The Mercedes five sublime

Chart #108 JUL/AUG '99

Through a combination of talent, passion and extremely hard work, Moist has become one of Canada's pre-eminent rock bands. After a major-label debut that sold nearly 500,000 copies, the band felt they had to prove to their critics that they weren't a one-trick pony. Their second album, 1996's Creature, also went multi-platinum. Point proven. This summer marks the release of their third album, Mercedes Five And Dime, and a return to performing, with a mainstage slot on Edgefest across Canada. ChartSenior Writer Sarah Chauncey sat down with the fivesome in a Montreal's vibrant San Tropol to discuss everything from fresh towels to the significance of singer David Usher's blue corduroys. Chart photographer Edward Pond took the pictures. For a band whose shows nightly re-define the word "intense," these five guys are extremely relaxed. Crowded around a bright yellow patio table on a cloudy afternoon, the bandmates appear remarkably even-keeled, without the slightest trace of tension....except for the odd bit of good-natured mocking. Has Moist - gasp!- mellowed? Only offstage.

Performing intensely every night over a long period of time can leave a person - not to mention five people - depleted. By the fall of 1997, David admits, "I was at the end of my wits." The band needed a break. While the quintet recuperated from Creature and wrote songs for Mercedes Five And Dime, the motivated Usher released a highly-acclaimed solo album, little songs.

"There's so much pressure associated with a second record," guitarist Mark Makoway explains, discussing the backlash that inevitably accompanies a successful debut. "We're past that now. We're a band, we're making music, and we have a record that we're really pumped on. We're all really excited about people hearing this album."

And hear it they will. Mercedes Five And Dime is the band's most accessible album to date, and if the sold-out Edgefest dates are any indication, absence truly has made the fans' hearts grow fonder. Ready to show Canada that they're hers to stay, Moist is eager to get back on the road, and they feel psychologically prepared to do so.

"The band has never been as healthy, as a social unit, as it is right now," confirms Mark. When asked why, all five - who honestly are best friends - chime in with one response: "A lot of time off."
They're baaaaack.

MERCEDES FIVE AND DIME

When Moist first made a recording - their 1993 indie cassette - they spent a marathon two days laying down nine tracks. Luckily for the band, their success has allowed them a bit more time and freedom to explore the recording process. In january, the quintet headed to Montreal's Studio Piccolo with producer David Leonard (Barenaked Ladies, Wide Mouth Mason).

With both Silver and Creature, Mark explains, the band "tried to capture the live energy; to re-create what we do as a live band ." With Mercedes, he says,"we made it more as an album, and we'd think about how we were going to play it afterwards." Not that the band didn't want to try out the songs live, but their schedule didn't allow for such opportunities.

"There's songs that we could've played when we did the Summersault tour last fall," recalls bassist Jeff Pearce,"but we were going out there and just doing 45 minutes worth of material." With a smile, he admits that "it's one thing to road-test your stuff at a club with 500 people in it. It's a little bit scarier to try a brand new song in front of 20,000 people,"

Drummer Paul Wilcox tosses in his opinion: "I don't think you can road-test in a big festival setting, either, just because people show up and they go,'Play the song like it is on the record-'"
"'-Or we'll rush the stage !" David finishes, laughing. This is a band that laughs loudly and often, a testament to the good will that runs between them.
"I think the main thing with this record," Jeff continues, " is that we really gave ourselves the freedom to try things out, to have fun with the songs, and to have fun writing the songs. We kind of got rid of the idea of what we thought a Moist song would be like. We did a lot of things; we really stepped out in a lot of ways. I'm really happy with the development of it, the way that it's different from Creature, and the way that we've changed and matured as musicians and as songwriters."

As the waiter delivers cappuccinos all around, David reflects. "We had a good time making this record, whereas I don't think we had a good time making the last one. We were all slightly crazed the last time; we were in the middle of a management shift to Nettwerk Management, who also handle Sarah Mclachlan and Barenaked Ladies; we were all slightly burnt out. This time, we actually enjoyed it. That means a lot." He adds, "I think it comes out in the record; there's sort of an easier feel to it."

FEWER NOUNS

The lyrics on Mercedes Five And Dime are a little easier to decipher than many of those on Silver and Creature. "I tried to make a lot of things make a little more sense," David acknowledges."Make them a little more - not understandable, but slightly more coherent - for the listener, and for myself, maybe."

