Feature : An Interview with Shane Anthony
February 2006
It was five years ago that Shane Anthony released Hands Like Mine, his
first full length album. The release of the record seemed promising:
it received a Best Songwriter nomination from the Canadian Aboriginal
Music Awards in 2001. Quickly following that, some small tours, radio
play, a folk festival here and there, along with a few television appearances.
And then a hiatus for five years until the release of Work To Do. The
Breath Ezine (Be.) sat down with Shane to see what took so long and what
he was doing in the meantime.
Be.: You had a very nice trajectory going there before this
record. You released a seven-song demo, Sky Stories, in 1999, and then
a year later you followed that up with Hands Like Mine. Now
it’s
been five years since, how’d the wheels fall off?
SA: (laughs) Jesus. I thought I had some pull here. Man. Can’t
we talk about how nice the artwork is or something?
Be.: I thought best to get this out of the way.
SA: Two things derailed me: one, was marriage and falling in love with
someone for the rest of my life. Two, was learning to believe in making
music again. There is a big why bother aspect to music and making records
these days. Some changes to things are great, others are ridiculous;
and aside from coming off as a whining pain in the ass, I’ll say
that it probably most settles on fear.
Be.: Okay, let’s tackle the first one. How did falling
in love and getting married hold things up?
SA: Okay, again, there are two things to break down here as well. The
first bit is, my whole entire life to the point of getting married and “settling” was
entirely devoted to falling in love with the Other. I spent hours dreaming
about the girl across the classroom or the waitress or the faceless woman
in the dreams. She is this elusive other, this almost-place that I was
constantly dreaming I would get to, arrive at, and everything would be
a-okay from then on.
Be.: And now you met a girl and that’s over with?
SA: There’s this great poem by Rumi and the point of it is this:
the reed flute, which was once a reed in the river, attached in the mud
to the earth, to the God, to creation. And only when it is pulled from
the river and holes are carved into it can it begin to make such sweet
music. The whole thing is, you have to be removed from a sense of completion,
from an utter connection to the source of life before you can then be
apart from it, from the source, and thus now striving and longing and
crying out in some way to returned to the riverbed. For me that “other” that
connection was always embodied in another wonderful smile I was chasing
about, always getting rejected, and thus having this vast ocean of longing
and rejection to write about—be it movies or songs.
Be.: And marriage in a way takes that away?
SA: Well that’s the thing, it does and it doesn’t. On one
level now it’s harder to write broken-hearted love songs, which
is the entire repetoire of country and blues music—genres I’m
mostly leaning on for inspiration. I don’t go out and meet someone
and have it fall apart and then write about it. I actually have to write
a song not write a journal entry, which has been harder. I have to listen
to people tell me their stories, their experiences, and I take the best
parts and turn it into something. But it should also be said, a whole
new whack of things come up with being married when you give it some
time and before you know it, that search for connection is never really
put at ease.
Look, I guess all I’m trying to say in the first part is that
writing songs from a single guy traveling about is easier, or it was
easier for me to come up with variations of “she done left me.” Now
what the hell do I sing about, the battle for paint colours in the bathroom?
Domesticity has it’s advantages, of actually building a home and
struggle with one other person in the world to get through life with,
don’t get me wrong—there’s love and home there, there’s
something really deep being explored. But now suddenly you have to start
reading more, researching more, listening more to come up with things to write about.
Be.: So, it’s like your own life has become pretty common you got
to steal from other people’s experiences?
SA: (laughs) Well, yeah, to write from entirely new places. Take “Whole
World Before Me”. I don’t write political songs that well.
I get one verse in and then I’m already pissed off and I want to
rant for 45 minutes. Give me an environmental issue and I get so entirely
emotionally bent outta shape I wanna smash everything around me. This
one was written after one sitting through the buildup to the Iraq war,
when every TV anchor was at the time saying we had no options, we’re
going to war. And then being a Canadian and having the CBC to switch
to, you get another perspective. And at the time it reminded me of growing
up, and really truly having a positive and hopeful heart for things.
I gotta say at core I’m an extremely hopeful guy, I really thing
we’ll figure it out; we get to the bottom of it, we’ll do
it before it’s too late in the world environmentally, we get this
life together. So, you put that hope out against 190 TV channels and
you can come back with a broken heart pretty fast. Boom, you got some
songs to sing.
Be.: So, having an ache of some sort is the only place to sing
about?
SA: I’m a goofy guy, I love jerking around with my friends laughing
for hours, and I’m really lucky in the sense that everyone really
close to me makes me laugh for hours. I feel blessed that way for sure.
