Basia Bulat

0:06Hi, I'm Dasha Boulard and you're watching NSN Exclusives. You know, choose characters.

0:53I want to be Millicent friendly. Oh, Millicent, that's a good name. This is who I'm going to be. That should be, uh, See Millicent friendly. It's a good, that's almost a good like alter ego staging. Like if you were to put out like a jazz record or something. I feel like it's a very... Or lamche, maybe lamche. Or twe- Or twe- Is tween type of music? Yeah, yeah. It's a twe. It's like an indie style of music. It's from like tweebends. Um, well it's debatable who counts as tweeb, who doesn't know this week. You're gonna have to google it. Alright, alright fair enough. But um, she's a... Oh sorry, yeah. We can actually talk. No, I was gonna... But we're here to promote with the director of top post shout out today. Shows and Quebec this weekend here in 10 next weekend. At the Polish-Kabat-N-Tall. Yeah, on Beverly.

1:38Yeah, on Beverly and Coles. That's a cool venue. It is a very cool venue with a lot of characters. Yeah. It's pretty much so it's gonna be fun. We're gonna set up Chuck for three minutes. And, uh, Have something a little bit out of the ordinary for a city-less. You guys, well I saw you play with Josh Ritter years ago in Edmonton. I'll google both of them. And like this Massible church. You played some cool like, different kind of cool rooms over the years. Yeah, I've been really lucky to play it. I mean, I'm really interested in finding different kinds of sounds. Different sounding rooms. Maybe interesting, more kind of unusual spaces. Yeah. That's always been really fun for me. Obviously, churches have a great sound to them. Very specific sound. But that's not to say I don't love rock clubs. If I do.

2:24Fair enough. The music must lend itself to those big church-like rooms. Some music. The space and all those. Well, songs at least that we can play. I guess it would have been the first record. It's always fun. I mean, if you're playing on your own, it's easy. It's easy because you can take as much room as you want to fill up the room with whatever sounds you want. How do you decide what instrument to pick up for a tune? Is it the song that you two believe you sit up piano and write a song or a guitar? And then that stays as the instrument for that song because that's where it started. I used to switch around a lot. This record I've been writing a lot on piano. But, yeah, just sort of see what I'm feeling. And then whatever happens eventually on the recording you might decide to change the arrangement. But, yeah, I can write a song on one instrument and switch it to the other.

3:11Yeah, I like to mix it up. Does... What would you just show me? The South American? Oh, the Chorango. Chorango. What's the... Is that the coolest new weird instrument that you found? I love random instruments. I see yes. It seems you do too. It's interesting though because I've been getting this question quite a bit and people think that they're odd or random or weird. And really, they're not... It's just not maybe not known to us. But... You didn't like my phrasing of random and weird or something? Chorango is a very well-known instrument in South America. It's a popular folk instrument. So it might be unusual to maybe somebody here who hasn't been familiar, but that's not to say that it's weird.

3:56Maybe other instruments are weird. No, they're all equal. Equal, special. And I first encountered... I first came across one actually in the band center. I was doing a residency there. And so obviously they have musicians and residents from all around the world coming to visit. So it was somebody from Peru who had brought their Chorango with them. Do any of these songs start in the band? No. Sorry. It's fun to have all of their songs. It was really... I fell in love with the instrument and I started learning it. It took me a while to figure out a way to play it. There is a traditional way of playing it. That's actually a very challenging...

4:43way to play. So I'm learning that slowly. But for now I'm kind of figuring out how the way of playing the instrument and so far, I think it's been okay. And a lot of people who are familiar with instruments say, yeah, you go play the typical way, but what you're doing is okay. It's okay. So that's good. This is the guitar you're using in the video. It can't be a video? No, it's a Chorango. That's what I'm calling a guitar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm scared of the word choice. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, I didn't need to put you out there. Yeah, it's the same one. And it's... Yeah, it's kind of fun. I really kind of fell in love with it because it seemed like it was only going to sound like something I had in my head. Something in my head kind of a precept. I guess I had an expectation of what it was going to sound like.

5:31And then I realized it was capable of a lot of other things and had a lot more depth to it. So, and I think with a lot of different instruments, that's what attracted me to something like the auto bar, or maybe different kinds of scissors or different kinds of organs and keyboards. It's like, okay, well, it doesn't have to only just sound this one way. Okay, maybe do something different with it or put it in a context that maybe it's not always heard in this context. So, take it out of its place that people aren't expecting. Right. I'm going to start with the... What you can't be, but you're just going on top of the steps. Oh, so... That's what it starts and then we'll chat. Okay, cool. So, do you want to talk about that? Sure, yeah, we filmed that at the Art Gallery of Ontario. I did a concert there and it was actually a collaboration between myself and a visual artist.

