A Conversation With: THE DARCYS (Part Two)
This is part two of my conversation with Jason Couse and Wes Marskell of the Darcys. If you need a refresher, click here to read part one. Part one ended in the midst of discussing the Darcy’s upcoming record, which is where part two picks up. But it gets much better. We continue to talk about Jason and Wes’s day jobs (*hint: one of them wears a costume), the band’s love-hate relationship with alcohol, and the story behind their enigmatic press photo. Part three is just as, if not more, revealing we get into crazy tour stories and discuss the Darcys’ literary connections, so make sure to move onto that once you’re finished reading this!
But for now, gear up for part two.
When is the record going to be done?
Wes: June. For sure. Well, we’re going to hopefully have it done for our 7” release, not obviously available. When we start putting the 7” out everything else will be out at the same time. But you never know with us [laughs]. It’s already been four years, so it could be another four.
What can be expected from it? I know the Dears’ Murray Lightburn helped produce it.
Wes: He did produce it. Well, I think the 7” is good. It sort of touches both sides of the spectrum. There’s more rock-driven stuff and some more moody, atmospheric stuff. The 7” has both sides of it. So if you can imagine everything that would take you from one of those songs to another song, that’s kind of what the record sounds like in a lot of ways.
And you have guest spots from Broken Social Scene on there?
Wes: A lot of the guys, oh and from Stars and Islands. Some of the guys play horns and strings.
A lot of the people from Arts and Crafts then?
Wes: Yeah. Flukely, actually. Just through some of these networks.
Jason: Just some of the people that were kind of in the scene, in the loop with the people we were working with.
Wes: Murray does some stuff on the record too. It’s fun. I’m really excited to get it out there. But it seems to be taking forever.
Jason: Yeah. As it would.
Wes: But that’s why we’re getting the 7” out now.
Jason: Just so we have something ready to go.
Wes: And we have, like, 40 tour dates starting in a week. Which I didn’t realize. It’s like “Oh you’re leaving in a week,” and I’m like “What?” I wasn’t really aware of it. I think I work like the day before we leave and I have to pack the morning of.
You work at Medieval Times, right?
Wes: You’ve read some of the interviews, I see.
Yeah, I did some research.
Jason: She did the background check.
Wes: I do. I do work there. It’s fun.
Are you the jouster?
Wes: A knight, you mean?
Jason: [laughs]
Wes: You know, I’ve been telling girls that I’m a knight. But I’m but a lowly bartender; a wench of sorts.
Jason: Is there a male equivalent?
Wes: I’m a manwench. You know, like manwich? Like chili?
Jason: Yeah. I got it.
What do you wear?
Wes: Interesting. Well, you’re going to have to come see. It’s like a tunic, sort of.
Do you wear tights?
Wes: I think I have the option to. I don’t though.
Jason: Do you wear a sheath? Like a sword? Around your waist?
Wes: I don’t have a sheath.
Jason: Do you tie a rope? A golden tassel?
Wes: I’m not little John, you know?
Jason: [laughs]
Wes: Little John, like from Robin Hood. Not Lil Jon, the rapper. Anyway… Yeah, it’s fun though. It’s not the average workplace. It has room for comical error, and stuff like that.
If they ever asked you to joust, would you do it?
Wes: You have to be like, way trained for that kind of stuff. I took Jason to the show the other day, and if you haven’t been there it’s way more high-impact than people think it is.
Jason: I was blown away by the amount of skill you have to have to do a lot of that stuff. Like the jousting alone. They’re full-tilt horse-riding at each other, then they hit each other and it splinters the wood. And the amount of impact to knock off the horse. Like, a horse is not a small animal. To tumble off’ve that and onto the ground and not be hurt… I wouldn’t even want to bail off my bike, even.
Wes: Yeah, no those guys are always… part of their job is that they get paid to work out so they’re in top form. So they can be safe and healthy. I think you have to do an apprenticeship as a squire for years before you can be knight.
Jason: So it’s a real higher calling type thing?
Wes: Well you can’t just show up as a knight, right? Because they actually have swords and axes. If you screwed up, you’d literally cut someone’s head off.
[to Jason] And you work at Sadie’s Diner?
Jason: Yeah.
How do you like that?
Jason: It’s great. It’s delicious
It’s delicious?
Wes: Have you never been there?
No, I haven’t.
Wes: Oh, you should go there.
Jason: It’s good. My boss is understanding of the music thing. Like when I need time off to go tour or a day off to play a show out of town, and stuff like that. It’s never been a problem.
How long have you worked there?
Jason: For that reason, I’ve been there for about a year and a half. It’s good because its not like I’ve actually been working for a year and a half straight, because we’ve been on the road so much. Yeah. it’s really great. And it’s a cool place because there are so many artists and musicians that come through there, so I meet quite a few really cool people on a regular basis.
Do you plug your band while you’re working?
Jason: Not openly. But I feel like there’s a good way to read if someone is actually interested or it would actually make a difference. And it’s weird because there was somebody that kept coming in and I didn’t even know he was a musician but I got a good vibe from him, the way we got along and stuff. And I never plugged the band to him. Then when we got signed up to the show with the Junction I started checking out their Myspace, and it was Brent Jackson. Who I knew as a guy with a big beard and who loves Coney fries. And so I was checking out his band and we show up at soundcheck and we both made that connection. It was a total fluke. But I see people around and I know their face from serving them breakfast.
Wes: So you just served him everyday. And then he showed up at the show and he’s like, “Oh no way! You’re in the band and you’re my server all the time.”
