Dan Mangan

0:03How's life? How are things? Things are good. Things are kind of crazy just continually progressing and not a lot of time at home, but you know how she goes. That's the idea That's the lifestyle you signed up for when you started making discs And which is a nice little segue into into where we're going to go with this interview because we're just going to talk About this new record pretty much Well, where are you at with it now? I mean it's still not out your plane shows. How how are you feeling about the record so far? It's funny, you know like when I when I was first done I needed space from it and I said been in it for too long too deep and kind of needed time So I took about you know six weeks and I didn't hear hardly a look of it and all that time And then now you know as things are moving on, you know that we're getting into the more

0:53logistical aspects of the record released opposed to the heavy creative ones, you know and Kind of coming back to it a little bit more and and Starting to actually enjoy it again, which is really nice and getting a little bit more objective perspective on it It's also kind of nice and it's exciting It's a you know generally the response that we've had from the kind of the team is really great And I think that it's in a total departure from from everything I've done previously and it's a new direction And you know it's something that we kind of had to go in hit first and not worry about Radio or not worry about whatever else and just kind of get something done that was that felt really good Were you worried about radio on the last record? I don't see you as the kid as you is the kind of guy that that worries about that kind of stuff too much

1:40No, no, and that was just it, you know, we fluked out we we ended up being on the radio But it was it was never something I thought about with the last record and so there's like all the sudden There's this like this pressure. It's like there's all these radio stations and now have a relationship with your music and and and they're expecting something that they can play So there's this weird thing where you're like well now do I have to make something that's like gonna work out for that and of course The answer is no, I mean, you know You just have to do what feels right and we flew out last time and maybe we'll fluke out again And if we don't then you know, then that's fine and then it's just not a just not a radio record And that's gonna be just just gonna be just okay. Well, you having said that though There are songs that will work on radio I mean, I know the singles are gonna be row of houses and and post-war blues

2:25I think well on certain stations the ones that played off the first record probably will play these ones too Yeah, yeah, no, I I think that they will you know, I think just in general that the the range that we're in you know the kind of Dynamic musical space that we exist in is not So crazy or so outside that you know all radio is It's just a matter of I don't know it's an interesting thing You know like a dealing with radio and I've had to love relationship with it the last few years I there's been all these new radio stations across Canada that are playing music that I never would have expected our radio stations before You know, maybe so only on college radio. It's it's cool It's amazing that it gets embraced that way and I've seen how that can change a career like I've witnessed it firsthand

3:13How being played on the radio can open up so many doors? That's interesting you say that I actually I wanted to talk a lot about the record But that's interesting because I'm starting to feel a trend the other way of radio not breaking bands as much anymore But you're saying it's helped you absolutely. I mean, I don't think it's It used to be a bit of a golden ticket, you know, I used to be kind of like well If you're someone was on the radio well then man You're gonna be huge because if you were on the radio then it meant that you had all of the infrastructure That went along with being a band that got played on the radio So, you know, maybe you were on a major label. Maybe you were a huge marketing Budget or something like that. You know, this is a giant team behind yours now With these you know kind of play non your triple a stations happening in Canada where you're getting is fans that like have hardly toured out of their

4:05Own city getting played on the radio, which is which is a totally different thing. So it's like You know without having that crazy infrastructure alongside of it It's a different kind of experience But it has opened our that it's unbelievable the things that that radio did for me in Vancouver and you know across Canada And even we can go down to some places in the States You know cities that I had never thought that we'd be touring and it's these big crowds because they heard us on the station So I don't know it's a bizarre thing I never used to listen to the radio to be honest I mean it's about CBC and and now I'm finding we're driving to these towns and kind of breeze to the FM dial and I'm kind of hearing some good music again. Yeah, I think that the musical landscapes that we existed now is probably stronger than it's ever been, you know, none's not that

