Since the release of their successful third album, Albatross, Big Wreck began their fourth album Ghosts, with a goal of rediscovering what made them fall in love with rock roll. Recorded at Revolution Studios and Vespa Studios in Toronto, Ghosts took around six months to complete, but is most definitely one of the most intense and unbridled in the band’s repertoire. They opened up and let the music flow through them, and what was left over is nothing short of astounding.
Guestwriter, guitar virtuoso Mike Martin (The Dreaded Marco), sat down for an in depth musician to musician interview with Ian Thornley, and just as Ghosts is nothing short of astounding, the conversation had is nothing short of brilliant.
Let’s talk about the new record Ghosts just a little bit. How has the response been so far?
Um, from what I gather, people are digging it. I mean the die-hards, and certainly people that I know personally – they love it. But I don’t really have my finger on that pulse. I don’t really pay too much attention. As far as, like, reading reviews and stuff – even the positive ones – I find that any of that stuff can be distracting and sort of throw you off. Even if it’s praising and it’s all you know, great, the negative stuff certainly. And I’ve learned to tune that out. Of course, every once in a while you’re like, “Oh, I wonder what people are saying.” And then you start digging around, and for some reason I gravitate toward the shitty ones. And there’s a part of me that wants to find a grain of truth in what they’re saying, even if it’s coming from, like, a pimply thirteen-year-old who has never heard, you know, “Zeppelin 4” before. For the most part, I think the reaction’s been positive.
Very cool, very cool. I think, for the scope of, of the few Big Wreck records that are out, you guys have really hit your stride. I mean, I will have to say the first record kind of became a standard for me and a lot of my friends. It kinda hit right at that late-90s, “this is what a rock band can sound like if they’re not trying to sound like what the rest of the corporate rock labels are trying to put out.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, we sort of made a conscious effort to go against that. That first album was essentially demos, right? I think our manager had the bill for studio time, so everything was done really, really quickly, and it was just demos to shop for a deal. And Atlantic loved the demos. And that’s what the first album was. We took what we’d done and put out an album, which we were totally pleased with. When they hooked us up with the big Hollywood producers and said, “You guys are gonna be stars. It’s gonna be great,” then it was just like oil and water. I can hear that on the second record, unfortunately. There are some great ideas and some great songs and some great music, but it’s recorded wrong, and it’s mixed wrong. I just hear some hesitation in it. I think what’s going on now, when you say we’ve hit our stride, it’s essentially the same thing is happening as with the first record. Nobody was hanging over our shoulders, saying, “Well, you gotta do it like this. I mean, if you want to be successful. ” I don’t listen to them anymore. And I’m not impressed with them, you know? (laughs) I don’t care. It’s like, here’s what we do, and here’s how I do it.
There is no one way to do it, right? There’s a lot of people who’ve had a lot of success doing it their way. I’ve tried with phony records, and even with that second Big Wreck album. I just don’t think that we’re that kind of band or that I’m that kind of artist. Not that I naturally clash with somebody who’s got a different vision than me, it’s just that the only thing that’s ever been successful for me in any way is being around like-minded people who get it. So you know, I think just listen to your heart. Follow your heart, and do – as corny as that sounds.
You guys are obviously all great players, but you have a bigger than that musicality. Clearly all of you guys can play, and your guitar-playing is impeccable, but you guys always err on the side of great songwriting and great performances; the music comes before all of that.
I wouldn’t say “battled” with it. It’s just something, I sort of go back and forth with, and I think what I was saying earlier about turning it all off and listening to your heart? I love playing guitar, even the real show-offy stuff. I really dig it, you know? It doesn’t move me as much as like, the sax solo in “Jungle Land.” Not even close! I just look at them as two different things: one’s riding a mountain bike and one’s riding a racing bike, but they’re both bikes, and I love biking. Do you see what I’m saying? But I think at the end of the day, the most, the most important thing is always the song, right? It’s always the piece of music itself; and when I say “song,” I don’t meant the hook. I mean all of it, the whole movement and the tone and the feel of the music. That’s the most important thing. That’s a thing that I will remember about a piece of music before I remember a particular lyric. It’s the way the thing comes off the speakers, and the way it hits you and feels and the way it sounds. That’s the most important thing. To get to that point requires a lot of work. I think it’s just sort of allowing yourself to be a bit of a nerd. I’m a total guitar geek, and I’m okay with it. You allow yourself to be that and then all of a sudden you can find yourself in these situations where, “Hey wait a second, I might be able to staple a kickass guitar solo onto the back end of this tune and have it work.”
I think you do a really great job of not just serving up great guitar playing, but everything that you guys do, even since the first record, you’ve had an honesty and the ability to connect really emotionally, whether it’s harder rockin’ songs or something like “Blown Wide Open” or something like “Break” or “Off and Running” or even “Hey Mama”. At least for me, those are songs that consistently make the hair on my arms stand up.
