Following a soundcheck that was running late as usual, Matt Mays and his band, El Torpedo, decided to multi-task and kill the interview and pre-show dinner at the same time. We walked down the street a block to a small, casual Mexican eatery that was noisily playing a hockey game above our heads. It’s not the most desirable setting for picking up muttered voices between bites of food, but it would do. I have keyboardist Brad Conrad, Matt Mays, drummer Tim Baker and bassist Andy Patil sitting across from me. Guitarist Jarrett Murphy stayed at the venue to deal with some gear problems. With the noise levels where we were sitting, it was a bit difficult to hear who was saying what sometimes on the recording, so my apologies if I mixed up the quotes anywhere in here!

While discussing how they all began playing music, mostly as teenagers growing up in and around Halifax, Nova Scotia and being influenced by siblings, friends, parents’ record collections, the ultimate ‘cool’ factor of playing in a band, and Texas, Mays had touched on the fact that there seemed to be an explosion in the music scene over there in the early 90’s. When asked if the scene in Halifax (and area) was a nurturing one to grow up in, Conrad explains simply, “Yeah, it’s good. Yeah Halifax has got a great music scene, a lot of people playing there, really warm and friendly. It’s not competitive like other cities. Met a lot of cool people over the years.” Mays elaborates a little further. “Yeah, it’s a really exciting town, you meet a lot of people, new people. Like I lived in Dartmouth until I was 17. You go to school with a certain amount of people, but then you get to go hang out at all-ages shows and meet a lot of people, like-minded people and see a lot of bands. Really exciting. It’s so much different than playing on the football team or whatever, you know, you’re part of the culture and the city and that’s exciting at an early age. You know, you’re playing for kids and playing for people. Sounded like shit, and thinking you sound good some nights! But it’s the best time, you know, I haven’t had a better time than I did back then.”

Looking slightly contemplative, Conrad decides to add in his thoughts about the aforementioned explosion. “There was always good music going on in Halifax. The explosion was sort of an explosion of maybe awareness about it.” Patil interjects that while the music itself may not have gotten more plentiful or inherently better, the ability of the bands to play live has improved. “I was a huge fan of that scene, growing up, the pop explosion, of great bands and great records, and live didn’t always cut it. But I find ten years ago versus now, bands are better players. I think the techno age is something that has sorta made people pull up their socks and sorta make it… I don’t know. I don’t really know what to say about what’s affecting it but there’s more consistency going on in Halifax.”

Mays feels the era might have had something to do with it. “It was through the whole early 90’s grunge scene. It wasn’t about being tight or whatever. It was about being… about having the right attitude, and the right… you know…” Conrad finishes for Mays, “It was about not being Stryper.”

The whole band looks at growing up in that smaller musical community as a benefit to their development, rather than a hindrance at being often passed by from media over there on the coast. Mays states, “I think it’s a way better place ‘cause it’s way more supportive and there seems to be a lot more variety, and there’s a family of people that play together but they all play in tons of different projects. As opposed to somewhere like Toronto, or any big city, where there’s so many musicians and so little opportunity for all those people that it gets really competitive. And you can really sense that when you’re there, you know, you can talk to any band from a big city and they’re like, 'Oh yeah, it’s hard. It’s really competitive and you don’t know what people think.' But at home, everybody’s so laid back. But the world’s so small now with internet, you can be successful anywhere.”

Conrad adds, “It’s such a big thing, music and there’s so many people involved and so many people are high quality… I was brought up by older musicians who almost schooled me, essentially, and put the time in to give feedback, and not be weirdly threatened or feeling competitive about it, and you know, I got schooled. In bars.”

The close-knit Halifax community was also directly responsible for bringing the band together. Mays says, “For the most part, we’d all just been in the Halifax music scene, and when I finally had the record and was looking for some guys to play with me or whatever and I just made a few phone calls and these guys weren’t doing anything.” So it was a natural connection that they all had from the get-go, but who the hell came up with ‘El Torpedo?’ Mays makes the observation that being in a Mexican restaurant, it’s very appropriate that we’re discussing the band name. But even he doesn’t know exactly why they settled on the term, that they just needed a name. Patil tries to give it some substance. “Somebody said ‘Torpedo’ and then we were thinking ‘El Camino’ and then Tim said, ‘Why don’t we say El Torpedo?’ and we all had a good laugh. And that was sort of it.” Mays adds in, “Well it’s also got the ultimate sort of phallic thing about it. We kinda like that.”

Having the name of the singer as part of the band name begs the question of how much the band, obviously all friends, are ‘hired hands’ supporting a solo artist, versus being musical contributors, but Mays takes down the hired hands theory in a hurry. “I think it definitely feels like a band. It’s kinda weird you know, ‘cause I usually do all the interviews... but we have it worked out. We have a good sort of system and it feels like a band, you know what I mean? To me anyways.” Conrad mentions that it’s just like having a band with a primary songwriter.

Along with making a name for yourself in any market comes the prospect of awards and awards shows of varying degrees. Within a couple of days of this interview and show, Matt Mays + El Torpedo was to descend upon Edmonton, Alberta for the annual Juno Awards show weekend. They were going to continue their tour rather than hang around for the awards evening, but they did play a showcase during the music festival that was part of the awards’ weekend. While they bantered briefly about looking forward to hitting a “really good” Hooters restaurant in West Edmonton Mall, seeing old family and friends, and hitting the giant roller coaster in the mall, they soon began to discuss the impact and importance that awards have on the music industry.

