It’s a (presumably) grey Friday afternoon outside the Reading hotel that is currently home base for the members of Canada’s punk-rock heroes Alexisonfire.
As their trusted minder Stu answers the phone, the lads are in varying states of recovering from the previous day’s CD launch, staged on a boat floating down the Thames, and psyching themselves up for tomorrow’s return-engagement at the legendary Reading Festival.
breaker
Stu’s job, meanwhile, is to rouse a sleeping George Pettit for his 3 p.m. interview. It takes a few minutes, but eventually a weary voice mutters a greeting that’s as pleasant as can be expected under the circumstances.
George?
“No,” the voice responds after a few seconds’ delay that can be in part attributed to a dodgy trans-Atlantic connection. “It’s Dallas. But I’m kinda like George.”
Kinda. Like George Pettit, Dallas Green is a distinctive voice within the band. But, as Alexisonfire’s legion of fans could tell you, Green’s voice is not at all like Pettit’s: The former is the comforting good cop to the latter’s abrasive bad cop.
Green, in fact, has taken his smoother style to the extreme of launching a solo side project, City and Colour, devoted to acoustic-based, kinder, gentler material.
But while that dichotomy has been instrumental in setting the band’s incendiary material apart from the power-pop-punk multitudes, there’s no denying that Green, Pettit, Wade MacNeil, Jordan Hastings and Chris Steele are inextricably linked through a punishing international touring schedule that in the four years since the release of the first Alexisonfire CD saw the band criss-crossing the globe numerous times.
And so it goes. Tuesday, the band will embark on its most extensive Canadian tour to date with a show at the Ottawa Congress Centre. Fortunately, they will be travelling armed with their finest, most mature effort to date, the politically-charged Crisis.
“This,” Green proudly declares, “is the best representation so far of what we are as a live band. The last record was our second time in the studio, so we took advantage of all the opportunities we had to overdub parts and play around with sounds — I remember Wade and I spending hours recording feedback from our amps. This time, it was all about capturing the live sound.”
And, as powerful tracks like You Burn First and Mailbox Arson demonstrate, it was also about that word rock and rollers most fear: Maturity.
“We’re getting older,” Green says of the suggestion, “so it’s only natural. We write about things that matter to us; where, we used to write about whatever.
“On our first record, George and I were often singing about different things in the same song. Now, we write together. And the lyrics are of course a little heavier, because we’ve been touring the world for three years and you see a lot of stuff and go through a lot of stuff.
“Really, we’re getting better at being Alexisonfire.”
Not that they weren’t pretty good at it before. The band’s first two albums gained attention internationally, and went gold here at home.
Junos take notice
(Even the Junos eventually took notice, tossing the band a best new group bone following the second mega-selling release. “That,” Green says with a chuckle, “was kinda weird.”)
But with getting older and getting better, Green stresses, also comes a recognition of one’s responsibilities.
Hence, fans at the band’s Canadian shows (including Tuesday’s) are being asked to bring non-perishable food items to shows, to benefit Food Banks across the country.
“We are at the point where we can start to use our name to help people,” Green observes.
“And if you can do that, I think it’s foolish or irresponsible of you not to. It’s such an easy thing to do and it’ll really help people who need it.”
How very mature.
In a good way.
