WL 370 - Sunday, July 8 - 11pm
Purveyors of: a viable communist model

When I call up Jim Ginther, the drummer and “band daddy” of Saskatoon’s Carbon Dating Service to see how preparations for their cross-Canada tour are going, Jim gives me an answer that is as unexpected as it is anticipated:

“Well, I just have to tell you, it’s going great: I spent the afternoon out at on a farm having our bus worked on for the tour. I got all the way home, remembered I left my house keys and wallet back at the farm, went back to the farm to get them, got the bus stuck in the mud and spent an hour shooting mud off the tires. Now it’s 9:30 at night and I just got home. How are you?”

From there we chat about Carbon Dating Service, their new record and the Saskatoon music community, and I try to think of a way to work Jim’s anecdote into my interview without unfairly characterizing him as a prairie-bred hayseed. I prove unsuccessful.

In the last few years the Canadian music scene has been characterized by larger bands, more instrumentation and less traditional rock instruments than just guitar, bass and drums. What made you opt for a bigger outfit like this one? What are the pros and cons behind your band, both in the studio and playing live?

This band used to be just Steve Reed and me, and it eventually evolved into an eight-member outfit not because of trends but just because of the nature of Saskatoon’s music scene. A couple of years ago we expanded the band to five people and, with friends coming into the band, it’s kind of grown from there. I think it’s just been a result of being in the Saskatoon music scene; it’s a place that’s very co-operative. There’s shared shows, shared gear, shared members playing in several different bands with everyone helping each other out.

Music is also approached in a way where most bands aren’t playing to “make it,” they’re just playing for the sake of playing. Eight people just kind of happened in a way that made sense in that co-operative context. We really just killed two birds with one stone.

On stage, sound is always a tricky thing to do right, even with a small band or single performer. With eight members and several of you playing multiple instruments, you’ve got as much or more instrumentation going on a live stage than many bands have on a layered studio record. Do you ever walk into a venue and the soundman takes one look at you and just shakes his head and mutters “aw fuck…”? What’s the biggest problem you run into when touring?

I think the biggest problem is scheduling. With eight people in the band, we all have jobs and several of us are in school in some way or another, so it’s hard to get everyone together to rehearse or play a show. Usually the only time we have everyone together at the same time is when we play live. As far as recording, we have our own studio but it still takes a long time to get everyone together and get a recording to the point where everyone is happy with how it’s turned out.

When it comes to playing live, I’ll put it this way: we’re a soundman’s nightmare. We’ve usually got four vocals, a viola, some horns, a harp. Generally the biggest problem is that we can’t all fit on the stage, so we’ve got members of the band down on the dance floor and that becomes part of the stage. We have to bring our own mics and mixers a lot of the time, because you can’t just assume that a venue can accommodate a band like this.

What is the Saskatoon music scene like right now? Do you find there’s a certain aesthetic or characteristics to the music being made there right now?

When I was living in Montreal, talking to someone about music in Saskatoon, their response was always “Oh, there’s a music scene there?” But for a city with 250 000 people there’s a lot going on in terms of music, and again it’s very collaborative and cooperative, it’s a scene with a team dynamic.

The Teargas recording tree project was a way to assert to ourselves that we won’t get anywhere through competition and we have to work together. There are so many projects going on here and only so many places to play, we have to collaborate to succeed. There isn’t the same emphasis on making it big here and there aren’t music reps all over the place looking to sign people. I don’t want to say music is a hobby here because I think that kind of trivializes it, but there isn’t the focus on making money that exists in other cities.

You guys just got some funding from the government of Saskatchewan and SaskMusic. Do you find that Saskatoon is good about taking care of its musicians and fostering talent like this? Do you think it’s a good place to launch a band from in comparison to Halifax or Toronto or Montreal?

There are a lot of things going on here that you don’t see in most places. Last year we did a 24-hour band-swap. We went out to dinner with about 30 people, picked a few band leaders and drew names out of a hat to pick new bands. Then each band had 24 hours to come up with three new songs and one cover to play a show the next night. We ended up with people lined up around the block to get in and raised over $2000 for a halfway house for kids. I think that’s a real barometer for what the Saskatoon music scene is like.

As a band you’ve got a fairly strong web presence, between teargas and MySpace and CBC radio 3 and so on. The music world is getting smaller and smaller all the time; it’s so easy to record and promote and distribute music, but at the same time the competition is steeper than ever. Any jackass with a laptop can put out a record, and everyone seems to expect that music should be free these days. What’s your take on the online music world, and how has it impacted you as a band?

I think the home studio philosophy is how Teargas and Carbon Dating Service really got off the ground. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of bands form, play for a year, and break up with no recordings or anything to document it. On the other hand, with promoting a band online, your 15 minutes of fame is reduced to 15 seconds because there’s so much out there. Even though a lot of people are listening to your music they’re very quick to move on to the next thing. You still have to back it up with touring and albums. I don’t think that just releasing music online is enough to sustain a band and making a living, you still have to take it to the road and distribute your music in person.

In the last few years, big Canadian bands like Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire, bands with interesting orchestration, more abstract lyrics and art-driven music have garnered lots of commercial success, and it’s not irrational for a band like this at a time like this to hope for not just critical acclaim, but widespread success and popularity. Do you have any specific goals or hopes for this band? At what point do you consider a band to be a true success, and at what moment would you consider that you had “made it”?

With the record we just put out, I think we can all look at it and say “this is the best we could do,” which I don’t think we could say of our previous recording. What we’re doing now is so much more than what I thought possible five years ago. Just to have this recording and to be doing this tour and have funding from CBC3, we’ve already accomplished more than I thought we could. From this point I think that the music will go as far as we can take it, and touring and making music is all I expect from this.

By Dan Taylor