Greenisonfire | allas Green returns—again. The guy just won’t quit touring.
City & Colour
w/ Black Lungs & Sleepercar. May 28 (8pm). Jubilee Auditorium (11455-87 Ave). Sold out.
Let me be the first to say it: Sometimes, the 2006 solo album by Alexisonfire guitarist-cum-solo-dynamo Dallas Green, is sure to be counted as a watershed moment for Canadian rock. Jeer away, but not since Neil Young bailed on Buffalo Springfield to go it alone, not since Leonard Cohen released Songs of Love and Hate, has a solo artist commanded such admiration from a young Canadian crowd with his lovelorn vibes and virtuosic talent.
After his relentless touring and recording schedule, you’d think the 27-year-old St. Catherines native of St. Catharines, Ontario might want to take a long rest, and though he does make time (he tells me) for the odd afternoon screening of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the temptation to keep moving forward is simply too great to resist. “Two days ago I mowed my lawn,” laughs Green. “That was pretty cool, pretty different from touring. I don’t really take a break that often; I don’t see the need to, you know? If I’m taking a break, I’m usually just sitting in my house playing guitar, so I might as well be out playing songs for people.”
This intimate quality carries over into Green’s live show. His solo repertoire (which consists of Sometimes and the recently released Bring Me Your Love) is a roomy concoction of intricate guitars and Green’s much-talked-about vocal style: a pitch-perfect, punk-meets-folk yawp that matches the pared-down sound. Heck, he even plays in stocking feet the odd time—and faithful fans have been cramming into sold-out soft-seat amphitheatres night after night just to be part of it.
“I think doing them in the theatre makes them more intimate,” Green says, emphasizing the difference from Alexisonfire’s hardcore vibe. “Alexis shows are supposed to be these crazy, sweaty, energetic, hour-and-a-half, leave-it-all-out-on-the-floor sort of things.
“We started when we were kids. And I think the kids that were into us back then have grown up with us. A lot of people obviously move on, but that’s the way music goes. Some people just don’t stay with bands for their entire career and that’s fine. I’m the same way. I don’t think we ever expected everyone in the world to like what we’re doing, because we definitely don’t like everything we hear. It’s cool that we’ve been around seven years and we feel like we still matter.”
For Green, the key to longevity has been the unabashed nothing-is-sacred honesty of his songwriting. His personal accounts of lovers, friends, family, and influential figures (like the baleful Sometimes ballad “Sam Malone”—a nod to the Cheers antihero) are the product of a predisposition for sweet, solemn life stories.
“I just write in that personal vein,” he says. “I can’t help it. It’s always nerve-wracking because you never know if someone is going to be able to relate to a song that’s just about something that’s bothering you. I could take a more generic approach and write a song that I know people would maybe get, but I just don’t do that. I honestly just put a lot of pressure on myself because I just want to be better every time I write a song.”
But it’s not all angst for Green—in fact, things have never been better. He plans to continue touring through the summer, and polish off the new Alexisonfire album for release this time next year. He has little to say beyond that—he hates talking about himself, as he reminds me several times—and so we shift gears back to movies, this time Wayne’s World. I note the 2006 Edmonton gig where, to break the ice with the audience, Green re-enacted Mike Myers’ famous “no stairway” scene. Oddly enough, he remembers.
“I would hate if the entire show was just me sitting there singing these really sad, heavy songs and there’d be no break in between,” he says. “That’s why I try to keep it fun and intimate, I tell stories about me tripping over something, so there can be some laughter as well.
“I like to just make a fool of myself. I take my music very seriously, but I don’t take myself very seriously.”