Keyboardist Kevin Young looks up from his coffee. "Fewer Nouns, apparently." Without missing a beat, David deadpans, "A lot less nouns. I tried deliberately to eliminate the nouns." His eyes glinting with amusement, he asks, "What are you talking about?"
"Somebody from Nettwerk was listening to the record and said,'Fewer nouns than last time.'" He shrugs. David looks puzzled. "You know," Kevin explains wryly. "Nouns. People, Places and-"
"Things," they finish together. David shakes his head, perplexed.
"I thought there were more people, places and things."
"I did, too," admits Kevin,, "but I was sort of in a weak frame of mind, so I said, 'Oh, sure,'"
"there's quite a few proper nouns on this record,"Jeff offers helpfully. In an attempt to spin the conversation - well, somewhere else, anywhere else - he adds, "These songs seem to be more... more about specific things. They seem to be more specific about things." Can he be more specific about things? "Well, no, I still don't know," he admits. "I still don't know what the songs are about."
Mark reinforces the initial concept. "But they are about something."
Jeff nods. They seem to be about something."
Paul looks at his bandmates as though they just beamed down from Mars. "It's a riddle, wrapped in an enigma... smothered in cheese sauce."

PLAYING LIVE

All five members of Moist are thrilled to be getting back on the road after such a long hiatus. "I miss playing live a lot," Paul admits,"and we're looking forward to that; that's going to be a lot of fun."
Although there's certainly a creative reward in finishing a CD - especially one as well-crafted and melodically contagious as Mercedes - playing live is where you get the adrenalin rush, the immediate feedback of fans, the danger of not getting a second take.
"The songs take on a new life when they go live," Kevin explains. "They've got to change somewhat, because getting a song in the studio is really just a snapshot of what the song is all about, and sometimes you get the best picture, and sometimes you don't get the best picture."
On the downside, when a band performs every night, day in and day out, for months on end, they need to find ways to keep the music fresh. "Quite often, things happen that are new for that night and won't happen again," Mark says. "And that can be challenging, like if David decides he's going to do a scat vocal improv, then we just figure out something to go with it, for the moment. So that's interesting. As a musician, that's kind of what you're there for as well."
And never, never underestimate the importance of the fans.
"Audiences keep it interesting," adds David."There's always a different slant to an audience, how they're taking things and different ways you can go about interacting with them."
Paul agrees. "When you're playing in front of people, it's different - when we're practicing, and we're playing songs we've played a thousand times, it's definitely not as much fun as playing it in front of people that want to hear it. If they're getting off on it, then we get lost in it."
"'Push' is a good example of that," Mark elaborates. "We seldom play it when we're just, like, playing on our own, but it is actually fun to play live, just because of the crowd reaction and the way that works, you know?"

LIFE ON THE ROAD

In the '70s, somebody once sang, "They say the road ain't no place to raise a family." Well, it's not much of a place to have any semblance of a normal life, either. But luckily, bands on tour aren't in search of a normal life.
"It's kind of an institutional lifestyle," Paul explains, "because you have a fairly strict schedule that you follow, every day, and you're told where to go, and you do it. And that's about it. And try to squeeze in some fun in-between."
Mark thinks about this. "It's kind of like being in Grade 8."
"Or military school," Paul counters. Everyone laughs, knowing that there's a bit of truth in both extremes. On a roll, Paul continues. "It's like the Fame Academy or something. We're constantly breaking into dance and song on the road."
Thankfully, he doesn't launch into "I Sing The Body Electric."
"When we're on the road," Jeff notes, "there's little things we do to keep our sanity, for sure."
We yell at each other," Paul quips.
"We take breaks away from each other," clarifies Jeff. "And we havr friends, too. We have friends and relatives all across the country, and the only time we get to see them is when we're touring."
Finally, Mark breaks down and confesses. "The fact of the matter is, we don't remain totally sane on the road, anyway. We kind of get into this weird headspace and roll with the punches."
The tricky part is coming home - to pets that need to be fed, dinners that need to be cooked, and girlfriends or wives who've been patiently getting along while you were out eating in restaurants every night.
"It does feel weird when you first get off the road," Mark explains. "You've just got to get out of that road headspace - breakfast at Denny's, a catered dinner, you don't have to do anything for yourself; you just go from the interview to the stage to the bus and repeat it all again."
Kevin sighs. "No matter how long you wait, fresh towels will not be coming."

SEPARATION ANXIETY

After the Creature tour, as burned out as the band was, the adjustment period was still strange. At least for some of them. One of them.
"I don't think anybody felt quite right the first couple of days," Kevin admits, "because suddenly, everybody you'd been spending the last six months with, every day, every hour, was just gone."
"And didn't want to talk to you!" adds David.
"Yeah," continues Kevin, "Nobody wanted to talk to anybody, but at the same time, you all felt a little edgy without everybody around." He pauses and grins. "But it passed - really, really quickly."
Paul gives Kevin a studied look. "I think I was pretty much all right, right off the bat."
"I think we all were, Kevin," Dsavid says teasingly.
Kevin sighs again. "That's my dirty little secret, my separation anxiety."

