. It couldn’t have worked better had it been put out by a very large U.S. label, because it was such an incredible personal priority for them.

Mass Romantic’s momentum only grew in the months to come. It was reviewed in major publications across the United States, including a near-glowing mention on Pitchfork, which was then quickly becoming the major taste arbiter for the indie

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kids. Many reviews focused on the band’s “supergroup” status, something that dogged them for years afterward.

Carl Newman: I think, at the time, nobody knew how to sell the band. It seemed like the only angle. It was like, “Hey, it’s the guy from Zumpano, and Neko Case is the popular heroine, and Dan’s in Destroyer,” and everybody had come from different places. But of course, a few years later, when people started writing about us more, it became very easy for people to write about it in a very speciﬁc way. “This self-proclaimed ‘supergroup’ from Vancouver . . .” or, “This supergroup is made out of Vancouver indie bands I’ve never heard of.” In fact, I think our ﬁrst Rolling Stone review made some mention of that. Something like, “Vancouver indie supergroup is an oxymoron.” Which is very true. People still call us that, and I just gave in after a while.

Back at Mint headquarters, things returned to something resembling normal — Bill went back to Summerland, only making the occasional trip in, and Randy went back to spending months at a time alone in the ofﬁce. On August 20, 2002, Mint released Neko Case’s third album, Blacklisted. Bloodshot again took on the U.S. release; it would be re-released on ANTI- (home of Tom Waits, among others) in 2007.

Bill Baker: She was very focused on her thing at that time. I mean, she still is, but somewhere in that period of time, she and the New Pornographers both developed. They both went from the happy-go-lucky, accidental “Here’s something fun I want to do” to that phase where people were taking it very seriously. And you can still fuck that up, if you don’t do what both of them did, which is take that

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A poster from the 2002 Canadian tour, by frequent New Pornographers artist Greg Oakes.

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opportunity and think, “Wow. I’m going to really focus on this and make the most that I possibly can of it.” Carl Newman: I think there’s been a symbiotic relationship between the New Pornographers and all the people in the band. Neko really helped out the New Pornographers, and she already had a name, but the New Pornographers’ name started to help her out, too. And I think working with the New Pornographers is what brought Dan to the attention of Merge Records. Bill Baker: It’s in that time when Neko really went from, “Wow, this is incredible, what a ride” to bearing down on it, and making it a business, and being focused and deliberate about everything. And that’s what I remember about that record. I mean, I’m generalizing terribly, but Furnace Room is the, “Wow, great. I can’t believe you like me!” album, and then Blacklisted was, “Okay, now this is what I’m doing for my job.” Randy Iwata: That’s the hope we always cling to. That there’s an arc. That the arc doesn’t peak at the ﬁrst album and go down.

By that time, Case was living and working out of Chicago; she would shortly move to Tucson, where much of the album was developed. Blacklisted became another critical success, inspiring devotionals in the press and among fans. “Blacklisted is not as immediately arresting as its predecessor,” wrote the Calgary Herald’s Heath McCoy in 2002. “Case’s beautiful voice still sends shivers up the spine and the music is still rooted ﬁrmly in Americana, but while the spark on Furnace was instantaneous, Blacklisted is a slow burner.” He goes on: “This is the soundtrack to some country-gothic masterpiece burning inside its creator’s mind.” Case would have still more up her sleeve for Mint. In 2002, Mint’s country division encompassed Case and Carolyn Mark (who had just released a compilation of tracks in tribute to Robert Altman’s ﬁlm Nashville months before). Pretty soon, however, it would grow by one more, to include Carl Newman’s then wife, Cindy Wolfe.

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Cindy Wolfe, Tennessee Twin: I’m an identical twin. We were born in Memphis and later we moved to Mount Vernon, Washington, with my mom. She opened up this women’s health clinic there in the seventies. We did abortions and stuff. I worked there. My twin sister, Alison, she was more of an Olympia girl. She and her friends started the riot grrrl thing in Olympia, had this band Bratmobile. And I sort of had a band, called Link. [Laughs] It was named after my mom’s pot-bellied pig. Link, like a sausage link. After Alison moved to Washington, D.C. [for riot grrrl purposes], I thought, “Yeah, okay, I’m going to do a country band.” I didn’t want to deal with comparisons. I started dating John Atkins, from Seaweed, and that’s when I met Neko, in Tacoma. And then she was in a band with my boyfriend called the Propanes, and she started dating Dave Carswell, and all these people, like John Collins, would come down and visit us, so we started going up and visiting them. I got to be friends with a bunch of musicians in Vancouver. On one trip, Neko took me to a bowling alley, Commodore Lanes, downtown. She wanted to ﬂirt with Blaine [Thurier], so she took me there. I had met Carl before; we’d seen Superconductor play at the Cruel Elephant. But that night, we hung out a lot, and we just started going out. We went back and forth for awhile, between Olympia and Vancouver, and then I decided to move up. This was the mid-nineties, and it just seemed like everyone in Olympia was turning into a junkie. One of my friends died, and I found the body. So I was just kind of like, “Carl, let’s get out of here.” We got married just after that, in 1997.

Once in Vancouver, Cindy started writing songs from her and Carl’s tiny apartment.

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Cindy Wolfe: Carl had played with a mandolin at a party before, and he was like, “I should get one of those.” So I remembered that, and then for his birthday I got him a mandolin. And he said, “What did you get me this for?” I got really mad. And I took it back from him. I kept it. I was just like, “Well, I’m going to use it then.” So I taught myself to play the mandolin. Originally, Carl had asked me if I wanted to play keyboards in the New Pornographers. After a while, he said, “I really want my best friend Blaine to be in the band. And the only thing he can or wants to do is play keyboards.” I was like, “Oh, okay. Good for him.” He was secure enough in our relationship at that point [that] he thought it was okay to drop the bomb.

Wolfe began to play and record with friends. The recordings would eventually come together enough to make an album.

Cindy Wolfe: It was called Tennessee Twin, but it was really the Cindy Wolfe Band. Carl was in the band for a while, and Todd Fancey. Kurt recorded some stuff. And Dave Carswell and John Collins, they played on and recorded my ﬁrst album, too. Dave and John are awesome, but I was such good friends with them that they probably let me get away with a bunch of bullshit, whereas Kurt was like, “Um, you’re not hitting all the notes,” or, “You sound like you have beans in your nose.” He was harsh on my vocals, and even though I kind of cringe when I listen to some of the stuff now, Kurt deﬁnitely forced me to sing a lot better.

Mint released Tennessee Twin’s 7-inch in April 2001 and a full-length, Free to Do What? on February 5, 2002.

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Cindy Wolfe: I think I basically did what everyone does to get onto Mint. At some point, you just ask Randy and he usually says yes. Which may ultimately be his undoing. He’s too nice. I’ve only seen Randy get mad once. Or, I should say, heard him get mad. I’d just moved to Toronto. I moved when I was still making my second album, so that was just a disaster. I forgot about the time change and called him. He’s a workaholic and doesn’t ever sleep, except on Sunday morning. I accidentally called him at eight Sunday morning, because I had some idea. “Oh, hey, Randy, can I talk to you . . .”

The Tennessee Twin live.

[Slurred yell] “The fuck are you doing? Rrrragh!” I was like, “Oh, shit. Sorry. Oh my god!” I felt so bad. I was just astonished because I’d never really witnessed anger from him.

In early 2000, Blaine Thurier released a ﬁlm he’d made called Low Self-Esteem Girl. The ﬁlm starred Corrina Beesley-Hammond, from Maow, and Carl and Cindy as a pair of evil Christian missionaries.

Cindy Wolfe: The premiere of the ﬁlm was at the Blinding Light, but my mom had just died the day before. Carl and I basically broke up right around then. My mom dying — it was just really difﬁcult. I was sort of incapable of being in a relationship.

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I was all-consumed with my mom being sick and dying. And Carl was not capable of really emotionally being there for me. Although I think he knows what it’s all about now. His dad actually died a few years after that, and he called me so I could talk him through it.

Had Wolfe made it to the screening, she would have met another ﬁlmmaker, Reg Harkema. Harkema was a fan of Thurier’s work, and both would go on to be regarded as two of Canada’s best underground ﬁlmmakers. They soon became friends. When Low Self-Esteem Girl travelled to TIFF, Cindy and Carl went along (the same trip as the one during which Carl ﬁrst read a review of Mass Romantic). Cindy ﬁrst met Reg there, and they later became a couple. Reg, for his part, would soon become entangled with the New Pornographers in his own right when he decided to make a documentary about them. Wolfe prepped for her second full-length album from her new home in Toronto. At the same time, in the wake of Mass Romantic’s success, Beez had started helping Mint with their books in a more substantial way. He was systematically going through the label’s ﬁnances, trying to streamline things.

Cindy Wolfe: I got kicked off Mint before I released the second album. The problem, really, was that it took me so long to complete my record. I would go back out [to Vancouver] and record some more stuff, but Kurt [Dahle] was also super busy, and Kurt and I could never coordinate schedules. When I had time to work on stuff, he had to do something else, and vice versa. So by the time we fucking got it ﬁnished, they had hired Beez, and Beez was like, “Randy, you can’t put out this record.” Basically, he said, “It’ll cost us more than not.” I’m good friends with Beez, so it was a bummer for sure. But you know, I couldn’t really fault him. It’s not like my records ever sold that much.

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Two of the musicians on the Tennessee Twin records were accordionist Maija Martin and drummer Corrine “Coco” Culbertson, who also happened to be Kurt Dahle’s wife at the time. In 2002, Culbertson recruited Martin for a new band called the Gay. Culbertson envisioned a band in which everyone would share vocal duties as well as bring their unique instrumental talents to the table.

Maija Martin, accordion in the Gay: Coco played drums in Tennessee Twin, but she’s normally a bass player. A super killer bass player. And I think she wanted to put together kind of a pop rock band, with different people from different bands in Vancouver. She asked Tobey from Maow, and Sara [Lapsley] from Kreviss and Vancouver Nights, and me. And then she asked Keith [Parry] later. I went on holiday, and when I came back she told me that Keith was going to be the drummer, and I was really excited. He’s one of my favorite drummers of all time. Coco Culbertson, bassist and singer in the Gay: I had been touring with Bif Naked, being paid to play bass, and I wanted to kill myself because the music was so horriﬁc. Biffy is really sweet, but the music just made me want to slit my throat. So I quit playing and I decided I just wanted to put together a silly band that I wanted to be in. I cold-called Tobey Black, Maija Martin, Keith Parry from Superconductor, and Sara Lapsley, from the Vancouver Nights. I told them that I liked them all very much, I was a fan, and would they want to be in a band with me? Keith Parry, drummer in the Gay: Coco was really the driving force in the Gay. She wanted us to put out records and tour. I said, “Hey, I just like playing in a band with four girls.” They’d come over to my house, we’d drink wine, have a good time, play squash, hang out. I wasn’t trying to get anywhere. She was the one who pushed us for sure. Sara Lapsley, keyboards in the Gay: I had dated Mike from Superconductor, and Keith suggested I start a female version of Superconductor, Kreviss. So we did

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that, and we got involved in the K Records scene and the Olympia scene. At the time, I was struggling with my mental health, and drinking a lot. And that culminated in this kind of spectacular nervous breakdown in about 2001. I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder at that time. I had been dating Dan Bejar, and he took off abruptly [to Spain, as mentioned]. The stress of him leaving had tied in with causing the breakdown. So I was kind of rebuilding my life, and Coco approached me and said, “I’m putting together this band, the Gay, and would you like to do it?” It came along at a time when I really needed something fun, and to kind of get back into the scene. And so that was really wonderful. Coco Culbertson: It was a mad love affair. I think we spent every waking minute together. We ruined people’s relationships with our love for each other. [Laughs] Wives were leaving husbands, husbands were leaving wives. It was crazy. And it wasn’t that there was anything intimate going on between us, it’s just that all we wanted to do was be together. We celebrated birthdays, and we played squash together every morning, as a band, and then hot tubbed after. We really had fun. Keith Parry: My girlfriend didn’t like it. Maija Martin: I think we all wanted a bit of an escape from our otherwise fairly demanding lives. Keith was running a record label and a record store, and Coco had a son. I don’t know, it just felt really fun. Sara Lapsley: It was like being a teenager again. Even though we were well into our thirties. And because Coco and Keith were really well connected, they just made stuff happen. Right away we were playing shows and doing stuff. Keith Parry: We never sent demos out, but either Coco pushed some buttons or the word got back to us that Mint was interested. It’s a no-brainer. If we were going to sign with any Canadian indie, they’re friends, they do a great job. It was an easy decision to make. Work with people you like.

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The question arises: Why didn’t Parry just put out the Gay’s record on Scratch? Well, the poppier nature of the music they were making meant that the Gay were not exactly the right ﬁt for the underground underbelly that is Scratch records. To this day, Parry’s label is picky — they only release an album or two a year. It’s also possible that Parry never even considered putting out the Gay on Scratch, seeing as the band was his version of leisure time — you know, that old adage of not mixing business with pleasure. By then, too, any remnants of the Mint–Scratch rivalry had dissipated, gone right around the same time that former Scratch employee Carl Newman passed a demo tape into Bill Baker’s sweaty palm in an Olympia back alley.

Randy Iwata: Keith Parry and I went for drinks at the Public. And he brought all this stuff with him, and talked about putting out a record, just for fun. Coco Culbertson: We didn’t sign a record deal with them or anything. It was just like, “The kids are making another crazy record. It’s a different group of them, but okay.” They’re sort of like the mom and dad of everybody. You go in and say, “Can I have the keys to the car tonight?” And that’s sort of the way they put out your record. Randy Iwata: We’ve talked before about how we’re, well, not lazy per se, but we respond to the connect-the-dots and six degrees sort of things, the tendrils. And this once again made sense, because there was overlap of previous projects and bands, and friendships. It did make sense in that way.

Mint released the Gay’s 7-inch, Fishin’ Jim, on October 7, 2002, and a full-length, You Know the Rules, in September 2003. The full-length, produced by Kurt Dahle, came hot on the heels of the New Pornographers’ second album, Electric Version.

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Carl Newman: I was kind of on a tear for a few years there. At the end of 2002, we ﬁnished Electric Version. It came out in 2003, we did about ﬁve or six weeks of touring, then I immediately came back to Vancouver and started working on my solo album.

The New Pornographers, 2005. Photo by Steven Dewall.

John Collins: We wanted to change the sound a bit already. In a funny way we had been sounding like that for a long time. That record for us was almost three years old. We wanted to see if we could create a slightly different proﬁle for the sound, have it a bit less wild and woolly. Bill Baker: I’m glad it wasn’t shit.

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Kurt Dahle: I don’t have as much to do with it anymore, because I feel like there are too many cooks in the kitchen. I kind of stay away from it now. But on the second record I had a lot more to do with it. We normally don’t have these great big drum sounds, but on the second record it sounds like Fleetwood Mac — the big, wideopen, sixties-sounding drums. That’s my thing. For a lot of the songs from Electric Version on, the pre-production was all done in my basement, so it was basically Carl and I. He’d come over, we would bang through songs, and he’d go home. I think I was more of a sounding board. He could hear what it was going to sound like with a beat. Sometimes I played the most preposterous beats — I threw a really weird Iron Maiden beat into a song and Carl said, “What’s that?!” And he loved it. So I’d adjust it a little bit and make it mine, and off we’d go. John Collins: I like Electric Version. I like it a lot, but I didn’t have my hands quite as deep from beginning to end in that one, and so I don’t have the same kind of connection to it. I have lots of little senses of triumph attached to the ones that I mixed. I’ll listen to a record and go, “Oh yeah, that guitar sound, that was pretty cool.” Bill Baker: I mean, I’m being cavalier in saying I’m glad it wasn’t shit. Of course it wasn’t shit, but I do remember thinking, “Wow. That wasn’t a ﬂuke. They have this in them, to do this a bunch more times.” Other than production-wise, that and Mass Romantic in some ways could be a double album, in my memory. By the time Electric Version came together, that whole, “this might not be anything”? It was long forgotten.

The record also provided the opportunity that Nils and Matador had been waiting for. They reached out to Mint about licensing the record in the United States.

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Bill Baker: The deal was, Electric Version and whatever else comes next, but then we went back and added Mass Romantic. We had to pull that from our distributor, Nail, which caused a great deal of consternation, because I think at that time it was the best or second-best selling record that they had. John Collins: You can sell eight thousand records in Canada and you can sell twenty thousand records in America, and it seems like you’re more popular in America even though per capita you’re doing much better in Canada. There’s a certain kind of thing that happens with Canadian bands where they sometimes only get popular in Canada; they become monstrously popular in Canada, and yet they’re kind of an unknown entity in the rest of the world. That’s never really been anything that we aspired to. Carl Newman: I think labels, for the most part, they don’t often sign bands sight unseen because they like a few of their songs. They usually want you to prove that you’re a real band. So I think for Matador, they had to see that we could put out an album and go tour it and build a bit of a following. We had that by then, so they thought, “This is something we could work with.” Nils Bernstein: It’s great that we did get on it and we were able to continue that momentum and just spin it way forward. And instead of just putting out a record by an unknown band and ﬂogging it and trying to make it happen, it was kind of nice that it happened in this really organic way with people that had grown up with the band.

The New Pornographers went on tour for Electric Version, taking the Gay with them. At the time, three members of the Gay were dating three members of the New Pornographers (Sara Lapsley and Todd Fancey, Coco Culbertson and Kurt Dahle, and Maija Martin and John Collins). Spotting an opportunity, ﬁlmmaker Reg Harkema — who’d just begun dating Cindy Wolfe — decided to make a movie. The resulting oh-what-a-tangled-web documentary, Better Off in Bed, was never

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released. In a May 2010 article on ChartAttack.com about his new ﬁlm Leslie, My Name is Evil, Harkema was asked about his unseen rock documentary. “[Neko] gave me verbal permission to shoot her onstage and then after the tour her manager kind of freaked out,” he said. “And Neko pressured all of the New Pornographers into not signing release forms. So I ﬁnished the ﬁlm on my own, and it played a couple art galleries and basically sits on my shelf at home.” Harkema elaborated in a phone interview: “Neko told me, ‘Sometimes I don’t look my best, and I’ve got this image to maintain. So I don’t want a camera following me around offstage.’” Harkema says he agreed to keep the camera off her, but after the tour she decided she didn’t want the ﬁlm out at all, and she let him know. “It ended up with Neko screaming at me on the phone for ﬁfteen minutes one day. One of those things where I put down the phone, did some dishes, and came back, and she was still screaming at me.” The ﬁlm — which in the end contains very little Neko — is largely about the relationships between Dahle and Culbertson (lived in, married-like) and Lapsley and Fancey (new, hot, and jealousy-laden). But Better Off in Bed is about more than these two couples. It’s also about touring, and how lonely, shitty, and boring it can be. Add creative and relationship dynamics, and the feeling of watching bands on the verge of greatness work all of that out, and you’ve got an intriguing little slice of pop culture documentation. Alas, you’re not likely to see it any time soon.

Coco Culberston: Reg is a friend of mine, and I really respect him. But I think the intention of the ﬁlm is not kind. I think it was edited to make certain people look crazy. I am glad the ﬁlm exists, because I have awesome footage of my kid going crazy in the pool, or my dog, who is deceased now. There are things that I really value about it, more in a sentimental kind of way. But I don’t really think it’s that great of a ﬁlm. I don’t think we’re really that good of a subject. I don’t think anyone who doesn’t know us would really care. I’ve only ever seen it once, and I just kind

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of went, “Oh.” There was more stuff going on at that point than was necessarily shown in the ﬁlm. Way more juicier stuff. But that being said, nobody signed release forms, right? Sara Lapsley: I started dating Todd, whom Coco introduced me to, and we had a very difﬁcult, tumultuous relationship. And that had a big impact on my being in the band. Todd’s still very much a part of my life. We’re not dating, but we’re roommates. He’s in the New Pornographers, so I’m hesitant to say too much about our relationship, other than it was not a good relationship. It caused a lot of strain on me personally and then came down on the band. Coco Culbertson: The love for the craziness in each other that we celebrated was also kind of what ripped us apart. Because it’s not sustainable. And someone always feels left out. Sara Lapsley: Todd didn’t want me to be in the band, and put a lot of pressure on

Naked and Gay (L-R: Coco Culbertson, Tobey Black, Maija Martin, Keith Parry).

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me because he felt like we were too wild, and party animals. I should have just told him to take a hike, but I didn’t really have the strength, I guess. And so, in the end, I was just sort of torn for a long time. And ﬁnally I left the band. I mean, I think it was for the best, just because it was hard for me to stay on the straight and narrow. Coco Culbertson: Sara just hated us. And really hated me, in particular. But you know, I’m okay with that because we’re very good friends now. It’s difﬁcult to manage a relationship. And I’m quite vocal about what I think, and it can be difﬁcult for people if they’re not feeling that strong and conﬁdent around me or if they’re feeling vulnerable. So Sara was quite unhappy. Ida Nilsen came in after, whom I completely adore. I had a massive crush on Ida. And it was really nice for a while. We continued on, and played some shows, and I think we improved technically as a band. I don’t know if it was quite as explosive chemistry-wise, but I mean, we sounded better, just because Ida wanted to be there. Sara Lapsley: I don’t think they could understand why I was letting the relationship with Todd get so much in the way. And the dynamics changed when Tobey and Maija got together as well. Keith Parry: So the Gay existed for two or three years. And — I’ll watch my words — Maija and Tobey lived up to our name. They got together and announced they were gay. Coco Culbertson: Everybody kinda knew something was going on for a while before that. There was a secret romance. We didn’t really talk about it, but it was understood that there was some sort of infatuation with each other, for sure. When they came out with it, I was really happy for them. I love them both very much, and I knew they were both going to have a very difﬁcult time with their families and their partners, so I just wanted to be as supportive as possible. They didn’t need another person giving them a kicking, because they were going to get enough. I think it’s difﬁcult enough to leave a long-term relationship when there’s a third party involved, when you’re heterosexual and you’re leaving someone for another person

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of the opposite sex. But when you’re coming out at the same time . . . I think there was a lot of pressure on those two. I think they handled it exceptionally well. Sara Lapsley: Maija sat me down, and I thought she was going to tell me she was pregnant. And then she said, “Tobey and I are lovers, and we’re going to be together,” basically. And I was just blown away. And happy for them. I felt bad, because I knew there was a lot of pain on all sides. It’s never easy. But they’ve had an amazing, successful relationship for a long time now. I mean, they’re just really good together. Keith Parry: They were the scandal of the year. They broke up with their musician boys: John Collins from NP in Maija’s case and Mike Ledwidge from Zumpano in Tobey’s case. Dumped them, then got together and, you know, the Gay existed for another year or so after that, and then those girls moved to Toronto. Maija Martin: I was kind of hating being in Vancouver at that point. So probably the real nail in the cofﬁn was when I decided to move to Toronto. But it had sort of ﬁzzled already.

While the Gay was no more, their tour partners were hard at work on a third album. The New Pornographers released Twin Cinema on August 23, 2005. It was the last record they owed Mint in a three-album deal.

Carl Newman: Twin Cinema was when the pattern started to change. Because I think Mass Romantic and Electric Version were very similar albums. But I did my solo album [The Slow Wonder, released on Matador in 2004], and it had a lot of slower songs on it. After I made that record, I thought, “Why can’t the New Pornographers slow down a little bit?” So I went into Twin Cinema and we did “The Bones of an Idol” and “These Are the Fables.” And I also just decided we could do any weird songs we wanted. So there were “Falling Through Your Clothes” and

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“The Jessica Numbers.” We just messed around with things more on that record. Kurt Dahle: We were doing a video in my house for the song “Use It,” and Nardwuar was there, and we had David Cross from Arrested Development and Mr. Show in it, he’s a friend of ours. We also had Chris [Nelson] come out from MuchMusic with his cameraman. So we were doing the video inside, and we decided to take a break. I’m out in the front smoking with a camera operator, and he looks across the street, and Cordova’s really gross right there — there are always hookers on the corner. So he looks across the street and goes, “Hey, check that dude out in the truck,” and I look over and you can see this girl’s head bobbing up and down — she’s giving him a blow job. So I opened the door and said, “Hey guys, check it out — this dude’s getting a blow job.” So the next thing you know, the two cameras from the video are on him, and the MuchMusic camera is on him, and there’s, like, twenty people standing on my front veranda, and this guy’s just across the street in his pickup truck. And Dave Cross was all, “Hey buddy, why don’t you take it somewhere less conspicuous, like a public park?” And [the guy] looks and he starts his truck and just ﬂoors it out of there because he sees twenty people with three video cameras on him. Carl Newman: Twin Cinema is also the record that Kathryn [Calder] started playing with us. John Collins: The Evaporators played in Victoria with Immaculate Machine, and Kathryn came up and introduced herself as Carl’s niece. And I was like, “That’s weird, I think I heard about you.” Kathryn Calder, keyboards and vocals in the New Pornographers and Immaculate Machine: My mom was adopted as a baby, and about fourteen years ago or so she came to my bedroom, woke me up, and said, “Kathryn, I found my mother.” And it was really crazy, because I knew she was adopted but I didn’t know she was going through this whole process to ﬁnd her mother. That was the ﬁrst year they had opened adoption registries. If you and your birth mother or father were both looking for each other, they would connect you.

