Gregory Pepper has a nice place and he likes to keep it that way.
He stays on top of the dishes. Renovations are underway in the kitchen. His friends joke that, other than the geriatric dude down the street, he’s the only guy in the neighbourhood who cares about edging the lawn.
But Pepper’s home in the cozy residential area west of downtown, where he lives with his partner (local artist Gillian Wilson), isn’t just a place to hang his hat or play badminton. It’s here, in the basement, that Pepper now writes and records all his music, including everything he’s released in the past year. “Around the time that I did my last proper studio album [2015’s Chorus! Chorus! Chorus!], I’d become more and more disenfranchised with the process: with the waiting, the hype, the cost, and the very short life span of the album,” said Pepper.
“I think it’s a dinosaur. It’s on its last legs. As much as I love records, I’m aware that they’re not going to be around for much longer. I’m trying to get a jump on the next thing.”First, Pepper broke with convention by personally performing and recording every part on his last full-length release, February 2017’s Black Metal Demo Tape. Now, he’s given up the album model altogether in favour of a subscription service.
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For $4 a month, the 75 listeners subscribed to Pepper’s “Song Of The Week Club” on Patreon or Bandcamp get a new tune delivered to their inbox every week, complete with lyrics, artwork, and an in-depth and sometimes quite personal exposition of the song’s origin. The project, which will run for a year, is now 12 songs in.
There are limitations, says Pepper, to the tools available to musicians testing this format. Patreon lacks customizability and Bandcamp is even less flexible. “While I think I might be ahead of the curve as a release model, I don’t know if technology has caught up,” said Pepper.But the new format has allowed Pepper to stretch in other ways, as he explores new sonic textures and refocuses on connecting with listeners.
The demo-like quality of the recordings gives them a vulnerability lacking from polished studio tracks, something Pepper is aiming to replicate when taking these new songs to a live setting.
He recently debuted some of the “Song Of The Week” songs at a Kazoo! show at Take Time Vintage: an appropriately intimate setting. “I’m kind of at the point where I want to play for a small group of people that I can make eye-contact with and talk to about the songs.”No further shows have been announced. In the meantime, there are songs to be written and dishes to be done — and the lawn needs an edging.
Check out the full interview here.
Photo by Will Wellington/The Ontarion.