4:54They're all the best bands are existing now and bands before now weren't as good I want to say it all but I just think that there's more good music than ever before I think that it used to be that we relied on a handful of bands to give us all the best music and Now you can pick and choose. I mean got us thousands and thousands of amazing bands and If they want to put it online and you want to hear it you can you can find them in 30 seconds Yeah, okay, so explain how you're releasing this record online that way then because it's different now you're right releasing People can find anything online whenever they want really even I'm sure some of the new songs of yours are popping up on YouTube from live Performances or those acoustic tunes that you did the other day. Yeah, how is this one being rolled out? We like we've the record is coming out September 27th and but it's done, you know sitting there feels weird to not do anything

5:41Yeah, how come it's just sitting there? How come it's not out for fans or something? You know, I think that it has to do with the kind of the scheduling of a record label and the scheduling of Publicist and all those kinds of things. I mean it's a world that I previously didn't really exist in and I wonder how it differs for you It's fine. It's awesome Because the people that I work with have really been hand-picked, you know, like I I made a really important decision a long time ago that I never wanted to enter a business relationship with somebody who I would second guess about introducing to my family, you know, like I Everyone that I work with says I think that they have a really strong understanding of what I'm about and they're good people and

6:27Every step along the way it hasn't felt dirty, you know, I think that that's just a that's the main thing like you know I think that there's this this underlying thing that as soon as you have a team or as soon as you're working with a record label Then you're no longer grassroots and you're you're selling out or something. It's just like it's not about being afraid of Success. It's about being afraid of dirty success And it's a very different thing as long as you're kind of going about it with a really honest and vivid and Everybody who's in your team gets you and record. It's great. Yeah, and going with arts and crafts is probably At least in my opinion the best the best choice you could none in Canada Yeah, absolutely, you know and and and the way that that came about was really organic and and mind-blowing like I

7:17I respected that at that record label for so long and I don't even think that I had sent them my record Just because I assumed they wouldn't like it and you know So when it all happened there was it was crazy, you know, and I I feel kind of like to kind of hit the jackpot when it comes to Canadian record labels just because they've had such a great legacy of amazing bands and you know really credible music and It's a great aesthetic quite to something about the record. They well, it just feels really good and They're great, you know, I want to start to get to know them as actual people That's when I really get it, you know that they're in it for the right reasons and You said you didn't send their music your music because it didn't fit with what they did well

8:04This record fits more in terms of production I suppose with what arts and crafts does just leaning towards a more full-band atmospheric lots of soaring guitars and horns and textures and strings and It feels bigger this record than the last one. Yeah, it's interesting because I think it is bigger I think that that is an appropriate term. It's a good adjective. Thank you, but it's also like slightly less flashy in a way Like there's something about it It's not it's not a shiny at the last record But it's bigger and it's deeper and it's more complicated and it's I think that it's I mean what I hope is that it's the kind of record That lasts a long time. I think that You know if you tap into a kind of sonic landscape sometimes in recording that is immediately gripping

8:49That can that can build you a quick audience But I don't know if that if that's the same kind of thing that sticks around in people No, it's one thing that he stuck in their head, but it's another thing to get Second people's guts and you want to get into their guts? Because that's what music, you know, that's what my favorite music does to me. So that's exactly what we want to do to other people I think that it's more chaotic and it's a little bit more Spooky or something like that. Well, you're talking about death a lot on it and burning a lot as well Yeah, I think you know I spent a lot of time on trains and planes and a lot of time traveling on big pieces of metal Really quickly you know center block in front of a train track or something like that. I don't know

9:39I guess you know thing it I had a crazy couple of years, you know in the last second came out We really did go from playing tiny little bars and coffee shops to getting these opportunities to play massive festivals and Share stages with fans that we really adored and quickly that you know You kind of you start to imagine that it must end soon like things think things must go pear-shaped Really, you know, it's too good. So I think you know, I was also we spent a lot of time driving through wilderness and driving through Isolate isolated Landscape which got me thinking a lot about the woods rural communities. There's a couple songs on the record that Departure for me and songwriting I used to write basically slowly from what I thought about the world

10:29I think on the strike of the hand tool of songs I'm putting my character that I've conjured in my brain and a lot of that came out of imagining what it would be like to work at a gas station halfway between St. Marie and Thunder Bay, you know, and And it's just long stretches of highways like, you know, people commute into Toronto and crazy to me But what about for the gas station where you work and we're sitting all day alone, you know, it's you know It's you know what about owning that gas station for 20 years to your kids