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So then they connected with letters, writing back and forth, because it was too emotional to call right away. We ﬁnally arranged a meeting, and that’s how I met Carl, because he’s my mother’s half-brother. His mom was really young when she had my mother. There’s quite an age difference between the youngest and oldest. Carl Newman: At this show in Victoria, John and Dave [Carswell] were watching Immaculate Machine and didn’t know who she was, didn’t know she was my niece. In the band, she played two keyboards and she would be singing simultaneously, and they were watching going, “That girl is awesome.” And then John was shocked when that girl came down and introduced herself to them: “Hi, I’m Carl’s niece.” He came back to Vancouver and said, “I just saw your niece play. She’s amazing. We should get her to sing on the record. And get her to play on the record.” I initially thought, “It’s kind of weird, isn’t it? She’s my niece.” And then I got over it. And she ended up playing with us, and now she’s in the band. It’s really a strange thing, how life unfolds. Because she’s not just my niece — I call her my long-lost niece. Kathryn Calder: They brought me in on Twin Cinema to do some singing and piano playing, and that was it, as far as I knew. I was coming in, playing on the record, super excited. I did my few days of work, and I left thinking, “Okay, that was great.” And then a few months later, I got a call from Carl. John Collins: The year before we started recording Twin Cinema, we played a grand total of one show as a band because between Neko’s crazy schedule and everyone else’s we just couldn’t get it together to play gigs, and we didn’t really know what to do. Did we play without Neko? I mean, we had a little bit when we were ﬁrst just playing gigs, but it didn’t matter to anybody — we just did whatever back then. But now we had records to live up to and stuff. Bill Baker: That’s when Neko was ﬁrst really into that high gear of planning things months in advance. Eight, ten months in advance. I just remember having conversations with Carl all the time, like, “Well, we can’t go on tour because Neko can’t go on tour until next year.”

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Carl Newman: We thought, “We have to ﬁnd a way around this,” because the band could have been making a living at this. As it was, people weren’t, because playing live is how you make a lot of the money in this business. There was actually a very stern offer from a Brooklyn promoter in mid-2005 to play this place called the Prospect Park Bandshell, and we looked into it and Neko couldn’t do it. We went back and said, “Sorry, Neko can’t do it. I guess it’s a no.” And then the promoter said, “Well, I don’t care if Neko can’t do it. Can the New Pornographers do it?” That was the ﬁrst time that anybody’s ever said, “Why don’t you just play without her?” And then we thought, “Hmm, that’s interesting.” Kathryn had just started playing with us, so we thought, “Why don’t we do a series of shows with just Kathryn doing all the lead vocals, and see how that works out? It can be an experiment.” Kathryn Calder: I felt pressure about the Neko thing, obviously, because it was clear I was stepping into a role. And people didn’t know that she wasn’t going to be there, so they were all kind of expecting her. I did feel like I had to prove myself. I had to sing really well and I had to perform really well. And I kind of still feel that way. I still feel like there’s a pressure to not be a huge disappointment to people when they come to a show and all of a sudden Neko’s not there. Carl Newman: We did it, and it went very well. You know, as much as we want Neko to be with us, we were

Keeping Dan and Kathryn busy: the New Pornographers/Destroyer/Immaculate Machine co-tour, 2005.

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shocked that there weren’t people screaming, “Where’s Neko?” throughout the show and demanding their money back. Also, at that Prospect Park Bandshell, that’s where I ﬁrst hung out with Christy [Simpson, who works for Matador], who would become my wife a couple of years later. So that promoter that asked us to do that show without Neko pretty much began Kathryn’s life in the band and sort of introduced me to my wife. I owe that guy, right? Wherever he is.

Twin Cinema was the last record the New Pornographers would release through Mint. They soon moved entirely over to Matador (who in turn used Last Gang Records for Canadian distribution of their next few albums).

Bill Baker: The only thing that was substantially different in my mind with Twin Cinema is I felt, in the most generous sense, like there were three equal parties involved. Whereas with the previous record, it felt like we were a big conduit between the band and Matador. We already knew from the agreement with them to begin with that we only had them for three records, and I guess I kind of always assumed the worst in those situations. Randy Iwata: I think we’re the only ones that really thought a lot about the weight of it being the last record with us. John Collins: It was just one of those things, you know? Labels tend to want to have full control over their bands. It’s a little bit tricky when labels are sharing bands because there is essentially double the paperwork. They’re doing as much work as they normally do for a band that they’re fully invested in, except that they’re only really getting about half of the payback for it. And Matador had a few things it was hard to say no to. They had large budgets and large advances, which are tough to say no to sometimes. So they just said, “We can do this for you,” and it wasn’t really much of a change for us in a way. It was just sort of like, “Please guys, don’t

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hate us, but we’re going to let one record company handle us right now.” Carl Newman: It was a strange dynamic, because we really wanted to do it, but I think Mint was less enthusiastic about it. I think Mint would’ve liked to have just kept going. Like any business, they said, “Well, why can’t you do it with us? Why can’t we do the same things?” But Mint was a two-man operation, and Matador was based in New York and had, like, thirty people working there. Kurt Dahle: I made sure that I called Randy and Bill both. I think they expected it. John Collins: It was a lot of things, and none of them were really that great. It was frustrating and I felt guilty and a bit worried that they would take it poorly. It was a little bit like a breakup. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but on the other hand I think when you’re making simple business decisions it’s all pretty straightforward. They can probably look into what decisions we were making and say, “Oh yeah, you know, I’d probably do that, too.” Maybe that’s what I tell myself. Randy Iwata: For the longest time I clung to the idea that that we were a company that took a band from step one to step inﬁnity, you know? And it took quite a while to realize that we serve a purpose and the purpose doesn’t have an inﬁnite breadth. Neko and the New Pornographers proved that we aren’t big enough to sustain a band’s career after a certain point.

Newman now lives in upstate New York with his second wife, Christy, who still works at Matador. The rest of the band (with the exception of Case) lives in the Vancouver area. The New Pornographers’ fourth record, Challengers, came out in 2007, followed by Together in 2010, both on Matador. Together was longlisted for the Polaris Prize.

Carl Newman: We’ve gotten to a point where people expect the New Pornographers to put out one of the best albums of the year. And I think to myself, “What, we’re

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supposed to make a record that’s as good as the National, or Animal Collective, or TV on the Radio?” I think, “How the hell are we supposed to do this?” Sometimes I feel like I’m just not good enough. I’m a hack. But you know, I’ve felt that way for years. You work through it. Kurt Dahle: When the next record didn’t do arms and legs better [than Twin Cinema] I was like, “Oh, shit. We should have stayed on Mint.”

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Chapter 13 Housewrecked

In 2001, just after the release of Mass Romantic, Bill and Randy realized two things: one, that life was pretty good, and two, that they had been in existence for a decade. Their ﬁfth anniversary had come and gone in the haze of the collapse of cub and Cargo, but this time would be different — this was an era in Mint Records’ history to celebrate. Plans were put into works for a 10th-anniversary show, in September 2001.

Randy Iwata: I remember 9/11 was a Tuesday. Our party was the Thursday/Friday before that. If it’d happened a week later — well, you know.

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Bill Baker: Might not have been as good a time. Randy Iwata: Yeah. Bill Baker: When I came back for that tenth-anniversary show, it was a bit weird. I hadn’t been gone that long, either, but I really felt like I was coming into Randy’s scene at that time. A lot of those bands were people I didn’t know.

Nardwuar surfs at the 10th anniversary.

Randy Iwata: We had a dream of having two shows. You know, two shows symbolized the divergent paths that we seemed to be on. And we had the dream of having Neko, Corn Sisters, Carolyn Mark, Tennessee Twin on one night. But Neko did not play and, if I remember correctly, neither did the Corn Sisters. It was Tennessee Twin and Carolyn, for the whole show on the Friday, at Richards on Richards. Bill Baker: Saturday was at the Commodore. The New Pornographers, the Smug-

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glers, I Am Spoonbender, and New Town Animals. Oh, and the Evaporators and [heavy metal band] Thor, right? Randy Iwata: That was the ﬁrst time in a long time that Thor blew up the water bottle. [Thor was known, among other reasons, for its singer Jon Miki Thor’s habit of blowing into water bottles until they burst.] Bill Baker: And Lisa Marr guested with the Smugglers. That was when they all sat down in honour of Robynn. There had been a lot of animosity in the past about that whole cub/Smugglers tour when cub started doing better. And then at our show, it had been long enough since that had all passed, and cub had broken up and everything else. Just having Lisa come and sing with them — there was a very . . . almost reverent moment where they clearly were honouring that, and I remember thinking that really kind of tied that up nicely. Randy Iwata: We had catering and a big cake and we made videos to play on the screen between bands. Bill Baker: That was a helluva thing. That really was. Randy Iwata: It was the ﬁrst time the New Pornographers played on a big stage. Then they played again in April, which was their best show ever, I think, the next year. Bill Baker: I just remember, when I was trying to do the deals with everybody, that was my ﬁrst experience with them being a little bit more insistent that they receive slightly better treatment than the rest of the groups. I guess in that ﬁrst year we sold a lot of records. They must’ve toured somewhere, had some success, because they were leveraging that. Randy Iwata: The Commodore was packed. Bill Baker: It was packed. Randy Iwata: Twelve hundred people, something like that? Bill Baker: I just remember being very proud of the fact that basically everyone I knew was there. Including people I didn’t expect to see, or people I hadn’t seen in a long time. It really had that King of Kensington quality. I couldn’t walk three feet

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without someone saying, “Hey!” It was really great that way. Randy Iwata: There were also parental tables, weren’t there? Bill Baker: Yes. That’s right. We had a couple of my aunts, and my mom. God, they were so proud. Randy Iwata: Bill was hauled out onstage. Randy Iwata and Bill Baker [in unison]: By Carl. Bill Baker: “Come and say a few words.” Luckily, or unluckily, I was drunk enough to agree. It wasn’t terrible, but you know, I didn’t expect to speak. I think I remember saying, [slurs] “See you in another ten years.” Randy Iwata: I think there’s video of it. Bill Baker: I also remember hugging Nardwuar after the Evaporators, and just getting immediately soaked with sweat. Randy Iwata: That was when Nard was still doing stuff for MuchMusic, so he interviewed New Town Animals onstage. And Duotang played. That might’ve been the last time they played, too. I just remember trying to get everybody to eat the food. Because we had catering. And Bill was staying in a hotel, so he and I went to the hotel afterwards. Bill Baker: Ugh. Yeah, that’s true. We actually had champagne. Like, immediately. I have such great fondness for that trip, because staying in a hotel — this sounds so corny, but staying in a hotel, and then going to this show, it all just felt like . . . we’d arrived. That was a heck of a show. Randy Iwata: The walk back! Bill Baker: Then we walked down Davie Street together and got hot dogs, or something. That’s super classic. We went to get some hot dogs from the 7-11. We got some kind of 7-Eleven food. A pizza slice or something. Randy Iwata: There’s a bit of an unfortunate part of that, in that we ended up walking Yvette to her hotel. And we basically ditched her and then went to Bill’s hotel. Which was a huge slap in the face. We felt bad, and when we got there we called her, but she was like, “I’m in bed. It’s too late.” Our big regret. One of many.

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The poster for Mint Records’ 10th anniversary bash. 259

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Bill Baker: It was a large hotel room because one of my graphic clients had a corporate account. It was a hotel room with rooms in it. And we had the big couch, and we had the curtains open, and we were looking out over the city lights, saying, “Whoooo! Congratulations!” Randy Iwata: Then the next day, Bill went home. He’d done what he’d come to do. Bill Baker: I also really loved living in [Summerland], and I was quite happy to go back. I didn’t really think of myself as being from Vancouver, at that time. It just felt like I came and did my thing, and then I was going to go home. If anything, I remember feeling kind of aglow about the whole thing. Randy Iwata: Then 9/11 happened. Carolyn was playing CMJ Music Marathon, and she had crossed and she was stuck there, in the States. She was stuck in New York State, trying to cobble together shows. Bill Baker: Everything kind of ground to a halt, but that’s not unique to us, obviously. I have very clear memories of keeping out of everyone’s face, from the States, for a long time. Until they had a chance to feel like they wanted to contact us. Like, I remember, a few days later, gingerly sending out an email to Neko’s manager, just saying, “Is it okay to talk about work, yet?” You know. It didn’t feel appropriate.

Around the anniversary, Mint signed New Town Animals, a band that would not have been out of place in the Lookout! era.

Jeffrey McCloy, guitar in New Town Animals: I was in a band called the Disﬁgurines, and that band did a mini-tour with cub and a bunch of shows with the Smugglers, so that’s how we met them. That was right when the Mint–Lookout! thing was going on, and we’d befriended a bunch of the Lookout! bands. The Disﬁgurines almost had something come out on Mint, but then that band broke up.

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The New Town Animals.

I ended up playing in the Smugglers because I was in a band with Bryce [from the Smugglers] and Shane from the Awkward Stage, called the Come Ons. It’s funny because Bryce had just left the Smugglers, and we worked at this record shop called Singles Going Steady, so it was this really small world scenario at this point. The Smugglers asked me if I would be able to ﬁll in [for Beez]. I ended up doing a few tours with them.

Eventually, Beez came back to the Smugglers and McCloy went on to join New Town Animals. The band’s singer, Nick Newtown, was English and lent them some punk rock credibility. Mint released a 7-inch in December 2000, produced by JC/DC (more or less Mint’s go-to studio at this point), and a full-length, Is Your Radio Active? in mid-2001. The full-length was produced by Jesse Gander from local punk band d.b.s., whom NTA thought better suited their punk ethos.

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Jeffrey McCloy: We were not a Mint band at all. We were the oddball band. That was the failing with that band, and with Mint, too. There was no one to align ourselves with. The Smugglers would have been the closest band to align with, and they were pretty inactive at that point. So we would go on tour with some of the Mint bands, and the people were ﬁne, that was never the issue, but we were like, “Musically we have nothing to do with these bands.” Eventually, we started playing lots of shows that had nothing to do with Mint. We were realizing that there was a whole scene that was happening — that we were very much a part of — that Mint had nothing to do with. Bill Baker: I just remember, especially around the anniversary, being very aware that Randy had gone into two different groups of people that we hadn’t been a part of when I lived in Vancouver. There were the New Town Animals, Operation Makeout, and the Riff Randells, and they were the punk-kids zone, and then there was that whole Carolyn, Sugar Reﬁnery, Buttless Chaps sort of rootsy, Ford Pier– type alt-country zone. And that was all based on him socializing in those circles that we hadn’t previously socialized in at all. That was super fertile ground for him, meeting all those new people. Randy Iwata: Things happen when a parent dies. I just went out and drank a lot, so it exposed me to a lot of different artists in a way that I would not have been otherwise. Being in socially lubricated situations allowed for free conversation. Jeffrey McCloy: You could sense that there was a very safe side to that label at that point. And we liked the idea of total debauchery and total disaster. And there weren’t really any other bands in Mint that even came close to anything like that. I think that we were sort of bridging the gap between the end of the Lookout! era and the start of the next era, and it was them trying to ﬁnd out where their hold was going to be because they had these different kinds of bands come out all at the same time. Mint did tons of work for us and they were awesome, but at a certain point,

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communication just stopped. The label’s identity was totally out of whack at that point. I did meet up with Randy and I was like, “You guys aren’t even there as a label, are you still into it?” That’s the one thing. They’re very passive aggressive with their delivery of things. No one at Mint sort of knows how to say outright, “This is bullshit,” and if you’re a band or people who appreciate that kind of delivery, that can be a little annoying. It seemed like so much of Mint was a shrugged shoulder. It’s always soft spoken but not particularly upfront about what’s going on half the time. So that would be the only thing that you could really complain about.

In August of 2001, Mint released the debut EP by Operation Makeout. One of the band’s members was Jesse Gander, who’d produced New Town Animals’ record.

Operation Makeout.

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Jesse Gander, bass and vocals in Operation Makeout: I’ve been making a living as a recording engineer for about eleven years now, and my ﬁrst real paid project was for a Mint band. The New Town Animals was my ﬁrst big record — the ﬁrst one that was for sure going to come out on a label, and someone was going to pay me to record the album for the band. Back when I was in the eighth grade, I bought a record player. I still remember the ﬁrst three 7-inches I bought, and one of them was the ﬁrst cub 7-inch, that along with a couple of other local bands. So I’ve been aware of Mint for a long time. Katie Lapi, guitar and vocals in Operation Makeout: Anna and I are from Ladysmith, B.C. We were really into that movie Crybaby and decided that we’d start a band. The ﬁrst drum kit I made her was a painted ice cream bucket. Eventually, we both ended up playing guitar, and I remember going to a record store when we ﬁrst started playing music and we got the girl who worked at the record store — who was really cool and older — to get us into some bands. One of them was cub, and there was Bikini Kill and Bratmobile. I remember hearing cub and thinking, “We can do this.” I remember we were so excited because we could learn one of their songs right away. Jesse Gander: I ﬁrst met Katie and Anna when my band would go to play on Vancouver Island. Their old band was called Mali, and we knew them as “those Mali girls.” They were very distinct-looking girls. Katie had all this crazy-coloured dyed hair. I met them again as friends after they’d moved to Vancouver, just from the local scene. I wasn’t the original bass player in Operation Makeout; I joined a couple of years into the band. I was supposed to record the second album, and the bass player moved away and I was like, “Well, I’ll join and play bass on the album, too.” Katie Lapi: There was a Women’s Day show we were supposed to play on CiTR. He learned all the songs right away. Jesse Gander: I think I only jammed with them two or three times, then memorized everything as fast as I could. I guess I was invited to stick around. Our ﬁrst

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show was my last band’s last show. Operation Makeout opened and d.b.s. closed the show. I think I recorded the

EP

probably

within a month of being in the band, and it came out really quick after that. It was all very surprising. We were like, “Oh, maybe someone will put out our record,” so we sent one to Mint, and Randy called us on the phone and was like, “Hey, it’s Randy from Mint, and I’ll put out the record for you.” Katie Lapi: It was for sure the biggest label that we sent it to. There’s no way I thought they would actually ever put it out.

Katie Lapi of Operation Makeout plays the Hang Loose release party.

The band toured on the EP, mostly across Canada but also in Paciﬁc Northwest and into California.

Jesse Gander: Katie’s a designer so we always had good-looking T-shirts on our tours. We did good, we didn’t lose any money or anything like that. We also got interviewed by George Stroumboulopoulos. He did a feature about us for the New Music. It was exciting. Katie Lapi: We spooned him. It was about ﬂophouses and where bands stay at night, and we were staying at Yvette Ray’s house, which was above a funeral home in Toronto at the time. He interviewed us there about the house and the rules, like,

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“What’s the etiquette for staying at somebody’s house if you’re a band?” Then we all had to pretend to go to sleep in the same bed as him, so we ended up spooning each other. Jesse Gander: I was really surprised that we went out on the ﬁrst tour and it didn’t suck. We had gas money, and that was my main surprise. I didn’t have a lot of expectations for it. Katie Lapi: I remember a particularly bad show in Belleville, Ontario, at the Bohemian Penguin, where not even the promoter showed up. There was no one there. Well, there were a few people there, not that they were there for the show, they just happened to be there. Anna said they came up to her later in the washroom and said, “Your band is terrible. There’s no one here and the people that did see it hated it.”

In early 2001, Operation Makeout toured with New Town Animals across Canada.

Katie Lapi: Jesse and Jeff from NTA had a bet that they could only eat poutine as long as they were in the province of Quebec. Jesse Gander: Yeah, I was disqualiﬁed for eating a potato chip. It was still a greasy potato! I thought it wouldn’t count. I made it three days. My belly was a solid mass. And Steve and I from NTA, we had all these dares we’d do to each other. One night, in Calgary, I’d had many drinks by the time we got back to the hotel room. I was tired, I’d had a number of gin and tonics, and I was trying not to fall asleep because I knew Steve was going to mess with me. Because the night before I was rousing him. So he ﬁlled up a garbage pail full of water and ice, like a twenty-litre pail, and dumped it right on my head when I was asleep. I grabbed him — I was mad as hell, in a funny way — I dragged him outside the hotel room and I threw him. He couldn’t get back in, so he spent the night sleeping on the street in front of the 7-Eleven. Great times.

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Mint released Operation Makeout’s full-length, Hang Loose, in August of 2002.

Jesse Gander: We were really pretty well rehearsed, so I booked us a couple of days to record the beds, and Anna showed up and, in an afternoon, did the whole thing. We played it live so she had something to play to. She’s a really consistent drummer and writes parts that she’s going to play well regularly, so it didn’t take her very long. Then Katie and I slaved away at the guitars and the bass and the vocals for a while after that, maybe a week or ten days. Katie Lapi: And I did the art. Jesse Gander: Yeah, it was pretty much giving it to Mint ready to go. “We’ve done the whole thing. Just print ’em up.” I think for every thousand

CDs

we pressed we got two hundred, and then we

could go on tour and sell those for ten bucks each and that was two thousand bucks and that keeps you on the road and keeps the gas tank full. I really liked that because I had been in record deals before that had all been based on percentage of proﬁts. And in the music industry, those proﬁts often never come. I was in bands that sold a lot more records than Operation Makeout did and never got paid at all. And then we could buy more off Mint for really cheap, just a little bit above cost, so they’re really ﬂexible. They’re professional but kind of punk rock at the same time. Randy works his ass off. It’s a tough industry to work in, running a record label, maybe even tougher than being in a band. Katie Lapi: Way tougher and less fun. Jesse Gander: Yeah, and less glory. If Mint has a huge hit, it’s not like a big crowd gathers outside, Randy looks down, and it’s like, “Whoo, Randy! You really promoted the shit out of that record!”

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At that point, with Bill in Summerland, the vast majority of Mint’s responsibilities fell on Randy. During the Cargo collapse, cub breakup, and Lookout! mess, Bill had stopped taking a salary from Mint, instead making money on graphic design for major labels and other companies (including ads for a gay partyline based out of Toronto). For the better part of the previous ﬁve years, in other words, he’d remained more or less out of the picture. In that time, Randy’s workaholic tendencies were in overdrive — he’d become a one-man label — but he’s careful not to say that Bill’s departure screwed him over (he did, after all, blossom socially in Bill’s absence). For some bands — like Operation Makeout, who signed on to and left Mint while Bill was in Summerland — the absent partner was more or less a stranger. He was the guy they might crash with on tour while on their way through to Alberta, but nothing more.

Katie Lapi: I think we broke up in May 2003. Jesse Gander: We had about ﬁve tunes written toward another record so I always felt we could do one more. I think that the next one would have been really good. We had gotten so much tighter — we were all growing a lot at our instruments. We had gotten a lot more precise sounding. But yeah, people have other things going on in their lives that are important, too. I was so busy at the studio. If Operation Makeout got back together, our ﬁrst practice would suck, our second practice would be ﬁne, and the third practice would be just about as good as we were, minus a tour. Before we started touring all the time. It’d probably only take three or four hours of rehearsal for Anna to be back up to snuff. Katie and I would have to learn all the riffs again. That would be torture. Katie Lapi: It would take forever. Jesse Gander: We thought about doing it. We got offered a reunion show. This

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guy was a fan of the band, and he got married. He and his wife always listened to Operation Makeout — his ﬁancée at the time. They met during those days, and he said, “I’ll give you a thousand bucks to play at my wedding,” and we considered it. But just the amount of rehearsal to get it together . . . A year after Operation Makeout, Katie put together another band, Cadeaux, and they were touring out east and decided to clean out their van, which was our old van. Where the back bench would be there’s an ashtray holder and someone opened it and found a thousand bucks. I guess we had an extra thousand bucks. Katie Lapi: Our roadie decided that once we had that much money in our cashbox, it was a good idea to split it up so if it got lost or stolen we wouldn’t lose all of it. So he wadded up that thousand dollars in this tight little roll and everybody forgot about it. Jesse Gander: I think the van even got broken into in that time. What did they rip off? Katie Lapi: The bass. Jesse Gander: But they never looked in the ashtray. So when Cadeaux came back from tour, Katie was like, “I found a thousand dollars of our money, what do you want to do with it?” We decided to give it to Randy. We were like, “Thanks for all your help,” because I don’t know if he ever recouped off of us, since our band broke up prematurely.

