Interview at La Petite Marche, Montreal.
I’ve got to be honest about the name. I don’t feel that chill.. I do feel the maximum. Not in a bad way but your music is very bombastic and boisterous. It’s exciting and fun and boop be be bop.
That’s true, yeah. It’s kind of like… I want people to be able to come out to our shows and feel like they can hang out. So it’s like, we’re hanging out, we’re a chill group of people. We’re very maximalist in terms of what we do and how we act—the clothing that we wear except for tonight. We’re a little bit chill tonight.
Yeah I know it’s pretty maximum. So how many people are in the band?
Right now it’s five, and that’s not exactly my ideal number of people in the band. We used to have six. We had eight at one point. My ideal number is probably somewhere from like ten to twelve.
Holy moly man, you’re not gonna make a nickel.
No, no.
I have a feeling you’re not in it for the money.
We’re only in it for the money… no we’re not.
You’ve got a bit of a Zappa vibe going on here.
No, I don’t know who he is… no, I’ve never heard of him. But yeah so the goal is kind of… I want to be… I’m a musical composer. I want to write music, I want to compose music and I want to play it and performing is my vehicle for listening to and writing my music.
Ok, so there are five now. Who’s the sixth? Who are you missing right now? Who’s the most crucial next member?
We’re missing bari saxophone. We had a bari sax player named Matt who left the band to finish his schooling so he left at the end of summer.
Did you kick him out because his name wasn’t Barry?
No, although our old drummer liked to call him Barry.
Oh you gotta. It took me a second. I’m not as musically inclined… baritone.
Exactly.
Ok so bari sax, what about number seven?
So we had an alto sax, we had bari alto. I want soprano, alto, tenor, bari. So that’s four. I want flute. We’ve got clarinet. We had obo. We had vibraphone. We’ve got a drummer, percussionist, bassist and myself on guitar.
Just one guitar right?
I’ve auditioned a second guitar player and he’s gonna be joining us in December, maybe January.
For rhythm?
Yeah rhythm.. Swapping lead and stuff. He’s very funky.
So you’ve auditioned him. How do you know he’s ready for Maximum Chill?
I gave him “Long Distance Friction”—the song we just played. I just said come up with your own part and we jammed it out and it sounded really nice. He filled in the gaps because there are lots of gaps. We used to have an electric piano player. That was really nice for filling in the gaps and the rhythm bits. Since we don’t have that right now it’s kind of up to me.
Ok so you compose everything first and then jam with the guys? How much are the guys involved? How much input do they have?
So I will write out all the music for everyone’s part. Sometimes in my music I will put in a part that says ‘this is the general vibe that I want for the next 16… 32 bars’. So if they can come up with something that’s better, I will give them a foundation and let them roll with it. But I want to say about 75% of it is composed, written out, rehearsed. There are three.
So obviously Frank Zappa inspires you. Who would be some other artists that you are inspired by?
A very early inspiration of mine is Mark Mothersbough from Devo. So he is one of the main musicians in Devo, he’s also a film composer, he’s also a very out there artist. He does visual art, he does music, he does electronic art. So he’s a big inspiration of mine.
Brian Eno is an inspiration. I’ve got like a list of probably one hundred or so inspirations on our album but I would say that including Frank Zappa, those are probably the three big ones.
And do you play multiple instruments?
I can play pitch percussion; xylophone, glockenspiel. I play drums. I can play bass..
Now did you start out as most aspiring musicians? Did you start out on a glockenspiel and say, move into a string instrument?
No one aspires to be the glockenspiel player…
I don’t even know what it is. And so how early in your life did you begin playing instruments?
So I started like every kid who learns the recorder when they’re very young.
Not every kid.
Ok, not every kid.
We all triangle at best.
So I learned the recorder as a kid. Apparently I played the piano at a very young age but I don’t really remember it. I want to say I really started learning instruments around thirteen going into grade nine. Because during my childhood we had no musical education. We didn’t have music in my public school, we just had vocals. It was only when I hit high school that they said ‘you can choose to learn an instrument and play in a band.’
So were you crushing vocals? You can sing.
No.
Once the balls dropped?
Haha once the balls dropped. I can still sing the high notes, you just gotta clench… everything.
And do you have any albums out or what’s the story here?
We did a self produced album. It was all recorded in Ottawa. It was self recorded too. Our old saxophone player was a really great engineer and we got into a real studio. So it’s the five of us from four years ago plus a nine person orchestra and we did fifteen tracks (not all of them are music).
What does that mean?
Some of them are like sound compositions… so taking snippets of sound and arranging them in a way so that it sounds to me like a cohesive thought.
Smoke a joint for that one?
Yeah I guess. I actually don’t do drugs.
Me either…
So that might surprise people based on all the psychedelic nature of the band.
So you’re like Zappa man, he didn’t do drugs either. That’s awesome.
I guess.. That’s true, yeah.
You’re like Dali, you are the drugs.
I am the drugs. Yeah I’m high on life that’s all I can say.
Yeah I need some of that. So do you have another album coming out or what?
Yes, we have an instrumental album that we recorded at the beginning of the year. We are almost finished. I’m in the process of mixing it. It’s a lot of tracks in terms of recorded instruments on top of one another. But in terms of tracks like the amount of songs on the album it’s four.
Are we bringing the orchestra back or?
No.
I gotta ask… how do you get a nine person orchestra on the recording because that’s got to be costly no?
You find one person who knows the rest of the orchestra and you pay them money.
Oh, so it’s simple?
It’s very simple.
You just have to be rich?
Or just poor enough.
Well I love your philosophy, I think it’s cool. Free show here tonight folks.
It’s our second free show here. We’re experimenting with the free show. People can come and go as they want.
Someone came around here with a hat and I said ‘get the fu… It’s a free show’ I said. I don’t know if they’re with you but even if they are—rules are rules.
I would like some money.
Now there’s a level of pageantry to your presence as well. Last time I was here everyone dressed up all wild. Do you just tell the band ‘hey go home and find your craziest shit’?
We’ve done thrift shopping trips together just trying to find the weirdest outfits. I find that everybody has their own unique style in terms of what they think is out there and weird so it’s nice to see everybody come together and explore their weird side.
Well it adds an extra element to the show. And you’ve got your bandmate walking through the crowd which is another element—now we’re almost into performance art at a certain point.
Oh yeah. We really want to get everyone involved and make people feel like they’re a part of the show and not just coming here to sit and watch a concert and go home. And Alex does a great job of walking around and looking at people.
Freaking them out a bit.
Having a presence, yeah, freaking them out a bit—especially with the high heels and the makeup and…
Nothing wrong with that.
We go crazy.
I like it. Anything else you want to say or tell us about Maximum Chill that we might not know or should know?
We really want to do this full time and we really want to be able to have the money and the time available so that we can practice a lot. Because we need to practice a lot to make good music. And if you support us… buy our albums… follow us… whatever. That will mean that we can do more music, better and more often.
Might I suggest a bigger hat?
We did have a cowboy hat at one point.
Sombrero?
A sombrero would be good.
Get it going.
A ten gallon hat… ten gallon sombrero.
Geez in this economy? You might want a twenty gallon in this economy.
It’s gonna cost us.
Inflation. Well thanks a lot for doing this.
Thank you.
This has been The Maximum Chill, and go see them at your local establishment.
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