The Stanfields are back! The raucous, hard-rockin’ Nova Scotia band released its fifth studio album, Limboland on March 23 to great acclaim and is getting set to head into central Canada after a few dates on the east coast.
Limboland sees the quintet as raw and incendiary as they have ever been, with their rare combination of classic rock, punk rock and Celtic rock stylings coming together for an experience that is vibrant, high energy and memorable, alongside lyrics that should incite deeper thinking and possibly even some positive action.
Having two new band members allowed Jon Landry, as the band’s founder and primary songwriter, to take some time to reflect on The Stanfield’s direction and sound, discovering that in order to move forward, it was propitious to take a step back – back to the sense of urgency, energy and unadorned rocking vibe that characterized the band’s first couple of albums, and what set them apart from other bands coming from the east coast scene.
“We spent some time trying to find our voice again. It’s a tough deal to bring in two new guys and just expect them to play a role rather than having a chance for us all to evolve together. So, we were very conscious of giving ourselves some time to reinvent the band in a way that we were excited about. In that sense, I think we evolved by taking a step back in a way. When the new guys joined [fiddler Calen Kinney and bassist Dillan Tate] they are younger than us, by probably eight or 10 years. And they were fans of the band. They used to come watch us play. So, we were like these older guys and then they just joined the band and it made us all collectively start to think about moving back around to where we started, to when these guys became big fans of The Stanfields. Let’s pretend we’re hitting the reset button and doing everything again,” Landry explained.
“What were the things about the band that we enjoyed the most when we began? What was it that excited us in the first place? And it was simplicity and engaging the audience on a visceral level from the live show – all these simple things. Not seven-minute opuses and complicated measures of music and what not; just getting down to brass tacks. So, we kind of evolved by de-evolving. I think we have come full circle. We did go off in wacky direction with the last record, Modem Operandi [released in 2015] and it was what it was, although truth be told, it’s my favourite out of all of them.
“That album was a little more experimental I guess you could say and sometimes as musicians and artists you need to try different things. I don’t look at it like a one and we’re done scenario or ever looked at the band like that. I have always looked at it that we’re chipping away at the coal face for the next 20 to 30 years and everything is a stop along the way. We learn from both our mistakes and our successes but keep moving forward.”
Landry is effusive in his praise not only for the musicianship of his two new bandmates, but how they have reinvigorated and reinjected some swagger back into he and fellow Stanfields veterans Jason MacIsaac (guitar) and drummer Mark Murphy.
“What was really cool this time is that it feels like a new band in some ways because there is new blood. And for me, I have done so many records with The Stanfields and with lots of other projects as a producer, it’s easy to get a little bit jaded and fall into a routine,” he explained.
“But for the new guys, this is their first record, so it kind of brings back that ‘yeah we’re going to conquer the world’ sort of innocent sentiment that we were lacking as a group until these new guys came along. There’s been a reinjection of that and it feels pretty good. We feel better about what we’re doing and we’re already thinking about what we’re going to be doing in three years from now.”
And there definitely is a ferocity and insistence in both the music and the lyrical content. Landry has always used lyrics to talk about important issues, as well as about life in general – sometimes with a Punk-ish snarl. Limboland is no different as the messages on many of the songs are blunt and direct.
It’s always been Landry’s calling card to express his views on the sins of greed, dishonesty, corruption and especially hypocrisy. He approaches the things that he finds vexatious with an attitude of disbelief but also with frustration as he has no answers to solving these varied dilemmas.
“For this record, in particular, I was kind of feeling like sometimes our message misses the mark for whatever reason. We can’t control that. I wanted to just be as explicit as possible on the whole. So, for example I think that Donald Trump is the epitome of the enemy of everything I personally believe. He personified that to me. Whereas on the other hand we have Trudeau, who is a culmination of the ‘look at me’ generation – selfie, selfie, selfie – and that grinds on my nerves too. Somewhere in the middles is where I think most people live. Most people live in that sort of moderate area between those two pillars or book ends. These days I don’t feel like our system, in terms of our mass media or even our social media, is designed to cater to them – it’s designed to confuse us and pull us in one direction or another and all it’s doing is pulling us apart,” he said.