By 2002, Mint’s two-sided coin (and Randy’s workaholism) was on full display. On the country side, there was Carolyn Mark’s second album, Terrible Hostess, Tennessee Twin’s record, and a roots recording, Black Monk, by Mark’s friend John Guliak, who would follow that up two years later with 7 Stories and 13 Songs. On the ﬂip side were two records by veteran punk rockers: My Game, the third album by the Hanson Brothers (Nomeansno’s hockey-themed side project) and Gaga for Gigi, by Volumizer (featuring Rodney Graham of UJ3RK5 and his wife,

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along with Jade Blade, a.k.a. Jill Hemy-Bain of the Dishrags and her husband, Bill Napier-Hemy of the Pointed Sticks). Volumizer was organized as a fun creative output for two couples who’d been around the music block a few times. They had never intended for the resulting album to be publicly consumed, but they were cajoled into contacting Mint by John Collins after recording at JC/DC. Of course, Randy leapt at the chance to release what was, in some sense, a historic Vancouver punk rock collaboration. Mint’s press around the album touted it as “a different kind of Vancouver all-star collaboration” on “the other side of the Mint spectrum.” Unfortunately, Gaga for Gigi was Volumizer’s only release, and their relationship with Mint was a brief one. Tom Holliston of Nomeansno and the Hanson Brothers, on the other hand, developed a friendship with Randy Iwata that continues to this day. At one point, they were even roommates.

Tom Holliston, guitar in Hanson Brothers: I knew the Nomeansno guys for quite a while. We were all from Victoria, we all wore glasses, and we were all losing our hair and going gray prematurely. So that was the criteria for Hanson Brothers, I’m sad to say — not expertise on an instrument. And then, when Andy left the band in the spring of 1992, I started doing some Hanson Brothers stuff, because [Jello Biafra’s] Alternative Tentacles Records wanted to put out a Hanson Brothers album, and they were sort of between Nomeansno records. We started doing that, and then shortly thereafter I started playing with Nomeansno. Obviously, the band idea is from [hockey satire ﬁlm] Slapshot. I don’t know whose idea it was. Nobody can remember. The idea was just to put on second-hand minor beer league hockey uniforms and play covers. And there were a few shows occasionally, like, I think on Halloween about 1988 or 1989 in Vancouver at the Town Pump. And then Alternative Tentacles had their hundredth record release party in the spring of ’92, and so we went down there and did half an hour as the

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Hanson Brothers. That would have been John and Rob [Wright] and I, and a fellow named Ken Jensen who was in D.O.A for a while, but he ended up passing away in quite sad circumstances in a house ﬁre in ’95. And we did a tour in Canada with the Smugglers and cub in ’93.

The ofﬁcial Hanson Brothers promo glossy.

Holliston lived with Randy between 1997 and 1999.

Tom Holliston: Randy was a perfect roommate because he was never there, and I was never there because I was always on tour. So later, releasing an album with Mint was no big deal. I think at one time they

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were putting out, for a label of their size, maybe a bit too much? I mean, obviously they’ve had really solid, well-selling people, like Neko and the New Pornographers, but for the most part I think they were putting out quite a bit of stuff at one point. And some of the stuff they were putting out, these guys weren’t touring, and in those cases you might end up with a lot of dead stock if people don’t get out on the road. They knew that with the Hanson Brothers, well, we’d be doing stuff in North America, and also what turned out to be two or three tours in Europe. And so every time we’d go on the road, that stuff sells a little bit. I think they were pretty satisﬁed. Although they turned down the live album, but I don’t blame them. It’s okay.

Between 2000 and 2004, the label also looked back to a number of established relationships for new releases: the Evaporators’ 7-inch Honk the Horn came out in 2001, and a second full-length, Ripple Rock, followed; there was a split 7-inch by Pansy Division and local queercore outﬁt Skinjobs, called Dirty Queers Don’t Come Cheap; and there were two records, two years apart, by Brian Connelly’s Atomic 7. They also put out Avanti, the ﬁrst record by Ramblin’ Ambassadors, headed up by Brent Cooper from the now defunct Huevos Rancheros.

Brent Cooper: I wanted to form a new band, and I had that name in my head for a long time after seeing a car called the Rambler Ambassador. Craig Evans, who was booking the Night Gallery [in Calgary], said he needed a band to open for the Von Zippers in two weeks, and I said, “Oh, I have a band,” and he said, “What are you called?” and I said the Rambler Ambassadors. He thought I said “the Ramblin’ Bastards” and he made a poster, even before we had a drummer. After so long in one band, it was totally exciting. It was a challenge. We ended up with a drummer who I’d never even met — he was a friend’s

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roommate — and I had it on this guy’s word that he was a good drummer so I said, “Okay, he’s in.” And we had two practices and a gig. I remember after my daughter Jordan was born, talking on the phone with Bill for maybe an hour and a half about how Huevos was dead and I wanted to make a solo album. And he was encouraging, so we recorded Avanti with David Alcock again. We just sent everything off to Mint and bingo!

One record to buck the friendship trend was the ﬁrst and only record by Mark Kleiner Power Trio. Although Kurt Dahle played drums on the record, he had nothing to do with the label releasing it; that responsibility fell to Kleiner. By the early 2000s, Mark Kleiner was a Vancouver scene veteran, having played in glamrock band Jungle and Sister Lovers. Kleiner had also become good friends with Nardwuar, mostly based on the mutual appreciation the two shared of ’60s pop, the Monkees in particular.

Mark Kleiner, guitar in Mark Kleiner Power Trio: I was in bands in Saskatoon with my brother John Paul from the age of seven. We played in a kind of knock-off KISS band, and I remember we were gonna play “Calling Doctor Love” in the basement of a church in probably 1977. My parents heard us audition and basically because of the lyrics of that song, they told us we couldn’t sing that in church. So that’s how we got into pop song writing. My ﬁrst really serious high school band — if that’s not an oxymoron — started in grade eleven or twelve. We were called Green Eggs and Ham. After I graduated, we all went west to make our mark, ﬁnd our fortune. And that brought us up to Vancouver.

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Kleiner’s high school band became an early formation of Sister Lovers. He later started Jungle, with members from Sister Lovers and Stephen Hamm, from Slow and Tankhog. Jungle released a few records with Scratch, and Randy designed the album covers.

Randy Iwata: One cover was embossed gold. Bill Baker: So Fucking Good to Be Alive was one title. And then there was a bunch of trouble about that. Randy Iwata: This is Nard’s doing. He was championing it, because of Sister Lovers and Jungle’s hit factor. They had modest hits. Riffy hits. Nard wanted some sort of anthology of Jungle. Mark Kleiner’s history. So he got the ball rolling, and

Mark Kleiner Power Trio in Vancouver: Kurt Dahle, Mark Kleiner, and Pete Bastard.

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I ended up going out with Mark and talking to him. And he, much like Nard, just talked my head off. Not in a bad way. But he was so enthusiastic about what he wanted to do. Bill Baker: We had toyed with the idea of putting out the Sister Lovers record. In hindsight, production-wise, it’s pretty poor. I don’t think it stands up. But the songs are so amazing. That was a whole other group of people, that Sisters Lovers group. Mark wanted to be like Mick Jagger, Exile on Main Street era. And have this whole coterie of people. They all had nicknames, and they all lived together in this gross house. And he was very ﬂamboyant. He would be in leotards. Like a thrift store version of an established rock ’n’ roll dude. And he was such a character. This was back in the nineties. The Sister Lovers record was one that we were all super stoked about putting out, but he’s the reason that we didn’t do it. Mark Kleiner: Sister Lovers had a very volatile and intense period. We were all kind of off the rails emotionally and psychologically. And those guys were running a label — they were fairly straight shooters and what you want in a label. They weren’t destroying things. We were. Including relationships. Bill Baker: We were having a meeting — I think it was the meeting that we had with Gob when we were giving them that whole spiel about how they’d misbehaved on tour. And Mark came in. This is when we were in the seventh ﬂoor ofﬁce and Grant had a little reception area. And I remember him coming in, and putting the cassette of his record down. Grant was like, “We’re in a meeting right now.” And Mark just didn’t listen. I don’t remember if it was like, “I don’t care” or “This’ll just take a second” or what. He put the cassette in, pressed play, and started lip-synching to his own cassette — while we were in the room with all these other people. And I remember Grant throwing the cassette out into the hallway. Randy Iwata: Out the window? Bill Baker: He said, “Get the fuck out of here.” Mark Kleiner: That is kind of a sadder memory, because we really did blow it at

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having a shot with those guys at one of their early peaks. At some point I made some overtures to Grant to make some sort of an amends for my part in that debacle.

When Sister Lovers and Jungle disbanded, Kleiner languished for a while on the scene before he decided to pull up stakes in 1999 and move back to Saskatchewan — to go to theology school. The move made gravy in Vancouver’s local music press, where the sensationalism-in-reverse of a well-known glam rocker like Kleiner leaving the excesses of rock ’n’ roll behind for the cloth was hard to resist: “Auditioning for God: Frontman for Jungle Answers a Higher Call” ran a headline in the September 12, 1999, issue of the Vancouver Sun.

Mark Kleiner: That “called by God” thing, it’s only half true. I hadn’t really thought through what a “call” was. I had always lived a kind of anxious existence in Vancouver and didn’t feel totally grounded. So in a way it wasn’t really running to something like a call or ministry, it was more like running away from something — which was sheer, utter, existential terror. I was getting close to a decade of living a life where I was putting everything into making it in music. So that meant that I didn’t invest in anything else. One thing was, “How many hours a day do I spend writing songs?” Certainly a very little piece of the pie. A lot of it, I worked, dishwashing or line cooking, and I coped by drinking quite heavily. It basically caught up to me, and it was just an inner implosion. It was kind of crazy. It was a bad way to go out, because Scratch Records was left holding the bag [for the Jungle records]. I’ve since made up with Keith. I’m glad to say I got sober a few years later and that has helped me in terms of clarity about my life and decisions and stuff like that.

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A few years later, Kleiner returned to Vancouver and began pursuing what would be the beginning of Mark Kleiner Power Trio. One leg of the tripod was Pete Bastard of legendary punk group Flash Bastard.

Mark Kleiner: It was just incendiary being around those guys. Sister Lovers did some shows with Flash Bastard. Pete started the studio and Jungle recorded there. Pete Mills, a.k.a Pete Bastard, bass in Mark Kleiner Power Trio: Toward the end of Flash Bastard, and many rehabs in, I broke my ankle. I couldn’t walk. And I loved recording; I had a few demos under my belt as far as really small productions. And then Mark Kleiner says, “Hey, I want to record an album with you, I have an investor, and I trust you to do the process, I know you can do it.” And I said, “Well, I don’t really have any gear, but if you could give me some money up front, we can get started.” After all the Flash Bastard experiences, of going on tour with Motley Crüe and getting kicked off the tour because we were too “rock ’n’ roll” and then it all culminating with our record label dropping us, me breaking my ankle, and kind of looking at the ceiling every morning going “What the fuck” — then Mark Kleiner comes out of nowhere with this investor who wants to do this thing. Mark Kleiner: I was back for the fall and summer, just for a vacation, really, and my friend and old songwriting partner, Nick Waddell, had become a dot-com millionaire. He had these palatial digs in North Van, just outside Deep Cove, and we were sitting around the hot tub one night, talking about new songs and stuff we would write together. I just started playing some song, and at the time we were thinking about recording something together that summer. He said, “You’ve got a solo album and you should record it.” And he agreed to underwrite it. So I had this relationship with Pete, and then Nick made the offer to underwrite the record and allow me the ﬁnancial freedom to make an album. And Pete actually suggested Kurt.

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Kurt Dahle: I was friends with Pete Bastard, because Pete is a really great recording engineer. In Age of Eclectic and Limblifter, I had the luxury of always working in big studios. So at the beginning of this whole home recording thing when you could get Pro Tools rigs and start making recordings at home that sounded half decent, I got interested. Bastard had already gone to school and he really knew his stuff, so he taught me how to edit. I worked on Flash Bastard records with him, editing drums and guitars. He taught me how to tune vocals and all that sort of stuff. So I think when Pete and Mark started to put this thing together Pete recommended me. Mark Kleiner: At the sessions Kurt brought in the Mass Romantic album on tape and was like, “Check this out, I just ﬁnished recording this,” and I remember him playing that for us when we took a break. That was a very creative time, so that was neat to hear that. That

MKPT

record just came together. A few of the songs were leftovers, the

songs that didn’t get recorded with Jungle that I really believed in, and a few were songs that I had written back in Saskatoon, where I seemed to always have been able to write quite well. We just kind of cobbled it together, and Pete had a real clarifying kind of vision. He really — in a good way — restricted me from going off too much. So in some ways, it omitted some of the edges that were usually there in some of my other work. It just became a sunshiny pop record that you could throw on without having to explain anything.

Love To Night was completed that summer, but it wouldn’t see release until March 2002.

Bill Baker: After everything that had happened in the ofﬁce, I just remember that when Randy said that he was putting this out, I just said, “Oh god, no. Not this. Please.”

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Mark Kleiner: We played one show for fun at the end of the summer at a place on Commercial Drive, just to celebrate being done with the record. And then that was the one and only time the three of us ever did a show like that. Pete Bastard: Mark’s got this fetish for teddy bears, and one of the songs that he wrote was about that. I mean, Mark is a brilliant songwriter, but his muse would have no aim, so he wrote a song about his teddy bear. So the climax of that show was, he went out with this keytar and played this nursery rhyme-type song that we wrote, while he grabbed tons of teddy bears he’d bought at the thrift store and started throwing them out to the audience. It was just a really surreal, acid-type moment where everyone in the audience was holding a teddy bear, coddling it, watching Mark sing this song. Kurt Dahle: That record bombed. It’s funny, though — I’ll be on tour somewhere in the States or Europe and somebody will go, “I really liked that MKPT record.” And I’ll just shake my head and go, “What?” Because what did it sell? Five thousand copies, if that. That’s because he never took it out to tour or anything. Pete Bastard: Beyond that one show, I wasn’t able to tour, and Kurt couldn’t really tour, so it just kind of didn’t happen. Mark Kleiner: The really concerted thing for that record was Grant Lawrence calling us up and inviting us on the Mint summer tour party because the Smugglers were playing. So we played with them and Tennessee Twin in Alberta, and with Operation Makeout. They were great. We didn’t do a lot of shows, but it was nice to make up with Grant and do that tour. And actually, to make things more intertwined and strange, there’s another Kurt Dahle here in Saskatoon — same name — who’s my drummer for a band called the River Boys. So when Kurt Dahle from Vancouver couldn’t make the video shoot, Kurt Dahle from Saskatoon came in and was my drummer in the video. And now Kurt Dahle from Saskatoon is going to move to Vancouver. He’s got a band that’s working with Jonathan Simkin and the Nickelback people. So it’s just crazy.

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Bill Baker: As a footnote to the whole thing, I’m really glad that it happened. It’s a great record. I don’t know that it really sold, and there weren’t tours, really, to go with it, but in later life — in the last two years — I’ve done tons of ﬁlm and TV licenses for that, because it just ﬁts. People that come to us for music, there’s that certain thing that they need, that kind of sunny, AM radio pop hit. It’s a long time ago, 2002, and most times people don’t want to license music that’s old, but I have people coming to me for the Mark Kleiner record all the time. Mark Kleiner: With the Sister Lovers thing and Mint, to have that fall apart and then to be able, half a decade later, to do something together, get some music out that way — that was really kind of healing for me. The fact that they were able to let bygones be bygones and give me another chance was quite big on their part. Because they were the ones taking the risk — we never had much to lose.

Kleiner now lives in Saskatoon with his wife and is completing the same Lutheran program his father did years ago. Pete Bastard lives in L.A. and is a producer, and, well, you know where Kurt Dahle is. In 2004, four years after the release of Rosie, the Smugglers — or rather, Grant — decided to do another record. Mutiny in Stereo came out in March, right between the Evaporators’ Ripple Rock and Carolyn Mark’s third full-length, The Pros and Cons of Collaboration. To date, it’s the Smugglers’ last record, though Grant has never ofﬁcially called it a day. Around that same time, Beez’s dabbling in Mint’s accounts became ofﬁcial.

Grant Lawrence: Beez had sold some shares from a company he was part owner of and came into a massive amount of money. And being the philanthropist he is, he bought into Mint Records. And then, all of a sudden, Beez injected a big energy back into Mint when he came on board. Because he’s a bookkeeper and accoun-

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tant, and he went through years and years of Mint’s accounting. Mint couldn’t make a dime for years, and then Beez came along and found hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to them from all sorts of these small bills that were never paid. And so Beez did a lot to get Mint back in the black. Back in black, to quote AC/DC. Beez: The New Pornographers were still on Mint. Neko was still on Mint. There was a lot of work to do. And Bill was in Summerland. And so he offered to sell me some of his shares, in exchange. And you know, I wanted more work, too. And I thought it would be a good opportunity. It was like my midlife crisis. It was my Corvette. Carolyn Mark: I’d never had a contract with Mint before that. I tried to avoid it for as long as possible, but then they all cornered me. It was terrible. After Beez stepped in to do the accounts, that was Black Monday, in my life. I just thought we were beyond that, you know? [Laughs] But apparently we’re not. I was living a lie.

Some perspective might be in order here — the so-called Black Monday was not so dire in the grand scheme of things. It just meant that many of the oral contracts Bill and Randy had made over the years were put to pen and paper for the ﬁrst time. For those like Mark with long-time handshake deals, this meant some shifting sands, but it didn’t mean Beez was stalking them in the night searching for money. However, the restructuring did mean that the era of “Sure, we’ll put this out, friend” had more or less come to a close. Shortly after rummaging through Mint’s paperwork, following a hockey game with some friends (including Grant), Beez suffered a heart attack. A Georgia Straight article from June 9, 2005, wished him well and invited cards and letters to be sent to Mint directly. Writer John Lucas also quoted Grant: “Lawrence was concerned for his friend’s health but, ever the jokester, he couldn’t resist bringing a little levity to the situation. ‘When the doctor ﬁrst came out of the emergency

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room to talk to us, he said, “Your friend Beez is suffering from some severe angina pain,” which is really harsh pressure in the heart. And when he ﬁnished speaking, I said to him, as deadpan as possible, “My only question, doctor, is, where exactly is the mangina?” He just stared at me and did not get the joke or appreciate it.’” Beez, then forty-two, made a full recovery and went back to work. A few months later, after the release of Twin Cinema, the New Pornographers moved over to Matador. The irony of the order of those events is not lost on Bill, Randy, or Beez.

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Chapter 14 There Is Nothing I Can Do

While Mint spent much of the early 2000s nursing established acts and the Mint “family,” there was also a growing cadre of bands that had come calling in the wake of the New Pornographers’ and Neko’s successes. Accordingly, they ﬁt ﬁrmly in two camps: sunny, smart power pop with sweet harmonies and wickedly intelligent lyrics or rootsy, Canadiana-soaked alt-country. Demos began rolling in. One, sent all the way from Holland, contained a CD jewel case bearing a small brick of hash and a baggie of pot . . . but no CD. Regardless of their angle (or bribery techniques), the bands coming to Mint then shared an earnest desire to do what their predecessors had done — on their own terms, of course. In their eyes, the label responsible was a good place to start.

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

One such band with their eyes on the prize was Young and Sexy. They came knocking on Mint’s door — with a little help.

Lucy Brain, vocals in Young and Sexy: I emigrated from Bath, England, with my family as a kid, so I went to school here from grade six. My dad was in a band called Interview, signed to Virgin, through the late seventies into the early eighties. So we were around that culture quite a bit, and even after the band, he was always trying to get something going. He was really into Phil Spector, and wanted to get a girl group going. So I remember, as a kid, him auditioning girl singers. Paul Pittman, vocals in Young and Sexy: Lucy and I met in Vancouver in ’93, and we dated for a little while. But we didn’t start a band until 1997. Lucy Brain: Our ﬁrst gig was at Ms. T’s. Paul Pittman: And we met Andre at the Sugar Reﬁnery a few years after that. He and I were out back, smoking. We were looking to record, and someone said, “He works at Method Studios.” I don’t remember who introduced us. Andre Legace, bass and guitar in Young and Sexy: We were both pretty drunk. And nothing really came of the Method thing. Lucy Brain: Steven at the Sugar Reﬁnery offered us Sunday nights, for at least a month. And so it really had this home, but it was kind of torture. There was no one there, or we played to some kids bringing their parents out for dinner, that kind of thing. But I think that really helped us, and I think we owe a lot to them for that. Paul Pittman: We wouldn’t make much money, but he’d usually give you half price on the menu. The Sugar Reﬁnery was awesome. It’s too bad it’s not there anymore. We really got along well with Andre, so we just said, “Do you want to play bass on a couple songs on our next show?” And he was into that, so he joined the band. And then we started recording for real. We did some demos at the Hive. Andre Legace: Oh yeah, because Colin offered to record us for free. Paul Pittman: He was doing that all the time. Colin from the Hive, he’d go out and

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see bands live, and he’d just ﬁnd bands he liked, and say, “We’ll record you for free, a couple songs.” It was just a good way for them to promote themselves, and to help out these young bands. Lucy Brain: They were just starting, too. Paul Pittman: Of course, we overdid it there. Because we went in for the day or whatever, and we recorded two songs, and then I think we weren’t satisﬁed so we went back and paid for another day. Andre Legace: “More overdubs!” Paul Pittman: Which is our standard-issue story. Lucy Brain: Never satisﬁed. Paul Pittman: That demo got us a show, actually, because we ended up opening for Stephen Malkmus in March of 2001. Lucy Brain: I had graduated from university and couldn’t ﬁnd work, and I ﬁnally caved and got a job at London Drugs. It was my ﬁrst shift, and I had to work ’til nine, and we basically got wind of the show the night before. I had to run down the street to Richards on Richards in my blue London Drugs tunic to play a rock show with Stephen Malkmus. Paul Pittman: We’d recorded the stuff with the Hive, and we weren’t totally happy with the way that turned out. But we heard stuff done with JC/DC that we liked, especially Thief by Destroyer, and so I was like, “Let’s go to JC/DC, and we’ll pay for it ourselves.” I had some money saved at that point, and then everybody else chipped in. John Collins gave that album to Randy. Randy Iwata: They had that big-band-esque-ness that the Pornographers had. You know, the ﬁve to seven people doing things. And I thought that it [Stand Up For Your Mother] was exceptional. Lucy Brain: I remember Randy being really interested in a song of ours called “Shuttlecock,” which is about Paul’s history of being a badminton star. [True story: he was once seeded ﬁrst in Canada Under-16.] He wanted us to release that song, and we were going to on the second album, but we never did. Sorry, Randy.

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Randy Iwata: I don’t know how the romantic makeup was at that time, but the story we told everyone was that Paul and Lucy used to go out. Lucy Brain: It was when we met, when I was eighteen or nineteen. And it was for a year. Paul Pittman: I think we broke up in ’94. Or ’95. But whatever, it was really early on. Lucy Brain: It was the whole, “He’s writing love songs and I’m singing them,” you know? It was a gimmick. I mean, that’s the thing — you need a story, right? And we’ve never really been very good at that kind of thing, like writing Lucy Brain of Young and Sexy plays Mint’s 10th Anniversary.

a band bio and shit like that. We’re just people that like to make music, really.

Stand Up For Your Mother was released on March 5, 2002.

Paul Pittman: I had a lot of faith in what we were doing at the time. Lucy Brain: But also there wasn’t the pressure of spending someone else’s money. We were spending Paul’s money. Paul Pittman: Just after the album came out, we ended up playing a show with the Pornographers and the Gay at the Commodore. That was obviously a big high point for us. And the album got a lot of good press in Canada.

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Local music scribes paid particular attention to Young and Sexy’s song “The City You Live in Is Ugly” which included the sound of the SkyTrain and made direct reference to some of Vancouver’s less attractive landmarks as a metaphor for a relationship gone sour. “You covered up the Bowmac sign with Toys ’R’ Us, you don’t make a fuss” Lucy sings, “but now you’re regretting it and forgetting it and you don’t drive by there much.” (Then, as now, lyricist Paul Pittman worked for the City of Vancouver.)

Andre Legace: We did a winter tour. Lucy Brain: Oh yeah, it was terrible. There was a blizzard on the Trans-Canada. It was a whiteout, and I remember semis jackkniﬁng in front, and you didn’t know

Paul Pittman at Mint’s 10th Anniversary.

