Ottawa is filled with amazing bands with piles of unsold records. Greenfield Main is a four piece based in Ottawa. There are three people named Jon in the band, as well as a Rolf. Jam Butty sat down with Jon (Jon Bartlett, who sings, plays guitar, and does most of the work for Kelp Records).

Can we talk for a minute about Kelp? I never heard about you guys until a week or two ago, and then I see you're having your 10 year anniversary? Well, Kelp Records is just a collection of friends who pursue making music as a hobby. We're all buddies, and it has a nice co-op feel. Everybody pitches in. Rolf does a lot of the work, he takes care of the design and web stuff.

That sounds great. What's good about it? What's bad about it? What do you do besides music? A big problem is that none of us have a lot of time for touring. And, well, the fact that lots of people haven't heard about us or the music we make.

That can be all right, though. It makes Kelp Records a kind of hidden treasure. I was super excited to find out about Greenfield Main and The Acorn. How many other bands are on Kelp? About eight or nine altogether. We also cook and have dinner together, hang out. I like that more people keep moving out here to Ottawa. There's a great group of people here who make art and film as well as music. Everybody's real supportive, we'll go to the art opening, then go to the show, then go for Pho at 3am. There's a nice family vibe, we all live in the downtown core. It reminds me of when I used to live in Toronto, and my universe was basically confined to Ossington to Yonge, Bloor to the Harbourfront.

Dude, that's huge. For me, leaving Kensington Market is, like, a pain. Well, in many respects Ottawa and Toronto are very similar.

Are any of you guys married? I'm only asking because my friend Michael was telling me about something he read in Time Out. Apparently, no NYC rock musicians are married, ever, unless you're in The Rapture. I am. Not.. to anyone in the band, of course. We got married last year in a small town called Gagetown. It's a community of about 1000 people on the St. John river. My wife and I are both from Fredericton, NB. It was medium sized, somewhere between a private wedding and an Indian wedding. About a hundred people came. I spent a week beforehand making the mix discs. There was about twelve hours of music.

Wow! Twelve hours?!? Actually, probably more than that. Sixteen or more. 4pm until 6am. We started with country music in the afternoon, then dinner music, then a dance party, then finally Nelly, J-Lo and Guns'n'Roses. I put some stuff on it too that induced some serious nostalgia. Like that Sloan song, 'œ500 Up'?, that came on and everybody was like, 'œWhoa!'? It's funny what's becoming nostalgic to people in their late 20s and early 30s.

You write the lyrics for Greenfield Main. What are your songs about? Our latest album has a song on it that's really dark. I wrote it when my wife and I were living in Bangkok. There's a huge drug war going on there, it makes any other drug war seem pretty inconsequential. It's ridiculous '” one week the police went out with a list and executed a thousand people they suspected. The drugs are mostly amphetamines, called 'œya ba,'? they come in from Burma. Anyways, I read a tiny article about a corrupt police man who was involved in the trafficking. Lots of bad cops over there, because the police force is so underpaid. He heard he had been found out, and he was dead scared that he'd be killed. So he handcuffed himself and his wife and they threw themselves off a bridge in downtown Bangkok. That's what the song 'œTo The Sea'? is about.

Greenfield Main's new record, Barnburners and Heartchurners is an excellent country-tinged record. I like it more than that Iron & Wine disc. And, I'm pleased to report that everything I've heard on Kelp is absolutely 100%.