Singer and guitarist Lucas Silveira is explaining changes his band, The Cliks, has gone through since recording the recently released hard-rocking disc Snakehouse.
Morgan Doctor remains the band's drummer, but Jen Benton is now playing bass (replacing Jordan B Wright) and the former trio has added a second guitarist, Nina Martinez, to give the already punchy sound a bit more punch.
Oh, and, Silveira adds before the conversation progresses, "I'm transgendered, by the way."
Really. Why that minor, non-music-related detail is known only to, well, anyone who has ever read an article about The Cliks. Silveira's band is a suspiciously androgynous lot -- all female and all sporting suits and ties for publicity photos -- which, of course, enhances the effect. To their credit, The Cliks make no mention of Silveira's female-to-male change in official bios.
"The way we see it is we're just a bunch of musicians," Silveira insists.
"It's kinda like one of those parts of the music industry where if you're anything but a white male it's automatically a novelty; if you happen to be a person of colour in rock and roll it's a novelty. But it's just who we are. When I go on stage I don't think about the fact that I'm transgendered and I don't think the rest of the band think about the fact that they're female. We're just rockers, man."
Good enough rockers, fortunately, that the (trans)gender thing need not be an issue. This, after all, is a band with the balls to turn Justin Timberlake's Cry Me a River into a riff-heavy raveup.
"I'd started singing that song around the house, first because I just love it and secondly because I thought the lyrics are really cool," Silveira says.
"I was going through a pretty intense situation at the time where I had a really bad breakup and lost trust in somebody, so I just connected to the song. I remember bringing it into rehearsal and going, 'Man, you guys should listen to this song.'
"But I felt like the sentiment in the lyrics was a little bit too light-hearted for how it was being played and I felt like I needed to express it myself; to be a little bit more aggressive with it, being that I do rock and roll and I like loud guitars."
The cover has attracted a fair bit of attention. A wealth of tour dates that will include shows on Cyndi Lauper's True Colors tour next month should do the rest.
On stage, Silveira is a compelling performer. And the themes he tackles are more universal than some might anticipate.
"I always get this question, like, 'How has being transgendered affect the way you write music?' " Silveira says. "I'm like, 'The same way Robert Plant being straight affects the way he writes music.' Your identity is part of who you are. And as an artist, if you're doing a good job, you write from your heart and your mind and the way you view the world. It doesn't necessarily mean I sit down and completely realize my identity every single second of my life and go, 'I'm going to write from this perspective.' "
That having been said, Silveira's perspective is unique in the macho world of rock and roll. And while he admits some unsuspecting attendees tonight might feel uneasy about what he calls "a pretty rockin' sexual show," it's worth noting he is as likely to make Justin Timberlake fans uneasy about what he and The Cliks have done to their song.
"Yeah," Silveira says with a laugh, "it's my job to make everybody feel a little bit uncomfortable."