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until you were right up against it. You couldn’t see anything. Paul Pittman: I think we saw three semis in the ditches. Lucy Brain: And we were hustling to make it for our gig because it was St. Patrick’s Day. We arrived at the Royal Albert Arms, in Winnipeg, with the Waking Eyes. And we only got to play four songs, because they were like, “We close early on Sundays,” and we were like, “You don’t know what we went through!” Andre Legace: But it was probably our best show at that point. The adrenalin. Lucy Brain: And then we did North by Northeast that year, in June. That was amazing, and that was probably a lot to do with Yvette, because basically there was only one other band that was hyped more than us, and that was the Hives. We were in all the major papers. It was really cool. We had, literally, a lineup around the block. I mean, the venue held, like, ten people anyway. I know that one of the guys from Sloan was trying to get in and he didn’t get in. Paul Pittman: We always got good crowds in Toronto. We should have capitalized on that sooner. We didn’t go back until the next record.

Young and Sexy’s second record, Life Through One Speaker, was released in October 2003, just months after the Pornographers’ Electric Version. Mint put the two similar bands on tour together in the fall of that year. Around the same time, Brain and Legace got married.

Lucy Brain: We did eleven dates, all in a row, through the States. It was epic. And then just to see the culture, too, around live music. So many people came out — all ages, whole families would come out — and they’d also done research on us. I remember, I worked the merch table a lot, and people were so friendly, really unlike my experience up here. You know, congratulating us on our second album. Andre and I had just gotten married, and a lot of people knew that for some reason. And

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there were a lot of fans that were there for Neko Case, a lot of country fans. It was pretty unusual and cool. Also, seeing the New Pornographers every night kind of mentored us. Because they were such pros. John was always like our dad, in a way. Paul Pittman: John always helped with the soundboard, trying to get our sound right. Deﬁnitely the New York show that we played with them at the Bowery was, I think, one of our best shows ever. Lucy Brain: We really felt like, “Okay, this is it.” Paul Pittman: And then we got back, and the album came out. After the tour, which is unfortunate timing. I think that record — I feel it’s sort of the least representative of the band. It sounds fairly staid and just a little clinical, more than our other records. I think it was missing the vibrancy of the ﬁrst record. Lucy Brain: I don’t know how Mint felt. Randy never said anything about anything. I kind of struggled with the image of Mint, in a way. I don’t know what they were pushing for, and I wasn’t sure how we ﬁt in. A little cartoony, maybe. Not disparaging in any way, but I wasn’t really sure at times what they saw in us. Randy Iwata: They’re another band that came to us, like, “We want you to do our next record.” And if you ﬁnd the release schedules or the release dates, they don’t make perfect business sense. You know, things are bunched up. Paul Pittman: They’re focused on pop. Whereas, you know, we do have those elements, but we also deﬁnitely don’t have those elements sometimes. I mean, we knew what label we were signing to.

At the same time, Randy was in hot pursuit of a weird country-ish band called Buttless Chaps.

Dave Gowans, guitar and vocals in Buttless Chaps: I grew up in Victoria, and I

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heard about Carolyn Mark’s open stage at the Old Bailey Pub around 1997. The ﬁrst time I went there, I put my name on the list but I got scared. I walked up to her and I said, “I can’t do it, take my name off the list.” She told me I was up next, and she said, “If you don’t do it, you can never come back again. It’ll be ﬁne now, get up there, but don’t ever ask me again if you’re going to bail on it.” She was also laughing at me, so I got up and played and it was nerve-wracking, but I really enjoyed it. She let me play an extra song, I think, so then of course I was back there every week bugging her. “When am I up next?” My roommate Morgan and I started playing as a duo at the open stage, and we met two other guys — Lasse, the other guitarist, and Torben. The Buttless Chaps formed pretty well at that open stage. Morgan MacDonald, keyboards in Buttless Chaps: The four of us started playing pretty quickly after getting to know each other. We recorded our ﬁrst album within a few weeks of me ever having met Lasse or Torben. Lasse Lutick, guitar in Buttless Chaps: I actually grew up without any electricity in northern B.C., so I wasn’t exposed to anything musical until I was probably twelve years old. My parents ran a tree planting company, so tree planters started showing up around the same time we got power. I started to be exposed to music right around then. The tree planters showed me the Cure, Tom Waits,

XTC,

stuff

like that. I met Torben right around then, as well. We lived so far in the bush that if you wanted to go to someone’s house, then you had to stay there overnight, so I had a lot of overnighters at Torben’s. He was more into Iron Maiden and a lot more technical metal music, even as a young person. His alarm clock would immediately play “Number of the Beast” when he woke up. Torben Wilson, bass in Buttless Chaps: Lasse made all these mix tapes for me, of all this stuff he was hearing through the tree planters. It blew our minds. We formed a band called Ballyhoo with some friends up north. There was one guy from the Yukon who was older than us, but he was a multi-percussionist. And we

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had a bass player who was super into Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. The drummer was more into Afro-Cuban, as multi-percussionists often are. So it was a kind of out-there band. We did some recording with a guy who had all this analog gear, but it was the dead of winter. We put all this stuff in the trailer, shoved it out to Lasse’s place on the other side of François Lake, and, of course, it was thirty below zero. So this guy got all this gear inside, set it up, immediately turned it on, and of course there was so much condensation in it from the temperature change that it just died instantly. I left for a while after school and went to Finland. I ended up getting married there, and when I got back, Lasse had moved to Victoria. So I moved there, too. Dave Gowans: Morgan and I had called ourselves Buttless Chaps as a joke, and then we decided to call the band Trailer Park. Carolyn gave us a show opening for her old band, the Fixin’s, and I said, “We have a different band name, we’re called Trailer Park, so please — we’re not going to call ourselves the Buttless Chaps.” She said, “You can’t play unless you call yourselves the Buttless Chaps,” so it was put on the poster and I remember a writer, who used to come to shows for Monday magazine, did a review of our set or made a little mention, and that’s when the name kind of stuck.

Buttless Chaps self-released ﬁve albums — one a year — between 1998 and 2003. Around the third album, the band moved to Vancouver.

Lasse Lutick: Morgan’s girlfriend said, “I’m moving to Vancouver,” and I know Dave was pretty tired of Victoria — he grew up there and he was getting pretty bored of it. All of us were at a point in our lives where we could easily make decisions like that and we all just very suddenly said, “All right, let’s just go,” and we all moved really quickly.

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Dave Gowans: When Carolyn was doing that Nashville album she asked me to sing one of the songs, and I did. Later, I went to a Mint Records show and that’s when I met Randy in person. He said, “Thanks for doing that song on the Nashville thing,” and we chatted for a bit. And then he started turning up at our shows because we used to play a lot with Carolyn. Lasse Lutick: The Sugar Reﬁnery really made everything possible for us in Vancouver, in a lot of ways, because we played there a lot. We’re best as a live act, and I think a lot of people saw us there. Dave Gowans: I never thought that Mint would be interested in releasing our music because we always did it ourselves. Randy Iwata: I was a big fan. I remember talking to Dave Gowans at the Main — outside the bathroom, as I remember. I think he was going, I was coming, and we stopped each other. I threw the idea out there, and I don’t think he had considered it. Much like a few of our bands, they have that sort of — not “off-kilter” but differentness to them, and this band was very different, I thought. Morgan MacDonald: I think we got more worked up about it than we needed to, this idea of being independent. “We call the shots, and who is this label that wants to sign us?” Dave had more conversations with them than the rest of us. And he’d met Randy, who’s a totally easygoing, mellow guy, just, “Yep, yep, we can do that.” And we go, “Well, what about this, we want to put our album out on Digipak, gatefold, it’s gonna be expensive.” “We can ﬁgure it out.” Just wonderful support. Really hands-off. Torben Wilson: Everybody I knew who had anything to do with them really had good things to say about the experience, so we were fairly conﬁdent they weren’t going to try to take over the music, or force producers down our throat, or anything like that. Let’s just say we had heard enough horror stories. I’ve talked to so many people who signed with Geffen, and it just took them out of the music scene entirely. Like, they’re just so bitter. And maybe there are people who wind up bitter after working with Mint, but I really don’t see how that would happen.

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Morgan MacDonald: In hindsight, in some ways, I almost wish there was a little more pressure to help us polish our recordings, because we still had a very indie sound. We spent as much effort as we cared to put into it, without anyone kind of saying, “You know what, this is close but it’s not quite there.” But it was just, “Yeah, do what you want, that sounds great. Sounds great, guys.” And it was really an invisible transition, I thought.

Mint released Love This Time on September 16, 2003.

Torben Wilson: I think most of the songs we wrote for that one we wrote at Lasse’s up north, because that was pretty much our process at the time. Lasse had this house with this huge workshop, and he sectioned off a third of it and made a studio. We had recording gear and we’d rent a bunch of decent mics and just go up there and hit play on the computer and just play for the afternoon. We’d do this for a week or two at a time. And songs would sort of start crawling out of the jams, and then we’d write music, and build them up, and Dave would write words. Lasse Lutick: We were more playful when we were in Victoria, and quite a bit more intense in Vancouver. In Victoria you were just like, “Whatever, let’s just try it.” In Vancouver, in my opinion, we started writing a little more technical and a lot more emotional songs. Dave Gowans: Doing the ﬁrst album, we were all stressed out about whether it would be good enough, whether they would like it, whether it would do well for the label. And we were pretty concerned about whether we were touring enough and promoting it. Bands go out and they’ve got their brand-new record out for Mint and they’re playing for ﬁfteen people, and they’re like, “What’s going on? There are articles in the paper, my CD’s in the record store, why aren’t there people here?” Well, you’ve

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got to do it ﬁfty times, then maybe wonder why no one’s coming. We had done our ﬁrst tour, nine weeks to Newfoundland and back, however many shows that was, and just kept playing and booking shows and kept going, then went out again. So by the time we signed to Mint, if we went to this city at that time we were able to ﬁll a large club. We had certain cities that were really strong, some that really ﬂuctuated over the years, and then some that never worked. There are certain ones that we just bombed every time, so you learn that maybe you skip that one the next time. We worked for it, and I think that’s also what attracted Mint. At that time, we had the ability to ﬁll a club, to sell out the Railway for two nights or go and play in Calgary for three hundred people.

With two exciting new acts on the Mint roster, Randy went for the hat trick — an all-female band called the Organ that was amassing a huge buzz around town. In a way, Mint had already released them: a song by Full Sketch, an earlier, instrumental incarnation of the Organ, had appeared on the Vancouver Special compilation.

Jenny Smyth, organist in the Organ: When I was a kid, my best friend and I wanted to be an R&B singing group and we would write songs using my Casio and glasses ﬁlled with various amounts of water used to make different tones. We basically wanted to be Cher and CeCe Peniston. When I was about twelve, we moved to the suburbs and I became really alienated from my peer group. So I applied to an alternative school in Vancouver. I was accepted and moved into a relative’s home at fourteen, away from my family. I fell into a group of friends who attended local all-ages shows, stuff like d.b.s. and the Evaporators. Mar Sellars [of Riff Randells] was basically my voice in high school. I was so

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shy and also unwell with a variety of health concerns. She was kind of my advocate, and we both shared a love for Mint, K, and Lookout! as kids. We would go down to Yo-Yo a Go-Go [in Olympia], Seattle, and Victoria to attend all-ages concerts. [As you’ll recall, Sellars and Smyth also started a zine that featured Mint bands like Duotang.] I fell in love with the style of organ Nardwuar played and tried to emulate that — I played in a band I started called the Ewoks, which was basically a poor teen girl rip-off of the Evaporators. I got a chance to buy an Acetone when I was seventeen and began to play around with it. Around that time, Barb Choit from Full Sketch noticed me dancing onstage at the Starﬁsh Room and asked me to audition for the band. I passed the audition and that’s where I met Katie Sketch, the drummer for Full Sketch.

Full Sketch became the Organ, and they released the Sinking Ships EP in 2002.

Jenny Smyth: I was somehow friends with Randy at that time, though I don’t remember how. I remember playing with the New Pornographers at the Helen Pitt Gallery and being enamoured with Bill, which is silly. I was about eighteen then. Duotang would come to parties at Mar’s mom’s house, and we would drink wine. I had also attended Maow shows as an enthusiastic fan. Anyway, I became friends with Operation Makeout at shows and they, especially Anna, were becoming friends with Randy. I remember driving in Randy’s old beige van and playing the Organ

EP

and Anna asking Randy when he would

sign us. He was like, “Do you want me to?” and I was like, “Yes, of course!” That was my dream. Duh. Randy Iwata: I tend to say this a lot and Bill gets mad — I felt that they were out of our league.

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Bill Baker: Oh fuck, I hate that. Randy Iwata: At that time I felt they were, because they had these higher ambitions, and we were a tiny little thing then. We had a one-room ofﬁce. Not that that’s a sign of anything, really, but we were small. And I don’t remember actually talking to them initially, record-wise, because of that. So when Jonathan Simkin started calling us and asking if we wanted to be involved, my understanding at that time was that they were at loggerheads with how they wanted to proceed. There were basically two offers presented to them, by much larger companies, and Jonathan’s was one of them. Bill Baker: Jonathan’s was not a much larger company at that time. Nor is it now a “much larger” company. It was a company with greater ﬁnancial resources. Jonathan Simkin, Mint Lawyer and co-owner of 604 Records: Some local producer tipped me off to the Organ, and I went and saw them play at the Piccadilly Pub, and I fell in love. I was just dumbfounded. I’m a child of the seventies and eighties, so the bands I cut my teeth on were Joy Division and the Smiths and the Cure and that kind of the stuff. The Smiths in particular. So I see these ﬁve girls sounding like the Smiths and it blew my mind. Falling in love with a band is sort of like falling in love with a woman. It’s all you can think about. You ﬁnd yourself thinking the stupidest, gooﬁest stuff like, “What do they think of me? Do they like me?” You have a meeting with them, then you analyze it, like, “Did I say something stupid?” Jenny Smyth: Simkin had been pressuring Katie [Sketch] to sign to 604. We also talked about working with Nettwerk, but that did not work. She asked for my opinion, and I agreed that doing a partnership would provide the beneﬁts of both labels. The thing we wanted most from 604 was recording and distributing money, as I recall. That may not be correct. Jonathan Simkin: The Organ was a joint venture between my company and their company, which really said something about how much I trusted them, how much I loved those guys to the point of getting into business with them.

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Bill Baker: Jonathan stepped out on a limb with that, because that was right when they were ﬁrst establishing the type of music that they continue to work with.

For the uninitiated, 604 Records — which was, at the time, in its infancy — is Simkin and Chad Kroeger’s record label and production arm (Simkin is also still Mint’s lawyer). They primarily release records by Nickelback-like acts.

Jonathan Simkin: I’m known as Mr. Nickelback. That’s ﬁne, I’m proud of that. I couldn’t care less. Lovely guys. Biggest band in the world. Chad has given opportunities to all sorts of local afﬁliations. My history is as much rooted in alternative music as it is in mainstream rock, but like I say, I’ve become Mr. Nickelback. Bill Baker: Half of the Organ wanted to go with 604 and half of them didn’t. And because we had such a tight relationship with Jonathan, we were able to create that hybrid. I mean, a cynical view of it was that they provided a clout of some kind, and that we provided the cred. Randy Iwata: The Organ was completely tangential to everything 604 was doing. Jonathan Simkin: I pursued them and pursued them. It even got to the point where I gave them a contract. They went to a lawyer, and then they got cold feet, and they got cold feet because of the whole Nickelback, Theory of a Deadman, we’re-reallynot-sure-we-want-to-be-afﬁliated-with-those-kinds-of-bands kind of thing. And that’s when I immediately went to Mint. I remember it so well; they [the Organ] came to me and said, “We’re not going to do the deal,” and it broke my heart. At the same time that happened, Nettwerk was going after them and I was like, “Oh god, I’m going to lose them to Nettwerk?!” I called Randy and said, “Look, do you like this band?” And Randy said, “Yeah. I love ’em.” I said, “Well, why haven’t you made an offer?” “Because we knew you were already doing that.” “What if we made an offer together?” “Love it!” That’s what Randy said: “Love it!”

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The Organ celebrate.

I think at a showcase one of the people in Nettwerk said something that really bothered Katie, like he liked it better when she was drunk or drinking when she was performing. And I think she was upset by that. That, coupled with me bringing Mint to the table, was enough to get the deal done. Bill Baker: That was part of the story that people loved, like, “Why are you doing this with the guy from Nickelback?” Which really didn’t have anything to do with the reality of it at all. People loved that angle. “Oh, Mint and Nickelback, huh?” But there’s really only one Chad part to the story. Randy Iwata: He found out that they were going to sleep on the ﬂoor, as bands do, somewhere in Alberta. And he very altruistically and philanthropically bought them hotel rooms.

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Bill Baker: Which he then billed back to the label. Actually, I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe leave that out.

Mint and 604 co-released the Organ’s Grab That Gun on May 24, 2004. The record had ﬁrst been made in a session with Kurt Dahle, then scrapped and later re-recorded with Warehouse Studios. Already held in high esteem locally, the band’s popularity grew exponentially and geographically in the wake of the record’s release. When Grab That Gun came out, the Organ suffered the glut of press that focused on their most salient attributes: being ﬁve somewhat androgynous girls (the horror!) signing with Chad Kroeger’s label (the intrigue!) and playing a perfect homage to early ’80s British sounds in 2000s Vancouver (the astonishment!). For the most part, however, the consensus was, whatever the circumstances that had brought it out, Grab That Gun was an incredible record. Still, in some press, the cracks in the band began to show. In a cover story in the June 2004 issue of Exclaim! Lorraine Carpenter wrote, “Eloquently illustrating cold, pain, darkness, despair, loneliness, longing, self-mutilation and suicide, Sketch’s lyrics also reﬂect her musical inﬂuences, as well as the band’s collective history of clinical depression and severe social alienation.” This well-drawn encapsulation of the Organ’s mental health, elsewhere distilled to “sad girls playing sad music,” was an endlessly intriguing angle to the press and fans alike. The band went on tour. Being heralded as the second coming of New Wave/ post-punk meant they were soon sharing the bill with a number of big-name acts.

Jenny Smyth: Oh man, we toured Grab That Gun for the majority of my adult life. We opened for Bratmobile, the Cure, Cat Power, and played the same day at a festival with Morrissey. We toured that record forever. Basically, we would tour one

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area and then the next would release the record — Canada, then Australia, then the U.K., then Europe. So it took a long time. Jonathan Simkin: The record really did well. Bill Baker: They had fantastic songs, they had an incredibly compelling frontperson [Katie Sketch was also a model, and has appeared in Vogue], and I mean, that’s all you need. When Randy ﬁrst sent the Organ stuff to me, I was like, “I don’t get this. I don’t understand why this is such a big deal.” [Laughs] I know that was a misstep on my part, to this day. But the ﬁrst time I saw them, it was just mesmerizing. The whole thing was just incredible. That’s why people were into it. Randy Iwata: And yet they got screamed at, like, “Will somebody move?” or “Will somebody smile?” You know, because they did neither for the longest time. And the music touches on so many different time periods. Certainly good songs hit you, in your head, in different ways, and that’s what this did. I remember there were allusions to or comparisons made with Deb [Cohen, guitar] and Johnny Marr, and the Smiths angle, and that time period. And yet it has remained sort of timeless, I think. Bill Baker: Sometimes things come and go, or you can think, “Wow, I remember that time. That was of a moment.” But the Organ stands up, completely. They were also on the L Word. They played a band in the story. They were certainly being asked to do things that no band we’d ever worked with had. And that was a big thing with Jonathan, because they got asked to play Coachella. And they didn’t. They turned it down. Because they just were exhausted.

Internal and external pressures combined to break up the Organ. They ofﬁcially called it quits in December 2006, but already during the previous summer they had cancelled a number of tour dates, including high-proﬁle appearances at U.K. festivals like Reading and Leeds.

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Jonathan Simkin: The band breaking up was one of the saddest things I’ve ever had to go through in my career because they were really on the verge of becoming a big band. Jenny Smyth: It was like the worst divorce ever. I felt like it was the end of the world and I was so sad. I don’t think I had much to do with it but maybe others feel that I did. I was completely crushed. I know that Kate was unwell and we had to cancel shows; that turned into a full-on hiatus, which turned into a breakup. Nightmare. I dealt with it, but not well. Bill Baker: The weakness of our relationship with 604 in terms of this was that it was based on mutual enthusiasm and friendship, but we didn’t describe how it would really work, ahead of time. And where I think we failed, all of us, was that we didn’t create a pathway of responsibility for the band. There wasn’t the person in charge. If it had just been us, we would’ve said, “Well, do it or don’t do it, just let us know.” But 604 was very driven to get them to do things. And the different aspects of those two voices ended up being a problem, because I think, in that situation, especially when a band is becoming successful and having all these opportunities put in front of them, they need to have a coherent voice. Jenny Smyth: Meh. I think Mint was kind of silent throughout our experience. I love them, but they did nothing helpful apart from Randy’s amazing help doing graphics, and a few things here and there. Mostly, we had problems with 604 and Mint seemed hesitant to get involved. Whatever. It’s a record label and those are out of date anyway.

In 2008, the Organ released a posthumous EP of unreleased tracks. According to interviews with Katie Sketch, the release occurred because “the label” (whether 604, Mint, or both) was threatening to put the songs out regardless. Intriguingly, the release was titled Thieves. By the time the band got together to work on the

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songs, they were barely speaking to one another.

Jenny Smyth: Actually, I loved recording Thieves. We were mostly all together and it was wonderful. Deb had to be recorded separately. I wished we could reunite. It seemed so possible then. We recorded at Shmoo [Ritchie, Katie’s The Organ’s ofﬁcial sticker.

sister] and Katie’s mom’s place on the coast of Galiano Island. Basically, you were recording and looking out the

window at a whale swimming past and an eagle soaring through the mighty cedar trees. It was lovely. You know, my German friend says that people still like the Organ in Germany. I don’t know if we will ever mean anything to anyone in the future. Bill Baker: It’s sort of the dark version of the New Pornographers story. Like, they were just friends, doing music together. And . . . I don’t know, I feel like they got chucked into a machine without much of a lifeline.

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“Without question, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood is one of 2006’s best: a gorgeous triumph that has captured not only a delightfully intriguing snapshot of Americana’s dark heart, but also the hearts of listeners everywhere.” — Tiny Mix Tapes’ Favorite Albums of 2006 “Suddenly, you can almost believe that Miller and Black weren’t raised somewhere in the Deep South in a world of tin-roofed shacks, weather-beaten outhouses, and backwoods moonshine stills. And that’s maybe appropriate. After all, they come from an area that isn’t exactly within spitting distance of the Crossroads. Both grew up in East Van, long before Ken Lum’s Monument for East Vancouver cross at Clark Drive and Great Northern Way made that seem cool.” — “Becky Black and Maya Miller Get Ahead of the Pack,” Georgia Straight, April 22, 2010 303

Chapter 15 Two Places

Mint’s 14th year: 2005. The big, shiny jewel in their crown was lost. Their new partner was in recovery from a heart attack. While major labels grappled with the Internet and its inﬁnite ability to undermine them, indie labels enjoyed a minirenaissance (even as the word “indie” itself underwent a major label makeover). This indie-splosion seemed especially potent in Canada, which had of late been producing a slew of successful acts: alongside the New Pornographers’ ascent, a Toronto band called Broken Social Scene (another “supergroup”) had hopped the indie escalator, as had a noisy gaggle from Montreal called Arcade Fire. Accumulated goodwill, particularly from the hip music press in the States, allowed for an army of bands to parade forth, each following a model set out by the groups before

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them: start local, cultivate your act organically in the places you’re known, then get out there in the big, bad U.S. of A. and do us proud! Never look back! Alongside these bands and their successes, the program that touted them, CBC Radio 3, hosted by Grant Lawrence, rose as well. Twenty years from now the mid-2000s may seem to have shaken out slightly differently, but as of this moment there’s no denying it: in 2005, Canada had asserted itself. Canada was hot. Of course, plenty of Mint bands wanted in. One of these was Immaculate Machine. Back in 2003, when Kathryn Calder introduced herself to John Collins in Victoria, she unwittingly both expanded and contracted her musical universe. From mere session musician for the New Pornographers, she grew into the role of ringer for Neko Case. Today, Calder’s contributions in the NP realm are singular and essential. But back in 2005, she was just Carl Newman’s niece, a girl in a rock band from Victoria.