11:18But you know your kids don't want anything to do with it So they move it's under bay and they work at Denny's like, you know, it's it's an interesting thing like living way out there It's a different existence than I've known for most of my life It's mostly been a city and so I don't know, you know, do some things that toss around in my brain Yeah, would you ever want to do that? Would you ever want to live in the middle of nowhere though? Yeah? I think so. Yeah, it does it, you know, it's pretty charming like the idea of going and having a nice little garden and Living in the middle of nowhere. I don't know it seems all right. Sounds like you're able to write pretty much anywhere You can write in the van right in the bus. Yeah, yeah, that's that's something I've been fortunately less with they Have kind of been able to do that. I mean when I first started writing I was trading in my bedroom Because you know I spent a lot of time at home as things progressed and I'm cheering a lot

12:06I kind of it was sort of you know fight or flight like either either you've learned how to write on the road or you don't and I wasn't spending any time not on the road So I had to learn how to write on the road. It's a different thing I I keep you know I I keep writing things down and I put put napkins in my pocket with phrases and they accumulate them and I write things into my Phone and I text message myself things. I'm a really really slow writer. It takes me so I'm 16 Months to write one song. I'm writing slowly and subtly all the time and that's that's the way That's what works for me everyone's got their own process And that's that's what's works for me is just to To keep keep to an ongoing process to just always be writing and even when I'm not feeling incredibly creative Just are there any stream of consciousness songs that on this record? Do you ever written like that?

12:56I think I mean the last song on the record called Jeopardy Mm-hmm and every every lyric in the song is a question, you know, it's like a it's like a big exercise and rhetorical Prose I that is a stream of consciousness on me the first verse So that song is kind of about me and my own me and drinks and yeah I go on so that there's a lot of me and that in that first verse and the second verse is entirely different It's it's much broader. It sort of goes from me to the greater world and to start talking The questions about what it you know, what is unity and is aligned about? Well, you know what happens when all flags burn together? It's sort of like if one flag burns and that that's unfair because there's all these other flags And they're gonna take advantage of that But you know what if we off what if all the flags just burned at the same time?

13:42That would be it would be a different thing, you know, I You're probably right unfortunately Since we're talking about that song though that that's the last song on the record you got this very big big band like 1920s kind of horn section ending just a fantastic way to end the record. Thank you. Yeah, you know that song we we're we could have gone a couple different directions and I've been listening to a lot of Sam Cooke and Feeling very inspired by that 1950s pop sound and so it you know everything was recorded on recorded in the 50s and mono It's ribbon mics and we tried to go pretty authentic on it and it ended Ended up being this weird kind of combo of 50s, you know soul pops with a bit of burp back around

14:33You know it's that It's hard to really peg it down But it is kind of a bigger band feel and we just performed that song live for the very first time with a big 15 piece band and Vancouver on Sunday night I was a lot of fun, you know, we got sick There's not a lot of not a lot of points in our set where we just have like a really long drawn out solo And in this particular one, you know, you got the horn section cooking and then you've got this great big solo between the guitar and the trumpet And they're often they're kind of battling almost, you know, it's great. Is it the same band pretty much? Yeah, there's there's been some changes and there's been some Additions, but you know the core of the band has mostly been steady throughout the last couple years and same band that's on the record too Yes, yeah, I remember I can't remember what interview I was reading was reading you talking about something about this record being

15:22Less about you and more about the band as a whole so did they contribute to the writing process or was it? Did you bring in all the songs pretty much finished? Yeah, I mean the the songs were written but in terms of the arrangements, it's very bandy You know, there were times on the last couple years, you know, we'd end up in Norman, Oklahoma or something like that There's nine people in the crowd So we I like literally I would just start playing a song that they had never heard and they would just kind of play along and they would figure it out And we you know, we didn't have any time to rehearse because we were never at home So we basically like a lot of these songs were like literally arranged on stage in front of people Which was a nice organic experience because it meant that there was kind of a sense of urgency to it and it meant that you know There's a sense of improvisation to it, you know more than anything But I think the record previous that I had performed those songs solo so many times