Thanks, man. That means a lot. I appreciate that. That’s the aim. That’s the best compliment I can hear. You know, ‘cause if it does it for me, then I’m hoping it’ll do it for others. I think its a combination of production, performance, and the vibe in the room when you’re cutting the tune. It’s also keeping a, keeping a positive sort of mindset – as corny as that might sound, because that’s important, too. We usually paste the vocals on last, and when you’re doing the vocals (at least when I’m doing a vocal) I want to feel like I’m performing it. It’s about what’s coming out, you know? And just sort of helping translate what the music and the lyric and the melody and the relationship therein, just helping translate that and get it out even clearer for people. I don’t know what it comes from or where it comes from. I just know when it doesn’t happen (and it’s a bummer when you don’t get it right) do you scratch the whole thing and start from the drums again? I’ve been lucky with the last two record. Again, it’s a big leap of faith in knowing that the people around you are kickass and that they believe in you and you believe in them and you have a shared vision of the way you want to go. With this record in particular it was a lot easier to do that because Raffy and I ran through all the demos together and put them all together. What you hear in the finished album is just a bigger, slicker version of what we had on the demos.
Big Wreck – Ghosts (Official Video)
[embedplusvideo height=”350″ width=”600″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1uJ3z0c” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Pghhg40gTs4?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=Pghhg40gTs4&width=600&height=350&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep8668″ /]
That’s something I think in modern music we’ve lost and thank god for bands like, like Big Wreck and you for keeping that going and having that be a more important means of expression of the art and writing great music.
You know I’m kind of excited to see what’s your take on it. That sort of manner of thinking is really bad for me, you know? It’s sort of a left brain, right brain thing maybe you know? I like to stay where it’s beautiful and it can move you to tears, or just make you smile or just raise the hair you know? You can get taken somewhere. Maybe it’s singing about something completely different but for some reason it translates exactly to what you’re going through at that moment, and it hits you like a ton of bricks and stops you in your tracks and knocks the wind outta you. Like, music can do that. These people writing these three and a half minute commercials are not trying to do that. They’re trying to make money
Right. It’s a product.
Trust me, I’ve been through the whole process of that, and it’s like man, this is fucking wrong. It’s not fair for me to pick on people that are doing it, especially when people are doing it well and doing it successfully. It’s just that we all got into music for the same reason. I just know that that’s not really my bag and I’ve always been on the other side of it. That’s where my heart’s always been and trying to pay attention to those things. Like, “This one, every time I listen to it chokes me up” – okay I gotta get to that and I just keep listening to it until I can start dissecting it and figure out why it keep doing this to me. I’ve spent so much time doing that over the years. Even when I was a little kid I would dissect these things. (laughs) So I just learned to play that on the piano, and was like, “okay, is it the phaser sound on it? Is it the synth sound, like what is the deal?” Trying to dissect all these things. I notice all that and I love it and these are all conversations that happen within a section, you know? Doing a Big Wreck record, it’s not like “We’ve gotta get this under three and a half” or “we’ve gotta get to the chorus under one minute. What if we pulled back on the chorus a bit? Wouldn’t it open up a little more and just sort of feel a little bit weightier?” Things like that.
Yeah I think about songs like “Turn it on again” and you know they don’t even say those words until the outro in that song. I love stuff like that. I don’t necessarily think that you guys are going out of your way to be a progressive band like too many bands try to live up to some box that they want to put themselves in because they listen to progressive rock so they feel like their band has to write progressive music. Again, bringing up Led Zeppelin, I listened to a band like that – there’s all sorts of, you know, weird modalities being used, and time signatures and stuff that we would consider to be very progressive, but we don’t think about them that way.
The Beatles did that a lot too. Certainly Genesis. You know, there’s a lot of great music. I grew up on all that stuff, and I love it. I admire it. One of the things I do love about it is the fact that I don’t go, “Wait a second! What is and why is it in ninth? Does this need to be in ninth? Cause it sounds like a great riff in four-four that they added an extra half beat to.” You know what I mean? But just so they could make it weird, just so they could throw off the drum beat, or something. But I think you know that – excuse me – I’m not listening to it anymore. Like dude, what are they trying to do here? Who are they trying to trick?
I was just gonna say, when it’s math for the sake of math I don’t get so interested by that. When the phrase just demands that this is the way the phrase needs to be, it’s inherently more musical and physiological.
Yeah, when you don’t think about counting it at all, and that’s when it’s working. That’s when it’s working, to me. When something beautiful happens to your body because all of a sudden the downbeat is somewhere else because you’ve been following the melody and the changes and the way that it’s been performed is so clever that you didn’t even notice that a beat was just stolen from you. That’s the stuff that gets me off. “Wait, how did I end up on the one?” you know?
Big Wreck – Hey Mama (Official Video)
[embedplusvideo height=”350″ width=”600″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1uJaUwK” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/zM0XDSkFLYg?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=zM0XDSkFLYg&width=600&height=350&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep1964″ /]
For me, I think there’s a place for everything. Certainly any artist or writer or band is doing whatever that they’re doing, and they’re doing it with at least all personal honesty and interest in it. If they’re finding their audience, I think more power to ‘em.
More power to ‘em. Absolutely.