Kathryn Calder, vocals and keyboards in Immaculate Machine: I met Brooke and Luke in high school. We were in the Vic High R&B Band, based on The Commitments. The idea was we were gonna be a bunch of kids singing soul songs. You know, R&B hits from the sixties and seventies. And actually, as an initiation to that band, every year the band teacher would have a party and they’d show The Commitments. So that’s where I met Brooke. And he was always getting himself into trouble, because he was a . . . I hate to say “free spirit” because that’s really hippy, and that doesn’t really ﬁt. He’s a bit of a shit disturber, Brooke. Brooke Gallupe, vocals and guitar in Immaculate Machine: We hung out with a lot of teenage jazz musicians. So we were into a lot of fusion music and jam band music, that kind of stuff. That certainly is not how we ended up, thank god. Luke Kozlowski, vocals and drums in Immaculate Machine: Brooke sold me his ﬁrst guitar and taught me to play. We were always kind of writing songs together. By

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the time grade eleven rolled around, we were playing all-ages shows in Victoria. Kathryn Calder: It was probably Brooke who had the idea [to form a band]. I could play piano and sing, and Luke could play the guitar and sing and drum and a bunch of other things. So it just seemed pretty natural at the time. Luke Kozlowski: Brooke was always a strong champion of the Beatles, and he educated Kathryn on the Beatles when she was into the Backstreet Boys, back in high school. [Laughs] And so that rubbed off on me as well, and we also really bonded over David Bowie and Queen. Kathryn Calder: Immaculate Machine got started up after high school. Brooke Gallupe: We got convinced by this guy we met at Long & McQuade to play at this place in suburbia, called Upper Deck. Every weekend. For free, of course.

Luke and Kathryn load in during a Toronto blizzard, 2008.

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Luke Kozlowski: We became the house band. Brooke Gallupe: Between periods of hockey games. Luke Kozlowski: We’d announce the dinner specials. Brooke Gallupe: And we had to lug a PA up two ﬂights of stairs, all for free. But it was just hard to get a gig. We weren’t in the scene. We didn’t know any older kids who had cool bands or anything like that. Eventually, we got good enough to get an actual gig. We started playing Tuesday nights as the opening act at [popular Victoria bars] Logan’s or Lucky. Which is a huge step up from the Upper Deck, no doubt about it, but when I think about those times, I remember how excited we were to get a gig at all. It was just this almost unfathomable dream to get to headline a Saturday night at these relatively small bars. Luke Kozlowski: In late 2002, early 2003 we recorded our ﬁrst EP with Scott Henderson from Sea of Shit Studios, out in [Victoria suburb] Langford. Then after that we kind of got the idea. “Well, you know, now that we’re getting shows at Lucky on Tuesdays, and we got a Saturday, maybe we should try and get a tour.” Of course, we didn’t know anybody who could book a tour, so Brooke took it upon himself to book a tour for us. We ended up doing a ﬁve-week tour out to Montreal and back. Our ﬁrst show was in Vancouver, at the Railway Club, but it ended up getting cancelled, and we had to get a show at the Sugar Reﬁnery instead. And then our next show wasn’t until nine days later in Thunder Bay. [Laughs] It was a very real introduction into the life of touring and how hard it is. Brooke Gallupe: I remember the second night, after we played Vancouver, we drove really late into the night. And we just parked by the side of the highway when it was getting too dark to be able to see where we were going. When we woke up, we were on this cliff overlooking a lake with a giant apricot tree right in front of us. So we woke up in the morning and ate fresh apricots, before diving into the lake to have a swim. Kathryn Calder: We camped all the way until Thunder Bay. And it was great!

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Brooke Gallupe: Every time we stopped the van, these sketchy-looking guys would slowly wander over to us like hungry zombies. They’d be like, “So . . .” And we’d be like, “So?” “Do you have weed to sell us?” And we’d say, “What? No, of course not.” They were like, “Come on. B.C. plates on a VW van?” Luke Kozlowski: There was also that show in Halifax. We shut a place down. Brook Gallupe: It was just this insane party, basically. I think it was something about the gloomy Halifax winters — people were just desperate to party. The owner was enjoying himself so much that he was just not willing to stop the music. Luke Kozlowski: The cops came by and he shooed them away. With a broom. Brooke Gallupe: He shook the broom at the cops, and the cops came back again, and he was like, “Get out of here. Wait ’til they’re done at least.” They told him they were going to come back in ﬁfteen minutes, and if it wasn’t over, they were shutting the place down. And he was like, “Just play on, guys. I want to hear as much as you’ve got! I’ll deal with them later!” So they came and they shut it down that instant, and it never opened again.

Immaculate Machine: well known for their beautiful moustaches. (L-R: Kathryn, Brooke, and Luke.)

Kathryn Calder: Once you’ve done one tour you say, “Okay! Let’s improve on that tour. Let’s see what we can do to make it better.” So we had this idea that we were all going to move to Toronto for a summer and just tour around. Because it really is a central place to tour. If you wanna be in a band, the closest cities together are all in Ontario.

In May 2004, in advance of the Toronto trip, the band independently released a

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full-length, Transporter.

Kathryn Calder: We had a really good time in Toronto, actually. It’s a fun city. It has a bad reputation among some people for being kind of snobby. But from our experience, everyone we met was super friendly and really fun and into weird music. We kind of got into the underground current, which was very actively ﬁghting the mainstream current. Brooke Gallupe: In Toronto, we played with Owen Pallett’s band, and he took a real liking to us and started lauding us to everyone he knew for a little while. Kathryn Calder: We did another tour, coming home. Our last show was in Vancouver, and that’s where we met Mint. Randy Iwata: Immaculate Machine is a perfect ﬁve-piece that’s in a three-piece. In a normal band, you’d have extra people. Brooke, he’s tall. There’s Kathryn, playing two instruments on one keyboard. And then there’s Luke who, two songs in, takes his shirt off. It became a contest to see, “Okay, so when is he going to take his shirt off?” And invariably, he always did. They all sang, and they all did all these weird, three-part harmonies. It was just amazing to watch and listen to. Kathryn Calder: That whole show was a big blur because we were just so excited to have people from the New Pornographers and Mint Records there. I think it was at the Railway Club. We’d also been talking with John [Collins] about recording our next record. We were all super nervous.

Mint signed Immaculate Machine in early 2005.

Randy Iwata: Kathryn in particular was vibrating with excitement as she signed. I thought it was wonderful. And Beez was being serious or blithe in the wake, per-

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haps, of Kathryn vibrating. He was just like, “Okay. Here. Here. Done.” Bill Baker: On a personal level, my head was completely down at this point. I wasn’t participating in anything, really. Part of the logic of Beez becoming involved was that it was going to relieve me of a bunch of work, which it never did, but I stepped back a little bit. Right then, things were very upended. So Immaculate Machine, I remember, was one of those situations where I just found out about it and went with it. I’d never heard them or anything.

The band went in to JC/DC and started recording what would become Ones and Zeros.

Brooke Gallupe: Carl’s apartment was free for that particular month, so we just went and lived in his apartment while we recorded the album. We brought our bikes and we cycled to the studio from the West End every day. And it was awesome. It felt like living the dream. The Mint ofﬁce is across the street from JC/DC. I phoned them up and said, “So, you wanna come over and hear it?” And they said, “Why?” And I said, “Well, so you can give us some feedback, or whatever. We’re trying to decide which songs make it to the album.” And they were like, “Okay . . . and you want us to come over?” And I said, “Yeah. Well, you’re the record label. I mean, you’re the one putting the money into it. Shouldn’t you have a say in this?” And they said, “Good god, no. You have it all wrong, Brooke. I don’t think we want to hear this, actually.” They got a little bit nervous. “What, you’re trying to make us make these decisions? That’s weird. You’re the artist. You make the decisions.”

Mint released the record in September of 2005, just after the New Pornographers’

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Twin Cinema. The bands were sent out on tour together that fall, which meant that at most shows Kathryn was doing double duty, playing with Immaculate Machine and then NP.

Luke Kozlowski: We quickly learned that it’s a slow process to build a fan base. You can’t just do it just because you get some press in local magazines and Exclaim! We realized that there’s still a lot of competition out there. We thought, “Oh, now that we’re on Mint Records, maybe we’ll get the cover of Exclaim!” And that was a little unrealistic, but we thought it was possible. Brooke Gallupe: We also learned a lot about how things actually work. When Ones and Zeros got released, on tour, I remember seeing our album in the “Top Staff Picks” or whatever at some cool music shop in Portland. And thinking, “Wow. This is really it!” And then talking to the distribution people who were at the show later that night and realizing that we actually paid for that. Luke Kozlowski: But then, also, I remember playing in New York the ﬁrst time, at CMJ.

And CBGB. That was just a really cool experience. It was packed, it was sold out,

and apparently Elijah Wood got turned away. That made us feel really important. “No hobbits!” Brooke Gallupe: We would read the press hoping that it would be the article that shot us to fame, or something like that. But that’s a terrible idea, I have to say. Because with the good ones you say, “Okay, great. Another good one, put it on the pile.” The bad ones you think, “Oh my god. It hurts. It hurts so much!” A ten out of ten review is just like, “Yeah. That’s what I think, too.” But a nine out of ten makes you wonder, “What’s wrong?”

A portion of the tour with the New Pornographers coincided with Mint’s 15th anniversary. The label planned a celebratory cross-country tour, in conjunction with

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CBC Radio 3 and Exclaim! which had started around the same time as Mint and had always been keenly interested in the label and generous in its coverage of Mint bands.

Ian Danzig, publisher of Exclaim!: I ﬁrst met Bill in the nineties, in Toronto. He was living here and we had just started Exclaim! and we needed some help with graphic design. In the very early issues, Bill did a bunch of the little logos and section headers. What I discovered later was that, sometimes, Bill just sent the work to Randy and Randy did it. Mint really exposed us to the great music scene that was in Vancouver. I think it’s a traditional, positive record label–media outlet relationship. They made investments in and promoted great artists and we were excited to discover those artists and get behind them. I’d been talking to Randy constantly because we do an anniversary tour every year and I’d always wanted to have the New Pornographers on it. They just kept getting bigger and it was like, “Holy shit, this is never going to happen, they wouldn’t want to do the Exclaim! tour, they’re too popular,” kind of thing. And the timing never worked when the New Pornographers were on the road. But because we both had a strong relationship with CBC Radio 3, they got involved, as well, with a compilation CD. And Mint put together a great package with it. It was just a great conﬂuence of activities.

The Exclaim!/Mint/CBC Radio 3 tour made its way across Canada throughout the fall of 2006. Immaculate Machine, for its part, continued to tour after, including dates in Europe. They then decided to release Les Uns Mais Pas Les Autres, an

EP

entirely in French.

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Brooke Gallupe: I did a degree in French and French Literature at UVic. And I got really into it. You kind of need something else, other than just touring and practising the same songs, once in a while. And so that was just my little pet project. We did a few interviews for francophone stations in Quebec, which was hard.

The band then returned to JC/DC to record their second full-length for Mint, Fables. The experience would not be as carefree as the ﬁrst time around.

An Immaculate Machine set list.

Luke Kozlowski: There was pressure in the studio, and sometimes when there’s that pressure on, it’s just not as enjoyable as it can be. And when you have different opinions on how you want things to sound, sometimes you need to take a step back. Brooke Gallupe: I think it was mostly my fault. It was about doing the same thing over and over again, until we got it perfect, and I was getting really frustrated. There was never really any actual conﬂict between band members, but there was always this kind of unspoken competition. Kathryn does so well with repetitively working something to perfection. And no matter how much I try, I’ll never get it perfect like she does. Luke Kozloski: One day Brooke just took off and went back to Victoria. We’re like, “Oh. Where did he go?” [Laughs] We were kind of hypothesizing at John and

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Dave’s, just, “Well, what’s going through his head?” But eventually he came back. Brooke Gallupe: I wasn’t able to get past that. We just changed producers midstream. We went and worked with Colin Stewart [of Hive]. John and Dave are really good at getting layers and layers of instruments all perfectly in line with each other, and the whole thing is production perfection. Whereas Colin immediately really gelled with me, because he was more about, “Hey, from a listener’s point of view, does this sound cool, or does it not?”

Fables came out on June 12, 2007. In the end, the album featured contributions by friend Owen Pallett, the Cribs, and Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, whom Nardwuar had befriended and brought along to JC/DC for a visit. (Kapranos had also, that past December, showed up unannounced at Mint’s Christmas Party and jumped onstage with the Evaporators and the Cribs. His cameo had created quite a splash in the local and national media, and has since fueled the annual event with “who might be there?” gossip.) The band followed up with a 7-inch, Won’t Be Pretty b/w Wo Xiang Tanbai. “Wo Xiang Tanbai” was Fables’ “Dear Confessor,” re-released in Mandarin.

Kathryn Calder: I was at the Mint ofﬁce, handwriting the thank yous for Fables with the Mint folks. Grant Lawrence came on Radio 3 and he was talking about Les Uns Mais Pas Les Autres. And he was like, “Ha ha, their next record’s going to be in Chinese.” And then I thought, “Okay, that would be awesome if we did a song that was in Mandarin.” We had a friend who studied Mandarin, so we just got her to translate the song. Brooke Gallupe: We got Chris Kelly, the producer for Grant’s show, in on the secret that we wanted to release this Chinese song and have Grant hear it by surprise. He didn’t remember, of course, that he had said that. I think they had an old archive

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of what he had said that made us do it in the ﬁrst place, and Chris played him back the archive, and he thought it was the greatest thing. Unless he was just joking, and he actually thought it was the greatest waste of our time.

With Kathryn’s duties in the New Pornographers becoming increasingly demanding, some wear and tear on the band began to occur.

Kathryn Calder: I knew it was tough for Immaculate Machine, legitimately, because it’s hard to be in two bands at the same time. Brooke Gallupe: We knew we had a three-album deal. So the third album was imminent. Fables was doing pretty well. There was a growing tension between the New Pornographers and us. And a growing kind of resentment. It’s every rock band’s story, really. As soon as you start to realize some of the goals you’ve always had, everyone turns on each other, and gets jaded, and all that kind of stuff.

It certainly didn’t help that Fables, although generally well received, had only tepidly impressed then powerful Pitchfork. The site gave the album a 6.7 rating and made a few heavy-handed comparisons to the New Pornographers.

Kathryn Calder: I felt like I was holding them back, making it difﬁcult for the band to do things because my schedule was so crazy. And also, at the same time, my mother was really sick. She had ALS — Lou Gehrig’s desease. It’s a really terrible, terrible disease. I was the one in the best position to look after her. I decided to do that rather than continue in the band. I didn’t know at that point how long she was going to be alive.

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Luke Kozlowski: Since Kathryn took a step back, and I was going through a bit of an existential crisis myself at the same time, I took that opportunity to go back to school. But we were still committed to making that last album, and so that went forward as planned. Brooke Gallupe: The one real driving force is that we had this record to make. We had funding to make an album from Mint. And recording is the greatest thing. It’s so much fun. And when it’s paid for, you don’t not take that opportunity. So I had this album. Either we were all going to make it, or I was going to make it, or I was going to make it with their help, which is what ended up happening.

The ﬁnal product, High on Jackson Hill, was mostly an effort between Gallupe and producer Colin Stewart (incidentally, Stewart and Calder were married in 2011).

Kathryn Calder: I contributed one song, “You Destroyer,” which I sing lead on. The rest was pretty much a Brooke effort. That was pretty cool, too, seeing him make a record from start to ﬁnish. Luke Kozlowski: That Fables album was just like a perfect marriage between those two different styles. Ones and Zeros was a John-and-Dave-style album, and we have High on Jackson Hill, which is the total Colin-style. Kathryn Calder: And you know, the fact that I came in to the New Pornographers because Neko was so busy, and I ended up leaving Immaculate Machine because I was so busy with the New Pornographers — the irony is not lost on me.

Calder is now a full-time member of the New Pornographers. Her mother passed away in 2009, and in 2010 she released a solo album, Are You My Mother?

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Kozlowski is back at school, as planned, but has been known to step in for the occasional Immaculate Machine gig.

Brooke Gallupe: I’m not sure what Immaculate Machine really is anymore. I sort of haven’t known since Kathryn said she was leaving. Luke Kozlowski: There’s always going to be a part of me that wonders, “What if I had stayed and I had still been working as hard as I was before and [been] as committed? Could we have still kept that progression going?” Brooke Gallupe: I’m deﬁnitely doing another album, soon. I just don’t know whether it’ll be called Immaculate Machine.

Back in 2005, while Immaculate Machine was working on Ones and Zeros, Mint was cultivating another pop enterprise: a four-piece called P:ano (pronounced piano).

Nick Krgovich, multi-instrumentalist in P:ano: I guess our coming out party was when we played this festival that Brady Cranﬁeld [from Kid Champion] and Nick Bragg from Zulu put together at the Sugar Reﬁnery. I was sixteen or seventeen. We started passing cassette tapes around to CiTR and things, and people just started getting interested in what we were doing in a way that was very surprising. [The Hive’s] Colin Stewart’s band Vancouver Nights played at the Brickyard, and we played, too. It was a school night, and our drummer was even younger than us, so we were loading up our gear right after we played, and then Colin just kind of hopped out of nowhere and was like, “I love your band; I have a recording studio. I want to record you; here’s my number.”

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P:ano’s ﬁrst two albums were released on Hive’s now defunct label Hive Fi, with a co-release on Berkeley’s Zum Records. They began work on a third album, Brigadoon, a sprawling, 22-song epic.

Nick Krgovich: Bill’s wife, Rose, liked P:ano, and he emailed me around Christmas time because he lived up in Summerland and there wasn’t a local record store where he could get our albums. So I remember FedEx-ing him the P:ano records as Christmas presents. I had his email address, so I just passed Brigadoon along to him at some point. Bill Baker: I just thought it was this beautiful, lush record. Larissa Loyva, multi-instrumentalist in P:ano: Before that [record] we had a total rotating cast of guest artists. I was a strong proponent for, “There’s a lot of talent in this band, why don’t we just do it all ourselves?” At that time we rehearsed a lot, and Nick wrote a lot of songs, so it was a very proliﬁc and creative time for us. Justin Kellam, drums in P:ano: If I remember correctly, Nick’s idea for the album was that it would be like a musical. Larissa Loyva: And it was, I guess, around that time that Mint took notice. I remember they took us to [upscale Asian restaurant] Wild Rice, and we had dinner and drinks there. It felt very fancy. Randy Iwata: Bands have said this before, when they’re pitching us on things, “This sounds like a Mint album” or “This sounds like the Mint sound.” Even though we don’t really know what it is. Because, you know, it is so varied. But my recollection is that this was the Mintiest of their albums. Justin Kellam: I think it was Bill speciﬁcally who championed the album and wanted to put it out. For Mint, it’s a very eccentric album. You know, it’s not a guitar album, really, at all. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly rocking.

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Brigadoon was released on April 5, 2005, and was followed in November of that year by Ghost Pirates Without Heads.

Nick Krgovich: Brigadoon was kind of “anything goes.” We pummelled through the ideas of the American Songbook and it was very free. Kind of going against the idea of what an album should be. There were strong seams in it, but musically it was all over the place and it was overlong and a lot of the songs were really short and took some strange left turns. All of the records are like a reaction to the one before. Brigadoon was a reaction to [Hive Fi record] The Den, [and] Ghost Pirates was a reaction to Brigadoon. I see a silver line that connects them in a really strong way, but at the same time, to me they sound quite different and there are different ideas being presented in each one. Justin Kellam: It went from us learning these quite difﬁcult arrangements and stops and starts, and ups and downs, to basically stripping down to the quietest, most non-existent sort of instruments. I mean, Larissa was playing wood blocks, and every once in a while the accordion. And I was playing one tom, and Nick was playing ukulele. And he was very speciﬁc that he didn’t really want to be mic’d. After this big, unwieldy sort of album, I think that he wanted to do something that was very different. Larissa Loyva: We had little input until Nick presented a song to us, and then we’d usually ﬂesh it out as a group. He always had some grand scheme in his head about how it was supposed to go. It was impossible to guess what he had up his sleeve. Nick Krgovich: Ghost Pirates was recorded really quickly. It was mixed and recorded in one session. That was at the Hive as well. That record cost me a hundred and ﬁfty dollars to make. Larissa Loyva: Mint was always good about getting bands out there, especially

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across Canada. And in the States, too, I think they’re pretty good for that. We didn’t tour a heck of a lot. I think we went down the West Coast three or four times, or some section thereof. Nick Krgovich: We went on a long tour, maybe a month or so. It was the only European P:ano tour. And it just seemed like Larissa was feeling less and less interested. We started the group at such an early age that our ideas of what we wanted to do musically hadn’t fully been discovered yet, so the longer we were working on things and making music, it felt like she had some other things that she wanted to dedicate her time to. Larissa Loyva: When we came back from Europe, I quit the band, and that was that. Justin Kellam: When she actually said, “I can’t be in this band anymore,” it was only surprising that she did it. The lead up to it said it was going to happen, but the fact that she actually said that was what she was going to do I think was a surprise for all of us. Larissa Loyva: I’d been thinking a lot at that point about writing my own music, and I knew it was something that wouldn’t jive with the band. I wasn’t particularly getting along with the other members of the band at that point, either, so it was just time to go.

While the remains of P:ano would stay in place for a time, eventually the band disintegrated. Kellam, Krgovich, and Loyva all continued to be further entangled with Mint, and Kellam and Krgovich re-formed as the band No Kids. Their name, in part, was a reaction to a side project of Kellam’s: Duplex! was the children’s music group he shared with his wife, Veda Hille, who’d also guested on the second pre-Mint P:ano album.

Bill Baker: Canadian cultural icon, Veda Hille.

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Randy Iwata: I just love Veda. I think she’s incredible. As Bill said, a Canadian cultural icon. Very few of those. Bill Baker: Well, I said that because that’s what you call her. [Laughs] Randy Iwata: And the idea of the kids’ record was kind of neat. A kids’ record involving a Canadian cultural icon is neater. It also involved people that we knew, once again. Shit. Abe might be a teenager now, huh? [Abe Caruso is actually nine; he was three when the album came out.] Veda Hille, Canadian cultural icon: Duplex! started because Brady [Cranﬁeld] from Zulu [and Kid Champion] was putting together an album to go along with a book called Sonny, which is about a little boy who started a band. He asked a bunch of musicians to make songs as if they were that band, and I wrote a song for that, just on my own. I tried to write a good kids’ song, something I’d never tried before. And it was really fun. And then I realized that everyone who lived in our duplex played the right instruments to form a band. Which is amazing. We had Justin, my husband, who played drums, and I played the keys, and Annie and Matt upstairs played bass and guitar. And Shaun, who also lived upstairs, was a trumpet player. So I said, “Why don’t we give this a try, and let’s have all our kids sing on the record.” Justin’s daughter was about ten. It was supposed to be a band of children for the project. So it was like, “This isn’t just for children, it’s like, what would I write if I was a kid?” And that ﬁrst song has a Ramones reference, because it’s so clear that they’re really a great kids’ band. I think that was the fun thing, taking on a character. It was crazy fun making this song with all the kids and the band, even though it was kind of thrown together. So that was when we decided to make a whole record. Bill Baker: I went to high school with Veda, too, so I knew her for unrelated reasons. One time in high school somebody gave me a joint. [Laughs] I didn’t smoke pot very much. I remember I smoked it, and I was wandering around, and I got on a bus. For some reason I wanted to go out to UBC. I have no idea why, but I remem-

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ber so clearly how awkward I got. I remember sitting in those sideways seats at the front of the bus, next to Veda, just trying to have a conversation with her. And that was the last time I ever talked to her. [Laughs] Until this happened. Veda Hille: I’m very proud of Ablum. When we ﬁnished it, we said, “We should take this to Mint.” It was the ﬁrst thing we all thought of, just, “Mint should put this out.” It was such a Mint project. It was guitar, pop, jangly . . . it sounded like a Mint record to me. So I called Bill and I got him a copy. At ﬁrst he was like, “Well, we don’t really do kids’ records, and, you know, I’m sure it’s great, but it’s not really our thing.” And then he called me back about three days later, saying, “Okay, you’re on. Sam has not stopped playing this record since we got it.” [Baker and Rose Melberg had son Sam in 2002.] And Sam was about three at that point. So Sam was really the one who got us that gig.

Mint released Ablum by Duplex! which included the songs “Salad Song” (about how salads taste like dirt), “Lookit Me,” and “Pooing and Peeing.” It’s widely praised as an album for cool kids (and their cool parents).