DIGITAL MOIST

Moist is a band that has fully embraced the digital revolution. David, Mark, Kevin, Jeff and Paul all have computers, on which they both develop music and do more mundane things, like communicate.
When the band began, Jeff recalls, they used to have daily meetings at 8 or 9 a.m. The reminder of this elicits a collective groan.
"That was the stupidest thing -"
"It was a time to catch up on my sleep-"
"Every day-"
Mark explains: "We used to have these meeting every day. It was kind of this make-work project you've got to be thinking about the band constantly,all the time, and you just don't want to think about the band all the time."
"We don't want to now," Jeff admits, "but it didn't hurt us then."
"No," agrees Mark. "It didn't hurt us then at all. I don't think it helped us that much, either."
"Oh. I don't know, man" says Paul, shaking his head as if to rid it of the bad memory.
David takes an optimistic view: "Beats working at Club Monaco," he says, referring to his last day job.
Trying to find a balance, Kevin suggests, "There is something to be said for getting together endlessly, to endlessly discuss something and go over it, because you do end up reaching some kind of consensus on issues. And because everybody's in the room, nobody really gets out until the decision is made. And now, communicating by e-mail..."
At the word "e-mail," the entire band perks up, the way some bands might at the mention of heroin.
"E-mail has revolutionized everything," explains Jeff. "It just makes it so easy. If there's a question that needs to be answered, then everyone can answer it at their own time."
"And if you don't care," adds David, "you just don't respond. And thats your answer."
"You've got to bear in mind that our management's in Vancouver, and the band's living in Montreal,"
Mark continues. "E-mail just makes it work."
"If you compare that to the very analog way we used to do things..." Paul offers. Everyone laughs. "Some of the meeting we had before were excruciating. This is what would happen: We'd be talking about something. We'd talk about it for half an hour, just to talk about the fucking thing over and over and over again. I'd fall asleep, I'd wake up, we'd still be talking about the same thing, and-"
"-Then we'd have another meeting," says Mark, "to discuss the same thing."
"Painful," Paul reiterates, still trying to shake the bad memory.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DAVID'S PANTS

At last count, there were 60 (yes, 60) fan-created Moist websites on the Internet. Given that all five band members are wired, they've had a few chances to check out what their audiences have created in tribute. Surely, they must have a favorirte - or at least one that strikes them as a little bizarre.
"The Pants Page," offers Kevin. The others immediately agree.
Jeff begins to explain:"These people, they seem to notice that David has a particular pair of pants that are worn at every gig."
"You get a good idea of what they're paying attention to at the show!" Paul interjects.
"So they've developed this sort of mythology of The pants," Jeff continues, "that the whole show is centered around the pants. And they structured the architecture of the site around this thing, where you have the pockets, the legs, the belts, and that's sort of the way the site is all laid out. It's really crazy, but it's really funny."
All of them nod earnestly. It's clear this is a site they enjoy. You've got to admire the work that they actually put into putting this thing together," says Paul "...and the twisted mind that is responsible for it"
(The Pants Page is located at http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stage/4976/index.html)

FORGING AHEAD

The band is eagerly anticipating EdgeFest and getting back on stage.
"Festival crowds," Mark explains, "the outdoor, July kind of crowd, is definately fun to play for. It's just a big release for everyone, I think. Canadians are just so shut in for months of the year, because of the winter, that when summer rolls around, I find everyone goes to great lengths to make up for that ."
Adds David, "I think it's also a nice way for us to ease back into playing. It's not really a case of having the pressure on you to do your own show. I mean, you can't suck, it pushes you, but it's just a lot more fun. It's not really a high-pressure situation. You're just part of this big, traveling circus."
"Big, big circus," reiterates Jeff.
When the tents come down on EdgeFest, Moist will likely continue to tour and tour and tour (and then tour some more), although as of this writing, no specific dates were set, save one: They'll berocking the Corel Centre in Ottawa on New Year's Eve, ushering in the millenium with Our Lady Peace.
As someone once said, the only constant is change, Moist is an ever-evolving entity, one that grows and shifts along with its members. Over the past seven years, "We've changed as individuals," David summarizes. "Hopefully that's reflected in the music.
"I think the audience changes as well, so maybe we change at the same time. Hopefully. We'll find out."

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