A Conversation With Jamie Thompson

Hello my handful!

First, a requisite apology for infrequent updates: life in Chelsea (Ottawa area) is good but not conducive for blogging. More conducive for swimming and bbqs and hey yo, I got a life to lead.

As promised, below is the conversation I had last October with Jamie Thompson. He was born a Unicorn along with Alden Penner and Nick Thorburn, went on with Nick to form Islands in the last half of the 20-ought's, and now is back with Alden playing Baha'i music in The Hidden Words.

Full disclosure: I also play in The Hidden Words, so maybe I'm not qualified to give an objective P.O.V. This interview occurred, however, when my station in the band was confusing and tenuous, so perhaps I'm still in the green for journalistic integrity.

The Hidden Words, at this point, were preparing for a show at Casa Del Popolo for POP Montreal and I had offered to do a 500 word piece on them with a short quote for The McGill Daily to boost attendance. That short quote turned into a fifty minute interview that ran the gamut from the demise of The Unicorns to why World Music is a stupid term.

I have posted the interview in two parts in order to maintain focus. I hope you enjoy it!

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Part 1
Transcription of Conversation between Jamie Thompson and James Farr
Date: 20 September 2010

JT: One of my most important influences musically is this drummer from Ottawa who lives in Toronto now. His name is Jean-Martin. He’s not famous by any stretch: he’s this jazz guy. I did a bunch of workshops, and I used to go to this jazz camp outside of Ottawa and it was really cool because it was all different ages and all different skill levels. The whole approach had nothing to do with, like, “okay now we’re going to teach you every kind of scale you can play over a minor 2/5”. It was a broader approach to things and it really, really influenced me. I always try to look on the internet in my free time for music resources and there are a lot of them for technical things but for people who are trying to approach music from a broader perspective, there’s very little.

JF: I had a CEGEP professor who was very influential on me in the same way. Before, I was into straight-up tabs and then this guy said to me: “No, no! You’re playing this song like an idiot. You got all the notes right, but you’re playing like an idiot”. I think that sort of wake-up call is crucial to any musician getting any good at all. There are so many technically gifted people with no sense of how to move around their instrument properly.

JT: A big part of it also is that I find a lot of the time, when people start, there’s a real disconnect between the playing and listening. So let’s say you’re doing guitar, you’re so concentrated on something technical that you’re not even listening to what it sounds like.

JF: It’s crazy!

JT: Yeah, there’s no sense in that.

JF: There’s been a real inversion in the last maybe couple hundred years of technique over… I don’t even know what you would call what it’s over… do you call it the soul? The feel?

JT: Even if you just say the sound.

JF: How did you and Alden get working together again?

JT: Well I came back to Canada last summer for a bit, when I first got back from living in Germany and Alden was playing in his band Clues at the time and I went and saw them in Toronto, because I was in Guelph, which is near than Toronto, and it was the first time Alden and I had had a conversation that was more than, just sort of… maybe he’d come to an Islands show and we’d chat for a minute or two backstage. But we ended up hanging out the whole night and then I went with them to the Hillside festival after and we hung out for the whole weekend and it was really just a great interpersonal dynamic that came back right away. I think Alden was a little bit disillusioned with some of the stuff he was doing in Clues and I was talking to the rest of the guys in the band too, and it seemed like he was in a different place. I think he reacted really well to hanging out and we generally had this idea that we should do some kind of music project together again. And when I got back to Montréal in April and let him know that I was going to be here and that we should try and do something, he had been working on all these Hidden Words adaptations, putting to music these texts, and so it seemed like a perfect thing to get involved with.

JF: So it was more that he just happened to be writing Hidden Words at the time more than you being like, “I wanna get in on this Hidden Words project!”

