Vancouver’s favourite country-folk fusionists, the Buttless Chaps, are celebrating a decade of making music together, and I am in desperate need of an angle for my interview with the band’s frontman, Dave Gowans.

Some quick research into traditional anniversary gifts reveals that 50 years is gold, 25 years is silver, and 10 years is marked by an offering of aluminum. Perfect. I’ll bring a six-pack of gifts to the interview.

As with most sessions of imbibing that don’t end in a fight or an arrest, this strategy leads both interviewer and interviewee to a predictable outcome: fun. And that segues quite nicely into the Buttless Chaps’ whole philosophy.

“Ten years in, the business side is not as important,” a rosy Gowans admits while lounging in a small recording studio just off Fraser Street. “When the band practises together now, we have a fun night of joking around and being complete idiots and letting go and jamming. There’s not that same urgency. And that’s the way we like it. Sure, we still like recording albums. But the business side? I don’t want to be involved in it so much anymore when it comes to my own music.”

This is not too surprising given that a) Gowans makes his living outside the band working on the aforementioned business side of the music industry (he and Buttless Chaps’ guitarist Lasse Lutick own Main Street’s Red Cat Records), and b) the Buttless Chaps, while having accumulated a large underground following throughout North America, have enjoyed limited commercial success.

But it’s not that Gowans and fellow Chaps Lutick, Morgan McDonald (keyboards), Dan Gaucher (drums), and Ida Nilsen (accordion and vocals) have given up their dreams of being rock superstars, living large with the big house, five cars, and an indoor ski hill made out of Colombian coke. It’s more that such goals never really inspired the Buttless Chaps in the first place.

“The band’s always been based around fun and not putting limits on what we do, not trying to have an image or sound,” Gowans notes. “I mean, we love that people have always given a shit about what we do, but c’mon, we’re called the Buttless Chaps. The name itself is a serious hindrance from any kind of marketing perspective. But at the same time, it’s something people have grabbed on to. It lets them know what they are in for. And because the band is having fun, the audience has fun, as opposed to us taking ourselves too seriously and getting angry and being all, well, grunge or something.”

Grunge? An odd analogy, but considering how many “gifts” into the interview we are at this point, it actually isn’t half bad.

But don’t go getting the impression that the Buttless Chaps are a bunch of slack-ass musicians too lazy to even pursue musical dreams of, well, laziness. Having just started work on their sixth full-length release at Burnaby’s Hive Studios with producer extraordinaire Jesse Gander, the Chaps have also recently embarked on a new chapter in their recording lives: digital releases. On April 1st, the band released a collection of songs entitled CBC Radio 3 Sessions, available in a digital-only format on iTunes and Zunoir.com—a first for both the band and its label, Mint Records.

Ironically, it’s the Buttless Chaps’ foray into computerized music distribution that has Gowans reminiscing about the band’s early days.

“Our first album was recorded in one day. I would dub the tapes and cut out the artwork at home, then sell them for five bucks. And I felt pretty alive when I was doing that,” recalls Gowans. “The creative potential and freedom of these digital releases has a bit of that same vibe.”

Along with this renewed love of the process comes a reaffirmation of why Gowans got into it all in the first place.

“When it comes down to it, I just want to make music and play—as long as I am having fun. Will I keep doing that for 15 years? I think we got a few more in us, but I’ve said that for the last few years. So who knows? Like I keep saying, I think as long as it’s fun, we’ll keep doing it.”

I inform Gowans that if the Buttless Chaps do, in fact, keep going that long, it will bring us to 25 years—the silver anniversary. I momentarily reflect on what gift I would bestow upon him at that interview.

“Silver, huh? These aluminum cans look pretty silver in colour.”

Fun indeed.

The Buttless Chaps play the Biltmore Hotel on Friday (April 4).