HIP ONLINE - FEB 5, 1999 by Larry Sarzyniak Where is the Evening Star? Where in the hell is the Evening Star? That is the question that raced through my head as I traveled in the wrong direction on Niagara Falls Boulevard. I used to live in a small town outside of Niagara Falls, NY, so I figured I knew where the building was located. Boy, was I wrong. Finally, after being guided by a big burly trucker, I found the Evening Star Concert Hall. Shit, it's 5:25 pm and I was supposed to be here at 5! I tried to collect my nerves as I headed toward the front door of the building. When I walked inside, I thought I had stepped into the neighbor's basement. This place was tiny. It was going to be fun. Dave Henning, Big Wreck's tall, talented bassist, greeted me. He proved to be a friendly and well-spoken individual. We decided to just chill and do the interview at the bar over a couple of LaBatt's Blues. Dave told me that the rest of Big Wreck had gone out with an old friend, Colin, to grab a bite to eat and would return later for a sound check. The locals hounded Dave and I a bit because they did not know who or what either one of us was doing at their favorite watering hole. One drunk bastard out of the corner yelled in my direction, "Hey, who the hell are you?" I replied that my name was Larry from hip online and I was there to interview the main attraction, Big Wreck. The guy smirked back, "I never heard of either." Dave and I looked at each other and laughed at this wise guy's comments and gestures; things would get really funny much later in the interview when he and his buddies had a few more beers in them. We made some small talk about Portland, Maine, the town Big Wreck used to rock back in the day, and discussed other topics in music before diving into the infinite number of questions I had to unload on him. This is your second time around. Are the audiences getting bigger? Some places. I cannot remember how many times we have played this area (Niagara Fallls). We have done lots of shows. We played on the Niagara side in Canada. We played Buffalo, Rochester a few times. Yeah, the second time around the audiences have gotten bigger, a little bit more every time. How did you get hooked onto a label? Ah, it's kind of a weird story. We were playing as a three-piece for a while. We were originally a four-piece, same lineup. One of the guys left the band for personal reasons and we kept going, and no one would touch us in the industry and we were making demo tapes and no one would go near us. Finally, we got back together with the original lineup and we started playing. We made this demo tape and all these record companies started to come out of the woodwork. The next thing you know we have a bunch of labels making offers, and it was cool. Through this Toronto management company Canadian labels wanted to sign us. And we said, 'We are interested, but bring up the American counterparts and we'll go from there.' Then one thing just led to another. I guess we did about three showcases and we narrowed it down to about three labels. Atlantic was the best one for us, as far as what we wanted from a label. Being in the Boston area, did you play a lot of college towns? No. Mostly, hmm, just places like this, small but it varies. One night we could go to Boston and play in front of ten people, and the next night go to Philly and play in front of six people, then shoot up to Toronto and open for Joe Satriani. So, we had all kinds of stuff. We would open for the Tea Party a couple nights. A whole different bunch of bands, a wide variety of gigs that I can think of. Very few college towns, mainly bars and clubs. That kind of thing. Did all you guys in the band meet at the (Boston) Berkley School of Music? Yes. We met there in I guess '91. What was it like going to school there? It was pretty cool. It's a cool place. It's not for everyone; some people love it and some people hate it. It's got some really good things about it, and some things I did not like about it, but I met a lot of cool people there, learned a lot. It's a cool environment because it's music twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That's pretty much what you're paying for. Behind the classes, you're paying for the environment and being around people who have the same obsession as you. A lot of them are driven. It's cool. I got exposed to a lot of different kinds of music that I probably normally wouldn't. I had some really cool teachers and other students. It was definitely a good experience. I have taken a few music classes in college and have been amazed at some of the shit my professors brought into class. Yeah, I loved it. I was looking at two or three of my professors there, where every time you saw them they would have something new. They wanted you to hear something that there is a good chance you never would have heard before. It was just great. One teacher would be playing us symphonies, go to another class, all this obscure R&B stuff, and go to another teacher and he's playing you world music, and it was very cool that way. They had a very extensive music library that I liked. It was just filled with anything you could (drunk guy is bitter about something), you could go in there and, well, 'I feel like listening to Beethoven's late string quartet,' pop on the reel to reel and you could listen to it. Or, 'I feel like watching a video of a performance.' That's probably what I liked best about the school was the amount of information available. For yourself or for anyone else in the band, was it challenging to break away from being a trained musician? We are all trained to certain degrees. There is a point where you gotta forget that stuff and you gotta learn to forget. I definitely had to learn. I used to definitely overplay when we were first getting around. It was just because you're gonna come subservient to a song, I guess play what's called for. Every instrument has a certain role, and you try to do things outside of that role and complement what's going on with the song. That's the whole thing; try to figure the context and how it works, and learn how to play with each other and listening to each other. I want to talk about some of the