“I feel our fan base lives in that mushy middle with the rest of the world and I feel like I live in the mushy middle. This record is symbolic of that and that’s what I am trying to convey. Like the title Limboland says, you’re in limbo, you’re stuck in the middle and you don’t know where to turn for an answer. You don’t know what your world is going to look like in 30 years so anything you’re doing right now, does it f***ing matter? So, what should be looking after? Our society? Society doesn’t seem to want to look after itself, just look after those that are within arm’s reach. I don’t know, but these are sort of the questions I am trying to pose and that I struggle with every day and I am sure a lot of other people do too. And I wanted to be as explicit about It as possible because, for better or worse, at least in a way it gets down to the essence of what I think the band is about.
“It’s all about extremes these days. And it’s all about cliques and I certainly don’t have the answers. I am a college dropout and haven’t been necessarily challenged in my life as a white male, or as a Canadian, or somebody with relative economic means, as opposed to someone who comes from a totally different worldview. So, I can’t really legitimately come down from on high with answers because I don’t have them.”
And that’s reflected in several he song titles, from the opening track Afraid of the World, to Total Black, Desperation and more. The song Carolina Reaper is of a similar vibe to those but takes a more storytelling approach.
“What happens to me sometimes is that I will find a cool term or phrase and write a song around it. Carolina Reaper is the hottest chili pepper known to man, and it’s just a badass name. So, I just took that cool name and basically wrote a completely different story to it. I do this from time to time. Carolina Reaper is a bit of a dystopian story about a young girl trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic North America, scratching out a living in bombed out factories. And actually, bombing and bombed out things are kind of a recurring theme on this record. The song There’s a Light is the same – it’s a nuclear explosion in slow motion,” Landry explained.
Total Black is Landry’s blunt examination of the culture of consumerism and acquisition that puts ‘things’ and ‘money’ above relationships and humanity in life.
“We’re trained from the moment we enter the school system to create product, to move product and buy a house. It’s the ‘he who dies with the most toys wins’ thing. I was just thinking about people who are so focussed on winning within those rules that are applied to us and making sure they have the biggest house and making sure they make the most money and looking at it in a way that somebody who lives that sort of lifestyle, playing by those rules, buying into the neo-capitalist system, in the end its at the expense of personal relationships,” Landry said.
“You then have a person sitting along at their big opulent table in a huge empty house with every imaginable piece of luxury and every fancy trapping you could ever want to have – and nobody to share it with. Nobody to talk to, nobody who really cares sitting by your bedside as you die because you didn’t work on that part of your life. And this song is dealing with the fallout of that. It’s saying that here I am in a beautiful magazine house and nobody to share it with, boy was I stupid. We’re supposed to be good little automatons and move units, generate profit for others and consume, consume, consume. And it even comes down to art. According to the marketers and powers that be, we don’t ‘listen’ to music any more, we ‘consume’ it. And it’s bullshit, complete bullshit.”
Landry is a realist and understands that success for a band in the 21st century music industry environment is a relative term. Limboland is already a success is his mind because he, MacIsaac, Murphy, Tate and Kinney are thoroughly satisfied with the experience of making it and how it turned out. It is also a way for a band with as powerful a reputation for its live show as The Stanfields to continue to play gigs across the country and beyond and offers those who really listen to the songs an opportunity to perhaps feel that their frustrations, concerns, questions and fears are not theirs alone.
After shows in Halifax (April 13) and New Glasgow, Nova Scotia on April 14, The Stanfields will cross the Confederation Bridge for a show at the PEI Brewing Company in Charlottetown on April 21, before heading for concerts in Montreal April 26, Toronto on April 27, wrapping up in Ottawa on April 28. For more information on the band, the tour and Limboland, visit http://thestanfields.ca.
- 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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