JT: Well, the thing is, I think we were both in a really similar headspace too because I had just finalized my departure from this other band, Islands, I was playing in. A big part of it was that I didn’t necessarily agree with the purpose behind the band or what the motivations were. I’m not particularly a religious person per se, although I like a lot of the things that motivate religious people and the values and what’s important I share, but I just don’t happen to believe in a conscious creator god. But at the same time, the values, and the psychology of religion… I think the effect that religion has on people who do have that sort of faith is really, really positive and I think it’s a major benefit to humanity in terms of getting people to just think about morality and how people should treat each other. I think although those questions can be asked in philosophy or all these other things, really, religion is the main sort of forum for that. So for me it was perfect. I had known Alden to be sort of Bahá’í, like fluctuating, and then when I came back he was really fully committed, into it, and I had never seen him so engaged in his own life and really so genuinely happy and excited about what he was doing and it perfectly fit what I wanted to be doing, which was to be making music that has a purpose, that is a social purpose more than it is one of personal grandiosity---

JF: So not a kind of “art for art’s sake”, ivory tower thing?

JT: Yeah, well, I mean there’s art for art’s sake, but more common I think in popular music is art for my sake. You know, like “I’m going to go and play in this band, because I think I’m great, and I want people to recognize that I’m great” and it’s way more common than people are really aware of, in the professional pop music realm especially, and just like, “the reason I’m doing this is because I’m so talented and people need to hear this”, whereas I think the fact that this music is coming from a religious base is like, it can’t be that. It can’t come from a place of “this is about glorifying me”, because it just goes against---

JF: This is music about glorifying God, right?

JT: Yeah, exactly. It’s already, by definition, about that. Specifically, in this kind of case, (I’m also not that well acquainted with the Bahá’í faith but I’ve been going to meetings and get-togethers and talking to Alden) it seems very, very focused on human civilization and the idea that you glorify God by helping people, and that’s what’s important to me too. With music, at this point in my life, I’d much, much rather work a menial job and sacrifice making a living---I’ve made a living playing music since I was fifteen--- in order to make the focus to do something beneficial for humanity. I think the music can, when it’s done right, be one of the greatest gifts that humanity gives itself. I had been trying to, and I continually, continually have been trying to figure out ways to make music in a way that’s beneficial to people. So when I came back and that was what Alden was doing already, I really couldn’t ask for a more appropriate situation because it’s exactly what I want to do. And it’s worked out great; we don’t have to butt heads about anything, because we’re both on a similar wavelength.

JF: The nature of the outfit, the way it’s going right now and the way it’s developing suggests a deliberate break with conventional ways of promoting music, presenting music, and being part of a band. There’s no concept of a singular band, with one membership, with the goal of “the top”. I mean part of that may just be that it’s religious music, which is not part of the pop sphere right now. It seems that you guys are really oriented more to creating something good and something in a community rather than making it as a “big band” or being reviewed on pitchfork or whatever, I mean, not to badmouth any of those publications, but that’s a goal for a lot of bands.

JT: Yeah, exactly. It’s also great because there are certain kinds of pressures that come with those expectations. As soon as you go into a band thinking, “Okay, we’re going to make this a big, successful band” then there are all kinds of anxieties about things like, “well, is this good?”. You can second-guess what you’re doing if people aren’t responding to it in a certain way. I haven’t personally been that susceptible to reviews and the effects of that, but I know for a lot of people, things start to hinge on that, and if you get a bad review, then it affects your self-esteem. But for this band, so far, the majority of concerts have been at Bahá’í centers and the people who are coming are not part of the hip music intelligencia, they’re not people who know who the cool bands are, or who’s cool or not, and it just kind of carries its own set of criteria for success with it. It’s not externalized in the same way. It doesn’t matter what pitchfork says, it doesn’t matter if we fit into whatever kind of paradigm of hip music, which we pretty much don’t (laughs). I mean, I don’t know, maybe pitchfork would really like the record, but they might really not (laughs). But, you can have a sense of success because you go there, and if we play a show and there’s a seventy year-old there who really enjoys it, you have to wonder: when the last time they heard a new band they really liked? That’s its own success.

JF: Yeah, chances are they didn’t pick up the new Arcade Fire record. (laughs). It seems to me that this is a project that really sustains itself: there is no need for external influence and external support or anything like that. As long as the music keeps happening then the shows will keep happening, and the people will keep coming, and whatever sort of base you’re able to establish will sustain the project itself.