I think that all we want to do is find our audiences as we’re writers, you know, no matter – you know, hopefully it’ll be a really big positive audience – you know, but I remember being a kid and just having, you know, my family wanting to hear me play, or my friends in school wanting to hear me play, and then eventually doing gigs and 20 people showing up and enjoying hearing it. You know , it’s always, it’s always important, and just compelling to just be able to present something that means so much to you, you know, on whatever scale you can make that happen.
Mmm. Absolutely!
So more power to those guys.
Yeah I don’t want to take anything away from it. I guess what we’re talking about is the sort of prog-y thing, and like I said before, it’s an influence for sure. I don’t actively go out looking for places to fuck with the beat, you know what I mean? I don’t actively go out looking for strange riffs, or adding or taking away notes to make it odd, or starting in Lydian Dominant for the very first thing you hear. If there’s a riff that comes outta me that’s sort of a Lydian Dominant-sounding thing, then that’s the way it is. And, you know , if it’s in seven, then that’s fine, too. If it still has to groove, it still has to not feel like, like math. I find that kind of exhausting. And I do love it! I love listening to Dream Theater and trying to follow along for as long as I can, especially the instrumental sections. Like, “god damn!”
Yeah the, the intellectual capacity – I mean, 1) To write that stuff and 2) To remember all of that stuff over as many records as they’ve done now – you know? It’s crazy.
It’s great man. You know, I mean, it speaks to John’s commitment, you know? We toured with them years ago, and I was really impressed with him as a person. Of course as a guitarist, and of course the band was, and is what it is, but I was really impressed with their commitment. It is second to none. I mean, many, many rock bands out there are all about titties and beer and all that, but those guys are just very committed. They may not be your cup of tea, may not be necessarily my cup of tea, but you know they’re doing what they do, and their doing it well. They’ve found an audience (same as Rush) and many of those bands. And you know, more power to those guys. I think it’s fantastic.
And I, but I think that’s exactly the kind of thing, whether it’s Dream Theater, or it’s Rush, or Big Wreck, or lots of, lots of bands who I think are just very honest about their own writing and feeling compelled to just put out music they are expressing at that moment, when you connect with that kind of an audience, they stay with you, you know? Rush’s audience seems like their riding on popularity that just continues and continues and continues. Their last record was, was amazing. And their last tour was amazing, and they, they stay inspired and I think that’s what keeps their audience coming back.
Yeah. I watched that documentary – we’re on the same management as Rush, and I know, I know Al pretty well, and I’ve hung out with Gedd a couple times. They’re like super-super nice guys, extremely humble and gracious and wonderful guys. But when I watch that documentary, I was really struck by something that I started talking to the management about. What struck me was when they were sort of at the end of their deal, initially, and the label was like, “We want hits, we need hits, give us hits,” and then what they served up was, I think it was 2112 (laughs)
It was 2112.
Ian Thornley – Paulo Neta – Brian Doherty – Dave McMillan – Chuck KeepingI was like, “okay, I need to grow up now!” you know? ‘Cause what a ballsy move that is! That is the move of either a dumb kid or a seasoned vet! You are either extremely smart, extremely stupid, or you just really, really believe in yourself, or you just don’t care! I don’t know, but it’s like obviously these guys said, “you know what, take it or leave it, this is what we want to do.” That really resonated with me as far as what we’re doing.
Where do you feel like your audience is most resonating and growing from? Is it just the tried and true fans like me that’re telling everybody that this is one of my favorite bands?
I have no idea… I don’t know, man. It’s weird for us. I try not to pay too much attention to the whole thing, and I get to…like, on YouTube and invariably I’m gonna start reading the comments. Nine out of ten are gonna be like, “This guy sounds like Chris Cornell.” Trust me. I’ve heard that before. It’s either that or they get really mean, y’know? So I kind of don’t pay any attention to that shit. As soon as I see “It sounds like Chris Cornell”, I just tune it out, and I’m like, “okay, next!” I don’t wanna read this stuff anymore, because instantly, all those people that are commenting on YouTube do not know how to listen to music properly, and don’t know what they’re talking about, and clearly have too much time on their hands. I just move on to the next thing. So, as far as our audience, and all that? I don’t know. I would hope that our audience wouldn’t bother with posting on YouTube. I would hope that they would, y’know, be into different stuff, like listening to it with headphones on, and maybe taking a walk or something, doing something constructive. It’s hard for me to say, man. I’m just so happy that I’m still able to make music and have people listen to it, y’know? I do count my lucky stars, and I feel blessed that I’m still able to do it. So, as far as goin’ out there and just pissin’ people off, that’s just a young man’s game.
Any tip offhand as to what you guys are thinking post-Fall Tour, into 2015?
Um, no. I’m sure we’ll probably try to stay out playing just as much as we can. But, yeah…I haven’t really thought that far ahead. It’s been a pretty quiet summer by our standards, as far as playing shows. So, I’ve been doing a lot of writing and I’m kind of excited to get to work on that. (Laughs) Who knows? Maybe this record flops and I can just go make another one. Who knows?
There’s always a silver lining!
Yeah… Yay! I get to make another record!
Man, I can’t tell you what a thrill it has been for me just to get to talk with you for a little while. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
Right on, man, absolutely.
Connect with BIG WRECK! (click on the icons):
