DETAILS

Joel Plaskett
McDougall United Church
Thursday, May 14 - Thursday, May 14

More in: Live Music

JOEL PLASKETT
McDougall United Church (10025-101 St). Thu, May 14 (7pm). Tickets: $20, available through Ticketmaster (451-8000/ticketmaster.ca).

When Neil Young’s tour brought him to Halifax earlier this month, Joel Plaskett was there. The Nova Scotian indie rocker had been a fan of his for years and had seen him play live before, but Young’s confidence at this show blew Plaskett away: Neil would stop and start on a dime, changing the setlist whenever a whim struck him, and he pulled fearlessly from the more obscure parts of his back catalogue. But the real shock came during the encore, when Neil gestured to the lighting guy and a giant angel was lowered from the rafters, barely concealing a cheap keyboard, to help play “Like a Hurricane.”

“We met the opening act later that night, and they said he only does that once every 10 shows,” Plaskett says over the phone from Dartmouth. “There’s this angel up there, every night, and once in a while he gestures, ‘Bring it down.’ And there’s this glowing red telephone onstage that wasn’t used once. There’s a guy painting in the background. He had all this stuff, but when he’s playing a song, he’s so confident in it. And I thought, ‘This is what success is.’”

For Plaskett to be in awe of such outright eccentricity makes more and more sense every year. After dissolving Thrush Hermit, the brash rock group he founded as a teenager, in 1999, Plaskett has evolved into that rare breed of indie musician who can experiment to his heart’s content without alienating any of his devout fanbase, and who has managed to be prolific without ever really embarrassing himself. He’s released several electric pop-rock albums with his backing band, The Emergency, as well as quieter folk projects released as solo records. 2007’s Ashtray Rock was a concept album about drunk teenagers and unrequited love. On top of all that, he’s branched out as a producer (for the PEI group Two Hours Traffic), hook singer (on rapper Classified’s new single “One Track Mind”), and even actor (in 2008’s One Week).

Now, with the release of his 27-song, three-disc magnum opus Three, the full scope of Plaskett’s own eccentricities are on display — and thankfully, even his most left-field ideas are clever, chock full of melodies, and effortlessly catchy. It’s structured as a three-act travelling record, with several in-song references to other parts of the album and nearly half of the songs’ titles consisting of one word repeated three times.

SEE caught up with Plaskett last week to talk about the ambitious new album, numerology, and his cancer-defying cat, White Fang.

SEE Magazine: There’s something about the new record, Three, that strikes me as a little subversive. Two years ago, your song “Nowhere With You” had a long run on Top 40 radio and was used in a Zellers commercial — your career seemed poised to jump to the next level. But then your follow-up album turns out to be this 27-song epic, which, for all its merits, isn’t exactly the kind of record that millions of people tend to buy.

Joel Plaskett: [Laughs.] And it’s not chock full of singles, either. There are a few songs on there that I knew were catchy and whatnot, but this is a record that I made just because I wanted to. I thought it would be a unique challenge. Frankly, the success of “Nowhere With You” was awesome, and really brought the awareness of what I do to more people, and it certainly ramped up the live shows. I thought, “Oh, this is what radio does.” But for the most part, I find that most of what’s kept me going is trying to challenge myself and challenge the audience that, I like to think, I earned, through making records and changing a little bit.

SEE: I suppose the flipside is you run the risk of wanting to record an album full of those radio songs, which is never quite how you’ve operated.

JP: I’ve always been an albums guy. I love records. And I love a pop song. With a song like [the 2007 single] “Fashionable People,” I love going the whole nine yards — we had a great time trying to make it as ridiculous and complete within the pop format as possible. I wrote a lot of the songs [for Three] quickly, and I had the luxury of recording in my own space. I was kind of like, “I wrote this yesterday. I’m going to go record it tomorrow.” I’d lay down a bunch of stuff: drums, scratch bass and guitar, do some vocals. Then I’d go back, thinking I’m going to re-track it, and go, “Eh, it’s fine.” [Laughs.] It was more about capturing the enthusiasm that I felt for the song, whatever the song was, even on the darker ones.... There’s a song [“Heartless, Heartless, Heartless”] that we cut a couple of times, and I ended up going with basically the first take. Even though it was more imperfect, it felt more in tune with the words.

SEE: As far as the concept of threes goes, you’ve mentioned several variations on what it can mean: past, present, future; going away, being away, coming home; beginning, middle, end. Now, in reviews, critics seem eager to jump in and add their own interpretations. Are these references getting out
of control?

JP: Well, I went on [CBC Radio’s] Definitely Not the Opera, and they were like, “You’re obsessed with the number three! Do good things come in threes? Prove it!” For me, once I dove into that world and realized it was a theme on the record, I decided to go the full nine yards. If you look at the photo of me and the studio in the album, everything in it is set-decked in threes: three plugs plugged into the floor, three guitars on the wall, three cases, all the tapes on the tape shelf are organized in sets of threes. I just went total obsessive-compulsive, right down to the faders on the board. So that was outlandish in itself, you know? I spent two days set-decking my space for a photograph. And I immediately saw certain things, aside from the song lyrics, which started to get even more pronounced once I knew that I was onto [the theme] — like the fact that it’s my third solo record, I was 33 when I tracked the whole thing ... and the idea that two things always have a chemistry that create a third thing. Out of a conversation comes an idea.

