Sam Roberts Fights for His Right to Rock
Every certifiable, true-blue rocker””musician or otherwise””has pissed somebody off by playing music too loud. It happened to Sam Roberts when he was laying down tracks in Australia for his latest album, Chemical City. While vacationing near Byron Bay in rural New South Wales, he discovered a renovated old Presbyterian church and decided it was the perfect place to record. One local, described in the CD credits as “Rodney the Angry Neighbour” , didn't agree.
“He was a neighbour and he was angry,” quips Roberts, on the line from his Montreal home. Turns out Rodney was also a classical pianist who figured he'd found an idyllic retreat in which to practice his instrument all day. But the elegant tinkling of his ivories didn't meld well with the guitar-driven racket of the Sam Roberts Band.
“We made a lotta noise,” Roberts recalls, “and Rodney got the town council to come and board up all the beautiful stained-glass church windows. We were still makin' too much noise, but it sorta changed the mood; halfway through the sessions it was very dark and stuffy in there. All of a sudden you feel confined, and the spiders look twice the size as before, and you really do feel like you're in this old kind of rickety church.”
Not all the townsfolk were Chopin-obsessed geeks determined to silence our brave Canuck-rock heroes. A woman named Anne-Marie used to drop in with rum and Cokes every afternoon, and she'd hang out, enthusiastically observing the rock. At one point the town council came by with the dreaded noise meter, and that's when Roberts decided an acoustic jam was in order. But the mellow sounds of the newly minted Sam Roberts Folk Ensemble couldn't placate Rodney.
“He was not taking no for an answer,” Roberts explains, “so he took the whole matter to court. Then we got petitions from the neighbourhood residents to say that we were 'upstanding citizens contributing to the cultural development of Newrybar, Australia,' and the case was thrown out. So that was it; we kept goin'.”
With R.T.A.N. out of the picture, Roberts was free to continue working on Chemical City, which he describes as a “natural evolution” from his Juno Award–winning 2003 release, We Were Born in a Flame. “We didn't put a lot of conscious thought into changing anything,” he says. “It just grew out of the band spending almost three years on the road.” Although it does include the odd melodic-pop tune, like the catchy current single “Bridge to Nowhere” , the new disc isn't nearly as accessible as the previous one. It takes a while for the mix of progressive, '70s-style riff-rock, folksy, acoustic indie-pop, and stark, piano-based balladry to hit home. In a departure from the Vancouver-made Flame, Roberts didn't go into the Chemical City sessions with a lot of prepared material. After reading Jimmy McDonough's biography of Neil Young, Shakey, he developed the idea of writing songs while recording them.
“You know, Neil would sit down to record with Crazy Horse or whoever he was working with at the time, and he would have a couple of riffs, and that would be it””they would make a record like that. And I just love those records, where they were working through problems but the Record button was constantly on.”
Those curious about Roberts's Young-inspired approach can tune in to Late Night With David Letterman on Friday (July 21). (“I'm not sure who we bribed for that one,” says Roberts of the high-profile appearance.) Better yet, check out the Sam Roberts Band at Deer Lake Park, where they'll share a headlining bill with Toronto's Broken Social Scene, with openers Jets Overhead from Victoria and the Stills from Montreal. Roberts isn't sure if the coheadliners' fan bases overlap, and he's not too concerned.
“I think we're different enough that it adds a couple of interesting dimensions to a night, and that's what we're always looking for. There's nothing worse than having bands that all sound the same on the bill, so that by the end of three or four hours you feel like you've been listening to the same song over and over again. I think the juxtaposition of all four bands is enough to bring a little something different out of the crowd with every set.” -
Sam Roberts plays Burnaby's Deer Lake Park on Tuesday (J
Every certifiable, true-blue rocker””musician or otherwise””has pissed somebody off by playing music too loud. It happened to Sam Roberts when he was laying down tracks in Australia for his latest album, Chemical City. While vacationing near Byron Bay in rural New South Wales, he discovered a renovated old Presbyterian church and decided it was the perfect place to record. One local, described in the CD credits as “Rodney the Angry Neighbour” , didn't agree.
“He was a neighbour and he was angry,” quips Roberts, on the line from his Montreal home. Turns out Rodney was also a classical pianist who figured he'd found an idyllic retreat in which to practice his instrument all day. But the elegant tinkling of his ivories didn't meld well with the guitar-driven racket of the Sam Roberts Band.
“We made a lotta noise,” Roberts recalls, “and Rodney got the town council to come and board up all the beautiful stained-glass church windows. We were still makin' too much noise, but it sorta changed the mood; halfway through the sessions it was very dark and stuffy in there. All of a sudden you feel confined, and the spiders look twice the size as before, and you really do feel like you're in this old kind of rickety church.”
Not all the townsfolk were Chopin-obsessed geeks determined to silence our brave Canuck-rock heroes. A woman named Anne-Marie used to drop in with rum and Cokes every afternoon, and she'd hang out, enthusiastically observing the rock. At one point the town council came by with the dreaded noise meter, and that's when Roberts decided an acoustic jam was in order. But the mellow sounds of the newly minted Sam Roberts Folk Ensemble couldn't placate Rodney.
“He was not taking no for an answer,” Roberts explains, “so he took the whole matter to court. Then we got petitions from the neighbourhood residents to say that we were 'upstanding citizens contributing to the cultural development of Newrybar, Australia,' and the case was thrown out. So that was it; we kept goin'.”
With R.T.A.N. out of the picture, Roberts was free to continue working on Chemical City, which he describes as a “natural evolution” from his Juno Award–winning 2003 release, We Were Born in a Flame. “We didn't put a lot of conscious thought into changing anything,” he says. “It just grew out of the band spending almost three years on the road.” Although it does include the odd melodic-pop tune, like the catchy current single “Bridge to Nowhere” , the new disc isn't nearly as accessible as the previous one. It takes a while for the mix of progressive, '70s-style riff-rock, folksy, acoustic indie-pop, and stark, piano-based balladry to hit home. In a departure from the Vancouver-made Flame, Roberts didn't go into the Chemical City sessions with a lot of prepared material. After reading Jimmy McDonough's biography of Neil Young, Shakey, he developed the idea of writing songs while recording them.
“You know, Neil would sit down to record with Crazy Horse or whoever he was working with at the time, and he would have a couple of riffs, and that would be it””they would make a record like that. And I just love those records, where they were working through problems but the Record button was constantly on.”
Those curious about Roberts's Young-inspired approach can tune in to Late Night With David Letterman on Friday (July 21). (“I'm not sure who we bribed for that one,” says Roberts of the high-profile appearance.) Better yet, check out the Sam Roberts Band at Deer Lake Park, where they'll share a headlining bill with Toronto's Broken Social Scene, with openers Jets Overhead from Victoria and the Stills from Montreal. Roberts isn't sure if the coheadliners' fan bases overlap, and he's not too concerned.
“I think we're different enough that it adds a couple of interesting dimensions to a night, and that's what we're always looking for. There's nothing worse than having bands that all sound the same on the bill, so that by the end of three or four hours you feel like you've been listening to the same song over and over again. I think the juxtaposition of all four bands is enough to bring a little something different out of the crowd with every set.”
Sam Roberts plays Burnaby's Deer Lake Park on Tuesday (July 25).
uly 25).
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