[Disclaimer: this article contains coarse language.]
With the release of their latest album, Every Colour, Present Wonder, The Folk has been touring around Canada and breaking into the indie music scene.
The band describes their music as “FuckPop.”
“To fuck is to multiply, pleasure, do. Pop is for everyone. This is FuckPop; a distorted vision of digestible music.”
On Oct. 20, I had the opportunity to chat on the phone with three of the band’s six members, Sara Bortolon-Vettor, Emma Bortolon-Vettor, and Liam Magahay. Super laid back and outgoing, the three talked about feminism, the music industry, and their intentions behind Every Colour, Present Wonder.
Danielle Subject: Did Guelph influence you as musicians?
Sara Bortolon-Vettor: Absolutely. Guelph had a massive influence, definitely for myself at an early age. Emma and I had an all-female instrumental rock band when we were younger, and that was sort of spawned out of a reaction to the music scene being very male-dominated. So that’s why we wanted to have that kind of band – to have an all-female band to sort of showcase that. Guelph is a great place to be able to play music because everyone’s really open here, and very accepting, and very appreciative of art.
Emma Bortolon-Vettor: Guelph is a city of artists, so it’s a boomerang town. The nice part about having a city of artists is you have that general appreciation of anything that is creative. We really are lucky to have been raised in a city of people that [are] open to creativity.
D.S.: So you consider yourselves to be feminists?
S.B.: Yes! Very much so.
E.B.: Every woman that’s around today is a feminist. You have to be a feminist.
D.S.: I consider myself to be a feminist as well – I only asked that question because I find that, often, people don’t want to associate themselves with that term.
E.B.: You know, it’s so funny when people get turned off of that term. I think it’s because it’s often associated with extreme stereotypes, and I mean, generally, the term is to just ensure equality.
S.B.: The problem is, too, and we know, that it isn’t equal yet. I’m just gonna tell you, Danielle, ‘cause I think you’ll like this – I got a story for you.
So just this weekend we were in Sudbury, playing a show, and Emma and I were the only females out of a four-band bill, and I’ll tell you, most of the tour that we’ve played so far – and our band is made up of males and females – but the point is that throughout this almost two-month tour, and the amount of shows that we’ve played, we have hardly played with any females. And most of the bills that we’ve played have been men – have been white men talking about their problems. It’s cool, but, it’s just like, ‘Man, where are my sisters?’
So back to being in Sudbury this weekend, I was carrying a keyboard stand out of the venue and just putting it into our band’s van, and this late 20’s/early 30’s-year-old woman asked me ‘Oh, are you dating one of the band members?’ I was like ‘No, I just played at eleven-thirty.’
The week before, we were in Toronto – this is fuckin’ Toronto, man, at a bar that we’ve played numerous times – Emma and I, again, were the only females on a four-band bill completely filled with male rock bands. I’m not fucking sexist, I love men. But like, what the fuck is going on? I go into the venue, dude, and I told the doorman ‘Hey, I’m here to play the show’ and he was like ‘Are you one of the girlfriends of the band?’ and I was like ‘What the fuck?’ And this is by a door person who represents a very successful promotional company in Toronto, who we’ve worked with numerous times. I was very taken aback, I was like ‘No, I’m playing as The Folk for the second band.’ And then, get this Danielle, I go down to the washroom before we play and this lovely, early-20-year-old woman comes up to me and she’s like ‘Man, it’s a sausage-fest up there’ and I was like ‘Fuck I know. It’s all men up there and there’s nothing wrong with it, but I feel kind of uncomfortable’ and she was like ‘I feel really uncomfortable right now’ and I was like ‘I don’t blame you’. So those were three instances that happened just within two weeks.
D.S.: Even the fact that it’s surprising to people when they see a female-lead in a band is ridiculous. It shouldn’t be a surprising thing. Why do you think the music industry continues to be patriarchal?
E.B.: Liam and I were actually just talking about this tonight, and I think that it’s just the nature of where rock n’ roll kind of happened. It was very much a white man thing. Even in the media, you would show women flocking to men, so even in the ‘70s you had all these boys wanting to play music, be a chick magnet, but it’s completely different for women. I guess what I’m trying to say is from an original standpoint, it was already male-dominated and it already had its own sexual association, too. So I think that’s what kind of put things off course.
Liam Magahay: Obviously there [have] been strives to change from sort of an outside, like getting acts together that are all-female, but the problem is more so underneath – who still holds the power, who still puts things together, and the environment is still not inviting to everyone. It’s a very peculiar thing – a rock show. Maybe it’s just the stereotype of what a rock show is that needs to change, but it’s something underneath the surface that we need to dig up more to get to the root of things.
D.S.: I’m glad I had the opportunity to speak with you guys, it’s great to be able to talk about this topic.
S.B.: Oh thank god. I’ve been honestly really wanting to talk about this kind of stuff for years, and especially today, so I’m really happy that you brought that up – thank you so much.
D.S.: And what were you guys trying to communicate with your new album, Every Colour, Present Wonder?
E.B.: I think this album was something for all of us to reconcile our pasts. I think that all of us went through a lot of different growing pains and different types of mental health issues, people dying in our families, and by removing ourselves and having to start from scratch – and write together – yet also pour out, individually, what we were feeling at that time, I think that’s kind of what we were trying to communicate – just each of ourselves, what we’re going through, and really being there at the same time. All of us, really, being there at the same time throughout those hurdles, and really just writing about it, like I said, reconciling it. What do you think Liam?
L.M.: [laughs] Yeah, it was definitely a moment of reconciling. Being in a band together when we were all in university together, we had that push and pull of always having the responsibilities that come before playing in a band, you know, living the dream. So this is sort of our chance to all get together, go somewhere new, where none of us have really explored before; all going together as friends and just making art and that being the only focus, and that being what we did everyday. I really think it was important for that, more than anything. Just living in the way we wanted to for a very brief period of time. I felt like we earned it in a way for all that we put in before.
S.B.: Yeah, Every Colour, Present Wonder, to me, is a reaction and a statement to the current moment and the way that we communicate today, as well, and how immediacy as a result of technology has really fucked us all up, and the fact that, you know, we get something on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, we get a little pop on our phone and we’re like “Ooo, someone likes me.’ We need to be validated and feel validated, so that we need to get back to somebody right away and know what’s happening right now. Really, if we’d all just put our fuckin’ phones down and our computers down and everything and go for a walk, go and see a tree that’s been there for a hundred years – that’s been there longer than you’ve been alive – and see everything around you and the natural beauty of people and what we’ve been able to create, but, of course, we’ve created technology and everything. Man, this album is about putting everything down and just living in the moment, as cheesey as it may sound, it’s something that I think a lot of us are really losing nowadays because of technology. Ill quote Marshall McLuhan – he said it – technology, as an extension of the human body, well, it has come and it is here and if we don’t know how to control ourselves it’s going to destroy the way that we communicate with each other and be able to build respectful and loving relationships with one another. That’s what Every Colour, Present Wonder embodies to me.