SEE: For the most part, you worked without your regular backing band, The Emergency, though they do appear on the final song, the winding, multi-part “On & On & On.”

JP: Yeah, I wanted to bring those guys onto the last track, because the song’s about coming home, returning to form. I thought it would be appropriate. And also I didn’t have any desire to play drums for 12 minutes straight.

SEE: And for the rest you play with Rose Cousins and Anna Egge on backup vocals, as well as your father Bill, who plays guitar mostly on the darker, folkier second disc. These are also the musicians you’ll be playing with live for the show in Edmonton. Is there any reason your dad hadn’t played on one of your records until now?

JP: Well, he played a mandolin solo on [1999’s] In Need of Medical Attention and ... I can’t remember if it was banjo or bouzouki, on [2001’s] Down at the Khyber. Just small bit parts. When I was touring [2005’s] La De Da, I asked my dad to come do some songs with me, and that’s what got me on the idea that at some point I wanted to record him and me playing guitar. He’s a really great player. But I didn’t really have the songs to feature him until this record, and even here he’s not on everything. He’s a folk player.

SEE: What does he think about the peppier, more standard pop songs you do?
JP: The thing about my dad is that he loves music. He emigrated from England, and he’s real freewheeling, kind of a hippie. Both of my folks have been so supportive of me, growing up. He likes the rock ’n’ roll stuff. Like “Fashionable People” he chuckles at. He enjoys it. But there’s other stuff he loves.

SEE: You also had a cameo last year as a street busker in the wonderful Canadian film One Week.

JP: I haven’t seen it.

SEE: Really?

JP: Yeah. I heard it’s good. It’s funny; we shot it a year and a half ago, but with no context. I didn’t meet Joshua Jackson — it was just a scene with his love interest [Liane Balaban]. So we shot it, and then these ads came out, and I said, “Hey, that’s the movie I’m in!” It was in theatres, but I didn’t really want to go watch myself up on the screen.

SEE: So what did they tell you to do in that scene?

JP: They said, “Really, what you have to do is sing, and make eye contact.” That’s what I did. I still don’t entirely know the context. I gather it’s a turning point in the film — she just found out he cheated on her? Then she walks down the road and sees me ... something like that?

SEE: Basically Jackson’s character knows he’s going to die, and while living in the moment does this asshole thing where he cheats on his fiancée. Then she finds out, and as she’s walking down the street, she sees you singing “A Million Dollars” — except the way it’s shot, it looks, for a second, like she’s considering cheating on him with you. And you think, “Wait a minute: is she going to sleep with Joel Plaskett?”

JP: [Laughs.] That’s hilarious. I had no idea.

SEE: You’ve written well over 100 songs in your career. How many do you have in active rotation right now?

JP: That’s a good question. Obviously, with this tour, I’ve got a lot of ground to cover if I’m going to cover a fraction of that triple record. But I can pick up a guitar and probably play about 60. That wouldn’t be collectively with the whole band.

SEE: And how much of Three are you playing live?

JP: Quite a bit. I’d say at least half of it. But it’s changing, and we’re only four nights into the tour. [We’re] covering a handful from each disc, and then I’m going into the back catalogue, and trying to reinvent a couple with my father and the girls. But we take requests, if people start yelling stuff and there’s time in the show. One thing I’ve been really into is trying to make up stuff every night, and do some internal rhyming. Sometimes I go out on a limb and it fails miserably, but I’m trying to take a little more of a risk when I’m singing and even the way I’m informing the songs. I’ll try and add or change or words on the fly, just to see if I can do it. It’s not without its risks. [Laughs.]

SEE: Do you have any personal favourites on the record?

JP: I really love the song “Lazy Bones.” It’s one I’ve been sitting on for a long time. Some people thought it was a sleeper, I think, but there’s something about the sentiment — coming home, getting off the road, and allowing your mind to just go somewhere else. And also as a response to Hoagy Carmichael’s “Lazy Bones,” which is “Lazy all the day / How you ever gonna make a dime that way?” It’s the answer song. “Wishful Thinking” was kind of the breakthrough for me. I did that in Memphis. That’s what got the album started, because I invited Rose and Anna, who were down there for the same conference as I was. It started as a three-and-a-half-minute pop song, and then I recorded a bunch more verses. So they came in, and we were laughing, and I was like, “This is how I want to write—just make it up that afternoon.” “On & On & On” was a risky but pleasant surprise, in terms of the way it went and how everything fell into place.

SEE: Actually, I wanted to ask you about that song in particular, because it’s one of my favourites as well. It’s long and sad, but also really funny, and gets at so much: there’s angst about high school and becoming your parents, a tribute to people you know that have died, and even a verse about CBC host Shelagh Rogers.

JP: Well, that’s what I aimed for: to take all of the themes on the record and put them together in a way that was celebratory but without dismissing the fact that the whole second record is pretty blue. For me, it all comes back to my cat, White Fang. There’s nothing more like getting home than seeing your cat. It’s this weird, earless cat that is this source of fascination on a daily basis, like, “This cat’s still walking around. She’s got no ears. She lost them to cancer. This cat’s so friggin’ awesome.” I made up that song about her, because she just sleeps all day. She’s got no energy.

SEE: How old is she?

JP: I don’t know. She’s a stray. But really old — on the home stretch. I just hope she lasts while I’m gone.