“I think they’re important to most of the industry. It gives them a chance to get together. From a band standpoint, there’s a lot of… you know, the music industry is notoriously sort of crappy. There’s a lot of good people but… there’s a lot of bullshit so I don’t know… I don’t think it’s a good thing to gear up to win awards or whatever. It’s nice and there’s some really great exposure and there’s some really respectful people who are on the boards and everything,” says Mays. Conrad continues, “I think it's the kind of things that sort of hover around awards shows, you know, showcases and you get to play for people that otherwise might not come out, industry people. You get to play on TV or whatever or maybe you get an award that has some moola attached to it [as the band did at last year’s NXNE festival in Toronto where they won the Galaxie Rising Star Award].”

Patil pipes up then, “It just opens up so many more eyes I find, ‘cause like, people like my grandparents, well not just my grandparents, people of that age group would know who we are because of something like the [East Coast Music Association Awards], versus if that didn’t exist, they wouldn’t have a clue we ever existed.” Mays finishes, “You can take two routes. You can take the stay-outta-the-light and really just concentrate on playing music and being in a band and touring or whatever, or you can take another route where you get out in front of people as much as you can. And that’s what we’re doing ‘cause we want people to hear our music, you know what I mean? As many people as we can before we die.” Hence why awards shows are good for them, giving them a chance to play in front of a potential gigantic televised audience.

But as far as the awards themselves as validation for their own art, the band plays down their importance. “You can win a pile of awards and then decide that, oh we want X amount of dollars now for our gig, but if no one comes, you know, you’re not gonna get X amount of dollars in the gig next time or whatever. So in the end it’s just about making good music for people… it sounds stupid but it’s true,” explains Conrad. Mays adds a word of caution, “You’ve gotta have bit of a strong business angle too if you want to stay alive. You gotta always watch your own back. People might call you a capitalist or whatever but we’ve been in it long enough to know that people will take advantage of you every chance they get, and if you don’t put your foot down and say, “No that’s not cool,” you know… we’d rather just play in small bars the rest of our lives than do that.” Conrad elaborates a bit, “So the same people who are telling you you’re great today might not be doing it tomorrow and vice versa, right, so how seriously you want to take all that is up to you.”

Being away from home so much to tour their music can take it’s toll. Band members miss girlfriends and family, and sometimes, being worn out and on the road constantly can make them take a step back and ask them what they’re even going through this all for. “The road can make you crazy sometimes, but it’s usually a fleeting feeling, you know? Like it’s gone in like fifteen minutes and then you’re back there still loving it or whatever,” says Conrad, who is busy enjoying his newly-arrived dinner. Proving that a sense of humour is essential to sanity, Mays says, “They’ll throw a hot dog at you [when you get down about being on the road] and you’ll be back. Won’t give it a second thought.”

Turning the topic to the music, Mays admits he doesn’t often know where he derives his songwriting inspiration from. He’s grown tired of the music he’s taken on the road with him, and hasn’t been doing a lot of writing recently. “It’s weird. I don’t know. I’ve never gone through this before. And any song that I do write, I’m not gonna emulate everything at once which I’m kind of into you know? …So that’s kind of good in a way that I’m sick of everything maybe.” He also says that if he’s “well-slept and healthy,” he tends to write less. “If I don’t have sleep for two days and then I find I’m more emotional, and I get really cranky and more emotional and I just start thinking a little more.”

His existing self-titled release, which had been recorded independently and then re-released through Warner, is full of longing imagery, lonely nights driving, old friends, and barely-requited love. Does putting his thoughts into song in this way help him to heal and move on? “Yeah I think so. The thing with me is that I can’t write about just certain things, I usually just write about personal experiences all the time so usually with personal experiences I have trouble writing happy songs or whatever. Usually anything worth writing about to me is something that has happened to affect me emotionally. Nine times out of ten it’s something bad or sad. I get a good feeling when I think about open road driving and all that shit, that’s sort of my deal. I didn’t really know what to do, you know, growing up I drove all the time and …”

Suddenly Conrad exclaims how good his food is. Mays looks at him with surprise as the table bursts out in laughter. “I was just pouring my heart out there and you’re talking about your food!”

While we’re talking about longing and open roads and Mays’ “deal” as he put it, I asked if, based on his album cover which portrays him being smack dab in the middle of the country and the city, he were given the choice to live in only one spot or the other for the rest of his life, where he’d go. “The country. By fuckin’ far,” he says with no hesitation at all. But then he backtracks a little bit (with help from his bandmates) and says that he’d need to have a movie theatre and a shop or two nearby, just for some human interaction.

Finally, we turn towards the future. Following the tour (April 12), the band goes back into the studio to begin tracking for the next full-length album. They’ll be working with Don Smith, the mastermind behind albums by such important artists as Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. They’re awfully silent about the details of the recording, which I assume is partially because they don’t entirely know what will happen themselves. They have been playing a number of new songs live for at least half a year now, which many fans have latched onto and are highly anticipating having in recorded form. “We’ve got most of the songs and we’re gonna spend about a week getting them ready and we’ll tape… we’re recording for a month and I think it’s gonna be out next winter realistically. We’ll do it right after Christmas,” Mays informs us. Certainly something to look forward to.

Shortly, the band realizes the time, scarfs down their remaining food, and hauls off back to the Commodore to prepare for their gig. It was over quick, and they headed back out early the next day towards Edmonton. There’s been a lot of things happening for this band in the last year, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : April 22, 2004.