If you're looking for a CanCon encyclopedia, you couldn't do much better than Ford Pier's resume. Over the years, the charismatic and experimental solo artist has toured and collaborated with some of Canada's finest, but his eclectic solo sound has remained his priority all along. Eric Arthur spoke with Ford via email.

How does a man from a decidedly punk background come to make such sharply arranged, non-three-chord music?

Having a background in punk is like having a background in Latin. Its influence in every walk of life is ineluctable, and it has numerous taxonomic or formal applications, but it's still a dead language. It doesn't accommodate any broadening of vocabulary. When they broadened Latin, over time they wound up with vernacular Italian or French or Portuguese. Likewise with punk, when something new is brought to the party, it becomes immediately unidentifiable as punk, at least as Year Zero Punk Orthodoxy would recognize it.

Nobody really goes around calling Le Tigre a punk band. Or even Shellac. Or even the Fall anymore, let alone Konono #1. Punk as a style defeats itself. It's not dangerous or surprising. I value danger and the unexpected, of which the underground rock music that sprang up around the world in the mid-to-late-1970s is an excellent source. So are Shostokovich, Lennie Tristano, Magma, Hasil Adkins, and the Upsetters.

Your solo work has been your main focus for the past few years, even while collaborating with people like D.O.A., Carolyn Mark, Neko Case and Martin Tielli. Is it difficult to maintain your own sound while working with such a range of talented people?

Quite the opposite, I'd say. All the examples you bring up are so distinctive not because of their stylistic affiliations, but because their respective takes on those styles are so strongly imbued with their own individuality. Therefore, to be inspired or influenced by the people that I've been lucky enough to work with is to be intrepid about offering something of myself which might, I hope, be unique in its own way.

What artists and labels are you working with these days?

Labelwise, I'm still with Six Shooter, who are great people whom I trust and who are really supportive. It's hard for me to imagine presenting Shauna with a record she'd outright refuse to release. As far as other artists go, I've reined that in a bit. It's too easy and seductive to go off and play all my friends' wonderful music and not spend enough time on my own.

I would suppose I'll play with Carolyn so long as we both draw breath. I get to play with Rheostatics from time to time, which is really great. I'll always sit in here and there with whoever I'm allowed to. It's not the day job, though.

What can people expect from the live show this time around? Will you be backed by other musicians, or can we look forward to a more acoustic take on the music on your records?

I got so sick and tired of playing by myself, let me tell you. This will be with the band, who are Jason and Greg from the Fembots and the Weakerthans. They've been busy men this past year, and we haven't had a lot of time to work together, but it was worth it to me to wait them out. Playing by oneself is nice, because certainly there are one or two things you have the latitude to pull off at the drop of a hat, but I grew to miss a bunch of material which really needs a band in order to work. I also wrote a lot of stuff with those two specifically in mind, so I'm eager for us to learn it up and start recording before too long.

They're marvelous to play with. Very intuitive and sensitive, yet they don't mind having a part written for them. And they have no fear of being asked to play something that's going to take some practice, which is more uncommon than one might assume.

I really hate to the play the "What are your influences?" card, but it seems like you've got such an eclectic range of them. What might people be surprised to hear that you've been listening to lately?

Having just come off the season of making Merry Christmas CDs for friends, I can honestly say I've been listening to everything I own. I've been living without a turntable for the last four years or so, and so I went to a friend's house and digitized a bunch of vinyl I hadn't even unpacked since I moved here. Hunters and Collectors, Berlioz, Dave Edmunds, Personality Crisis, Stump, William Bell, Rare Air, Flesheaters, Jaques Brel, Young Canadians, plus Irma Thomas '“ the greatest singer ever '“ Webern, the Kinks, all those recordings that Henry Kaiser and David Lindley made in Madagascar and Norway, Randy Newman, Roger Miller (both kinds), Webb Pierce, Squarepusher, John Fahey, Now Time Delegation, DNA, The Roches, Os Mutantes, the recent records by Elliot Brood and Constantines and Tom Holliston, I could go on and on.

Under regular circumstances, though, my default listening choices are usually 20th century classical music or R&B from the early sixties. And I'm very excited about going to see Twilight of the Gods at the opera in a couple of weeks. I bet I'll be the only guy there accompanied by a soul singer who studied to be a cantor.