The Waking Eyes have criss-crossed Canada about 23,000 times in the past year. That may be a slight exaggeration, but when you consider the amount of kilometres driving across the Great White North racks up, it's pretty fucking daunting. Throw in a healthy mix of ridiculous it-could-only-happen-to-a band road woes, and top with a steadily growing fan base and general recognition, and you have the lives of these young Winnipeggers pretty much tallied up. This month, they're back on the road with the Marble Index and Boy, and should be making their way through your neighbourhood to inflict destruction (probably on themselves) pretty soon. Check their website for details on the tour.

At the band's last gig at the Media Club in Vancouver, I managed to drag the two members of the band who were left behind from another interview, everything-guy Matt Peters and also-everything-guy Rusty Matyas into my relentless grasp for an interview. Actually, we just went across the street to the Shark Club for dinner and beer. We settled in to a booth in the noisy bar, and after the guys were done playing games with my microphone, we began to discuss the video that was current for them at the time, "Watch Your Money." It's important to note at this point that Matyas was pretty involved with the menu and was barely listening to anything that was going on at the table. I begin by asking them if the video concept is at all based in reality, as it showcases them flaunting wealth and then completely getting kicked in the ass for it at the end. Peters quickly claims that no, no it doesn't have any basis in reality whatsoever, but after a time, Matyas, likely unaware that his bandmate had just said completely the opposite, registered that we were talking about the video's relevance to their lives. "Well in fact it is [a true story] because, our Winnebago burnt down," Matyas states. Peters looks at him with... I think I detect disgust. "What? What did that have anything to do with our video?"

Matyas keeps mumbling about the Winnie for a while, and finally Peters begins to somewhat agree with him. "I’d say it kinda does 'cause yeah we’re losers… with girl problems. And uh… so therefore we think we get girls and we actually don’t." Well-spoken. The band members appear to be pretty entertaining people, so it's not far-fetched to think they came up with the peculiar video concept themselves. That's not the case however. The director that was chosen for the video ended up creating the concept, which they chose out of a dozen or so ideas that were submitted to the band from various people. And apparently most of the dozen proposals completely sucked, except for the ones that director Sean Michael Terrell came up with. What were some of these other bogus concepts? Peters explains, "Weeeeeird stuff (laughter). Like one of them was kinda cool... this guy had this idea that like, we’re playing the entire song on a roller coaster, propped up on a roller coaster. You just do all this on a blue screen… but it just sounded like a logistical nightmare. So we decided against that one. And the rest were like a bunch of …running around a lot... Like we didn’t really want a really cheesy obvious money like song title kind of like... watch your money! There it is! But it ended up … yeah it ended up being like that anyhow." Oh well, they tried.

Now of course I have to ask about the Winnebago they talked about earlier. I remembered having heard about that. It seems like more large recreational and transport vehicles are viciously sacrificed under the care of rock musicans in Canada each year than in all other circumstances combined. And this is a pretty good story (and thankfully everyone's okay). I will let them explain.

Matyas : Well that whole night was pretty crazy.

Peters : Yeah I guess that’d probably be our craziest.

Matyas : We got arrested at like two in the morning, one in the morning for reasons that are probably fairly obvious.

Peters : We didn’t get charged or anything but we had like seven joints or something in our pockets in our clothes.

Matyas : And we got a ticket for a hundred bucks for our tail light being out. Then about four hours later we ran out of gas in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere in Saskatchewan and had to hitchhike to a gas station and wait til it was open. We got to hitch hike back and then about an hour later [the Winnebago] burned down.

Cord : What.. What happened to it?

Peters : I think it just overheated. It must have. It was a really hot day and we can't really see anything else that would have gone wrong. We don’t know anything about vehicles, like nothing. You can’t get four more auto like… automobile inept individuals on the planet and yeah, we didn’t know what the fuck was going on. And all of a sudden we smelled something funny and we pulled over and it started smoking and the next thing you know, we’re standing outside the vehicle and the entire thing is burning to the ground.