Veda Hille: I really believe that kids don’t need speciﬁc music that’s not for anybody else. They practically listen to any music. But even though I don’t feel they need separate music, it was nice to write for a different kind of person. You know, about underwear and going to bed. Bill Baker: They don’t have any money, though, kids. Randy Iwata: Parents do. There was an opportunity there to sort of go in that direction of more kids’ things. Because there’ll always be kids, you know. Veda Hille: It was also a time when kids’ music was just starting to really take off in a much more interesting way. There were a lot of good kids’ records coming out: They Might Be Giants, and Zane, and all kinds of people making real records that

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just happened to be about things that kids would be interested in. The only drag was having to talk all the time about kids’ music. People really wanted us to take a stand on how kids’ music had to be better. Meh. Just play music that your kid likes . . . and hopefully it’s Duplex! Justin Kellam: We had a very, very speciﬁc mandate that unless someone actually gave us a crapload of cash to travel, we wouldn’t do it. So when most children’s fests contacted us, most of them gave us ridiculously low offers. And we were bringing our children, so there was never really ever a way for us to go and do those things. Veda Hille: We did play some shows around town. Folkfest might have been a bit of a highlight. I remember other kids coming to get our kids’ autographs, so that was fun.

Duplex! released a second album, Worser, in 2009.

Veda Hille: Duplex! has always been a when-we-feel-like-it kind of thing. And yeah, the only problem with that gap was that the littler kids grew up. The ten-year-olds were now teenagers and didn’t want to be involved anymore. Justin Kellam: Embarrassment. Veda Hille: Total embarrassment. So we used old demo recordings of them to keep them in the recording, but mostly it’s the younger kids. It was also fun doing Worser, but it was a bit more scattered because the children weren’t as involved. They were more at the centre of it for Ablum. It didn’t have the same sense of being the amazing thing at the amazing time that Ablum was, but I still really love Worser. Justin Kellam: Hence the name.

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In the non-kids category, the mid-2000s also saw follow-up releases on the part of the Buttless Chaps and Neko Case. For the Chaps, it was their second release on Mint, Where Night Holds Light, in February 2006. By that time, the Chaps had already been together for eight years.

Dave Gowans: The second Mint record was a fun, creative experience that changed us. We left one studio and went to the Hive and re-recorded stuff. Martin [Tielli] and Tim [Vesely] from the Rheostatics added some tracks and I felt like we were really collaborating and sharing music. And it was around the time of the

Dave Gowans from the Buttless Chaps working at the Mint ofﬁce.

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Rheostatics tour [in 2004, just prior to recording] when I felt it was really potentially going somewhere. Morgan MacDonald: Ida [Nilsen] was in the band by then. I think she was a guest on Love This Time. This album had, I thought, really well-executed performances. A lot of those songs are really a great listen.

For a time, Gowans worked at Mint. He also held down a job at Red Cat Records on Main Street. Eventually, Gowans and Lasse Lutick decided to buy the store.

Lasse Lutick: Dave and I had thought about buying a record store when we’d ﬁrst moved to Vancouver, but we didn’t have the capital. Red Cat wasn’t doing well, but Dave was convinced that he could make it work with help and so he phoned me up out of the blue. I jumped at it. I ran a tree planting business, but I didn’t do a lot when I was in the city and I was starting to need something else to do. And then Dave’s wife got pregnant right after that. I think our lives were more full in Vancouver by then. There was just a lot going on with everybody. Plus I think in terms of playing music together, it was becoming a little bit predictable at that point. Our musical conversations were more predictable. Torben Wilson: I’m not the thickest-skinned individual around. I have a tendency to have my heart on my sleeve, and I tend to take things a little personally. Lasse and I were starting to have some friction as far as musical direction and stuff went. It was just little things, but it kept happening over and over and, honestly, I think I was just getting tired. Dave Gowans: I think for myself, as a performer in that band, there was a certain point where I started having a hard time doing the more antic stuff. I used to impersonate the woman from Flashdance and run on the spot, get a chair out of

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the audience, really ridiculous stuff. And I remember feeling at one point like I’d been doing this for a while and it started to get kind of old. People would be calling out for it in the crowd, like, “Play ‘Mr. Roboto,’ by Styx!” And we’d forgotten how to play it but that’s what the band was being remembered for. So I became really adamant about getting rid of that side of things, which hurt us as a group for enjoyment onstage. It’s very novelty and kitschy and fun to do for a Halloween show, but if you’re doing it night after night on the road you really should become a wedding band or something. Torben Wilson: There was an element of regret in me that the band seemed to be moving away from the more spontaneous fun of some of the earlier stuff. There seemed to be more of a focus — and this isn’t a bad thing at all — on producing a cohesive album. And, you know, some of the things that Dave was doing, as a frontman, I guess he started feeling a little self-conscious. I think we were growing up.

Torben and the Chaps parted ways in late 2006.

Torben Wilson: I think it was difﬁcult as well because I didn’t really act on it when I should have. I really should have cut out a bit sooner. But I let it go, and they ended up asking me to leave the band. So even though I had kind of felt for a long time that I should be doing that, I guess I didn’t have the guts to do it.

In the intervening years between the New Pornographers’ and her own studio albums, Neko Case had released a live record, in 2004, called The Tigers Have Spoken.

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Randy Iwata: Tigers was our ﬁrst experience with an incredibly huge recording budget. It involved big mobile recording studios in Chicago and Toronto. Multiple nights, I think. Guests. It was huge. And I ﬂew down to Tucson and worked on that with Neko. Bill Baker: I remember that as a situation where Neko proved again that she is a pro. So much of what happened with Neko was informed by our early experiences with her, when she was this scrappy kid from Tacoma. And I think she had to go against our vision of who she was to prove that she really is a very thoughtful performer. My point being, we didn’t really want to do a live record. Live records are kind of a throwaway. It’s sort of like a Christmas record, you know? Nobody really cares. And right from the outset she was basically saying, “This isn’t going to be like that. I’m going to have all these people involved.” And I remember that just being my ﬁrst experience of really coming around to thinking differently. Because I thought, “I don’t know how you can make this something good.” And she did. It’s a great record. Randy Iwata: Neko’s history is that she would not put out a subpar release. That, you know, come hell or high water, it’ll be amazing. And it was.

Shortly after Tigers, Mint released an album by Rod Slaughter of Duotang’s new band, Novillero. A minor controversy surrounded it — Novillero had technically (if not ofﬁcially) signed with Winnipeg label Endearing but, with Slaughter’s prompting, had pulled up stakes and moved to Mint. It is to this date the only example of a band leaving their label midstream to sign with Mint. Novillero released Aim Right for the Holes in Their Lives in 2005, and a follow-up, A Little Tradition, in 2008. Case, for her part, followed up Tigers with what is arguably her big breakout album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (2006).

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Bill Baker: That was when she ﬁnally became a free agent and was able to create a deal for herself. We made a pitch to Neko, as well. We sat down and ﬁgured out what we could actually, realistically offer. Because what we wanted to do was to perpetuate that relationship that we had, where she would come to us and we would license out. I didn’t really think she would go for the pitch, either. I would’ve been surprised. Between Twin Cinema and Challengers, I think the realism of the New Pornographers wanting to work with us seems greater, in terms of what they were actually doing and what we were capable of doing. Whereas at this point in Neko’s career she was already doing magazine covers. She was already way further down that road than they had been. A lot of what I know about how this business works is due to things I’ve had to learn to deal with through Neko and her records.

To Bill and Randy’s great surprise, Neko licensed Fox Confessor to Mint in Canada.

Bill Baker: We didn’t really expect her to say yes to working with us, but the reason why we got this record was basically as a thank you. For everything. I mean, we only got it for Canada, but that still was quite something, considering that we didn’t have anything, and she was well within her rights to go. ANTI- has a terriﬁc distribution system. There was no advantage to her giving us that record, in any way at all, that I can think of. Because the thing is, with the New Pornographers doing their things the way that they do, going to a Canadian label [Last Gang] for their records, they are also eligible for all kinds of grants and government stuff. But Neko, being an American — I mean, there was no advantage. And for the New Pornographers, yeah, they got to be on Letterman, but it wasn’t like something happened right after. It was just this sort of gradual thing. With her, I remember having that feeling of “That’s my friend that I’m watching

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on TV.” Like, holy shit. That kind of excitement. If I met one of my parents’ friends and they asked what I do, I could drop that name and they would know what I was talking about. And that was phenomenal to me. Randy Iwata: All of Neko’s various support mechanisms pushed all their chips in at that time with the goal of making her a podium ﬁnisher. In the public or the cultural view. Bill Baker: As self-deprecating as we can be, we wouldn’t have been up for that whole job. God help us if they’d said yes. I don’t know what we would’ve done.

Neko Case’s next record, 2009’s Middle Cyclone, was released exclusively on ANTI-.

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Chapter 16 Failsafe

In early 2006, after eight years away, Bill Baker moved back to Vancouver. His marriage to Rose Melberg had effectively ended, and he stepped back into the Mint breach, though it would be a little while before he’d have an effect on the label’s releases again. In near simultaneity to Bill’s return, Young and Sexy released their third album, Panic When You Find It.

Paul Pittman: Twin Cinema was coming out in the fall of 2005. Ours had to wait ’til February 2006.

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Lucy Brain: I remember feeling that was agony, to have to wait that long. Paul Pittman: That record’s cool because we were pretty much a whole new band. We have Andre [switching from bass and] playing guitar, a new rhythm section, and we got it together in eight months. We started at the Hive. I think we just wanted something a bit more naturalsounding, because I felt that the second record was a little bit too produced. Whether that was JC/DC’s fault or our own . . . I think it was a combination. For the third record, we’re like, “Let’s try something different.” So we went to the Hive, and then we got to the mixes phase, and we didn’t have any way of saving a mix. The idea of making a mix one night and not being able to change it the next day . . . I think we went through a day and a half of that, and I was like, “I can’t do this. It’s driving me crazy. I know I’m going to take it home and I’m not going to like it. I just wasted ﬁve hundred dollars.” So then we moved it over to JC/DC [who used computers to mix] and mixed it there.

Panic When You Find It came out on February 14, 2006. The band followed it up in 2008 with The Arc, which is their last album to date. In the years between, Lucy Brain and Andre Legace split up. As Pittman is quick to note, however, they are still “technically married.”

Andre Legace: We were a couple of friends; we were practising twice a week. Paul Pittman: Hanging out together. Putting shows together. Flirting with other people together. Andre Legace: Going on tour together. Paul Pittman: It wasn’t like her and I, who’d been broken up for, like, a decade or whatever. Lucy Brain: All right, already.

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Bill Baker: The Arc took a very long time to grow on me. I think by this point they hadn’t played a whole lot, if I’m not mistaken. And I think their process had changed somewhat. Paul Pittman: The last tour that we did, it was disheartening. It just seemed like, even the Toronto show, there was no publication for it. And usually that’s our best show. We felt like Spinal Tap, when they go to the puppet show or whatever. “Puppet Show . . . and Spinal Tap.” It was like “Nobody . . . and Young and Sexy.” Lucy Brain: I remember Paul was trying to convince me that this record was the right thing to do. I wasn’t even convinced that we needed to record. I wasn’t even willing to be taken to that step. And remember our last

CD

release show? At the Biltmore? R.E.M. were sup-

posed to turn up. Paul Pittman: They weren’t there, though. Lucy Brain: I remember thinking that night that it felt like, “Hey, this is kind of it,” in a way. Not for us, but for us and Mint. I think Randy said something to Paul that night, like, “So this is goodbye,” or something like that. Paul Pittman: It was just something ambiguous. But that’s Randy.

In the meantime, an old friend was busy prepping an ambitious new project.

Coco Culbertson: I took a bit of a time off between bands, and I really wanted to do something that the Gay hadn’t been able to do, which was have a very strong, complicated harmony-type ensemble. And we were going to do that in the Gay, but we ended up just wanting to play rock ’n’ roll. So I did the same thing I did with the Gay. I just started calling people I didn’t know but who I knew had been in choirs, so I knew what their vocal capability was. And I said, “I’m putting together a choir, do you want to come over and sing?” You know. “You don’t have

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to bring anything but your voice.” Larissa Loyva, P:ano and the Choir Practice: It was funny, because the excuse I gave for leaving P:ano was I wanted to work on my own music, and then I got sucked into the Choir Practice. Coco called me at work and said, “I heard you work here; I’m starting this band.” When she said that she wanted to do a vocal-focused thing, I said, “That’s perfect, because that’s exactly what I need right now.” I’d always sung in choir in school, and I really Coco rehearsing before a Choir Practice show.

loved it. I still miss it now, you know. Jenn Chycoski, the Choir Practice: Coco approached me and said, “We’re doing

this kind of little get-together sing-along, where we drink wine.” And I thought, “Yeah. That sounds awesome. That sounds like a lot of fun.” I went in to the ﬁrst practice, and I just sat and listened to the ﬁrst few songs. I couldn’t believe the talent. The voices were so spectacular. And I was just like, “Oh yeah. I want to do this.” Shira Blustein, the Choir Practice: Coco and I were at the Sasquatch festival, with this gorgeous sunset over the Gorge. Playing with A.C. Newman. And she just said, “I have this idea for a project. Something really special and different, with lots of people.” And I don’t know, I have a lot of trust and faith in Coco and what she does, so I was of course on board. Ska-T, the Choir Practice (and Smugglers roadie): I was friends with Coco. She just called me up and said, “I need some more guys in the Choir, we’ve got two big shows coming up.” I joined, she gave me a CD, and she said, “Just listen to the CD

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and make up your own parts.” I spent a week, every day, just making up parts. First show for me was at the Railway, and it was sold out and packed, and there was all this buzz. And then the second show was a week after that, and it was sold out, at the church.

Not too long after the Choir formed, they were invited to open for Antony and the Johnsons at St. Andrew’s-Wesley Church in September 2005. A Georgia Straight review from the show described the Choir as “comprising 11 indie scenesters clad in virginal white.”

Larissa Loyva: We were all really excited, and we were all drinking in the back of the church before that, to calm our nerves. We felt like badasses. It was pretty fun, the sound was great in there. I don’t recall having screwed up too much. The church has a very forgiving sound. Olivia Fetherstonhaugh, the Choir Practice and fanshaw: I worked at CiTR, but I was more of a music fan, not a musician. So I was like, “Oh, I have to get to know some musicians.” I saw the Choir Practice open for Antony and the Johnsons, and I said, “That’s a band that I could be in, because I was in a choir, and it won’t require me to play any instruments or anything, I can just sing.” Shane Turner, the Choir Practice and fanshaw: I played in a band called Sparrow with Lucy [Brain] and Jason Zumpano and Lucy was in the Choir. She said she was dropping out but that I should join, because she knows I used to be in tons of choirs. Olivia Fetherstonhaugh: I just became really determined to join the band. I went to Coco Culbertson’s solo show at the Lamplighter, and I saw her go into the bathroom, so I went into a stall and just stood in it and waited for her to wash her hands. And then I ﬂushed the toilet to pretend that I had used it, and then went out

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and talked to her. And I just said, “I wrote a song for your band, I’ll email it to you, blah blah blah.” Which wasn’t true. I had a song, but I didn’t actually intend to let the Choir use it, I just wanted her to hear my music and let me be in her band. I emailed her a song called “Vegas” that I ﬁnished writing the next day. Coco Culbertson: I ended up calling her. She was so awesome. I was like, “Where have you been, young lady?” I said, “Why don’t you just come and sing with us?” And just such a lovely, decent person, you know, as well. She really embodies what the Choir was meant to be. Olivia Fetherstonhaugh: She said, “What are you doing in three days, can you come to a rehearsal and then record?” I was like, “Uh, okay.” So I went to one rehearsal, and then I was in the studio a couple days later. Chris Kelly, the Choir Practice, producer of CBC Radio 3: I had just moved from New Brunswick, and I was working at Radio 3. Through meeting Grant I met everyone at Mint. It was great, because I didn’t have any friends in Vancouver. Someone had

The Choir in costume.

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sent me a MySpace link about the Choir Practice, saying, “Oh, you’re a fey sort of character. You’d like this band.” [Laughs] I said, “Oh, okay.” So I checked them out, and I was like, “Yeah, they’re great.” I genuinely wanted to get into the music scene in Vancouver, but I was also doing this stunt journalism thing, and I had had this massive experience with choirs when I was a kid. So I thought, “Oh, I will interview the band and ask to join them.

The Choir Practice rehearse in the Mint ofﬁce before the Victory Square block party.

And sort of build that into the piece.” I remember doing this interview at the Railway Club, and they were all wearing trench coats. And I asked all these questions, and then I asked to join and, amazingly, Coco said yes.

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Karin Bubas, the Choir Practice: It’s really hard to mic the Choir. For Coco and her recordings, there were two people per mic. I just remember listening back in the actual recording studio, and thinking that it sounded more — not like a doo-wop group, but it didn’t have that reverb that you get in a big room, or that sort of echo. In post-production I think they were able to duplicate the levels and ﬂesh it out. Kurt Dahle: I produced that Choir record. I’ve got to say — some of them who weren’t singers were great singers, and some of them who were singers weren’t great singers. So what I had to do a lot was overdub my good voices, the ones that I thought had really nice pitch, or a beautiful voice, or that timbre to the voice that I thought really helped the sound. I also recorded myself doing a few harmonies and just mixed them in.

Mint released the Choir Practice’s self-titled record in May 2007. It included “Failsafe,” a New Pornographers track loaned to them by Carl Newman. The uniqueness of the project meant that the Choir found itself in demand, sometimes in some interesting ways.

Larissa Loyva: Jarvis Cocker’s MySpace page was holding a contest to see who should open for him in each city. And so we just deluged them with emails saying, “Get Choir Practice, get Choir Practice,” and it worked. Jenn Chycoski: Being handpicked by him was an honour, and he was such a lovely man. A couple of the girls in the band just about had heart attacks. Larissa Loyva: Pulp is my favorite band of all time, and it was just a dream come true. If you’d told me ﬁve years before that I would be in the band opening for Jarvis Cocker, I would have been like, “No way.”

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While the Choir had been Coco’s project from the start, several of Loyva’s songs made it onto the record. In the months following the album’s release, big changes were afoot in the Culbertson–Dahle family.

Coco Culbertson: I got pregnant again. “Again,” I say, like it happens every week. [Laughs] “Damn pregnancy keeps sneaking up on me.” I got pregnant and moved to Saskatchewan, bought a farm, to do my maternity leave. I just wanted to get out of downtown. And it was time for an adventure. So off I went. Ska-T: That was almost the beginning of the end. Then Larissa took the reins. She didn’t want to, but someone had to, right? Karin Bubas: I think that everyone was prepared to continue on without Coco. And I think they were surprised that she got upset that people would continue on without her.

The following spring, the Choir was invited to play

SXSW.

By then, many of the

original members had left, including Bubas and Loyva, who’d moved on to a solo project. Coco ﬂew from Saskatchewan to Austin to join the band.

Ska-T: There were a bunch of new people Coco hadn’t really met before, and there was more piano and electric guitar, and bass guitar on some of the songs. I just wanted to go right back to just acoustic guitar. Occasionally maybe a little bit of piano. As soon as you add more instruments, you know, you’re just this big band with lots of people. You’re not a choir anymore. Coco Culbertson: What was happening wasn’t anything that I would want to associate my name with. Not in a negative way, just, you know, if I’m going to eat shit,

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I’ll do it at work where I’m being paid, but not with my art. Jenn Chycoski: The ﬁnal day in Austin, when we’d been totally all high and happy about our shows, she sort of had a little meeting with me where she said she was gonna pull the plug. [She asked] how she should do it, and I said, “Oh my god. Don’t ask me that. I can’t. I can’t tell you how to do it.” And then just the next day, she did pull us all together and say, “Yeah. This isn’t going to work for me.” We used to brag about being the band that didn’t have politics, but then politics started rolling like crazy. People started getting angry. Emails were being sent back and forth. Finally, a few people decided to say, “Well, if you don’t want this person in the band, then I’m not going to be in the band.” It was a chain reaction. Ska-T: Coco really wants to do another album but, realistically, having a band of twelve people is almost impossible. I don’t know if Larissa’s even into it, because she’s doing her own stuff, but if there is going to be a new Choir Practice album, Larissa’s songs are amazing and they need to be on it. I think it worked because it was Coco’s songs and Larissa’s songs, and they were very different. It’ll be a studio album, it won’t be a band. It’ll be a bunch of singers. And that’s all I can hope for.

In 2006, Nardwuar — who’d released a steady stream of Evaporators records with the label over the last eight years — came to the guys with a proposal of a different sort.

Randy Iwata: I don’t remember what Nard’s relationship was with MuchMusic at the time, because at some point in the last ﬁve years, he stopped. Or they stopped. He was a freelancer for a long, long time. He’d also done one or two specials on Much of his various interviews collapsed into a package, and he wanted to make

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those available. He did it all on his own. I don’t know where he did the studio stuff, but he did. He collected, and curated, and facilitated, and did everything.

Mint released two

DVD

collections of Nard’s interviews, spanning from the mid-

’80s through to their respective release dates in 2006 and 2007.

Nardwuar: The Doot Doola Doot Doo

DVD

[2006] was Alternative Tentacles/Nard-

wuar/Mint, and the second one that came out, Welcome to My Castle [2007], was just Nardwuar/Mint. It wasn’t on Alternative Tentacles. But I only would want it on Nardwuar/Mint for Canada because I want to make sure that stations like CiTR get it. A lot of people, they don’t understand the importance of college radio. But Mint Records really does understand the importance of college radio in Canada and in the U.S.

Nardwuar had long enjoyed underground popularity through the practice of tape trading in the ’80s and ’90s (the analog version of YouTube). Famously, David Cross was given a tape of Nardwuar’s interview with Sonic Youth back on the set of the Ben Stiller Show in the early ’90s. The release of the DVDs, however, led to an inﬂux of U.S. interest in Nardwuar’s work, which was by then quite proliﬁc.

Nardwuar: When I did an interview for CiTR, I thought, “Since I’m interviewing the band in person, why not bring the little video camera I have?” And also the audio turns out a lot better, so a lot of stuff I do I have on video. It’s just always kind of gone hand in hand. It’s like, you’re playing at a gig with a band, why don’t you organize the gig, why don’t you put out a record, and why don’t you interview

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the other bands that are playing on the gig? And why don’t you get Scott from the Evaporators to hold the video camera, and then you can ask the questions, and then you can play the audio on your radio show and take the video to give it to local cable access?

In late 2006, celebrating 20 years on air at CiTR, Nard partnered with veteran photographer Bev Davies for a punk rock calendar. Mint facilitated, making 2006 and 2007 banner years for releasing things that weren’t music.

Randy Iwata: This is basically Nard’s desire to put things into a package and have his legacy. “Here is my thing.” And it was also, I think, before YouTube was popular. Now you don’t need a DVD at all. He’s also big on booklets and all this writing and storytelling and archiving and photo stuff. Bill Baker: There’s a pile of those calendars here somewhere. Randy Iwata: Much like most things Nardwuar, he left a trail of destruction to our morale and a mess in his wake.

In the years to follow, Mint released two more Evaporators records, Gassy Jack and Other Tales in 2007, and a split 7-inch with legendary partier and musician Andrew W.K. called A Wild Pear in 2009.

Andrew W.K.: I met Nardwuar when he came to interview me at Scratch Records in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It must’ve been around 2002. I was very excited — years earlier I had the good fortune of having a friend who was a huge Nardwuar fan. She lent me VHS copies of his interviews and I watched

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them over and over. He made a huge impression on me. I learned a lot watching him and watching how people behaved around him. When I ﬁnally met him, I was starstruck. To me, he is the ultimate person — someone who is completely and entirely himself. That’s the kind of person I want to be around and learn from. And when I had the chance to work with him, I said yes out of respect not only for him but for my own dream being fulﬁlled.

The Evaporators and Andrew W.K.

While Bill and Randy wish everyone had as good a time on Mint as Andrew W.K. did, not every band who comes to the label ends up leaving with such a cheery taste in their mouth. This is perhaps most true when wounds are freshest, so it’s not altogether surprising that in this recent period, two bands declined to participate in this book. One was Vancougar, a female four-piece. The other, Shane Nelken,

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musician extraordinaire (he’s played with the Pornos and A.C. Newman, among others) who heads up the Awkward Stage, ﬁrst declined altogether and then asked to be quoted: “I’d love to talk about my time with Mint, but I’m busy working on a time machine.” The Awkward Stage had two releases on Mint: 2006’s Heaven Is For Easy Girls, and 2008’s Slimming Mirrors and Flattering Lights. Back in the ofﬁce, Bill was slowly returning to full-time involvement. In 2007, the guys brought on board a young music business school grad, Shena Yoshida, as an intern.

