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Geoff Berner: Accordians aren’t just for Grandpas anymore.

Geoff Berner and his Klezmer Trio 
With Rae Spoon, Brigitte Dajzcer. The ARTery (9535 Jasper Ave). Sat, Feb 6 (7:30pm). Tickets: $12 in advance (available at Blackbyrd Myoozik and Listen Records, and www. theartery.ca), $15 at the door.

Geoff Berner’s relationship with his liver might be on the rocks, but his fans love this Whiskey Rabbi’s prophetic political wailings. With accordion in hand, the squeezebox apostle has been getting people up and drunk and dancing for more than a decade as he drags Klezmer music kicking and screaming back into dingy pubs and seedy bars the world round. This weekend Berner and his Klezmer trio team up with Rae Spoon to bring their special brand of single malt awesomeness to Edmonton for their last prairie tour stop before heading off to Germany and Norway to spread their boozy gospel truth around like a rash.

With the Olympics in his hometown soon SEE tracked Berner down for a chat.

SEE: The Olympics are coming to your hometown and you wrote a song called The Official Theme Song of the Vancouver Whistler 2010 Olympic Games: The Dead Children Were Worth It. What inspired you to write this anthem?

GEOFF: It was Gordon Campbell. He drove into my house and he stumbled out of his SUV, and he climbed up onto my porch and shouted my name until I came out of my house, and he demanded I write the theme song for the games.

He said, “I really want you to focus on all the really important social services we’re cutting in order to pay for these really, really expensive games.” He was kind of in a maudlin mood, and as a songwriter I was like, “we can’t list all the stuff, like cutting surgeries, ambulance services, and all that. We have to focus, and pick your favourite.”

So together we decided that the closing of the Children’s Commission in Victoria, and the way they lost over 700 files of dead children was our favourite. They cancelled that right around the same time as we got the bid. And announced all of these massive spending boondoggles that have turned into spending boondoggles that are 10 times bigger. Then with the song we just woodshedded it and it took off from there.

SEE: Seriously?

GEOFF: If Gordon Campbell doesn’t remember it then I’m sorry. He was drunk, and must have forgot.

SEE: What’s your biggest beef with how the government has handled the social issues surrounding the Olympics?

GEOFF: I think there’s really an attempt to control the message and get people to ignore the crippling of the homeless in Vancouver, the massive addiction rates, the terrible poverty, and the cuts, and the lines at the food bank, and instead focus on skating very fast in form fitting lycra suits.

It’s much harder to do that now with this internetty thing they’ve invented. People can see the real Vancouver. The real Vancouver is very much akin to Cortés’ depiction of Mexico City — a beautiful city full of beautiful people with the pyramid in the middle where rivers of blood run down it from human sacrifices. That’s Vancouver in a nutshell really … the thing about western politics is that every time we try to be hyperbolically satirical something comes along that’s even worse that’s real.

SEE: You’ve sojourned into the political arena yourself. First with the BC Green Party, but then you switched to the Rhinoceros Party in 2001 and ran against you’re drunken comrade Gordon Campbell. How did that come about?

GEOFF: I was very close to beating him. Maybe 40,000 – 50,000 votes away. That was the year my friend from kindergarten, Stuart Parker, was deposed as leader of the Green Party of BC, and I was pretty choked about that. So I decided that I would participate in democracy in another way.

SEE: If you were to run again would you still offer cocaine and whores to potential investors?

GEOFF: I think that’s what they’re (BC provincial government) doing right now.

SEE: You’re touring with Rae Spoon how did that come about?

GEOFF:We met at the Vancouver Folk Festival in the year 2001. We did a workshop together, and Rae was stupendous, Rae is a genius.

SEE: Edmonton is your last prairie tour date. Where are you off to next?

GEOFF: We’re hitting Norway with the trio. We got a German festival to pay for our plane tickets, so we figured we’d stop by and play my favourite place to play in Europe — Norway, and do the full Norwegian tour with the band. We get to get the people up and drunk and dancing.

SEE: Have you toured Norway before?

GEOFF: Pretty much once a year since 2000. I got played on Norwegian National Radio before I got any CBC airplay. The key to cracking Canada was coming back from Norway, and saying, “see somebody likes me.”

SEE: How is the Klezmer revival coming along?

GEOFF: I started out thinking I was the only punky, dirty political guy, and as it turns out there’s a bunch of people mushrooming out like Dan Kahn in Berlin, and lots of people in New York, and Montreal. There’s a thing happening. Dan is calling it the Klezmer bund, and it’s very exciting. I’m accidentally part of an artistic movement.

SEE: Can we expect a new album featuring this new movement?

GEOFF: The next record I’m doing I’m going to convene most of them and set them to work. The last few records have been trio records, where the song is there in it’s platonic form, with a good beat and the fiddle and stuff, but this next record is going to be more of a sonic concoction. It’s going to be a bit of a gathering of the tribe I’d say.

SEE: Do you have a working title for this album?

GEOFF: The Victory Party. It’s all about celebrating everything.

SEE: Even the Olympics?

GEOFF: Everything, we’re celebrating everything. We’re just going to celebrate it.