Recovery was fast for them though, just realizing they needed to get a new vehicle and deal with insurance agencies. No resting on laurels - they had a tour to continue! Much like the arrival of food made them quickly forget they were being recorded, as the waitress stood by and the guys ordered extra things and talked about how hot the fries are. Matyas choked on them and then offered the steaming wands of potato to us. Now Matyas was too busy with his food to continue talking about the flaming RV, so Peters wraps it up. "I think that’s the most [crazy night] that we’ve had. Of course we’ve had the little things happen to us. But we got like three of the worst things that could happen to you when you're on the road...cops, uh, gas… running out of gas [ed. note : thanks for the clarification!]… and then like trouble with your vehicle, or to be more accurate, the complete and total destruction of your vehicle. That happened to us within about 12 hours." Quite the life.

The Waking Eyes are within their first year of being on a major label, having signed to Warner in 2004. I'm interested to see how they're liking their new home. They of course had the usual reservations regarding maintaining creative control and being pinned as sell-outs from longtime fans, but Peters notes that neither issue has come to light so far. Matyas interjects an "mmmm," and we carry on. Peters mentions that even through recording, the label wasn't stepping in to the studio and telling them how to make their album. "I think they’ve supported us and trusted in what we were doing with the recording. And then another thing is we trusted them and what they were doing and hoped it worked out, and so far it has. We get along really well with everyone at the label. And that’s awesome for us."

They've changed and evolved so much from their beginnings in 2000, that they're more likely to tell you they formed in 2002 if you were to ask, and the live show is also ever changing. In their self-proclaimed rookie year of 2002, they played out in Vancouver at the annual New Music West festival. I was there, albeit for only about ten minutes, but they look like they want to crawl under the table in shame when I bring it up. The show was with such on-the-cusp fellow Canadians as The Organ and Moneen, and was one of those gigs that people lined up outside for. But according to The Waking Eyes, they flew into the city drunk as hell, and with less than twenty minutes worth of rehearsed material to perform. I remember them wearing suits and being quite active, but I have no idea how long or short their set was. Peters claims that was their worst show of all time. Their Warner-issued bio sheet however states that the show was a turning point for the band, a statement that Peters is quite quick to dismiss as completely as utterly inaccurate. I don't even know who to believe any more.

I attempt to get them to relay whatever they have up their sleeve for their at-the-time pending CD release party in WInnipeg, but even they didn't know what would be going on, other than the local radio station giving it a big push. But my best efforts at keeping them engaged in conversation is no match for the lure of the giant fries, and before I know it, the two of them are in a tizzy about these landmark sides from the Shark Club.

Matyas : Do you want to split these with me?

Peters : I don’t really want those big fries.

Matyas : These are really big hey? And they're fucking hot.

Peters : Hey fries are pretty bad for you right?

Matyas : Yeah but they taste good. I’m eating a fricking potato. Like that’s not bad.

Peters : In like mountains of oil.

Matyas : Yeah but look at that inside, that’s a pretty raw potato.

Peters : It’s so hot.. It’s really white too, look at all that...

Matyas : Oh I burned myself. Ow. I’m so cool. Yeah!

Oh people, can we get back on track? We begin to talk about the Video Sound album. The whole disc travels a giant range of styles, with influences bouncing into the tunes from all sides. As a result, while it's definitely a rock record, it's nearly impossible to pigeon-hole. Was that on purpose? We all know how much bands hate to be pigeon-holed. In fact, Matyas clearly states, "We’ve definitely thought about it. We didn’t want to become pigeon holed."

Peters elaborates, "In a weird way, we kinda were like that on our first CD, Combing The Clouds… if Video Sound is kinda like this sort of thing [demonstrates with his hands the influx of some diverse influences], our old cd was like this [whips hands around in a frenzy from all directions]. Where it was the opposite of pigeon hole, you know what I mean? It was like we were drawing from too many places and we didn’t have enough focus… like I still love it. I don’t want to take anything away from that 'cause now I think we definitely felt that for next time we wanted to do something that really shows our influence… go a little more rock. Have a lot more fun with it and make it sound a little bit more live. And that’s what we did but, at the same time it [still] has a lot of different styles."

I seem to have made Matyas have an epihpany though, and he mentions he sees what I mean about the songs all being different, but that they fit together. And then he starts asking a bunch of questions about some bands I have written on a piece of paper that's in front of me. Who can keep their attention? Why do I even try? It was hard enough just trying to get acquainted with the band before the interview, as information and past interviews with them seemed to be quite scarce. I mention this to them, and they seem a bit surprised. Then they realize it's mostly old press about the earlier album, and it all makes sense. The only reason I mentioned that though is because I heard somewhere that they used to swap instruments during their shows. I want to see if they're still doing that.

