Throughout her long career, Julie Doiron has worn many musical hats — impassioned punker and charming singer-songwriter among them — but she’s never been as loud as she is in Julie & The Wrong Guys.
Backed by Jaye Schwarzer and Mike Peters of Toronto hardcore outfit the Cancer Bats and guitarist Eamon McGrath, Julie & The Wrong Guys are now pissing off sound guys and leaving ears ringing on a cross-country tour promoting their new album.
Kazoo! brought them to the Ebar recently, where Doiron and Schwarzer told The Ontarion about the process behind their new, self-titled record. (Selections from this interview appear in the Sept. 21 print edition of The Ontarion.)
Will Wellington: How did you start playing together?
Jaye Schwarzer: Julie needed a band.
Julie Doiron: I used to go to this place called Saving Gigi a lot when it was owned by our friends Amelia Laidlaw and Kristjan Harris. Eamon used to work there and I had started working there in January.
I was asked to play a show at The Garrison and Christian was like, “You should get my friend Mike Peters to play drums!” He was going on and on about how awesome that would be and then Eamon was like “Aw, dude, I’ll play guitar!”
JS: Mikey was like, “If I’m going to play drums, I need a bass player. Do you want to play in a band with Julie Doiron?” And I was like, “Absolutely.”
WW: So were you Julie Doiron fans?
JS: We were definitely big-time fans.
WW: Julie, were you a Cancer Bats fan?
JD: To be honest, I hadn’t heard the Cancer Bats. But I had heard of them. I kind of stopped exploring music that was new to me while I was having kids — which is my whole adult life! (Laughter.) I knew a lot of people who loved them. I think they’re awesome now that I know!
We did a little rehearsal show at Saving Gigi before the Garrison show. And it was really, really awesome.At one point we recorded all the songs of the set and we used two of them for a 45. I moved to New Brunswick shortly after and Mikey moved to Winnipeg.
JS: But we kept doing this. The Bloor Ossington Folk Fest was a big thing we would always do in Toronto, which was also associated with Kristjan and Amelia and Saving Gigi.
JD: And then Mike called me at one point and was like, “We all have this time off — I have this grant for us to make a record — we’re going to do it in October — this is happening.”
JS: He did just spring it on you.
JD: But that’s kind of the only way to get me to do anything really.
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WW: And they’re songs that you had written with the band?
JD: There are only two songs on [the new record] that we had played previously and they were songs I had written before meeting these guys: “Condescending You” and “Heartbeats.”
Throughout the six to eight months leading up to the recording of the album, these guys were getting together from time to time and jamming. Mike was writing stuff at home in Winnipeg. They were sending files to each other. They were sending files to me too, I just never actually listened to any of them.
JS: When we got it all figured out we converged on the cottage in Manitoba.
JD: We went to Mike’s grandparents’ cottage for a week on the lake. The day before the session I texted Mike, like, “I am freaking out. I don’t know what I’m going to offer to this collaboration — I have no ideas!” I hadn’t been writing songs. And I had never co-written.
Mike was like, “It’s going to be fine. We’ll jam at the cottage.”
They had music parts. I just showed up with the opening verse for “Hope Floats.” And I had a bit of an idea for “Calm Before The Storm” and that was it. Two song ideas.
JS: And we put everything else together at the cottage.
JD: The first thing we did was set up all the gear and then we just had a dinner.
JS: Got into some “CC avec de l’eau” [Canadian Club and water].
JD: In the morning, I would do yoga. Then we would have breakfast.
JS: Get the fire going.
JD: Then we’d jam for six hours or whatever, then have dinner. We went swimming one of the days — it was October and we went in the lake.
JS: It was a change of gears for everybody.JD: Eamon [was the only one of us] used to co-writing.
JS: He was the secret weapon.
JD: We’d come up with a lyrical idea and he’d write out a bunch of lyrics.
JS: And then we’d all pick lines and add lines and take things away.
JD: And I would have to tweak everything around to make it seem like something I would say.
JS: I’d never written like that, where we had a very short window of opportunity. Usually, it’s spending weeks and weeks in a room with the band writing.
JD: When we went into the studio, we didn’t have lyrics for “Broken Pieces” yet. We wrote them on the last day I was doing vocals. JS: We sat in a circle and wrote them.
