(Cord Magazine's questions are in blue. Artist responses are in grey.)


We have a ten question thing that we ask every band.

Oh, really.

Yeah. Now we’ll do that.

I havent actually read the magazine. I don’t know where to find it.

It’s only online.

Oh it is? Well that’s why I haven't been able to find it.

What do you do on your downtime? Your away-from-music hobbies?

I love writing. I don’t go a day without writing something.

Like writing songs or…?

Anything. Poetry, maybe a story, I don’t know. Anything. Although I haven't done it lately, painting and um, visual arts and things like that I’m really into. Um, I love going to live music. I love doing that.

Anyone caught your eye recently?

Recently. I have to think. Well I have been listening to a lot of Muddy Waters lately. When I was younger I wasn’t so much into it. I was more into the funkier, rockier, folkier stuff. But I’m getting down and dirty now. Into Muddy Waters! I’m trying to think of some stuff, somebody new. There hasn’t been that much new…

What about live though, even if it’s not brand new?

You know what? Yeah yeah yeah... One of my biggest influences… for live performances, is Peter Gabriel. And uh, although our music isn’t really similar at all, but... And his is pretty huge, like his performance is out of this world, but I like sort of making it a little more intimate for the sort of thing that I do, you know, I’m only playing to ten to fifty people usually and he’s playing to like a few thousand. Bouncing around in big huge man-sized rubber balls, rolling around the stage. Riding a bike and dressing up like a grape - I love it. I just don’t… like some people just want to go to a show and just...

There’s something to be said for just going to a show and sitting in a corner and mellowing out.

Yeah that’s the thing too, but when I pay to go to a show I wanna be entertained. You know otherwise I can just sit at home and listen to the record. Yeah, I mean I guess I’m spoiled, but I’m used to seeing like really amazing musicians and I guess going to see someone who just like their whole show is based on their… how good they are at their instrument doesn’t really sell me. I like to witness something more. Did you go see Grady when they were here? They were amazing actually. I was… they played at Mavericks, which was bizarre. Like the weirdest place… cuz they're so not Vancouver. Like all these girls with cleavage like… oh but he… it was like so heavy but it had so much groove. It was the weirdest, like my friend and I were just dancing nonstop the whole time. I was like, was that really rock music? Was that really rock blues music?

[Gordie Johnson, who produced part of Ben Rogers' record and front Grady] just did all this so quietly. Moved to Texas, I had no idea. I thought he had a cattle ranch in Alberta and…

Yeah well he only moved there about a year ago. He was just sort of fed up with things, how everyone was treating him. I thought it was a really good move. It was sort of like Scott Weiland going from STP to Velvet Revolver. Well I don’t. I haven't really listened to Velvet Revolver but it seems like he’s sort of back on top.

What is your vice of choice?

Vice of choice… like, creative vice or...?

Whatever you want. What is your vice of choice?

Probably how naïve I am. I’m like a child. My beliefs and then even in the way I write… sort of a vice that I embrace. What are the usuals?

Beer and cigarettes. Coffee and chicks.

Yeah it figures… what!? Hahaha.

What is your favourite venue or city to play in?

Oh man. Well I’ve only really played here and in Montreal. I’d love to play Austin though. I was [in Montreal] last May for the fringe festival. It’s beautiful there hey? It's cool, they attract a lot of dark people. I’ve got a friend who lives there and we really wants to get some shows. Cafes, bars, whatever.

Yeah [Lovely Feathers, a Montreal band Rogers' and I had discussed] said they'd have an album done by the time I left Montreal in early July…

And a year later…

Haha yeah I got the album in November.

Wow. Yeah haha, I’ve had that. “Oh when will your album be done?” This is in grade 12, like two years ago. Oh, I don’t know like a couple months… two years later.

Were you working that long on the same songs?

Yeah it was about two years. I wrote them all when I was like 16. So yeah we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

What issues and aspects of the world most concern you these days?

All of them.

That’s a lot to think about.

I love writing songs about the human condition and I love to write about it all. Everything that has ever crossed my mind and I want to talk about. The main issues - man. Africa. That is one place that’s always been on my heart. I really have a desire to go over there and do some sort of humanitarian work. Volunteer at an orphanage or something like that. I’m always like taking a shower or something like that, waiting for the water to get warm, how much water gets wasted. Do you know how much food gets thrown out at my job? Woody Guthrie, one of my favourite songwriters of all time, he said every year we waste enough to feed the ones who starve. I think that line goes through my head every day more so than any other.