But that laughter is coming from a deeper place of ache and confusion
and a battle for hope in spite of everything. I would have expressed
that before as “in spite of everything wrong with me you still
love me.”
Be.: “Good” has that sentiment in it.
SA: Yeah, for sure. The night before I got married I snuck into my wife’s
bedroom, not that we were “waiting” or anything like that.
We just thought it’d be neat to sleep separate from each other
before the ceremony of marriage the next day. But I snuck in because
I felt like I needed a cry before this thing in the morning. And I don’t
cry. I don’t’ say that to re-sort my peacock feathers, I
very rarely cry—and trust me I think it’s a problem too.
Anyway, I snuck in and I told her that I think the world is overwhelming.
I’ve done some lousy things in my life. I’ve been mean, I’ve
got loads of faults, I can think back on a massive amount of moments
in my life and wish there was a different outcome, that I was more…just
more. There’s that Bruce Springsteen song, with that line … two
steps back …
Be.: “I’m not half the man I wanted to be”?
SA: Yeah, that’s it exactly. I feel that a LOT. And the night
before I told her about that feeling, that how could she in her right
mind with all the shitty things I’ve done in life take me, choose
me, accept me in the way that the ceremony of marriages attempts to be,
that you will take this person for the rest of your life, this one person.
I felt very humbled by someone saying I’d be okay to do that with.
And that, then, is what “Good” is about, that I’m going
to remember that and try to be a better man.
Be.: And what about the gospel influences on this record—“Love
For Me” or “Manitou”. What is “Manitou” anyway?
SA: Well the original title to that track was “Jesus, Buddha,
Great Spirit, Allah, etc.” It’s a bit long so I settled
on a phrase that I think sums it up easily: Manitou. It’s a Cree
word for “Spirit”—not good or bad, just spirit, or
spirits. You would say Great Spirit or Gitchi Manitou for the good big
one we might all hear as God. And what Manitou also provides by being
a Cree word, is that a very small population of people are going to know
it’s meaning so it’s this blank word that you have to fill
the meaning of yourself—so, no lines are drawn in the sand—that’s
what I was originally hoping the “etc.” would provide.
Be.: I’m getting the sense you’re a One Love kind
of person.
SA: Completely. I compare it this way. One guy’s saying, “I
express myself in Microsoft Word—they’re the best!” The
other guy’s saying “I express myself better with WordPerfect—they’re
the best!” If you’re going to go to war for that, Jesus
Christ, what the hell are we talking about here? Just express yourself,
the message that comes out at the end is the point, not the software.
Be.: Are you comparing the various holy texts and methods of
prayer to software?
SA: As a concept, yeah. As the idea that the various teachings are method
to a greater connection to yourself, your short-comings, and the entire
living world around you.
Be.: So, what about “Manitou”, the song?
SA: Yeah, right. Well, I’m watching the news on September the
11th, 2001, and it’s crazy, it is absolutely heartbreaking. Those
images are right there in front of me right now. Very difficult time.
And I know people could show images of Iraq now or Vietnam then or any
other war the Western world brought “there”—there’s
all too many examples of human suffering and catastrophe and shame for
us all. But this was one that was for me anyway right there on the TV,
right close to “home”. Anyway, I’m watching that, I’m
watching the mothers in Afghanistan losing their families; the whole
thing is going to shit around us all. And I can remember this vividly:
opening the newspapers the days after the 11th and how the advertisements
for cars and fun stuff and this great easy possible life the West and
world offers, and how out of tune it was then next to the articles and
shock the world was facing at the time—I should say our Western
world. As this is happening the business world is saying, “ah,
I know, we got some hollow things here in the West, but if we all stop
shopping and we sit around thinking about this, our markets are going
to go to shit and we’re all going to be fucked. So, stop the crying,
the President’s called people to arms, we’re going to get
the bad guys and evil-doers, so let’s get back to what we’re
good at: entertainment and shopping.” And BOOM, three days later
the beauty pageant reality TV shit was back on the air. And I couldn’t
help thinking, here are these people in a desire to become famous, the
new definition of loved, and how far am I away from these people? Have
I not also had those desires, to be immensely successful at something?
And I thought back to when I was a kid and I prayed to God in the sky,
that I was talking to him directly, particularly around Christmas, and
I was begging for something.
Be.: “Something just for me”, as you sing in the
song.