16:12I've been all over the world my guitar so by the time we got to the studio those songs are already in my head I figured them out, you know, I knew what I wanted to do whereas these The last batch of songs they weren't that solidified they were you know, they were still ideas They were totally infinite with possibilities so came to the band and so like all these songs like what do you guys want to do? And luckily I got a really great band and I don't know how I keep holding on to them But you know just to play with they all come from totally different directions for me A lot of them are heavily entrenched in the kind of improvisational free jazz world And it's hell scheduling our tours because these guys are getting offers to go play jazz festival frog and

16:59And so it's you know, we're trying to trying to try to keep everybody Home now and then and trying to keep everybody's career going But they the guys in my band have you know four or five bands apiece and somehow we managed to keep it together Have you talked about this record before or is this like you're this mustn't be the first or close to it? Yeah, you know, we haven't had I haven't done that many interviews yet about this record, right? It's funny like throughout the process of a record release you learn to talk about your record and You try to formulate your thoughts and coherent manner But it is interesting in talking about the record you get to kind of know your record again the second time Yeah, well and it hasn't been that long since you recorded I'm sure if I asked you these questions three years from now that be very different answers than right now Certainly certainly well because the songs are like children and

17:46Records are like photographs of your children So your children grow up and they change in every live show you play the songs change and they grow up and this you know the songs are Are are infinite they will continue to grow and evolve as you grow and evolve? But a record is finite it is finished. It is done is a photograph of your child and it's never gonna change So you can look back at that photograph you can listen to the album and know that's where the song was sent And then you can play the song now or you can look at your grown-up kid now, and you know, okay Well, that's what they are now. So you know your opinion of your opinions of your kid changes I don't have any kids, but you know your opinions of your songs your opinions of your work change and develop what song is undertaking the most changed then well It's interesting

18:32I like you know the second song in the record how Darwinian and I think it's totally entirely different than any song that I've Recorded before it's kind of moody and Radioheady It's you know, it's funny like there's this really interesting thing going on in Kenton's drumming on this record because on one hand the drums are really subtle on a number of songs are not You know crazy high in the mix It doesn't sound like rock drumming, but it doesn't sound like jazz drumming and it doesn't really it's like Is this really subtle nature? understated Kind of nature to his playing on this record, but at the same time there's like incredible kicking rhythmic Forward propulsion on the record too. It's a sad record. Oh the death the nice relation, but it moves like I you know

19:22I'm proud to say that it's not like a sorrowful Sad sounding record all the time like it's got some real rhythm to it and it kicks So that's really cool for me to just sit back and just appreciate other people's performances I mean, it's you know my favorite parts of the record where the other parts where I'm just enjoying the other things that aren't me Yeah Well, what what do you love about harmonics? I noticed a lot of harmonics on your records harmonics like on the 12th fret or the 7th fret of guitar oh Interesting I hadn't really thought of that. They're all over there. Well, you know, you know what I mean though. They're all over the place Yeah, yeah, you know what that's not me. It's uh, there's maybe a couple that are me I think it's uh, no, but you would still have final say wouldn't you being like now?

20:08You know what I don't like that or or that keep doing that. That sounds good. You know that kind of stuff Yeah, right. I mean I guess that's all gourd goudina. I don't know I get gourd a seriously long leash I basically should do the whole band I should just do whatever you want and if I don't like it I'll tell you so I give them a really long leash to be playful and generally what I find is is that whatever they do I like it so I really have to you know direct them all that much and it's true actually and it's not I think about a plus word lose has a lot of harmonics on it. That's where I was gonna go next. Yeah, I'm kind of like really muted quick fast harmonic sounding electric guitar and Yeah, it's interesting, you know, I think that I like things that aren't perfectly predictable or beautiful Society human people were off flawed and that's what makes us great