music on this album. The songs are well thought out. What contributes to that? It seems the songs are not your basic three and a half minute tunes; many of the songs are five to six minutes plus. (Laughs) Well, some of those were cut down quite a few minutes. Some songs like used to be like ten; we'd stretch 'em out. There is a point where you want to get played on the radio, and I hate to say the word compromise, but you can do it both ways, with radio edits. The songwriting comes from our singer (Ian Thornley), and Brain Doherty (rhythm guitar) putting in a bit, and everyone kind of chips their two cents in on arrangements and things like that. The other thing is, over time we just keep playing things over and over again and they seem to edit themselves. Maybe a part will stick out, we don't need that or this needs to be moved, whatever, and a lot was just playing the songs over and over again at gigs. We were not signed so we would just whatever, we would play a couple of tunes off our demo tapes and the rest of the tunes were just works in progress. Over time there seemed to be a musical Darwinism, the good ones stayed and had the holding power, and then natural selection eliminates the bad ones, but a lot of the times the bad ones were usually the seeds for other songs though. There were a couple of songs on this record that were originally other songs that never quite did it, but a piece here and a piece of it there slapped together, it comes into a different context to make another song. So does that make this album what it is? Well, the thing is we recorded the last album (In Loving Memory Of...) in a really weird way. The last album is all demo tapes that we did. It's from four different sessions we did over the last two years, maybe it was five sessions that we did, I cannot remember. I think it's four. The oldest song on the album was recorded back in '95. The last song on the record, "Overemphasizing", was recorded in May of '95. That was recorded then. When we got to the record we had about twenty-five songs or so to choose from these demos. We basically chivied through and picked the best songs from those demos, and just kinda threw 'em out and decided to mix 'em. This record going into is a little different; those songs have been played so much and had such a long time in trying to get them altogether that they are pretty much finished. We are at the ends of the writing stage for this record. It will be the first time going into the studio and I hope we still remember the songs. I hope. (laughs) Maybe I'm reading a little too far into this, but is "Look What I Found" taking a shot at the music industry? I did not write the lyrics to that, but I'll field it. The guess is to say yes. Well, not towards the music industry primarily, but certain bands or musicians or not anybody in particular. If so, I'm not aware of it, I guess. Copying musician's signatures and stuff like that? Yeah, but we're all a little guilty of that to a certain extent, and it's healthy. Yet, there is a point where they're doing or not, or they're just bullshitting. I hate to use that word. Because of the band's musical background do you analyze today's music? Keeping your finger on the pulse kinda thing? Yeah. If you're sitting on the bus and listening to whatever... Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I don't listen to the radio that much but I usually listen to public radio or something. But Forrest (Williams, drums) is really into that, figuring out what changes, what's going on. [He] is really into that. I think even Ian (Thornley, vocals, etc.) to an extent. I'll listen a little bit and just kind of, just listen if something catches my ear, but I don't really keep track of what's going on out there. What are some of the band's influences? Between the four of us, the only ones we could probably agree upon is, well, it's funny because when a cd goes in the cd player, there are only about five bands: Zeppelin, Genesis, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and, I can't remember, The Police. After that, it's pretty wide open. Everybody kinda has their own thing going, you know. I have read some of the reviews written about the band and I was really puzzled by all the comparisons to Led Zeppelin and The Who. I don't hear that. This album has it's own sound. I hear four guys trying to do something, trying to expand rock music. Thank you. We have gotten some comparisons. I'll listen or I'll read the reviews, the reviews it took a while to get into perspective. I just had to realize that it was just another guy's opinion, and that's it. Some people are cool or make observations that you might not have made yourself and you kind of think about. Whether you agree with them or not, you have to take them into consideration, think about it, and kind of go, 'Okay,' you know? You just have to think about how they come to that conclusion. Some people are just vicious. They write things, I don't think they listen to it, they write things to be spiteful. They're more into looking at the pictures in the album than listening to the music. Obviously those kinds, but every once in a while you'll come across a critic who will writes something that will catch you off guard and it will make you go, 'Oh, I never would have looked at it that way,' you know. In so many of the reviews we have gotten comparisons. The obvious ones are to The Who, Soundgarden, Zeppelin, and the big guitar rock kind of thing. Ian must get the Chris Cornell thing all the time. I guess you just got to move ahead and not listen to the comparisons, even though the comparisons are flattering. Yeah, do your thing and do what you do, and hopefully people will like it and come out and see you, you know? That's all you can do. And if people want to put a name on things and compare things, well then that's their business. We just got to put on blinders and be pig headed, obstinate. What bands have you enjoyed touring with in the past and in the present? Every kind of band you can think of, from big rock arenas to the weirdest. (laughs) We played with this band in Chicago last year, they opened up for us. There was a cello player, a guy playing an electric