They go into band-meeting mode right in front of my eyes. They talk about how they'll probably do that again, but it has to be executed perfectly, because they'd seen a band 'the other night' that didn't do the instrument swap well at all and it was just clumsy to watch. Peters says, "It’s weird like everyone like our manager and label and and... You… everyone like, that’s not everyone I guess, but a lot of people are like, yeah you guys should switch around. And we love it, it’s totally fun. But like we can't help but feel that it’s awkward."

Matyas doesn't really agree. "Well not just that. No no no not necessarily just that. I can see that. But if we did it smoothly, properly and in the right order, it would look cool, but it’s more that, we don’t switch around on the album when we recorded it, so it wouldn’t make sense to … for me to play Steve [Senkiw]’s drums, when Steve played it... Like I don’t know what he plays. Steve knows what he plays. He doesn’t know what I play on the guitar. Know what I mean?"

Peters carries the point on, "But we recorded it the way we did because it sounded best if the same person is drumming on the album and it’s the same person playing guitar and bass and stuff like that. On our first album that wasn’t really that important, but for this album we all wanted to have an album that flowed really well. And also if the guitar track's really weak on one song and the drum track's really weak or whatever it is, it would really stick out and we wanted to have something that sounded good all the way through. But we will switch again." Triumphant.

It sounds like they're pretty gung ho about the recording process, but they're even more so about the writing process. This is a pair of down-home Canadian kids undoubtedly. Matyas says, "I love singing and sitting at home and writing songs and I could do that 24 hours a day. And record on a computer in my house. Or Matt’s house. I could do that forever and I much prefer doing that over playing live. Not that playing live is bad, 'cause I love to play live too."

Peters adds, "I agree though, I dunno, I’d rather be in my basement apartment all on my own and just like getting stoned. And I mean, just playing, Like just writing a song and recording it…"

Matyas : From like 11 in the morning, no really, like from 11 in the morning, til 4 in the morning again, with your shirt off…

Peters : And sweaty and smelly and and just like… being chaotic. I love it. I love it.

Matyas : Yeah. There’s nothing better really. There’s nothing else that I’d rather do in life.

All of this to the point of actually shutting themselves in their homes for days on end with the phone unplugged, just churning out three or four songs a day. Sure they get a lot of crap in there, but there's a lot of gold that comes out of it too. So much so that it might one day spawn a B-side record. Or a gangsta-rap record? Whoa hold the phone here...

They don't demean the touring aspect either though. They agree there's nothing quite like playing with your buds, no matter how much you might like your alone time. After the waitress finishes interrupting us again, I bring up their messy message board (which has recently been replaced with something harder to make a mess of). This thing is off the wall, packed with weird comments. I assumed it was a group of their friends just goofing off, but they in fact have no clue who's posting most of the comments, and some of it gets almost offensive, particularly when comparing old members to new members and vice versa. You can read it for yourself though. The topic turns slightly towards all the other things one can find online when one types "Waking Eyes" into Google. Weird poetry, anime fan art, that sort of thing. They have a popular moniker.

They both agree they had a great time working with Arnold Lanni to produce the Video Sound disc. They were nervous not having worked with a producer before, but it ended up being a great experience. I worry about fistfights when they give me different answers about who they'd pick to work with if they could have anyone, dead or alive. The perennial... John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But they've long since accepted that Peters is a John guy and Matyas is a Paul guy. As I begin to switch modes to the duration of time it took to make the album, Peters suddenly exclaims, "No wait! Otis redding. Someone soulful and black."

The recording time spent on this album didn't take much less time than it did for their first one, but for different reasons. For the earlier album, they all were holding down jobs and waiting for money to come in to make the disc. This time, they took breaks from recording in Toronto to go home to Winnipeg, which disrupted the flow, as they say. Matyas states, "I have to say for a much more focused record, the recording process was pretty unfocused at times." I ask if theyre ready to take on Pitchfork with this one, as the music-media giganto-site gave them a fairly tepid review of the first album. Matyas explains that they like the review actually, even if they don't entirely agree with it's bent. "I guess I appreciate that the guy that reviewed the album took the time to actually … hear the songs. And he acknowledges that we write good songs and that we have some talent I guess. And he pretty much said that they don’t have a lot of progression. And like, how many more things are they gonna put on there, but we wanted to make something bizarre, we used everything but the kitchen sink, we actually did on the first album. So that’s the cool thing, that’s pretty much what we did. I hope that on this album… I’m sure they’ll probably bash it but… somebody will somewhere. You cant get away from it."