20:54You know our flaws our collection of flaws is sort of like what is our defining characteristics of our personality Lot of flubs a lot of like flubbed guitar notes on this record and I got a lot of like weird No choices on this record in terms of the guitar that a lot of people would just delete and redo and try and get a better Cleaner, you know more fluid sounding take or something But for me, I feel like a lot of those flub notes, but that's what happened That was that moment, you know like that was the moment of what was happening in his guitar at that moment And I don't know I just want to mess with that, you know I got I want to let that breathe and live and then you know, of course coming back to it Those are my favorite parts one of my favorite parts of the record is starting a war to unite the kids

21:39Oh, yeah, cuz I think I know your thoughts on war just from Facebook posts and whatnot How hard is it to write a song where you're you want I would think you want to kind of protest the idea of war You also want to stay respectful to the troops. Yeah, I'm writing that thin line and that song is song is like I would say I almost say I want to say it's like it's not even an anti-war song so it's just like an anti Manipulation sign it's about Controlling people and I just frustrates me that the same government that want to send poor kids off to war By the same government the cut veterans rights and don't want to take care of those kids when they come home And they're still poor, but now they're all messed up in the head, you know, I this is huge evil I'd been listening to some radio programs on PTSD and that's reading on post-rattic Justice Order, and you know

22:24Shell shock says a heavy thing and it's it's almost not really respected It's like, you know, somebody's foot gets cut off. Well, man, that's terrible You know, we we got to we got to understand that but if there's likely a psychologically damage the rest of their life Not the fans. It's not as heavy. There's a song is a bit of a protest against just unethical and unresponsible governance more You know, just plain anti war I understand that there are times at war in the same age It's kind of hard to believe that most of the ones that happen are necessary and Could have been dealt with and I'd love to delve into that with you sometime But but I know you we don't have too much time So let's keep going through some songs as fun as that would be if I am dead back to the burning back to the death back to the leaves

23:11Themes a little acoustic ballad. I guess there's two slow songs on the record. There's that in Daffodil that come out It's like a living will yeah, yeah I'd say you know images of death and what do I want to happen when I die and This the I mean that song to you know touches on is the such that thing goes dying breeds gather beneath fallen trees Heads of leaves. Yeah, you know, the chorus if only we'd known sort of like You know, what are we doing? What are we doing to each other? What are we doing to the world and you know? We're always so full of hindsight, but so damaged to To to repeat all of our mistakes and carry out in the present all the things that we've damn in the past And I think they're happy on a societal level enough happen on a personal level, you know, we all do it

23:59I you know if only I'd known sort of like if only I'd known I was gonna die well, you know I would have lived differently, but of course I always knew I was gonna die so why didn't I live differently? You know Daffodil slow a song on the record you mentioned a whole bunch of flowers it Little just a cute little love song. Yeah, I should think of my grandfather kind of song you would have liked You know sounds like it was written in the 20s of 30s. Yeah, I told you that I ripped off actually did write it Just clear in the air. Are you You know, it's funny. It's one of the things where I wrote it and I was like no that song's too pretty too pretty too pretty It's too much too too much of a love song so let's make it filthy So we just had to add as many layers of chaotic noise to it as possible

24:51You know, right run every instrument to a couple layers of distortion Over Chad you talk about adding noise and big crescendo on the next song starts with them ends with us Yeah, and then probably the biggest crescendo on the record brings a temple back in the record about halfway through It lyrically reminds me of lost the TV show. Yeah, I Tried to go out of mala. I did when I was about 18 and 17 maybe In the break between grade 11 and 12 growing up from the west side of Vancouver And I think my mom said that I was getting a little bit too preoccupied with name-brand clothing and things like that She so she sent me down on the ship to go on other people and basically It was a trip going around it, you know human rights organizations and When you know, we went to all the slums and we met with people who are involved

25:41You know, it's the kind of gruesome outcome of the you know civil war intended It's kind of a dangerous time there kind of interesting But it was a beautiful amazing trip and I came home so grateful for all the things that I had and I think that You have to leave to know what what you have, right? You have to it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's so scared people who do not travel Because they don't understand that their way of life is not the infrastructure Or the or the basis or the norm their way of life is only one of millions of norms So that you know, I really taught me less I came home I was a very different person after that I kind of had an a new level of appreciation for the bubble world that I was living

