Sloan’s Murphy Talks about Anniversaries, Supergroups and Democracy

For 25 years, the Canadian quartet Sloan has been entertaining fans throughout North America with its unique blend of memorable, hook laden, sometimes quirky but always memorable brand of alternative rock music.

The group is about to embark on an autumnal sojourn throughout parts of the United States, but is playing a couple of dates in Canada before hitting the highways, including a gig headlining the end-of-summer Sandbanks Music Festival at Sandbanks Provincial Park in Prince Edward County in eastern Ontario. Also on the bill are Limblifter, Snowblink, The Peter Elkas Band, Jim Bryson, Taylor Knox and Jérémie Albino.

Over much of the past year, Sloan has been touring to mark the 20th anniversary of their biggest album, 1996s One Chord to Another, a watershed moment in the band’s career according to vocalist/guitarist/drummer Chris Murphy. It also happens to be the 25th anniversary of the band’s founding in 1991, when Murphy came together with pals Patrick Pentland, Jay Ferguson and Andrew Scott in Halifax. Over the entirety of the quarter century of Sloan’s existence, there has never been a lineup change – a truly remarkable state of affairs in the music industry.

“As a band we sort of made a big fuss about the 20th anniversary but that seemed like it was only five minutes ago even though it was five years ago. So I think it’s a bit goofy to do it again. Maybe we will mark it every 10 years. But we are marking the 20th anniversary of our third record. We had been on Geffen Records for the first two [Smeared, 1992 and 1994s Twice Removed] which was exciting. And the third one was supposed to be on Geffen but we basically broke up and we threw in the towel after our second record because we were frustrated. We weren’t getting along. Andrew moved to Toronto and I was pissed that he did that. But we ended up getting back, so One Chord to Another was kind of a back-from-the-dead record. And we made it with our own money and it cost us about $8,000 and we sold about 80,000 copies in Canada,” he explained.

“We had pretty small aspirations for it. It was part of a gradual process of becoming a band again. We were even wondering, ‘are we going to tour this record, are we going to be a band?’ We eventually decided that we would be a band again and jumped back in with both feet. At first it was designed to be kind of a posthumous record to float some money for the record label that we started, Murder Records. It was never meant to make money; it [the label] was more of a community service project. It was always fun to do and we were young enough that we didn’t give a shit about money or whatever.

“So that record had a small budget and small expectations and we recorded it basically on weekends on the cheap and yet it was our most commercially successful record. And the record itself is full of excellent songs. We had three singles off that album and three videos that MuchMusic played a lot [The Good in Everyone, Everything You’ve Done Wrong and The Lines You Amend] which we never really had again. So it really was a big album for us.”

It also garnered Sloan its only Juno Award for Best Alternative Album. The band has been nominated a total of 10 times. And although they may not have reached the commercial heights of many of their contemporaries like The Tragically Hip, I Mother Earth or Our Lady Peace, Sloan has a solid pedigree of radio hits, including the aforementioned songs, as well as radio staples Underwhelmed, Coax Me, Money City Maniacs, Losing California, If It Feels Good Do It and Unkind.

Part of the reason for the band’s success and unchanging lineup is that Sloan is comprised of four equal partners with that equality stretching into the creative side of the band, as Murphy explained.

“We are a democracy and we split all the money. That’s rule number one. If you don’t do that, if you’re in a band where one guy writes all the songs, then he’s surrounded by people who are pissed. And it’s not just about the money for us; we wanted to make a place for people to contribute creatively. We do it in a weird way where we’re almost like four solo projects. We’re not sitting there writing together as a group and voting on other people’s songs and whether they make the album or not. If we decide to do a 12-song record, then everyone is in charge of three songs. And you can get the other guys to play on those songs as much or as little as you want,” he said, adding that even he doesn’t understand how it all still sounds like a cohesive whole when songs are written in such a manner.

“I guess it’s because we’re four guys who grew up with similar influences, so our palate doesn’t go off in a lot of crazy directions. Theoretically, because of how democratic we are, I could hate ¾ of the material, but I don’t because I know what each guy brings to the table and I like most of the stuff they like. Sometimes I may think they’re using too much reverb here or some minor production point, but that’s more personal preference. It seems to be working and we like the process, so there’s no point in changing it.”

Murphy said there are no immediate plans for a new full-length Sloan album, but that the band will be releasing two Christmas-oriented singles before the holiday season, both as downloads and as actual 7-inch vinyl singles.

