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Jam! Showbiz
It must be quite exciting to be a band as wrapped in the maple leaf flag as The Rheostatics and go on tour with Canada's premiere flag bearers, The Tragically Hip.
Even if there's hardly anyone in the arena when you take the stage.
"It's funny," says Rheostatics guitarist/songwriter Martin Tielli. "We started out and we were just sort of going crazy on stage, just full of enthusiasm, probably out of control. And now it's cooler and we're playing better musically. It think it's because we're realizing that we are bouncing around (playing) to no one."
The Rheostatics, who just released their seventh CD, The Blue Hysteria, are opening for the Hip on their cross-Canada tour, which takes them to Ottawa Thursday and Friday, then on to the East coast.
"It's not that bad," says Tielli over the line Friday night en route to Detroit for a show the next night. "It's three-quarters full by the time we finish. I went on this tour expecting people to pelt us because I've seen that happen to show openers at Hip concerts before. But people are quite polite."
Then again major exposure and commercially viable projects have never been a top priory for this band. Take their 1995 project, a commission from the National Gallery of Canada to write and perform music honouring the Group Of Seven.
Not only did they accept, they were so taken by the results, the four musicians from Etobicoke, Ont., took their composition to the studio and released it last year as Music Inspired By The Group Of Seven. The CD is a unique collection of music and samples that invoke images of wind blowing through pines and lake water rising up beneath stormy skies -- much as the best works by Canadian painters do.
"It's another example that we want to do things other than pop records," says Tielli. "It was a great thing to do. I don't want to just do pop music or songs all the time. It gets a bit tiring."
That said, their newest release, The Blue Hysteria, is loaded with full-tilt rockers and pop songs mixed with Tielli's moody guitar riffs and floaty lyrics.
Tielli, guitarist Dave Bidini, bassist Tim Vesely (the three share songwriting and singing credits) and drummer Don Kerr got together over a stretch of 10 months at the Gas Station Studio in Toronto to produce something that was supposed to be a pop record.
Of course, anybody who's followed the Rheostatics knows the chances of the band making a legitimate pop album are akin to a porpoise walking into a McDonald's and ordering Fillet 'O' Fish.
But, that doesn't mean they don't go looking for commercial success.
"Getting on to 30 it kind of becomes a pain in the ass living hand to mouth, says Tielli.
"So we were trying to think about that. And I thought, well this will be neat, maybe we're going to make our first pop record. It's going to be short and concise and uncomplicated ... But of course it didn't turn out like that, at all. It turned out to be our longest record. Which is apparently not a pop move.
"In a way I'm kind of glad. It shows it's something that is sort of uncontrollable. It's a real thing instead of something you sit around and contrive."
Although The Blue Hysteria has its share of potential hits such as, Bad Time To Be Poor, the current single making the rounds, it is also one of the darkest in the band's catalogue. With such lyrics as "A mother looking tired/always weighted under/'cause no one else brought food/And it's a slow afternoon/cause there's no one else around/and the TV drags her down," from the opening track, All The Same Eyes, sets a heavy tone for the CD.
Even the album cover evokes disturbing images, showing a canoe full of monkeys flying over a lake while being chased by other flying monkeys. The cover, painted by Tielli, was influenced by the Quebec legend of Maudite, in which a group of coureur du bois sold their souls to the devil and in exchange were flown home in a canoe to visit their families.
"It's supposed to look hysterical, horrible, but confusing, like life," Tielli summarizes.
The Rheostatics were formed in high school 17 years ago and played for a time as a funk band called The Rheostatics And The Trans Canada Soul Patrol with a full horn section. Tielli joined the group 10 years ago to replace the horn section playing horn parts on guitar.
Their first album, slyly called The Greatest Hits, was followed by a four- year hiatus from recording. It was 1991's Melville then 1992's Whale Music that acted as benchmarks for the Rheos' sound. Searching the beer drinking joints and suburban hockey rinks of the land, and often delving into the oceans that make up three sides of Canada, have been the Rheostatics' bread and butter.
Fans will notice an absence on the new release of the overt references to fish and the oceans that shape much of the band's work.
Yet some things are just too deep in one's subconscious to ever be fully exorcized. This is, after all, a band that has released two albums called Whale Music and have featured fish on the covers of four of its seven releases.
For your further consideration: Blue Hysteria refers to the panic experienced by deep sea divers when they begin to hallucinate in deep waters.
"Being under water is amazing because you're not supposed to be there. You can't breath there," explains Tielli.
"I think we're actually trying to get away from it but, as usual, these contrivances don't go ... it just works for us so we don't screw with it."
Tielli says the Rheos will hole up for the winter after completing The Hip tour to a hometown crowd in Toronto Dec. 12 and 13. They won't hit the road again 'til spring, when the crowds will again be friendly - and, more importantly, present.