SA: Exactly. And here I am and we all are wishing and hoping and putting
all of our energy into pipe dreams of self-indulgence. Being younger,
fitter, happier, fitter, famous, adored, full of rich things in bling-blin—who
gives a shit. I’m guilty of that. And we send that upward and while
we’re sending that signal upward we got images of mothers holding
dead loved ones or worse children holding dead mothers and they at that
immense time of anguish and need are crying to the gods, to the manitous,
for explanations, for strength, for some embrace. So, in that song I
guess I’m trying to battle the desire to look to the gods to supply
me with better fortunes when we in the West are extremely wealthy – we
have running water for example. Everyday. Knock on wood. What are we
crying about?
Be.: A song about perspective.
SA: Yeah.
Be.: Well, you’ve already alluded to my next question,
and that is, what are your music influences? You draw on a lot of genres
in each of your records.
SA: That’s a bad question. All I can do with that one is name
drop some of my favourite artists and maybe we can form clubs of what
we both like the most. We are at a time now with all this music we can
get digitally, where it’s hard to define genres, where it’s
just a total sloshbucket of music mingling. So we have the now of music,
but we also have this VAST array of music from the past both recorded
and written. What’s scary to me is to think of all the music in
my entire life that I won’t hear—there is so much of it in
the world, both past and present. I’d love to be able to sit down
and sequester myself in a corner for days and just check it out and not
be distracted mentally to actually hear it and groove to it. Anyway,
all of this is to say you just pick up and play and what comes out comes
out. Not a great marketing strategy for a “recording” artist
but I’d be damned otherwise. I find it exciting to go off in whatever
genres I can get my head around, and one over that, I’m musically
inept compared to some of my closet friends, let alone some of the great
masters of music. I’m hoping I keep exploring them so when I’m
sixty I can make some music then that’ll knock my socks or knickers
or whatever else I got on then.
Be.: See, it wasn’t a bad question. You rambled off some
highbrow shit there.
Part Two
Be.: So, seriously, it took five years, why? That’s a
long time between records.
SA: I started to record this new record about a year after Hands. We
recorded the songs at my in-laws. They went away for a week and I thought
it’d be cool to record in a house all roomed up together—I
think I read it in Rolling Stone somewhere. It seemed rock and roll romantic.
Be.: What happened?
SA: It just didn’t work out. Jordan recorded it, I did the whole
band thing, we mixed some of—you can actually hear a few tracks
from that session online (see Records—Shane Anthony for more).
Be.: What was wrong with it?
SA: Me. Ears are very, very funny things. We think they’re objective
and they totally aren’t. I listen to a few of those tracks now
and they sound great. We never ever got into completing them, but you
know, they were close. But for whatever reason I wanted to record it
all over again in Ottawa.
Be.: With Dave Daves?
SA: Yeah. I had recorded the last two records with Dave and this one
wasn’t any different in the sense that you show up, you’re
surrounded with a very wonderful sense of relaxed creativity, which is
his studio for me, just a great place to make music as far as I’m
concerned. Anyway, I went down with just me, Craig Harley, for keyboard
instruments, and Jesse Baird on drums and percussion. Live off the floor,
sitting in one room, facing each other. It was my minimal live-off-the-floor
roots project realized finally.
Be.: I thought I heard orchestra on this record?
SA: Well, see that’s the thing. After we recorded everything there
was another hiatus. I got into making some movies and exploring that
aspect of things.
Be.: Movies?
SA: It’s an internal battle within seemingly only me. “Music
or film.” Those that have seen my films and seen me play shout
back, “it’s a no-brainer, your movies suck.” Which
is a painful though fair analysis. But even so I really love writing
and making movies all the same.
Be.: So, how did Work To Do go from drums, keys, guitar, and
vocals, live off the floor to orchestra, bass, backing vocals, and
pedal steel?
SA: Jordan O’Connor.
Be.: You have him credited as co-producer, mixer, mastering,
and orchestra compositions, along with bass playing.
SA: Yeah, thing is, to be totally truthful about things, without my
friends I’m really just absolutely lost and hopeless. I’ve
known Jordan since grade four, which means we exist like an old married
couple most of the time. We’ve been working together on so many
dreams and projects, it’s actually pretty nuts. Can’t we
make other friends? Jesus. But in truth—and this project is a perfect
example—without his dedication, talent and creativity this album
would have been another loosey-goosey love-song record. Jordan made it,
for me, and this is the thing: to ME this is my best record. It made
me want to make more records, where prior to I was thinking, “why
bother?”
Be.: Really.
