by Karen Bliss
Toronto pistol-rock band Billy Talent is holed
up at EMI Music Publishing’s in-house studio putting the finishing
touches on the album it recorded for Atlantic Records at Vancouver’s
The Factory before Christmas.
“We finished roughly 90% of the album. We have
to do one guitar solo and vocals for one song,” says guitarist
Ian D’Sa.
“And two back-ups,” adds bassist Jon Gallant.
The studio, with its purple velvet walls and black
shag carpet, is cozy and Billy Talent is very much at home here. The
band is signed to EMI Music Publishing Canada and has cut numerous demos
at this tiny facility with Gavin Brown.
Brown, whom the band also selected to produce its
major label debut, is comping vocals, meaning he’s taking the best
performed, recorded segments and compiling them on one master track.
He plays back ‘The Ex’.
“My heart turned black/then the sky turned gray,”
lead singer Ben Kowalewicz is firing from the speakers.
“My heart turned blond — that’s gonna
be the remix,” he later jokes.
Offstage, the frontman is the sweetest, nicest, funniest guy, just like
the rest of his bandmates. Onstage, however, he transforms into a red-faced
demon, neck vein bulging, and pacing around like a wild animal on a
short chain. His vocals back up the behaviour — raw, snarling,
yelping, but surprisingly melodic.
The band, rounded out by drummer Aaron Ess, originally
formed as Pezz in 1993 when the guys were still in high school in Streetsville
ON. It released a few independent cassettes and a full-length CD, Watoosh.
In late ‘99, the quartet changed its name to
Billy Talent after a character (Billy Tallent) in Bruce McDonald’s
film adaptation of Michael Turner’s 1993 book Hard Core Logo.
The band’s sound evolved too, into more aggressive emotional punk.
In 2001, Jen Hirst, who had seen Pezz before, bumped
into Kowalewicz, at Toronto’s Edge 102FM, where he worked as Live
On The Edge producer. He asked her to check out the band’s NXNE
showcase in June at The 360 club, which she did. Later, when she was
hired by Warner Music Canada to work in A&R, she touted Billy Talent.
Her support helped land the band a lawyer (Chris Taylor), producer (Brown)
and eventually a demo deal (Warner Music Canada).
Before recording the new demos, Atlantic A&R execs
Kevin Williamson and Tom Storms were in Toronto to sign Slurpymundae
and received a last-minute call from local manager Steve Hoffman to
see the band play in its tiny rehearsal space.
Within weeks, with the demos completed, Billy Talent
met with Warner Music Canada affiliates in the States, and a few others.
The band accepted the offer from Atlantic, which cut a co-venture agreement
with Warner Music Canada. Next Mosaic Media Group’s Scott Welch
(Alanis Morissette, Audiovent) came on board as Billy Talent’s
manager.
After spending five weeks recording in Vancouver,
the band emerged with 13 songs, six of which are new; 11 will end up
on the final album. As Brown plays back ‘Cut The Curtains’,
‘River Below’, and ‘How It Goes’, Kowalewicz is
wearing a woolen toque with a big pom-pom that bobs as he does. Much
like he is onstage, he can’t stay still.
He describes ‘How It Goes’, in his subtle
silly humour, as “a loud number,” and a ballad, ‘Nothing
To Lose’, for which he still had to cut the vocals, as “an
evil dreary song.”
Also captured for the heck of it are hilarious takes
of D’Sa singing snippets of AC/DC lyrics. “I can do a good
Axl,” he insists.
The guys are a blast to be around.
“The four of us have known each other so long
that watching the four of us together is like watching a Seinfeld
episode, but it doesn’t translate to music for some reason,”
says D’Sa.
“It comes from a different part of your personality
than what you expose everyday,” believes Gallant.
“And I have about 26 different personalities,”
Kowalewicz interjects with a laugh.
You gotta see BT live to know of what he speaks.
The album will be mixed in LA by Chris Lord-Alge in
mid February, and is plotted for a July 1 release.
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