boozokie, which is a Greek instrument, I think a drummer and a clarinet player and that was, I think we've played with every extreme from Green Day and The Foo Fighters. You name it. We played with a lot of cool bands in the festival circuit last summer. It was cool because you get to meet people you might not of and play with people you might not have. Checking 'em out doing their thing and you get to know them to some extent, but not in a deep way. It's just nice to meet people I thought we would never have a chance to meet. Have you guys been to Europe? No. I've been there to hang around, but never played there yet. We would like to at some point. I have checked out the music scene over there and it's cool, you know. I like the open-mindedness towards music, especially like in England and London. It is really wide open and there is room for everybody, and people will check it out and give it a chance. Here it seems to be, and I hate to use this term, but a corporate dictation on what is good and what is bad, you know. The music industry pushes who they want. They do it in Europe, but I don't know that they do it as well, but I now think to the extent of commercialization like we see here. But that's my observations and I could be totally wrong. I notice the band has had success in Canada. Any reason why? Hmm. They're definitely our part, business wise. Our management is based in Canada. . Well, the formats for airplay are different. Canadian radio stations have to play at least, I think twenty percent of their airplay has to include Canadian artists. Yeah, CANCON, that helped us too. Since our singer is Canadian and the album was recorded up there and our management, I guess all that makes us eligible for that. In Canada there seems to be more variety, but down here it seems to be what's going to work, you know. Yeah, here I think it's more clearly defined of what you can and cannot play. Are you guys excited about playing Edgefest? Yeah, yeah. I think we are doing ten or eleven shows altogether. I think. The lineup looks good. The position we got on the roster is the perfect spot we've looked for. Second or third to last spot in my opinion is the best spot to be on the main stage. Usually third. I think if you go on too late everyone is just spent. Either they have been out in the rain or sun all day, by the end of the day they're shot. In this case, it should be all right because Hole is getting on at the end, and they are a big enough name where they'll keep everyone on. We've done a few festivals where, pretty big bands though, they're not that, that next level, and I feel so bad for them. Watching twenty thousand turn to six thousand, just watching a sea of people leaving, it's just awful. We played in some clubs up in Toronto; I have some friends up there. We used to play to a club called the Brookdale many times. Our conversation briefly gets sidetracked because Dave and I both love The Hip, so we jabbered about how awesome and captivating their live performances are to witness. Then our attention is quickly shifted when a guy in the near distance starts to holler, "Hey, put the knife down! Put the knife down!" We both swing around to see if this knife wielding murderer is coming toward us, but he's not. Back to more dialogue. Are you playing any new stuff live yet? Yeah, tonight we'll probably play at least two or three more songs. We tried out, this is our third gig, we are basically doing a quick run. The last two or three nights we have played a couple songs. We played some of the songs [from In Loving Memory Of...] for so long that we want to break it up so bad, and we know the audiences pay to hear what's on the record, of what they know. It's kind of fun to play the new stuff for us to see the reaction of the audience. Can Big Wreck fans find any of the old demo releases anywhere? Every once in a while someone will come up to us at a show with a demo. We used to sell them on the side of the stage. I mean, everywhere in between Washington, D.C. to a few stops in western Pennsylvania, the occasional outside gig, you know. We just kept selling the demos hoping for the best and now every once in a while someone, I freak when I see them, but that has not happened in a while. But there were definitely a few times where someone has walked up to me, 'Sign this please.' We have intended to release a couple of things, but at the moment probably not now. But who knows? Maybe down the road. Did "Overemphasizing" change a lot over the years? Did you change any bridges or solos? Nope. That's the original version. The only thing we'd changed was the mix . Would you guys like to produce your own albums? Have the control, the grasp of the operation, or have someone come in to help out? There is different kinds of producers out there. I mean, there is producers who take total control of becoming the artists, they make the context for the artists. Other producers just sit around and order coffee and cigarettes. You know, that's just how it goes both ways, from total control to free-for-all whatever. Keep the vibe going. We are basically looking for someone who is really great in the studio sonically, but also as far as materials and ideas, an outside opinion, someone who is detached from the situation, and that kind of contradicts what I said by, but by understanding. A separate person who is away from this and is not caught up in the middle. It's nice to hear, 'Well, try this or try that,' you know? Well, I was out of questions but not out of time to talk to Dave because he and the rest of the band had some down time to just hang loose. Dave ordered another round of beers for everyone, and we continued to talk at great length about our musical passions and interests. Over a few more rounds of beers we talked about hockey, Led Zeppelin, and how people like us could blend with the psychopaths that were slamming beers ten feet away in the cozy Evening Star Concert Hall. It was almost a quarter to eight. My stomach held enough beer and wanted some food immediately. The night was not over; Big Wreck had yet to play. Check out our live page for the review of Big Wreck's fantastic performance. click here for the original article