Bill Baker: Shena is the new Grant. She shows us stuff. Randy Iwata: We’re too old now to go out, so Shena goes out for us. Shena Yoshida: I didn’t really have a job description. There wasn’t really anyone there to tell me what’s expected of me. I went in, and if I saw things that needed to be done, I would just do them. Eventually it was just sort of like, “We need you, please don’t go.” Which is sweet when you’re interning and ﬁnishing school, and have loans to pay off and stuff. That’s the best-case scenario ever. So I was totally thrilled.

Yoshida now bears the title of label manager, which was invented just for her. The year she came on board also saw releases by Carolyn Mark (her third solo record, Nothing Is Free, following an album of duets called Just Married in 2005), a second Sadies 7-inch, and a solo effort by P:ano’s Nick Krgovich called One Woman Show. In mid-2007, Bill and Randy turned to Shena, for the ﬁrst time, for advice on a band. A young up-and-coming three-piece called Bella with no “tendrils” to the Mint family had approached them about putting out a record.

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Shena Yoshida: I remember Bill sending me Bella demos and saying, “Tell me honestly, what do you think of this? Bill Baker: Bella, to me, represents the ﬁrst time I was involved in the process from the get-go since I came back to Vancouver, really.

Shena, Mint Label Manager, in the ofﬁce.

Tiffany Sotomayor, drums in Bella: I’m from San Francisco, but we all went to college together in Saskatchewan. I had gone to college basically with the purpose of ﬁnding a band, and then I met Charla ﬁrst, and then later on me and Cameron sort of spotted each other out. We were the weird kids at school. Charla McCutcheon, keyboards in Bella: I was from this pretty strict Christian

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family from Abbotsford — the Bible belt of B.C. — so I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio. But I loved what I heard when I heard the radio. That was the early nineties, so I loved the Cure and Bjork and R.E.M. and Pet Shop Boys and Joy Division. When I was ten, I told my mom I was going to buy My Little Ponies with my allowance, but I bought this little radio that could ﬁt underneath my pillowcase. I started playing guitar, and I took some lessons, and my guitar teacher always makes students sing at least once. He said, “I don’t care if you can’t sing. You’re gonna sing once, and then you never have to do it again.” So he made me sing, but ﬁrst he gave me this big lecture about the music industry and how hard it is, and how basically it’s not worth it. Then I sang, and he was like, “Forget everything I just said. You need to do this.” I went to school for music, and that’s where I met Tiff and Cameron. Cameron Fraser, guitar in Bella: Tiff especially was really adamant that we make a band, and I was pretty timid about it. I just didn’t feel very conﬁdent. Charla McCutcheon: School ended, and we all left, but I ended up going to California and living with Tiffany. It was a year later, but we said, “Let’s do this band that we wanted to do.” And so we contacted Cameron, and he’s like, “Okay.” And so we all moved to Vancouver, because it was kind of in the middle. Cameron Fraser: I remember the ﬁrst gig well. We were at the Marine Club, which is now closed, over on Homer. We were in the back room changing — Tiff was adamant that we have show outﬁts — and I was so nervous. But as soon as we started playing I just felt this power. I was like, “I was born for this. I’m in control here, I can do anything.” And the crowd responded well. They seemed genuinely surprised we didn’t suck. Charla McCutcheon: We were new to town, and it seemed like there was more of the whole Black Mountain scene. In our second show, we played with Ladyhawk. And so we felt kind of odd, because we were this pop, hand-clappy kind of band, and we were playing with all the beard rockers. Randy Iwata: They played a Media Club show with Viva Voce. They played ﬁrst.

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Viva Voce played third. And I was amazed at the number of people that were there for them. People came for them, left for the second band, and came back for Viva Voce. Charla McCutcheon: People seemed to like us. We’d get more and more people at shows, and people saying, “I ﬂew from Michigan! I saw you were playing, and I came to see you.” They found out about us on MySpace. And we were like, “Really?” Randy Iwata: I played Bill their [2003 self-released] album on MySpace. Pretty Mess. Bill Baker: I was so excited to meet with them. That was always one of the strengths of a relationship that we would make with an artist, regardless of whether they made good music or whatever. To be able to have a good, personal relationship with people is so important. We went to Taco Time. They served beer and margaritas. I just remember walking away from that dinner impressed. Tiffany is extremely motivated. They had good songs, and they were attractive young people that all dress the same, and they had this great plan, and seemingly a fan base to build on. It was very exciting to me, that meeting. Plus, you know, beer and tacos. Cameron Fraser: Somewhere in there, too, we won a song contest. For the Mint– Exclaim! tour, like the ﬁfteenth-anniversary tour. We got to open for the New Pornographers. Tiffany Sotomayor: I had become aware of anything and everything in Vancouver. And knowing the history of Mint and how long they had been around, and knowing that they had a good standing within the community was deﬁnitely important. I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about Mint. And to see the New Pornographers, Neko Case, or the Organ on the same label, it did give them a lot of credibility.

Bella’s JC/DC-produced album, No One Will Know, came out September 18, 2007. Shortly after, they went on tour.

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Cameron Fraser: We had done a few little tours for the ﬁrst record into western Canada and down to California where Tiff’s from, but this was actually a tour of Canada, which was rad. Although we missed Saskatchewan, but it was a really great experience. How many people, Canadians especially, get to see Canada? Charla McCutcheon: Being in the Vancouver scene, I had started to become friends with Tegan from Tegan and Sara. She had heard our stuff and really liked it, and had started playing it. We weren’t really friends yet, but she just was really supportive of Vancouver

Bella in the studio (clockwise from left: Cameron, Tiffany, and Charla).

bands. And one of the shows that we got was actually with the Breeders, at Richard’s, because their opener couldn’t get across the border. So Kim Deal had asked Tegan what Vancouver bands could open for them, and she had given them four bands, and they picked us. They were like, “Oh yeah, we really like them. We’ll let them play it.”

Shortly after the tour, however, and despite their rising popularity, the band started to disintegrate. Tiffany moved to Spain, and Charla to Toronto.

Cameron Fraser: I’ve never been married, but from my understanding of marriage, there’s some small parallel to being in a band. It’s like you’re married

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to two other people in a polygamous, weird relationship. And I don’t want to blame it on being an artist or whatever, but you’re sensitive about things. You’re sensitive about what you’re doing right, and it’s easier to get hurt that way. Tiffany Sotomayor: I think we just sort of grew apart and wanted to experience different things. For me, particularly, it was hard being there, because I was actually illegal for ﬁve or six years. And I really wanted to have some sort of stability in my life, too, so I had decided, “I’m going to move to Spain.” Charla McCutcheon: We kind of ended, slowly and not very surely. Life took us all in different directions. When we got involved with Mint, we, as a band, were already personally drifting apart. And it just became hard to stay together in the same city. We did tell Bill and Randy, and I think they were sad. Bill Baker: With Bella, it was the ﬁrst time we did demos on songs, and took our time with things, because I was unsure. I did really feel that there was a generational divide there. And it was the ﬁrst record we’d put out by a group not connected to Mint before. Randy Iwata: No tendrils. Bill Baker: Right. But mostly, I just felt old. I remember Tiffany was talking about her family, and going into some detail about her dad, like, “He’s a really cool guy, but he’s totally old. He’s like forty-two.” And I was forty-one or something at the time and I thought, “Oh my God.” And I guess the plus side of it was that she probably wouldn’t have said that if she had thought I was totally old and forty-two.

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By 2008, Bill, Randy, Shena, Dave (and sometimes Beez and the occasional intern or two) had settled into a routine in the ofﬁce. They had more or less established a rhythm by which everyone involved could make a modest living. At eighteen years of age, the label had stumbled into an adulthood of sorts. Over the years, new developments had changed the way they did business: Beez’s steadfast accounting; the rapid rise of the digital music market, mainly through iTunes (which now accounts for 60% of Mint’s sales); resurgence in the public’s interest in vinyl, which led to the re-release of a few albums; and the avenue of government granting and other subsidies to bands’ resources.

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Randy Iwata: There was a time when a lot of our releases had various government logos on it, whereas previously they hadn’t. And you know, the logos changed over time as we learned to avail ourselves of ﬁnancial support. We had, until a certain time, decidedly not wanted to involve ourselves, because I remember when we were at CiTR that the various government logos carried a certain stigma. You know, “S for shitty” or whatever. We snobby college radio types, you know, do not look fondly on that artistically. But [onetime Mint employee and grant whiz] Jenn Barker said, you know, “You should do this because it’s there. And if you don’t get this, someone else will.” And by virtue of that, all the logos started appearing. But that was a big thing for us.

By then, as well, kids who’d grown up with the label and its acts had somewhat starry eyes with regard to Mint and what they could do for them — a romanticized vision of what the label represented. One band, for instance, pitched that it was “saving itself for Mint Records.” Suddenly, Mint was faced with an interesting consequence of having been around for a while: mythic status. Despite such ﬂedgling notions, the day-to-day of the label changed little, and the “Mint sound,” whatever its myriad meanings, held true. That is, until the garage blues blast of the Pack A.D. showed up.

Maya Miller, drummer in the Pack A.D.: Some friends and us decided, “Let’s be a band.” And it was completely on a whim. So we became a band, and we had a lot of fun, and a lot of drinking over the summer, but it didn’t really amount to much of anything. Becky Black, guitars and vocals in the Pack A.D.: I noodled around with guitar. That was pretty much my only experience — and that was actually one of the reasons why we wanted to start a band, because I can play this instrument, and everyone

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could just learn everything else. We had another guy in the band that played bass, so we had two things, and then Maya picked up drums. Maya Miller: Through this band, Becky and I discovered that we actually worked really well together, or at least we thought we did, and [the two of us] continued on as a separate band. I think it was only ﬁve months before we got asked to play a barbecue, and then we inadvertently had our ﬁrst show. And then, two months after that — not even — we recorded an album. Becky Black: With my two hundred bucks. Maya Miller: Yeah, a friend of ours said that he wanted to record us, and we’d played two shows. So we recorded. Because why not? Which is kind of how everything goes. It was always been, why not?

The band self-released Tintype in April 2007.

Maya Miller: The album itself is seventeen tracks long, and that’s only because we didn’t know if we’d make another album. So we just put everything on it. Becky Black: And a lot of the songs we’d never played live, either, we just came up with [them] in the studio. Some of the songs we’ve never, ever played live, even to this day. Maya Miller: And then a month after that, Randy started sending us MySpace messages and asking us questions. From what I understand, Mint had been showing up to shows for some time and not saying anything to us. Randy Iwata: I had seen them before and was blown away, so I dragged Shena to Richard’s to see them play some sort of beneﬁt or something. I was completely blown away, times two. I MySpaced them to ask them about stuff. Maya Miller: We just ended up selling a lot at shows, and we went to all the record stores in Vancouver and consigned the CD. And Randy kept asking random ques-

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tions to us via MySpace. At one point we were running out of

CDs,

and I actually

emailed him, saying, “Well, we need to get more CDs, what do you think we should do? Should we get ﬁve hundred or a thousand, I don’t know.” And he’s like, “A thousand. You should get a thousand.” Becky Black: Maya knew about Mint, too, because she’d worked with Shelby from the Organ. Maya Miller: I remember before we ended up talking to them, we were [asking ourselves], “Oh, what label do you think would ever be interested in a band like us?” And we were like, “Well, maybe this or that,” but we never thought Mint would be interested in our music at all. Randy Iwata: I didn’t know much then. I knew they lost SHiNDiG. Chris Kelly, CBC Radio 3 Producer: And as everyone knows about SHiNDiG, it’s great if you don’t win it. Bill Baker: It was challenging, because their whole thing was very different from anything that we had worked with. If you divide things into the rock part of Mint, and then the country-ish part in that rock part, there was always some sort of hipster-type element. And they were casting themselves as the absolute anti-hipster, and effectively, too. They didn’t simply look the part onstage and then act differently offstage. I mean, they really were that way. Plus, they work so damn hard. Maya Miller: There was a very helpful book, actually, it’s been published by a fellow who was in Moist [Mark Makoway’s Indie Band Bible]. We found out how you send stuff to campus stations, so we did all our own mail-outs, and sent the CD to every station in Canada, and it actually charted. We were even number one in Vancouver, which was bizarre — because I think that was also pre-Mint. Becky Black: When we ﬁrst started, we would hand out packages to bars, which had a cassette tape that we’d recorded in our band space and then a little writeup about everything we’ve ever done. And we postered for a while by ourselves, until we got tired of that and wanted to pay somebody. Because it was really disheartening

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walking around town postering, and then walking back and seeing people put posters over top of it. Maya Miller: We’ve done everything really hands-on, and I don’t know if it was ever really a discussion, it just seemed like the way to do things. Probably certain bands think that if they just make it, then people will come, or some label’s going to show up to a show or whatever. But they don’t. Things don’t happen because you don’t do anything, they don’t just come to you. And I think that’s kind of a shared belief that we have, so we’ve always just kept putting it out there, whatever it is.

Maya playing Magic: The Gathering on the road.

Becky Black: We did a B.C. tour after we released the album. And then we did a Canadian tour. Bill Baker: Randy was so excited about them. And it wasn’t until I saw them play that I got it. So I’m glad that nobody listened to me, as usual.

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Maya Miller: We met Randy and Dave [Gowans] at Subeez. Randy Iwata: You’re meeting these people and you don’t know them at all, but you share this one desire to possibly work together. So you’ve got to do all this sort of due diligence, background-checking-type stuff. It was like, Dave and me talking, Dave and me talking, and then Maya and Becky were like, “We need to go for a smoke,” and no doubt [they] chat-chatted, and we chat-chatted. It was somewhat awkward, but it was cute. Becky Black: We met each other a few more times after that, and progressively

Becky, also Magical.

started drinking more. The second meeting was at the Reef on Main Street. Maya Miller: We got very drunk that night, because Randy kept buying pitchers of mojitos. Becky Black: Yeah. That’s one of the ﬁrst impressions we had about him, he was a

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pusher. And I was not complaining about it. Maya Miller: Finally, they were like, “Oh, we want to release your album.” Becky Black: When we ﬁrst signed with them, at their headquarters, I puked off the ﬁre escape. Randy Iwata: That bottle of half-empty Jack over there is from when they signed the contract. Bill Baker: [Laughs] That was a night. Maya Miller: We got really really really really really really drunk. And Becky puked off the ﬁre escape, and then she went to the bathroom and puked some more, and Bill followed her in and was having a conversation with her about the record or something while she was puking. Becky Black: Yeah, we were talking a lot in between me puking. Maya Miller: They put on Tintype, because they were going to re-release it or whatever, and Becky was so drunk, she sang along with our album. It was so funny that we fell on the ground and laughed and laughed, and they just stood around staring at us. It was pretty great. Randy Iwata: And then we went to the Media Club to see Bella play, and Dave Gowans met us there. He was wondering what was wrong with us, because we did not go anywhere near the bar. [Laughs] We were like, “Keep us away from booze.”

Mint re-released Tintype in January 2008. The Pack toured heavily on the record, and began work on their next album, Funeral Mixtape.

Becky Black: Deﬁnitely when Mint re-released [Tintype], it got a little bit more exposure for sure, because, you know, the label has more backing than just two people in a band. But I think it might’ve not been the best idea in some ways, because we released it and then released the next album so soon after there wasn’t enough

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A Pack A.D. tour comic by Maya Miller.

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time for anyone to expect a new album. All of a sudden it’s just there. And August isn’t always the best time, either. Maya Miller: For an album to come out in the middle of the summer, with [a cover featuring] us in winter clothing, in a cemetery . . . I’ve renamed that album, by the way. It’s now called Pudgy in the Cemetery. Becky Black: We went to the Hive for the ﬁrst time, and recorded with [Operation Makeout’s] Jesse Gander. It was deﬁnitely a totally different experience than the ﬁrst one, because, you know, we actually had money to pay for the recording. Like an actual, real recording. You know, on tape. Maya Miller: When talking to Mint about where to record, they had two ideas. One was JC/DC, and the other one was Hive, and we chose Hive. Apparently JC/DC’s more pop, and Hive was a little more rock. Becky Black: We still made the same mistake that we made with the ﬁrst album. We recorded a bunch of songs that we don’t play live. Which didn’t make any sense. We made a really slow, depressing album. Bill Baker: They would not let us hear a single sound of that record before it was completely ﬁnished. And when the time came for us to hear it, they insisted that we all gather together, and we ended up doing it at Red Cat because it was the only place we could get a decent stereo and a room big enough. Shena, Dave, Randy, and I, Beez, and the two of them sat in otherwise complete silence in Red Cat and listened to that record the entire way through. And it was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I’ve ever had, because I hate listening to people’s music for the ﬁrst time when they’re there. Randy Iwata: It was generally agreed that Tintype was very uneven, an inconsistent ﬁrst record. And this one was polished. It was a good one. Yeah, it was a good one. Bill Baker: This record is still a bit in that same vein, but I think you can hear conﬁdence in it where maybe there wasn’t so much in the ﬁrst one.

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By the time Funeral Mixtape was released in the summer of 2008, the band was already on tour. Being on the road became a Pack A.D. constant.

Becky Black: We were both working day jobs. First tour we went on, we took the time off. After that, I wanted to take more time off, because we had another tour

A Pack postcard, from Saskatchewan.

booked and they wouldn’t let me, so I had to quit. And then after that tour, Maya had to quit her job, too. It’s hard to maintain a job that will let you leave for two months and then come back.

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Maya Miller: And it was really kind of a no-brainer. They were like, “No, you can’t go.” “Well, I have to go. For tour.” And they said, “Well, you can’t have the time off.” And I’m like, “Mmm, okay, so I quit?” You know, it wasn’t really an option. Becky Black: Not having jobs to come back to is one of the reasons we’re always on tour. Because any day that we’re not on tour, we’re just losing money. Whereas at least we’re breaking even when we’re living off the band, in the van, with the money that we have. Maya Miller: Yeah, when we’re on tour the band pays for us.

While Miller and Black became a well-travelled machine, Mint did something they hadn’t done in a long while: reached outside of Vancouver for a band.

Randy Iwata: Shena, Beez, and I saw Hot Panda at the Lamplighter when they were opening for Vincat. And we did not know anything about Hot Panda, but — oh boy. We were there to see Vincat because they were on our radar. But the one band that stuck out that night was Hot Panda. Or at least, to Shena and Beez. Chris Connelly, guitar and vocals in Hot Panda: We did our ﬁrst show at Wunderbar in Edmonton, for sixty to seventy friends, and everything that went wrong could go wrong. Instruments broke — my guitar string broke, and I couldn’t ﬁnd a new one, so I went out to the van, and the band covered “Kumbaya” because [bassist] Mike knew it. And we thought it went awful, it was this trainwreck. But people loved it, because it was such a trainwreck. People still talk about that show. If you’re from Edmonton, you have to tour, because you can’t even play that many shows there. It’s such a small scene, and people will just get super sick of you. So we just started touring. We ended up in Vancouver for MusicWest, and we had a good show. Mint sent us a little email after that. Randy Iwata: They and Shena really hit it off. Probably because they’re all very

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similarly aged. I mean, they stay with her. I think they have her house keys, actually. Shena Yoshida: Hot Panda and fanshaw were two more recent ones that I was just like, “We have to do this. Come on.” Chris Connelly: I was always a huge music nerd, and obviously knew about Mint Records because they’re a very reputable Canadian label that’s put out a lot of really, really great stuff. I remember them putting out a Pluto record. And cub. I’m a huge fan of Nardwuar, too, growing up watching him on MuchMusic. And obviously really loving the New Pornographers and Neko Case and bands like that. So we were talking to them a bunch, and then we just said, “Hey, we want to come to Vancouver and play your Christmas party.” I think they respected our balls to say that. They were like, “Yeah, okay. Yeah, we’ll put you on our party.” They signed us soon after that.

Mint released Volcano, Bloody Volcano in early 2009, and How Come I’m Dead? in October 2010. Like the Pack, Hot Panda is dedicated to touring, and have played across North America and in Europe. As of this writing, they’re on tour for How Come I’m Dead? (They also played a pretty rad cover of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” at Mint’s 2010 Christmas party.)

Chris Connelly: There were other labels that were interested in us, but we got a pretentious, douchebag vibe from a lot of them. Ones we wouldn’t expect. And Mint, they’ve been doing it since 1991. So there’s this sense that they’re not doing it because it’s hip and trendy to have a record label for a while, and then as soon as they get a bit older and realize that there’s no money in this business, they’re gonna pack it up and get real jobs. Mint are lifers.

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Hot Panda live.

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While some bands coming into the fold at this point were outsiders, there were a few with “tendrils.” One of these was Kellarissa, the solo project of P:ano and Choir Practice member Larissa Loyva. Mint released Kellarissa’s Flamingo on September 9, 2008.

Larissa Loyva: Kellarissa is a Finnish word, and it means “in the basement.” I just remember being a kid and my mom had written me a note in Finnish saying something was in the basement, or whatever, and I was like, “Hey, my name is in that word!” And the songs I write in Finnish [there are three on the album] are totally different from the songs I write in English. I like that aesthetic that comes out at those times. I can’t create it in English for some reason, I ﬁnd. The mood is totally different. Bill Baker: We went for more of the Choir Practice approach with it, because she didn’t have the wherewithal to tour, and we both knew it. We kind of went into it with the understanding that it would not be heavily worked, but it would be nice to have it out. And I mean, obviously that’s a far more eclectic record than some of the ones around it. That was something that made it very interesting. Larissa Loyva: I ended up recording at the Hive. I didn’t really plan to record, but I realized I had a whole bunch of songs, and they were having a sale on recording time, so I took them up on it, and we made it in four days. Mint was just like, “Well, we’ll put it out for you.” I wanted to ﬁnally have a solo project, whatever that would entail.

By 2008, as well, the Buttless Chaps were Mint’s longest active band (Brent Cooper of Huevos Rancheros and Ramblin’ Ambassadors its longest active artist,

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followed closely by Carolyn Mark). The band released their fourth Mint album, Cartography, in October, and played a New Year’s Eve, 10th-anniversary show at the Railway. It would be their last.

Dave Gowans: My wife and I had just had a baby girl, and I was on the road when she was three months old. I was like, “This has got to be a really short tour.” Lasse Lutick: It was just the usual — I hate to say it — Railway evening where, I mean I’ve had some awesome gigs there and I don’t want to put it down, but it’s gotten to the point now when, if you’re headlining you play at two in the morning and people will just be so drunk. And the sound person would likely be the same way. I remember that we were playing and things were cutting out. Dave Gowans: I just had this feeling in the end of the set. I said, “I think I’m done.” And the guitarist said, “I think I’m done, too.” And I told the keyboardist and he burst out laughing. “Well, I guess that’s it. Finally we’ve made a decision.” Torben Wilson: I had gone to one of their last shows, and I had a great time. When I found out they were breaking up, I actually started crying. Because it’s still the Buttless Chaps whether I’m in it or not. I kind of surprised myself by feeling that way. I knew the band was going to stop at some point; I thought maybe I’d feel relief or something when it did. But it was more like a breakup, [and then] you ﬁnd out the person you broke up with, whom you still really cared about, has passed away. Dave Gowans: That whole thing was kind of a wild ride, I’ve got to say. I’m interested to see where the label goes in the future. Things are changing there, and there’s a roster of newer bands like Hot Panda and stuff like that. They’re also really going back to how it was, making it essential, where you press LPs every time you put out a record. That’s what’s keeping it going in a lot of ways, for us [at Red Cat] too. Vinyl records are the saviour for bands selling merchandise and stuff.

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Back at Mint, Shena’s youthful inﬂuence brought to Bill and Randy’s attention another band with tendrils: fanshaw, which included Olivia and Shane from the Choir Practice.

Olivia Fetherstonhaugh: When I was about twenty or so, I wrote my ﬁrst song, “Paperboy.” And then I went through kind of a bad breakup, and wrote ﬁve songs. They weren’t even really necessarily breakup songs, but I think I was just really stimulated by that time in my life. But it took four years to ﬁnish. I only wrote one or two songs a year after that. Shane Turner, guitar in fanshaw: Olivia was the best singer in the Choir, as far as raw natural talent. And I don’t know, our personalities worked together. Because I was a bit of a weirdo, and she wasn’t really questioning of that. Kind of understanding of my quirkiness and whatever. Olivia Fetherstonhaugh: At the time — and it’s different now — I was blindly ambitious. I was like, “I’m so good! I’m gonna make it! And I’m gonna make a record!” And I didn’t really consider anything, ever. I didn’t consider any of my shortcomings. Which I should have, probably. Shane Turner: I’d already had, you know, twenty bands break up, and I had a little bit of that dark cloud forming. A little jadedness. Olivia Fetherstonhaugh: We recorded four songs with Howard Redekopp in June or July of 2007. “Nobody” was from that recording, and “Strong Hips,” which we had basically written the week before. Both turned out really [good] in the studio, so that was cool. But the other songs we did through a click track, and I was really nervous on the guitar, and I wanted to play the click track, and everything sounded really stiff and boring. I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like those recordings. And then we won recording time with SHiNDiG, which we didn’t use until two years later. Colin from the Hive emailed me, saying, “Do you ever want to use

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the recording time?” and I was like, “Yeah, I do. Next year.” He’s like, “Okay . . . ” And actually, someone told me that because of me they made a new rule where you have to use it within a year, otherwise it expires. Shane Turner: Olivia’s one of the only SHiNDiG people to actually do something and release it. A lot of them are not happy with the recordings. And then the bands break up. Olivia Fetherstonhaugh: The SHiNDiG curse. And we actually did break up after SHiNDiG. There was some buzz about us, and people asking us to play shows, and I don’t know if it was self-sabotage or something, but I was just like, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m disbanding!” And everyone asked, “Why now?” and I was like, “I don’t want to do it! I want to just ﬁnish writing!”