Pretty insane hey?

Why can’t we somehow share it?

The world would be middle class.

Yeah and you can’t have that happen right? Communism is a great idea but when you have all these selfish people trying to convert it to what they want, it’s no longer communal.

It would be interesting… no one would be super rich, no one would be poor. Everyone would just be happy, content.

Yeah. It would be beautiful.

But then you’d have nothing to write about.

Exactly. Can’t write about happiness! Can’t talk about that! But yeah, every day, constantly, always going through my head.

What is one interview question you could care less to hear again?

Hmm, I’m trying to think. I’ve only had a few interviews. I don’t know. I really don’t know. Probably one that I havent heard yet. I’m sure that ten interviews down the road I’ll hear it. I guess maybe, what’s your ideal venue to play at. That one sort of… I’d like to play anywhere. Anyone who wants to ask me that question, stop it. I’m just joking. I don’t think there’s really any question that I wouldn’t mind hearing again.

What was your favourite Saturday morning cartoon?

I had a bunch. I was obsessed with cartoons. I think that’s one of the reasons…

I used to just have my box of cereal in the mornings and…

Yeah yeah! That’s one of the reasons why the show is so animated like I used to have a room full of stuffed animals and I’d just act out these scenarios with them and my brothers would spy on my and laugh at me and stuff like that. But um, Bobby’s World. And Eek the Cat. Amazing show.

Oh Eek the Cat. Why is it not on anymore?

I know. "Gee, she’s kind of fat." "Really?" Ha ha aha.

Oh man.

Heeheehee. So funny.

Aside from music, what did you want to be when you were growing up?

Well for a time I wanted to be an actor and a painter. Cowboy. I wanted to be a fireman.

Every little boys’ dream.

Yeah I wanted to be a preacher too cuz most of the preachers I see here are so bad. Powerpoint presentations in the early morning. I wanna see like steamy windows and sanctuary, gospel music… that’s what I wanted. Toronto has quite a bit of that.

Really?

Yeah. My friend who grew up in Toronto was constantly seeing that. Yeah whenever you ask somebody about, more specifically, Christianity, they always think like… church. You go to church before anything else. It’s so interesting like… why not … I wish that there was more publicly that people could associate Christianity with. The church sort of idea is so public. I guess that’s why its sort of… I don’t know I wish there was something a bit more intrinsic. I’ve never been into science much and fact. It just doesn’t have to make sense.

If you could trade places with anyone for a day who would it be and what would you hope to accomplish?

Well after that little talk, probably God. No no. um, man, so many. Yeah I probably would be God because then I could check out everybody, see through all those little candid cameras into everyone’s mind. Steal everything haha. No, um…

How un-Godlike!

Yeah exactly! Haha no um… one of them is probably Tom Waits. I’ll name three. Tom Waits, John Cage, and George Bush. I won’t elaborate. Haha. Tom Waits and George Bush.

There is a shark and there is a bear and they're gonna get into a fight. There’s just enough water for the shark to exist and swim around, keep himself alive. There’s a small rock in the middle of the pond just big enough for the bear to fit. Grizzly bear, great white shark, neither have been fed for a few days, neither have been trained. They fight to the death. Who wins?

Well I don’t know, I pick the bear because he has a little more... I just pick the bear. He has a little more room to move around. If he’s smart enough he’ll go for the gills. I dunno. I've always been freaked out of bears. I've had nightmares about them. I have a recurring thing in my dreams like ever since I was a kid, of me being mauled, my brother being mauled, all this crazy like … I remember this dream I had. I remember one time, even though I had many dreams of it, I remember this one dream where the bear approached me and I like tore its head sort of in half but I like half-decapitated it so it was sort of this quasi-decapitation that left him half alive and he sort of ambled on back into the bushes. So I guess I remember this guy and his parents were psychologists and he got out this thesaurus of dreams or something like that and he said that when you dream about bears that there’s something going on in the spiritual realm of your life. I thought okay, sure. I half-killed a bear. I feel terrible!

Well that’s cool, a personal experience catapulted onto this question. And the final question - if you could ask me one question, what would that question be?

Are you free Thursday night? No I’m just kidding hahaha. What was the … have you ever had a life-changing instance in your life? What was it? Like that second where you go, oh they're lying, or oh, that’s the truth, or oh, that’s not my father or something like that? [I have. we discuss much about mortality and losing time here until our beer and tea runs out and then we call it a night.]

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : benrogers.ca
Published : May 2005.