26:30So that song is kind of about the Civil War in Guatemala But you know, it's any civil war as long as originally called Guatemala And let me changed it. Oh just because I didn't want it to just be about Guatemala I wanted it to be about that feeling where living in a society where you can't tell your opinions anyone in case You know, it's this is this thing about best in percent, you know, like Black and white everything black and white is no gray, you know The whole thing about being afraid being afraid to live your life in the country where you were you're from is crazy You know being being afraid in the night someone's gonna come and sure. Yeah, we got lucky growing up here, huh? They did oh fortune huge drums the first one almost scares you because you don't expect it

27:21At the beginning of this. There's a quick little fill to it some point The last record obviously titled after or a no-de-curt vlogate anything from oh fortune or was it just you had the song and let's I mean, I'm aware that there is or not offer called over tuna, but What you wasn't really that where where it was coming from it's just Back to isolation back to the thunderbasing, you know way up You know talking about being dead and being at a funeral and being at your own funeral and kind of saying, you know Don't don't be sad just be happy and there's a big idea that you know if an old Parent dies and the kids have all moved away and living in different places You know if they're death to bring with all the kids home and even though it's sad that there's a death

28:07It's like a happy thing because well at least the product one together one more time. You know, why are you writing? We're the same age. Why are you writing about death so much? Do you feel it? Like I'm not even thinking about it too much yet Got trying to get it out of me. I okay, you know, it's like whatever's going on Whatever's going on in my brain or in my heart is gonna come out and I have to get through it I have to work through it and then then I can move beyond it and do something different on the topic of death songs There's a song called regarding death and dying. There's this gospel hymns thing going on It's gonna sound great when you're doing your theater tours and It's like a storm brewing of noise underneath. Yeah, and that's how with another one, you know It's like it's like it's kind of like this nice little folk ditty It's like little old traditional sounding folk song and I'm not too pretty

28:53I want to I'm gonna mess it up So it's the you know, I'd got Kenton to lay down a few layers of chaos blend them all together makes some noise The song itself has no regard for all the noise going underneath this like two separate entities Kind of coinciding Rose of houses. I hear you're inspired inspired by films and books when you write sometimes Stand by me. I move that song is about stand by me. It's kind of written from the perspective of Gordon the chance the book or the movie Well, you know what actually it's this is this is a confession. This is terrible. I've actually never read the body Oh, okay, I really should it's a short movie. It's like 20 pages Yeah, I know yeah, you know that we were picking up Anyway, so stand by me. Yeah, I love that movie great And it really says a lot about growing up and you know what that means

29:42And since we started with the last song on the disc Let's end with the first song on the disc is about as helpful as you can be without being any help at all I love how the record ends with that huge big band crescendo. This almost sounds like the The intro sergeant pepper with the band with the string band, you know tuning up and getting ready to go Yeah, it was out on purpose. So was that that song that song was in my brain for years and When we recorded it we and we had the guy named Avon Kang out of Seattle or do all the arrangements for it Knock there the park. It sounds like a like an introduction the song says you know Huge and it's grandiose and it's kind of exactly what I loved about it But yeah, there's a book called the luck of ginger coffee about this guy from Ireland living in in the United States

30:32Got a family and can't really get a job together and thing is you know thinking about just Never really doing all the things you want to do because you're so preoccupied about just getting the basic necessities and the feeling out of touch with the world and out of touch with luck and you know kind of not letting it get you down and kind of Rather than the class of Neil Young better to burn out from the fadeaway It's like rather than letting the world get you down saying well, you know You're not gonna burn me. I'm gonna burn myself. Which seems to be a theme of the record, too And before I let you go we did this last time but five questions five quick questions one more answers, okay road or studio Radio Landon or McCartney Landon lyrics melody or rhythm. What's most important in a song

31:21Song you've written you're most proud of Actually, you know what better question now that you have this new disc coming out Which of the new song sounds best live? Cool and in one word oh fortune