Jay Ferguson, a guitar player and singer for
Halifax Nova Scotia's pop sensation Sloan, has called me from a pay
phone at a Toronto mall to discuss his band's new album, their third,
One Chord To Another. With a throng of screaming kids ardently
Christmas shopping behind him, the conversation turns to age. "Johnny
Marr was 23 when the Smiths broke up, writing all those songs by 23,"
says Ferguson incredulously. Ferguson is 28. "I know a lot of people who
were big on music as teenagers, then they go on to a University and then
get real jobs and it drops."
For Sloan, approaching 30 means nothing
in terms of dropping it. Formed in the sheltered city of Halifax
("Fourteen to 15 hours to Montreal or Boston," says Ferguson), Sloan
recorded their first album after only 12 shows when a guy working for
MCA in Canada took their tape and handed it to a friend at Geffen
Records in Los Angeles. The album, Smeared, came out with little
more than a drum remix.
"The first record cost a couple of thousand
bucks and then the second album, Twice Removed, cost like 50
times that," says Ferguson. While pleased with the result of that second
effort, Sloan saw the expenses pile up and decided to work at a "more
leisurely pace" for their third release.
"We recorded the drums on a four-track cassette
machine and then put it on the big reels," says Ferguson. The experiment
was an attempt to recapture the excitement of their demos and the drum
effect of early Who records.
"We have a pretty good idea of how we
want our records to sound," confidently states Ferguson. "For 'G Turns
To D' we tried to capture the spirit and feel of a Supergrass
record."
The topic turns back to age. "At the bigger halls we get a
big cross section between college kids and 14-year-olds, which is cool.
We even get some parents, because we have that pop sound that reminds
them of the Beatles or something," Ferguson laughs.
One Chord To Another strikes
similarities between the Fab Four's more psychedelic exercises
("Everything You*ve Done Wrong" features a very "Penny Lane"-friendly
trumpet). The Beatles, Ferguson acknowledges, were through by 30. But, I
offer, fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen is in his 60s and still records
every few years. "It would be nice to get to that age and put out a
record every few years," admits Ferguson, adding "and play sit-down
halls and charge $35 a ticket."
At this point the civil unrest of the
mall becomes overwhelming. Kids scream relentlessly in the background
for Santa Claus. Santa, it seems, has no such age dilemmas.