WW: Do you have a favourite song on the record?
JS: Probably the last one, “Hope Floats.” That’s the one that gets me every time.
JD: It’s a pretty crazy song. For me, it’s either that one or “Call Your Own Shots” or “Calm Before the Storm.” “Heartbeats” I really like too, but that’s only because I did like thirteen vocal tracks on it.
JS: I can remember consciously being like, “I’m going to write something that I think Julie would sound really good singing with.” “Call Your Own Shots” [was one like that]. And when we got to the cottage Mikey was like, “You wrote all the songs that sound like something Julie would write” — like the funnier, poppier stuff — “and she wrote all the stuff that sounds like you!”JD: I did come up with a few heavy parts. The heavy part in the middle of the first song — that was me.
WW: A lot of the talk about the band is how you come from such diverse musical backgrounds — The Cancer Bats from the heavy music scene and Julie from a quieter genre.
JD: But I started in Eric’s Trip! It’s crazy. I don’t know why.
JS: People get used to whatever it is that you’re doing now. Everyone’s like, “Julie goes out and she sings Julie songs.”
JD: But here’s the thing: Most of the people who think that I’m a really quiet solo singer-songwriter have never seen me play live or they’ve only seen one solo show fifteen years ago right after Eric’s Trip broke up.Every time a band broke up, I wanted to make something that was the opposite of that band. So after Eric’s Trip broke up, I made really quiet music for a bit because I didn’t want to make the same music Eric’s Trip was making with anyone else. So then I made Loneliest in the Morning. When I was done with the Wooden Stars record [Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars], I made Heart and Crime, which is really quiet. Like I was mumbling, whispering.
JS: I do remember a Cancer Bats tour out west. This kid who always comes out to our shows was like, “I’ve got to head home but I live in Edmonton.” And we were like, “Oh, we’ll give you a ride, we’re going to Edmonton.”
And we just listened to gangster hip hop [all the way]. He was so weirded out. He was like, “You guys like this?” And we were like, “Love it. Love it.” And he said, “I thought you guys would just listen to metal all the time.”Everybody loves tons of different music.
JD: There’s going to be a lot of people saying, “Two musical worlds converging!” But it’s really not a departure for me.
WW: Julie, when I first saw you play, I was struck by your stage presence and how comfortable you seemed and how funny you were. And I thought it was interesting, last time you guys came through town, that you were joking, “Oh, I promised I wouldn’t talk while we were on stage.” How do you feel when you’re performing on stage? What do you try to project?
JD: The reason I would’ve said that with these guys is that it’s a different kind of experience. With a rock band, I don’t like to just talk, talk, talk. I know in the past from playing with other musicians that it’s not really fair if everyone is standing on stage waiting for me to finish my shtick after every song.But it really just depends on what mood I’m in. Usually I just talk when I feel like talking. If I’m feeling really positive, then I get really giddy and bubbly. There’s a little bit of nervous energy to it. If I’m feeling really shitty and I’m having a bad day, I don’t talk much. If I had a bunch of crazy things happen to me that day I usually like to share it. There’s no plan.
When I play solo I don’t make a setlist ever. I just play whatever I’m in the mood for. I also take a few requests. And I find not having a setlist makes me more inclined to tell stories. I’ll play a song and be like, “That reminds of this time….”I create a mood when I’m playing solo, and it’s something I’m conscious of. But when I’m playing with these guys, I’m definitely creating a different mood.
JS: You always want there to be a flow to things. With you playing by yourself, and telling all those stories, it’s adding to the flow of the set.
JD: And then I can play the room a little bit.
JS: Playing with a full band it’s like, “Well the flow is happening … because we’re jamming!”
WW: Jaye, as a Julie Doiron fan, if there was one non-Wrong Guys Julie Doiron song that we could include in the article or link to, what would it be?
JS: I think it was my doing to get “Condescending You” [originally from Loneliest in the Morning] into the set. I was like, “I love this song — we can make it heavy!” And then we did.But I think my favourite is “Tailor” from I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day. I always love that song.
Julie & The Wrong Guys is out now via Dine Alone Records.
Photo by Will Wellington/The Ontarion.