JT: A really good example of that is when we went and played this one show, the first time we played out of Montréal, and the first time we played not at a Bahá’í gathering, was at Quebec City at this festival, and they invited us because Alden and I were in this other band before, and they booked us as though we were going to sound like this band The Unicorns that we were in like 7 years ago, which really couldn’t be that much further, sonically, from what we’re doing. They put us as the headliner of the show; we played last at this big venue with a bar and after all these loud rock bands and electronicky dance things, and it was really poor fit, because the audience were all hyped-up and drunk and wanting to dance and stuff, and we’re playing this kind of quiet, meditative music, and as we played, it became clear that a lot of people just did-not-want-us there (laughs). There were a good amount of people who were really into it, but there were people who were heckling, and yelling stuff, and, really, the racket from the audience was overpowering us. You could barely hear because so many people were talking. But, the whole time, Alden and I just had the hugest smiles on our faces and afterwards we just got up and hugged and part of it was I think: it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if some random drunk person yells “get off the stage”, okay, that’s fine. I don’t know, I feel like in most bands that I’ve ever played in, if we’d been faced with that kind of situation, we just would have not spoken and had a really horrible night, but it was one of the most enjoyable shows to play almost just because it was like: this is fine. We’re not doing this so that everybody in the world likes it. We’re doing this because we believe in what it is, and we believe in this music, the message behind the music, the actual music itself, the sort of social implications of it, and the relationship between the people playing. All these things are already there, and certain, and everything else is just kind of, “whatever happens, happens” because the criteria for success is our own. It’s not external.

JF: It’s interesting that a lot of these shows, and a lot the attention you guys are getting is from this band that became extinct years ago. Does it bother you guys that this Unicorns thing is going to follow you guys around in The Hidden Words?

JT: The thing for me is I’ve already been through that. When that band broke up, me and the other guy from The Unicorns started that Islands band, and it was brutal, because that was at the height of the popularity of The Unicorns, we broke up at the height of our trajectory for personal reasons, and then me and him go make this other record and the expectation was, “Okay, so this is it! Now you’re taking over where the last one left off!” I think for the first year, at every one of our shows people were yelling out Unicorns songs to play, and every interview would talk about it, and every poster would say it, and it was just non-stop, and so I’m kind of just used to it by now. It’s kind of annoying, but at the same time, how many people get to have played in a band that people are obsessed with about six or seven years after the fact, you know? I feel like I’m lucky for that. It’s easy to lose sight of that, but…

JF: Gratitude is definitely a much healthier reaction than total resentment and bitterness. Especially if you want people to hear this band, it’s awesome that you’ll be able to get some attention for it because of a band you were in before. It’s miraculous that something you did seven years ago is still popular now, and that people will want to listen to what you’re doing now.

JT: Yeah! There are kids that are listening to that band who were barely cognizant when it was around. But, I mean, there’s the flipside of course which is that people who want more of The Unicorns, they find out that we’re giving this now, which is very different, and they may be less receptive to The Hidden Words because it’s a let-down that it’s not this other thing that they like so much.

JF: But like you said, the Quebec show just confirmed how little that is an important factor.

JT: Yeah, the people who don’t like this are welcome to not like it. I’ll still be your friend, even if you don’t like this music (laughs).

JF: So what about the show at Casa, then? It’s probably going to be a similar situation to the one is Quebec City, don’t you think?

JT: Maybe a little bit, because it will be mostly louder bands, mostly rock bands and stuff. But Casa’s a little bit more intimate of a space; the other show was also a free show, so I think a lot of people just came out to see whatever…

JF: (Drunken impersonation) Heylet’sgoseetheUnicornsI’msodrunk.

JT: This show, my friend Noah’s [Ed. Noah Bick of Passovah Productions and Blue Skies Turn Black] putting it on. All the bands that are playing are all really interesting, and I feel like the people who will come to this will tend to be a more open-minded group, but we’ll see. Maybe it will be a total disaster (laughs). I mean, musically, I’m sure it’ll be great, but I don’t know…I don’t imagine people heckling at Casa Del Popolo for some reason…(laughs)

(photo by Amanda Rachel Gardner)