“We will make a limited edition of them and probably sell them all out within a couple of days on our website and at shows. We probably won’t involve retailers. We have developed this new model of making limited edition stuff and selling out right away. We do the limited runs because we learned the hard way not to press too many copies; we still have boxes of unsold CDs from the 1990s. It’s fun to make smaller runs of fetish items for the people who really care,” he said adding that Sloan still prefers to release full albums as opposed to only downloadable singles.

“The thing is, if you put money into a radio campaign where you’ve hired an independent promoter to get the song on the radio and it costs $10,000, it’s better that the thing you’re selling has a $10 or $20 value to it rather than something with a 99 cent value. And if you already have 10 or 11 of our albums, you might want to get the 12th. That doesn’t represent a huge amount of people, but there are still a number of people following our story and they are hoping that we will make a 12th records and keeping on going after that.”

Besides his ongoing work with Sloan, Murphy has also embarked on another exciting new musical venture, a sort of ‘supergroup’ of 1990s Canadian music luminaries known as the Trans-Canada Highwaymen, which sees him joined onstage by Craig Northey (The Odds, Strippers Union), Steven Page (ex-Barenaked Ladies) and Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness. The talented conglomeration performed a show at the Jackson-Triggs Winery earlier in the summer at Niagara On-The-Lake and will be touring again in the early spring of 2017.

“We had the idea a couple of years ago. All of the guys involved are friends. I really only met Craig about 10 years or so ago. I didn’t really know him when we were both hot shit in the 1990s and a bigger part of the popular culture. Over the last couple of years I have mentioned to him the idea of doing something together. I said, ‘let’s get together. You’re buddies with Page and I know Moe Berg, and we all kind of know each other and it would be fun,’” Murphy said.

“I figured that each guy can bring in four songs. I haven’t written a whole set of recognizable songs in Sloan but I have written at least four and if everybody brings four bangers and then we have a full set of bangers and we just have fun and fart around. But then the idea sort of died. I think it was mentioned to a booking agent who thought it was a bad idea; especially for Steven because he could play theatres by himself so why would he cannibalize what he already could do and then have to split the money four ways.

“But then a guy named Jim Millan came to us and suggested we put together a multi-media theatre show that would be mostly music but with a theatrical element to it, with stories and bigger production which would be different than the show we did at the winery which was more of a straight ahead rock show. And for that we had a great time. It was mostly a chance to just get together to play some songs and see what the vibe was like, and talk about what we might do with a more theatrical kind of show.”

Murphy said that the quartet would be the only ones on stage, but they would play in a full band configuration, with the occasionally swapping out of instruments.

“We would do a couple of songs just acoustic, I play drums most of the time and then for my songs I just play bass because they’re great guitar players. And Northey will play drums for a song and Page will play drums for a song of mine too. We could have done it like we were Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and bring in a backing band, but it’s more fun doing it this way – and it’s way cheaper. Also, we’re fully capable of doing it this way,” he said, adding that it was great to share the stage with Berg, who doesn’t play live that often these days.

“That was the biggest coup, I think. Page plays all the time and I play all the time and Northey plays a little less than we do because he’s got more balls in the air with soundtrack work and stuff, but he does stuff with the Odds and he plays sometimes with Colin James or with Page. So it was great to get Moe out with us. I am playing drums when we do I’m An Adult Now and I tell you it brings the house down.”

For the next little while, Sloan is going to be on the road, meaning not much time for writing and recording new material. After their Sept. 17 show in Prince Edward County, it’s a series of dates in California and Nevada before a short east coast run in both Canada and the United States with a few in the southern states in November, wrapping up in Buffalo on Nov. 19 at the Iron Works. Then there are the spring dates for Trans-Canada Highwaymen, as well as some gigs with another Murphy musical project, TUNS happening in and around the Sloan shows in the fall.

That group is comprised of Murphy, Mike O’Neill from The Inbreds and Matt Murphy from Super Friendz and Flashing Lights, they released a self-titled debut album on Aug. 26 on Royal Mountain Records. TUNS shows are happening throughout Ontario and Quebec in October primarily.

For tickets and information for Sloan’s show at Sandbanks Provincial Park on Sept. 17, visit http://www.sandbanksmusicfest.com. For general information about the band, visit http://sloanmusic.com.

To find out more about the Trans-Canada Highwaymen, visit their Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/thetranscanadahigwaymen.  For details about the TUNS project, see http://tunsband.com.

* Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com

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