Fetherstonhaugh ﬁnally completed writing songs and recorded Dark Eyes. Mint released it in February 2010.

Randy Iwata: She was Shena’s social friend. It just made sense. And it’s gotten a certain amount of attention because of the story. It took so damn long to make, you know. Olivia Fetherstonhaugh: I was thinking of Mint by the time it was done. They were the only label that I gave it to, actually. We had this weird meeting where we had all these margaritas and I got really drunk. And the meeting started out really awkward — we just started talking about everything except putting out my record. Then they gave me a contract, and Bill was like, “You should get a lawyer to look over this contract.” Actually, the original contract they gave me was a three-album deal. I read all the legalese, and kind of freaked the fuck out, and told them, “I don’t want to be on your label, I’m not doing this, I’m just going to put it out myself on the Internet.” And they basically explained that I could just do a licensing deal, instead. Which

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I was more comfortable with. It’s been good. I think they’re the perfect label to be on with how music is now. So when I have another one, in ten years . . . [Laughs] Shane Turner: I’m thinking about giving Mint my next solo one. It suits them.

In 2010, the Pack A.D. hopped off the road long enough to release their third album, we kill computers. The record’s central theme was Miller and Black’s dislike of technology.

Bill Baker: Again, they made us listen to it. But this time it was worse, because it was just Randy and I in the ofﬁce with them. Randy Iwata: I remember thinking, “This is the hit. This is the one.” Bill Baker: They made some rumblings about wanting to change their sound, and whenever people say that — like it’s a plan — I am always a bit skeptical. You can or you can’t. But I think they actually managed to hit the sweet spot, right between going completely somewhere else and people saying, “What’s this?” or staying where it is. I think it really is a nice mix of the two. Becky Black: This album is a lot of rockers, which is more accurate to us. So we think, you know, it’s probably come the closest so far. It’s still a work in progress with everything. We’ll see what happens on the next album. Maya Miller: I want to be the band on Mint that delivers. Grant Lawrence: Sometimes I’m not sure about what Mint is doing these days. Like, I think they’ve missed some opportunities. But they do have the Pack.

In 2011, Mint Records turned 20.

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Maya Miller: Mint is kind of like family. Bill’s my annoying brother. Becky Black: He’s your polar opposite. Maya Miller: We have many meetings where Bill and I will sidetrack into just zinging each other. Which is pretty fun. He told me to eat a bag of dicks the other day. But yeah, I don’t know. They’re just good people. Bill Baker: Sometimes I worry, because our bands are so different, if they’ll get along socially. If you just took two records and asked, “Would these people get along with these people?” you might not think so. But the Pack and Hot Panda, we all took a ferry together back from Victoria, and it was a hilarious time. Maya Miller: Actually, the remainder of that bottle of Jack from the signing party is still in the Mint ofﬁce. It’s marked as “The Pack’s,” and no one can have it. It’s just, like, this much left. But it’s ours whenever we want it.

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Epitaph

Randy Iwata: Okay, what would our epitaph be? Bill Baker: You’re just saying that for sport. What would my epitaph be? I don’t know. Randy Iwata: No, the label’s. Bill Baker: Oh. Randy Iwata: “Sorry it didn’t work out.” Bill Baker: [Laughs] “Better luck next time.” Randy Iwata: [Laughs] “We tried.” Bill Baker: [Laughs] “We tried.” Yeah, I think “we tried” would be really good.

369

Discography The Mint Is a Terrible Windwalker/Tankhog

Thing to Taste

31-Aug-91

Windwalker

Rainstick

26-Mar-92

Tankhog

The Freight Train

11-Jul-92

cub

Pep

16-Oct-92

cub

Hot Dog Day

14-May-93

The Mint Is Still a various artists

Terrible Thing to Taste

1-Sep-93

cub

Betti-Cola

1-Oct-93

kid champion

kid champion

31-Jan-94

Party . . . Party . . . Party The Smugglers

. . . Pooper!

11-Feb-94

cub

Volcano

3-May-94

“Death Star” b/w Pluto

“Million & Two”

26-May-94

Another Collection of Lou Barlow

Home Recordings

12-Oct-94

cub

Come Out, Come Out

15-Jan-95

Pluto

Cool Way to Feel

11-Apr-95

Huevos Rancheros

Dig In!

27-May-95

The Stand GT

The Cracklefan

27-May-95

cub/Potatomen

The Day I Said Goodbye

1-Sep-95

Alternative Is Here to The Mr. T Experience

Stay!

1-Sep-95

gob

Too Late . . . No Friends

5-Sep-95

The Smugglers/Hi-Fives Summer Games

16-Dec-95

Pansy Division

9-Feb-96

Wish I’d Taken Pictures

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The Smugglers

Selling the Sizzle

9-Feb-96

Groovie Ghoulies

World Contact Day

6-May-96

The Unforgiving Sounds Maow

of . . .

27-May-96

The Mr. T Experience

Love Is Dead

2-Jul-96

cub

Box of Hair

16-Jul-96

Duotang

The Message

16-Jul-96

Smash the Ships and Duotang

Raise the Beams

29-Aug-96

Huevos Rancheros

Get Outta Dodge

30-Sep-96

various artists

Team Mint

28-Oct-96

Betti-Cola cub

(Japanese issue)

11-Mar-97

Pansy Division

Manada

2-Apr-97

Neko Case

The Virginian

15-Jul-97

The Smugglers

Buddy Holly Convention

31-Oct-97

The Evaporators

I Gotta Rash

7-Apr-98

Duotang

The Cons and the Pros

20-May-98

The Smugglers

Growing Up Smuggler

15-Oct-98

“Wild Turkey Surprise” Huevos Rancheros

b/w “The Wedge”

14-Jul-99

I Am Spoonbender

Sender/Receiver

1-Sep-99

The Smugglers

Rosie

1-Feb-00

Neko Case

Furnace Room Lullaby

22-Feb-00

Riff Randells

Riff Randells

14-Mar-00

various artists

Vancouver Special

4-Apr-00

Carolyn Mark

Party Girl

4-Apr-00

I Am Spoonbender

Teletwin

11-Apr-00

Huevos Rancheros

Muerte Del Toro

2-May-00

372

Discography

Who Says Riff Randells

Girls Can’t Rock

24-Sep-00

New Pornographers

Mass Romantic

17-Oct-00

Corn Sisters

The Other Women

24-Oct-00

It’s a Team various artists

Mint Xmas Vol. 1

5-Dec-00

New Town Animals

New Town Animals

5-Dec-00

The Evaporators

Honk the Horn

3-Apr-01

“These Thoughts Are The Tennessee Twin

Occupied” + 1

17-Apr-01

Duotang

The Bright Side

5-Jun-01

New Town Animals

Is Your Radio Active?

5-Jun-01

various artists

Team Mint Vol. 2!

28-Aug-01

Operation Makeout

First Base

28-Aug-01

The Sadies

“Cork & Monkey” + 2

4-Dec-01

various artists

A Tribute to Nashville

5-Feb-02

The Tennessee Twin

Free to Do What?

5-Feb-02

Hanson Brothers

My Game

26-Feb-02

Mark Kleiner Power Trio Love To Night

5-Mar-02

Volumizer

Gaga for Gigi

5-Mar-02

Young and Sexy

Stand Up for Your Mother 5-Mar-02

John Guliak

The Black Monk

25-Jun-02

Carolyn Mark

Terrible Hostess

1-Jul-02

Operation Makeout

Hang Loose

7-Aug-02

Neko Case

Blacklisted

20-Aug-02

Atomic 7

Gowns by Edith Head

7-Oct-02

The Gay

“Fishin’ Jim” + 2

7-Oct-02

New Pornographers

Electric Version

6-May-03

Avanti

19-Aug-03

The Ramblin’ Ambassadors

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The Buttless Chaps

Love This Time

16-Sep-03

The Gay

You Know the Rules

16-Sep-03

Young and Sexy

Life Through One Speaker

7-Oct-03

The Evaporators

Ripple Rock

20-Jan-04

The Smugglers

Mutiny in Stereo

9-Mar-04

The Pros and Cons of Carolyn Mark

Collaboration

4-May-04

The Organ

Grab That Gun

24-May-04

Atomic 7

En Hillbilly Caliente

29-Jun-04

Dirty Queers Pansy Division/Skinjobs

Don’t Come Cheap

6-Jul-04

John Guliak

7 Stories and 13 Songs

26-Oct-04

It’s a Team various artists

Mint Xmas Vol. 2

2-Nov-04

Neko Case

The Tigers Have Spoken

9-Nov-04

P:ano

Brigadoon

5-Apr-05

“J’ai essayé de ne pas” The Sadies

+1

5-Apr-05

Duplex!

Ablum by Duplex!

3-May-05

Aim Right for the Novillero

Holes in Their Lives

3-May-05

Just Married: Album of Carolyn Mark

Duets

7-Jun-05

New Pornographers

Twin Cinema

23-Aug-05

Immaculate Machine

Ones and Zeros

6-Sep-05

various artists

Fresh Breath of Mint

11-Oct-05

Ghost Pirates P:ano

Without Heads

15-Nov-05

Young and Sexy

Panic When You Find It

14-Feb-06

374

Discography

The Buttless Chaps

Where Night Holds Light

21-Feb-06

Doot Doola Doot Doo . . . Nardwuar

Doot Doo!

28-Feb-06

Fox Confessor Brings the Neko Case

Flood

7-Mar-06

Fresh Breath of Mint: A various artists

2006 Update!

14-Mar-06

A 2007 Punk Rock CalNardwuar vs. Bev Davies endar

12-Sep-06

Immaculate Machine

3-Oct-06

les uns mais pas les autres A Mint Harvest Fall 2006

various artists

Sampler

3-Oct-06

various artists

Mint Roadshow 4-song 7”

3-Oct-06

CBC Radio 3 Presvarious artists

ents: The Mint Sessions

3-Oct-06

The Awkward Stage

Heaven Is for Easy Girls

10-Oct-06

Mint Records various artists

@ SXSW 2007!

Young and Sexy/The

Double A-Side

Awkward Stage

Series Vol. 1

6-Feb-07 15-May-07

One Woman Show Nick Krgovich

4-song 7"

15-May-07

The Choir Practice

The Choir Practice

15-May-07

Immaculate Machine

Fables

12-Jun-07

Carolyn Mark

Nothing Is Free

3-Jul-07

Bella

No One Will Know

18-Sep-07

various artists

Do the Mint Twist!

1-Oct-07

Nardwuar

Welcome to My Castle

23-Oct-07

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

Gassy Jack and The Evaporators

Other Tales

4-Dec-07

The Pack A.D.

Tintype

21-Jan-08

Bella

No One Will Know

12-Feb-08

“Obvious” b/w Vancougar

“Distance”

12-Feb-08

The Buttless Chaps

CBC Radio 3 Sessions

1-Apr-08

“Cold Hands/Chapped Hot Panda

Lips” + 1

13-May-08

“Won’t Be Pretty” b/w Immaculate Machine

“Wo Xiang Tanbai”

13-May-08

The Ramblin’ Ambas-

Vista Cruiser

sadors

Country Squire

13-May-08

Young and Sexy

The Arc

13-May-08

Slimming Mirrors, FlatterThe Awkward Stage

ing Lights

10-Jun-08

Vancougar

Canadian Tuxedo

8-Jul-08

The Pack A.D.

Funeral Mixtape

12-Aug-08

Kellarissa

Flamingo

9-Sep-08

Novillero

A Little Tradition

9-Sep-08

Wheee! It’s a various artists

Team Mint Sampler!

14-Oct-08

The Buttless Chaps

Cartography

14-Oct-08

The Organ

Thieves

14-Oct-08

Volcano . . . Hot Panda

Bloody Volcano!

10-Feb-09

The Handsome Family

Honey Moon

14-Apr-09

Immaculate Machine

High on Jackson Hill

28-Apr-09

376

Discography

The Evaporators b/w Andrew W.K.

A Wild Pear

23-Jun-09

Duplex!

Worser

13-Oct-09

Let’s Just Stay Here

13-Oct-09

& Tolan McNeil

The Sound of the Tone

15-Dec-09

fanshaw

dark eyes

9-Feb-10

& NQ Arbuckle

Let’s Just Stay Here

23-Feb-10

The Pack A.D.

we kill computers

27-Apr-10

Hot Panda

How Come I’m Dead?

12-Oct-10

fanshaw

dark eyes

30-Nov-10

Geoff Berner

Victory Party

8-Mar-11

Kellarissa

Moon of Neptune

29-Mar-11

various artists

CiTR Pop Alliance Vol. 2

16-Apr-11

The Pack A.D.

Unpersons

13-Sep-11

Carolyn Mark & NQ Arbuckle Carolyn Mark

Carolyn Mark

Nardwuar Presents: various artists

. . . Busy Doing Nothing

8-Nov-11

377

Acknowledgements

I would ﬁrst like to thank Bill and Randy for plumbing the depths of their memories and souls to tell me about the last half of their existence on this planet. Even if it was sometimes “free therapy,” it was also a pain in the ass. Thanks for sticking with me. Thanks also to all of the Mint artists, staff, friends, and family for pillaging their photos and belongings, and for taking time out of their busy lives here and around the world to talk to me, even for half an hour, sometimes in crazy storms, at barbecues, in Scotland, or after ﬁfteen years apart. Thank you thank you thank you — not all of you made it into this book, and for that I apologize. Thank you to all of my friends and family, particularly Alistair Cook, whose very presence makes me want to do the best I can, and my mom, who made me fall for rock ’n’ roll in the ﬁrst place. Mom, this is your fault. Kim Fu: my own personal Jesus. You know it, now the world shall, too: Kim Fu is the best friend, editor, transcriptionist, and bullshit-detector a girl/writer could have in her life. This book would not exist without Kim’s help. Kim is everything. Kyle Anderson has been this music writer’s friend and ally since 2006. A lot of help in the realm of writing, pitching, friendly encouragement, and just getting

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

through the damn thing was provided. Everyone should read Kyle’s great book, Accidental Revolution: The Story of Grunge. And in one way or another, for anything and everything: Jen Hale and the ECW

team, Mark Baumgarten, Lynne Bowen, Andreas Schroeder, Nardwuar, Greg

Prato, Joey Comeau, Amy Lombardi, Euvin Weeber, Sara Church and Colin Preston at the CBC Radio Archives, Chuck Klosterman, Melissa Maerz, Jenny Eliscu, SPIN magazine, Rolling Stone magazine, Ian Danzig, James Keast and the Exclaim! staff, Chart magazine, Amy Macfarlane and Alex Molotkow at the Walrus, Carmine Starnino, Meryn Caddell, Chris Rzepa, John Semley, Chris Urquhart, Erika Thorkelson, Lauren Forconi, Ben Rawluk, Jenn and Quinn Matthews, Philip Walmsley, Kafka’s Coffee and Tea, the UBC Creative Writing Program, Bob Kronbauer and VancouverisAwesome.com, the Vancouver Public Library and its wonderful librarians, the CiTR/DiSCORDER staff and the beer machine. And if I’ve forgotten you, I’m sorry and thank you.

380

Sources

Azerrad, Michael. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground. New York: Little, Brown, 2002. Barclay Michael, Ian A.D. Jack, and Jason Schneider. Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985–1995. Toronto: ECW Press, 2001. Barclay, Michael. “The Edgy Grace of Neko Case.” Exclaim! March 2000. ———. “Smugglers — Kings of the Party: Timeline.” Exclaim! February 2000. Bozza, Anthony. “On the Edge: cub.” Rolling Stone, November 14, 1996. Canadian Press. “A bum rap? Expo bans rock bands.” Montreal Gazette, August 8, 1986. Carpenter, Elaine. “Glummer Girls.” Exclaim! June 2004. Cooper, Ryan. “A Dubious Moment in Punk Rock History — December, 1982 — The Punk Episode of Quincy M.E.” Ryan’s Punk Music Blog, About.com. Published Aug. 2, 2007. http://punkmusic.about.com/b/2007/08/02/a-dubious-moment-in-punk-rock-historydecember-1982-the-punk-episode-of-quincy-me.htm. Deusner, Stephen M. “Neko Case: The Virginian/Furnace Room Lullaby/Blacklisted/ Fox Confessor Brings the Flood” Reviews. Pitchfork.com, November 9, 2007. http://pitchfork. com/reviews/albums/11628-the-virginianfurnace-room-lullabyblacklistedfox-confessor-

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Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records

brings-the-ﬂood-bonus-disc-edition/. Diamond Certiﬁcation Records, CRIA.ca. Doole, Kerry. “Neko Case: Timeline.” Exclaim! March 2009. “Explow.mov” uploaded to YouTube by luvisland, January 18, 2010. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=oQcLCrWkCvc. Fuller, Cam. “Cub doesn’t growl at girl group label.” Saskatoon Star Phoenix, October 10, 1996. Gin, Andrea. “cub.” DiSCORDER, December 1996. Greenaway, John Endo. “Iwata2.” JCCA (B.C.) Bulletin, December 2006. Grifﬁths, Dylan. “SHiNDiG Finals: Maow review (Real Live Action).” DiSCORDER, January 1995. Harkema, Reg, dir. Better Off in Bed. 2006. Unreleased. Harvey, Eric. “Immaculate Machine’s Fables Review.” Pitchfork.com, June 15, 2007. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10319-immaculate-machines-fables/. Harvilla, Rob. “Kerplunk: The Rise and Fall of the Lookout Records Empire.” East Bay (CA) Express, September 14, 2005. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/kerplunk/ Content?oid=1079016 Hogan, Marc. “Review: Cub: Betti-Cola/Come Out, Come Out.” Pitchfork.com, May 10, 2007. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11902-betti-cola-come-out-come-out/. Keithley, Joey. I, Shithead: A Life in Punk. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004. Lawrence, Heather. “cub.” DiSCORDER, September 1994. LeBlanc, Larry. “Cargo Files For Bankruptcy: Little Impact on Music Industry Seen.” Billboard, January 24, 1998. Lucas, John. “Antony and the Johnsons/Choir Practice Review.” Georgia Straight (B.C.), September 22, 2005. http://www.straight.com/article/antony-and-the-johnsons-1. ———. “Smuggler Beez recovering.” Georgia Straight (B.C.), June 9, 2005. http:// www.straight.com/article/smuggler-beez-recovering/. Lynch, Brian. “Punk-Era Reissue Blasts Back from the Past.” Georgia Straight (B.C.), January 27, 2005. http://www.straight.com/article/punk-era-reissue-blasts-back-from-the-past.

382

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“Man Bites Dog.” SEE Magazine, April 9, 1998. http://www.seemagazine.com/ Issues/1998/0409/bite.html. McCoy, Heath. “Neko Case Slow Burns on Blacklisted.” Calgary Herald, August 23, 2002. McLaughlin, John P. “Neko Honors Country’s Roots.” (B.C.) Province, August 6, 1997. Morano, Jared. “Leslie, My Name Is Evil Director Says Neko Case is Blocking Release of New Pornographers Documentary.” ChartATTACK.com, May 17, 2010. http://www. chartattack.com/news/82321/leslie-my-name-is-evil-director-says-neko-case-is-blockingrelease-of-new-pornographers-d. Rayner, Ben. “More Fun Than a Barrel o’ Monkeys: Country Crooner Carolyn Mark’s Humour Goes Far.” Toronto Star, August 12, 1999. Roberts, Mike. “Auditioning for God: Frontman for Jungle Answers a Higher Call.” (B.C.) Province, September 12, 1999. Strauss, Neil. “The Pop Life: Undeservedly Obscure; Pop Critics List the Worthwhile Albums Most People Missed.” New York Times, December 28, 2000. http://select.nytimes .com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40E1EF73A5C0C7B8EDDAB0994D8404482&scp=4&sq=&pa gewanted=2. “Tiny Mix Tapes Favorite Albums of 2006: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.” http://www. tinymixtapes.com/features/2006-tiny-mix-tapes-favorite-albums-2006. Usinger, Mike. “Becky Black and Maya Miller Get Ahead of the Pack.” Georgia Straight (B.C.), April 22, 2010. http://www.straight.com/article-318897/vancouver/being-ahead-pack. ———. “The Mad Genius of Nardwuar.” Georgia Straight (B.C.), January 29, 2004. http://www.straight.com/article/the-mad-genius-of-nardwuar. Vautour, Chris. “Canadian Virginian.” No Depression, November–December 1997. http://archives.nodepression.com/1997/11/canadian-virginian/. Vegas, Les. “Review: Cub: Come Out, Come Out.” DiSCORDER, February 1995. Weingarten, Christopher. “Genres, Genres, Genres: Cuddlecore.” SPIN, May 2010.

383

Photo Credits

Photos Courtesy: Mint Records: 8, 16, 20, 23, 91, 97, 99, 109, 113, 117, 144, 153, 157, 175, 178, 182, 202, 203, 206, 207, 246, 265, 302, 314, 325, 336, 337, 343, 345, 348; Anthony Hempell: 29, 45, 142; Juliet Wilson: 33; Bruce Kane: 35, 39; Lisa Marr: 59, 68, 69, 75, 77, 78, 85; Bill Baker: 81; Nick Thomas: 124, 127, 128, 129, 189, 192; Mark Geller: 147; Brendan Edwards: 159; Rod Slaughter: 162, 167; Nardwuar the Human Serviette: 183; Jenny Smyth: 197; Kurt Dahle: 215, 219, 226, 233, 237, 251, 259; Susan Anderson: 225; Steven Dewall: 242; Katie Lapi: 256, 261, 286, 287; Anna Gard: 263, 298; Marlise McKee: 271; Pete Bastard: 274; Brooke Gallupe: 307, 309; Shira Blustein: 334; The Pack A.D.: 354, 355, 357, 359; Eric Newby: 362

385

Get a taste of Mint with a free playlist sampling 20 years of Mint artists. Download here: http://www.mintrecords.com/20_years/Mint_at_20.zip.

in “Kaitlin Fontana has managed to masterfully capture a modern era e. Canadian independent music where anything and everything felt possibl happy Most of the time it wasn’t, but sometimes it was, and I was really who to be a part of it all for so long. This is an important book for anyone music the wants to understand how delirious, frustrating, and glorious that industry can really be. Fresh at Twenty is a rare, in-depth insider story shocked even me . . . and I lived it.” — GRANT LAWRENCE, CBC Radio host, author of Adventures in Solitude

ing “Kaitlin Fontana’s Fresh at Twenty will have all the cool kids pretend and h they were there when cub ruled the world — and given how thoroug entertaining this oral history is, they’ll probably be able to fake it.” — KYLE ANDERSON, author of Accidental Revolution: The Story of Grunge

Fresh at Twen ty: The Oral Histo ry of Mint Reco rds

people is ﬁrst and foremost the story of an independent record label and the music r who helped build it. But it’s also a story of a place and time in popula careers — Vancouver through the 1990s and 2000s. Mint helped launch the the lers, of the New Pornographers, Neko Case, the Evaporators, the Smugg not only Organ, the Pack A.D., and countless other acts. In doing so, Mint helped but , shaped the sound of Vancouver at the end of the 20th century usher in a golden age of Canadian popular music that still thrives today. d the Now, on the eve of Mint’s 20th anniversary, the people who recorde music albums, drove cross-country in failing vans, and made Vancouver pop truly that matter, speak for the ﬁrst time about the label that they love — and loves them back. Kaitlin Fontana is a Vancouver, BC–based National Magazine Award–winning writer whose work has appeared in SPIN, Rolling Stone, Exclaim!, The Walrus, and Maisonneuve among others. Fresh at Twenty is her ﬁrst book. For more information, visit kaitlinfontana.com. ISBN 978-1-77041-004-6

FR EE MI MUS NT IC INS FRO IDE M !

$22.95 CDN $19.95 U.S. ecwpress.com