Purveyors of: Dancey pop and occasionally gigantic answers.

Craft Economy have been ambitious do-it-yourselfers since their birth almost a year ago. They put deep thought into their promotional activities and are growing their fan base at a rapid pace. Their influences range from New Order to Olivia Newton John to Rick Springfield ("Jessie's Girl" anyone?), and certainly don't suffer from predictability or blandness. Matthew Pilgrim looked into Andrew Bray's head to find out how they grew up to be so cool.

Our generation has been taught to be wary of synthy pop-rock from the 80s. You guys embrace the style and make sweet love to it. Why's this?

If you're going to make love, it should be sweet, so thanks.  We love pop music from the 60s.  We love the energy, rawness and simplicity of 70s punk rock.  Fundamentally, we're children of the 80s - that's never going away - and we all grew up in the "CanRock" or indie or punk rock or hard core scenes of the 90s.  I think we take something from each of those periods, be it musical, or a political consciousness, or an intensity or showmanship.  At the fundamental level, we're a pop band.  We love pop-fueled music.  We love catchy and danceable hooks, and pop deliciousness, and arena quality epic-ness, and maybe sometimes a whole lot of over-the-top big fat synth-iness.  Our musical loves just bubble up in the music we write.

You guys have made your latest EP, All on C legally available for free on the internet. Do you think it has helped your cause or lost you money?

Our "cause" right now has been to get the CD out to as many different people as possible.  We work really hard at our music, and we truly believe that people will like us if they get the chance to hear us.  If we were to only sell physical copies of our CD, that would mean that the only people that would hear or buy our music to would be our friends and the people that come out to our shows.  The internet and the creative commons license allows us to reach people in completely different ways.  It allows people to download our music from our website, burn it to CD, pass it on to friends, upload it to any website, seed a Torrent, etc.  Furthermore, it allows people to create derivative works and remixes, which is really cool.  The only thing it says is that you can't make money off of it, and that if you do create a derivative work you have to release your work under the same license.

Here's an interesting story:  When we were postering for our Sept 29th Kensington Station show, we attached CDs with our mp3s from the All On C EP to our posters.  Somebody picked up a CD, liked it, went to our website, and then posted a submission to BoingBoing.net with the details.  The next morning our website was going haywire with hits from all over the world.  I had to bump up our bandwidth twice and will likely have to do it again just to handle the traffic.  The next day, I got a phone call from the National Post - they wanted to do a story on the postering and the band.  Then the Toronto Star called.  None of this would have happened had we just kept the CD for sale at shows or on our website.

On the other hand, it has definitely cost us money.  It costs money to do postering with CDs and that doesn't include the time and energy cost.  We've had 7000+ songs downloaded in the past two days, but nobody has bought a CD.

But here's the thing: That's okay!   Those people were never going to buy a CD in the first place, because they never would have heard of us in the first place.  But now they have.  We've got exposure outside of Toronto now.  We've got credibility and integrity with the people we respect, because we're doing something that we love and they think is cool.  It may change in the future, but it's just the right thing for us to do right now.

And here's the other thing: Our CD is really fucking cool.  It's six songs for only $5.  It's handmade.  It's got original artwork.  Every CD is unique.  The CD is self-burned, but comes with a lifetime replacement guarantee.  There is only an original pressing of 200 before we change the design (we've already sold 100).  It takes A LOT of work to make these things, but we're doing it because we like it and because it's really the only avenue we have open.

Describe your music by filling in the blanks! (No cheating - "Craft Economy" is not allowed.)
C_____ E_____.

Communal Erotica.

What will you have available for sale at the Wavelength show?

EP's and awesome Karate headbands-or Kung Fu headbands, we're not really sure.  But they're going to be awesome to wear when you're doing lots of ass-kicking.  And they're only going to be 25 cents, or five for $1.00!  We're also having a CD cover making session this weekend.  Want to come?  You'll get to see how annoying the lino-pressing is, and what a great deal $5 is for our CD.

As we approach the frosty season, what is the short-term plan for the band? Any mini-tours coming up?

We love the fall!  We're going to do a lot of cuddling in big warm sweaters.  After our Wavelength show on the 14th, we've got a No Shame show with Hexes and Ohs (a very cool band from Montreal) at the Drake on Saturday, November 10th.  Otherwise, it's kind of weird: we're having a hell of a time getting a show outside of Toronto, but we have to turn down shows inside the city because of scheduling conflicts.  So if you're outside of Toronto and want to book us, let us know.  The long-term lofty goal is to do a little tour next summer.

By Matthew Pilgrim