6:17Her name is Stephanie Connelly. She is from Toronto originally. And she, working with her, has been really inspiring. We worked together on the music video for Tall Tall Shadow actually as well, which is kind of inspired by her. It's kind of a natural progression from her collaboration at the AGO. We kind of took that one more step and it's been really amazing to be working with her. It was just really, really fun to kind of have a very DIY kind of aesthetic or experience of making something. But then obviously at the AGO, we were using overhead projectors and sort of lower-fi equipment, but it kind of had a bigger result in all of it. And why did you want to do black and white?

7:02For black and white. For black and white? Yeah. That just sort of changed sense. Well, it seems like it's a black and white. It seems like I'm actually looking for Canadian color because there's gradients and different colors in the different shadows. So you can't just print a black and white cover and it actually has a lot of different tones in it. Cool. Yeah, thanks. I'm going to start this very closely. Would you something called... I actually know I wanted a spring scene. Yeah. So you got obsessed with the spring scene channel on satellite radio? I love... I mean, I don't have satellite radio, so I was on tour and when you're in a vehicle on tour, nowadays they're come with all mon cons. So it had satellite radio. Yeah, I didn't... I was psyched to find out that there was a whole Easter radio. It was really fun.

7:51It was the soundtrack to my drive through the mid-was. So when you're stuck on one artist for a little while, does it inspire you to either write a song or to cover their songs? Did anything come of that? What makes it other than joy? Yeah, well I did a cover of Glory Days, but that was actually by request of a website called the A.B. Club, the Onunami Club. And they were doing a series called Undercover and they were doing a baseball themed series. And they said, you know, would you like to do a song for the series? It's all about baseball, you take a baseball song and the first song that came to mind was Glory Days. So I know it's not exactly about baseball, but it's definitely in the realm of baseball.

8:36I feel like they just put it in some sort of highlight package or something. Yeah, so yeah, I love that song. I love... Yeah, I think he's fantastic, obviously. So in terms of writing, I mean, I think it's hard to know where your songs are coming from. I don't think it's possible for me to be exactly conscious of it, so I'm always writing, so we'll see what happens to Elba Line. You're always writing good because I'm scared now that everyone from this bell would see just ending their bands. Oh no. If you're a douber, I can't believe that that's cute. You're still around for that. I believe that they're going to be done, done, done. I can't believe that that's true. Certainly, I mean, OBU have been incredibly important to the Toronto music community, helped foster, if not in the pivotal kind of reason why so many of us all know each other.

9:31And inspiration, and well to me, certainly I think he's one of my favorite singers ever. She's an incredible songwriter and they're an incredible band. And I think seeing what they were doing was inspiring to me to see what might be possible was one of the reasons, you know, when you see your peers making something beautiful, you're like, oh maybe I can do something too. So that was really cool to then finally meet them and know that they were amazing people. Which they are. Yeah, and yeah, there's more songs. I know that everyone is not a crew of those more songs.

10:18I know it's got to be true. You heard it here first. I mean, I don't know. I know, but I don't know. Yeah, I'm hoping. You know, all of you too, I think. I think that shows are number two. So it's about five questions, five good questions, one more answers. Okay. Road or studio? Both. Let it, fine. Let it, or McCartney? Let it. Oh, no, Harrison. When you hear a song, usually it's your first lyrics melody or rhythm. Lyrics. If someone's never heard you before, what song do they start with? None of them. Random. Pick a random one.

11:04I like wires. Thanks. Then it closes aside one, which I didn't realize was like a side one, side two, kind of. Yeah. So in my head it is. Obviously on the CD, you can't flip. Yeah, but it's so nice to have that. We were just trying to screw out that record clip before we could get it working. So did you write it with that in mind? Did you know this was going to be like a two sided thing? No, it's kind of happened naturally. I realized that there were two kind of... The state's like narratives almost? Yeah, for me anyway, there were two modes and two kind of feelings. Actually, that's kind of a, that's kind of a screen-stating thing as well. I feel like this is my observation, but I think a few people share this opinion that the sides that he has, that's sort of the way he closes and opens siding inside via this record. This is something that I thought of as well, not that I necessarily think that I do the

11:51same thing, but it's something that I've noticed. Cool. And taken note of the... Last one of the five questions. Oh, I fully did five. No, we've only done four. It's on the left. In one word. And I hope I pronounced your name right because I've been debating with people all week. In one word, bashaboolat. Uh, bashaboolat. Boolat. Bashaboolat, yeah. Boolat. Bashaboolat, yeah. Boolat. I like that. Um, thanks. Um, yes. That's a good one. I don't know. Yes. I think. That's two words. Yeah, yeah, no, I like that one. It's good. Bashaboolat. What does bashab mean? Um, it's a Polish name. It's actually a form of Polish version of the word of the name Barbara. It's a very common, very Polish name.

12:37Yeah, yeah. So that's a thing. People think it's really weird, but actually it's also weird. No, I didn't use weird there. I didn't use weird. I used weird with the answer. I like names and I'm curious about the meanings behind names. Yeah, a lot of Polish names have that where they have um, there's bashab, kasha, yuasha, dandushab, zasha, lots of shells. Lots of shells. Lots of shells. That's where we end up with lots of shells. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, pleasure. Thank you very much. This is really fun.