How about the big bad internet? Do they worry about losing album sales that way? They don't find it a hindrance in fact, and actually have a CD of downloaded songs in their van. Matyas, taking over the interview, says, "I don’t find it being necessarily a hindrance. I mean yeah... I don’t know, we’re so broke as it is that, what difference does it make? I don’t think people downloading our songs is really gonna hurt us. Seeing as we are broke, it’s not gonna hurt us 'cause hey, people are downloading our songs, and that’s awesome. But apparently I probably shouldn’t say that. So never mind." Too late now.

Everyone's been fed and beer'd, so I begin to head for the home stretch with some questions that are a bit less relevant to anything in life. I tell them that when I looked up "Elwood" online in reference to one of their songs, I came up with a band from California, a town in Nebraska, and a denim company. They find that interesting, and Peters goes on to explain the song's actual premise. "What is that about? that’s about like a guy that .. I dunno, me and Myron [former member Schulz] have been friends with him for like ten years and his name wasn’t Elwood, his name was Jake, but we wanted to pick a more dorky name. And so it's all about that it doesn’t seem to matter what he does in life, things just don’t work out for him. He’s one of those guys that just makes every situation uncomfortable, he doesn’t know how to act in any sort of social situation at all and he is such a goof and hard not to mock. Like endlessly. You spend all your time mocking him. So anyway, that’s what it means to me. But yeah I think everyone has a friend like that. He’s just so clumsy … I should shut up haha. He’s a great guy though."

I point out then that if you read through the track listing, it kind of reads like a moral story. It sounds like a progression, like there was a tragedy, and you move on from that, and reflect... and then everything's cool. As I ramble on, they spout expressions of surprise and awe, evidently being another thing that hadn't occurred to them before. Matyas says, "No that’s really cool. You know what the funny thing is, I pretty much let the whole musical… I don’t want to say career cuz we don’t really have a career at this point but that’s pretty much the way the entire thing has gone on for us. Like there’s always been a setback that happens and then, everything's going well. Everything's going well and things are looking up and like, oh there’s a great opportunity here, you know, maybe I’ll fuck it up. And you gotta say, you know what, fuck it, you gotta keep going. Don’t look back at the setback, and keep going. And it’s funny how you were saying… that’s happened like four times that major things have occurred."

Speaking of waking... How often do they hit the snooze button before getting out of bed in the morning? These two say they're good about getting up, but Senkiw is another story. "Steve is a slack. it’s the weirdest thing, once he’s a sleeping he can't get up unless you like wake him up like 4 or 5 times. He explains it that like he convinces himself all the time that he doesn’t actually have to get up. He like lies to himself in bed… no seriously he does," says Matyas. Peters continues, "He does. He doesn’t think he needs to get up and it’s like ‘Steve, we're all in the door waiting for you. We gotta go, we’re leaving now.’ And he’ll be like ‘Yeah…’ and go back to sleep."

To cap all this off, I ask them about the importance of the "Woo" in rock. They seem momentarily confused. It went something like this :

Cord : Now finally. In your opinion, what is the importance of the ‘woo’ in rock?

Peters : The what?

Cord : The importance of the ‘woo’ in rock.

Matyas : The woo?

Cord : Woo.

Matyas : The woo.

Peters : WOOOooo!

Matyas : Oh! Um I think the woo is very exciting. It’s gotta be done right though. I don’t know how to do it right though. But yeah it’s very important.

Peters : It’s gotta be honest. Like you gotta be really rocking out and having a good time. If it’s fake it’s just like, I dunno, it’s like White Snake.

Cord : Does White Snake actually woo?

Peters : No but if they would, it would be fake.

Matyas : There’s actually a dishonest woo on our album. I’ll show you later but I’m not gonna say where it is. It’s sort of in the background and it sounds dishonest.

Well he never did show me, but I'll be on the lookout. So there was our time - I learned some things about these guys I hadn't known before, like how entranced they can be by potato products. They went on that night to rock like crazy, and get the entire audience involved in, yes, a woo-along. You know what? The Waking Eyes don't need a side of fries. They're perfectly satisfying on their own.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : February 2005.