SA: Yeah, I’m a bit of a chicken shit. When I’m doing it,
when I’m playing the music, no problem, I’m right there.
Booking the gig? Sending packages out? Asking for something? Awful at
it. I hate befriending someone only to ask them for something—it’s
just so insincere. And I have an awful time being “well, this is
how it works, this is business.” But like I was saying at the
top, at the end of the day, this is just whiny bullshit and who cares.
The world has bigger problems than this crap—I know it. So, what
I’m trying to work more from is what Nelson Mendela said in a speech
sometime—I can’t remember the exact words but the sentiment
is that the world needs us all to be what we must, to not be fearful,
but to be totally engaged in our potential and talents for the good of
all. I mean, I make pop records, I haven’t got it totally figured
out, but I think there can be something positive gained, given, and learned
from making music. And I often think, after a gig or a good jam with
myself in the basement, that at the very least life feels good and full
and possible with music.
Be.: I only have a few more questions. First one: in your bio you say
you’re Aboriginal, you’ve been nominated in the Aboriginal
Music Awards, you’ve been active in your Metis community but it’s
not apparent in your music. What’s the deal?
SA: That’s a tough one. My father’s Metis and I grew up
in Ottawa because he’s been an Aboriginal Rights movement leader
since the 60’s and the nations capital is where you go to bang
on doors for people’s rights. So, on the one hand I’m surrounded
by Metis poltics—people staying at the house, being dragged to
meetings and gatherings my Dad was speaking at or coordinating, that
kind of thing. Yet on the other hand, no, I’m not growing up in
a Metis settlement or community in northern Ontario or Saskatchewan.
Growing up it was on a more intellectual level, albeit hidden from me
at the time. I mean, I had no way of comprehending what was going on.
Be.: How so?
SA: Well, I can remember sitting in classrooms growing up and they would
get to the Indian parts and the Metis parts and what they were saying
wasn’t AT ALL what I was growing up listening to. What they were
saying, what their version or take on history and Other was, was totally
set against what I grew up knowing and feeling as an Aboriginal person—albeit
a mixed one. We aren’t all this or all that, we aren’t a
postcard image on a horse with a headdress; we’re complicated.
As an adult you can better explore and express these things, though we’re
talking about a massive group of diverse people, like any other.
Be.: Like what?
SA: Mixed-blood or half-breed. Half-breed…what are we horses?
As my Dad would always say, “I’m not half-anything, I’m
a 100% Metis.” It was vital for him that his children did not
grow up the way his family did, an entire generation did, in total denial
about their Metis identity.
Be.: What do you mean?
SA: Well, take the last song on the record, “Talking To Me”.
In it I’m writing from personal family experience as well as from
a look at the homeless Native person on any street corner. When Riel
was hung, for Metis people, it wasn’t a time to be Metis, so families
tried to hide it, ignore it, deny it. Language was still spoken at home,
fiddles and jigs always, traditional knowledge passed on for sure, but
you bury the positive proud aspect of being Metis or Aboriginal—you
don’t outwardly talk about it.
Be.: “Though I’m glad you weren’t, you’d need
to see, to understand the sadness in my family.” That’s
what you’re singing there.
SA: Exactly. There were and still are enormous emotional costs to the
war against the Aboriginal Peoples the entire world over. What a stupid
and simplistic way to say it in one sentence—I’ll admit that.
So, the song or a whole series of songs from all Aboriginal artists out
there is one way we can begin to tell this story, explore this anguish
together. But the funny part is, Jordan’s Irish and, well, it’s
not like family stories of disenfranchisement can only come from one
society.
Be.: But it’s not overt, your Aborignal identity isn’t put
out there totally. You seem non-secular and like “everyone else” in
that way.
SA: I am who I am, whatever people make of that is their own business.
My Dad’s Metis from Lac St. Anne Alberta. My Mom’s English
from Nova Scotia. They, along with my close friends and every great book
or cd or movie that can get to my deepest heart strings, are what makes
me who I am. I wouldn’t change anything. Bottom line is, like I
started off talking about: we are separated. We are separated from our
Gods, the natural world around us, from each other, and because of it
we have a very, very deep anguish and longing—this is true for
everyone, I believe. And we can try to bridge that gap—or so we
think—with stuff, drugs, bling, whatever. The final end is, the
separation is in us, and it is in us to overcome it; are we going to
or not? And for me I get to express that journey, just a little, with
songwriting. I’m scratching the surface, I could try much harder,
and I’m trying to try harder. |