Jason: It’s just crazy. And now I found out where he works so I’m going to go visit him. It’s cool like that. And that’s just kind of part of us finally being here for long enough that we’re starting to be part of a network of musicians. We’re from here but we lived in Halifax for five years. Coming back, you’re pretty fresh.
What did you do in Halifax for five years?
Wes: It was four years.
Jason: It was four and a half.
Wes: I was only there for three and a half. We went to school there.
Jason: The University of King’s College, and Dalhousie.
Wes: That’s where we met Dave, the bassist. This beer is making me burp.
Jason: Yeah. It’s burpage.
So you two and Dave went to Dalhousie. What about Mike?
Wes: Mike went to the University of Toronto, and then he did some… he went to an electronics college or something like that.
Jason: I know Mike from summer camp. We used to go canoe tripping and stuff.
Wes: Mike is the best thing that ever happened to our band.
Jason: Yeah, that guy is a great asset to the team. The shift between the two records is really his addition. I mean, in a lot more ways that how we think it would make music change over time. Just adding him to the band added another dimension.
Wes: It’s sort of like, you know when you’re thinking, I really want to make this sound or I want this to happen in a song? Mike can just do that.
Did he step up more after Kirby left?
Jason: Totally. It’s like a promotion across the board.
Wes: He’s been one of the big factors in why we can pull it off. There are songs where he’s running guitars…. Like he’s running his guitar, he’s running Jason’s guitar, he’s running a string pad. He’s running loops. He’s playing five instruments within three minutes. We’re all trying to pretend like he’s not doing anything at all, because he’s so cool.
Jason: It’s a secret.
What did you study in Halifax, in university?
Wes: We studied contemporary studies at King’s. And then you have to do a double major, so we all did different majors.
Jason: Dave did English, Wes did sociology, and I did environmental studies.
And you guys like Heidegger? Because he’s referenced in the introduction to your bio, on CBC Radio 3, Myspace, and your facebook page.
Wes: I wrote my thesis on Heidegger. Jason put it up there as a joke and then people started writing about it.
Jason: But Wes is our Heidegger expert, so all those questions get deflected to him.
Wes: But please don’t ask me any. I’ve been in the band too long. I’ve been drinking beer for too long to remember anything about that.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. You guys like to drink, right?
Wes: [laughs]
Jason: I don’t know what you mean.
Well I spoke to you, Jason, after your show at Lee’s, and you were okay. You told me to e-mail you later because you said you might not remember. But you, Wes, were pretty gone. You came up to my friend and shook her hand, said “Hi I’m Wes,” then ran away. I don’t even know if you remember.
Wes: No, what happened was that Branco from Dinosaur Bones was tackling me and I got thrown, sort of, at your feet or at your friend’s feet. And then I just wanted to be like “Hi, I’m Wes. Sorry.” But then I came back because I realized it was probably you guys, and I was thinking that I looked like such an idiot. Which clearly I didn’t fix.
Do you pride yourself on being boozy? Because you told the Torontoist “We are boozy, barefaced, and fortissimo.” You also told torontomusicscene.ca “Because the Darcys are all boozy, brazen, and loud.”
Wes: [laughing]
Jason: I think it fluctuates.
Wes: I think everyone in the band likes their whiskey, but I also think…. When I was calling us boozy I was sort of referencing us in a Yeah Yeah Yeah’s style of rock, in a way. I don’t think we sound like them, but they have an articulate side and they also have just this like, explosive rock side that’s way less calculated and rough on the edges. I think that we do the calculated side really well but then live we sort of get to breathe a little bit more.
Strange, because you seemed like such gentlemen on stage.
Wes: Well, we try our best. And then we’re not.
Jason: Maybe that’s the dichotomy right there.
Wes: It was sort of more about the booziness of the sound of the record and the music than it is about our personal affinity for alcohol. However, we – I, clearly – seem to have that.
Jason: But at this point, we’ve had to scale it back onstage. I feel like playing drunk is one thing but dealing with any sort of change in situation is totally impossible. If something doesn’t work properly or somebody misses a change and we all have to communicate and all have to be there and be on top of it, especially to kind of make a smooth cover for it, and if someone’s had too much to drink it’s just a lost cause.
Wes: I remember playing this one show. We always have a private Christmas party and we always invite 100 friends or whatever. We play some covers and stuff at the end of the night. I remember playing this cover last Christmas and looking out in the audience and our bass player, Dave, was drinking a beer and chatting up a girl. In the audience. And we were still playing onstage.
Jason: No bass.
Wes: He had like a glowing, light-up crown on. That’s when we were like “Okay, listen. We need to have a beer cap before we go onstage. You can get as drunk as you want after the set.” I also think we stepped up because the music now, it takes a lot more ability to execute it. Since we’ve stepped that up you can’t really be drunk and onstage, executing it.
With the tour coming up, how many cities will you be playing in how many days?
Wes: I think we’re on tour for 32 days and we have 28 shows. So we play like, 2 shows in every province.
Jason: I think the only time off is that we have quite a drive out. We play Guelph, and then I think we have two nights off to get to Alberta.
And you drive?
Wes: Yeah, and we drive. And then we have a show every single night all the way there. And then we have the Sunday in Vancouver off to sleep at our good friend Ryan Miller’s house, who has this great blog. And he takes care of us. And we spend that one detox day and he gives us a bed and some nice food. And then we shoot back here.
Jason: Then we have a show everyday and we play Toronto two weeks later.
Wes: The arena of playing rock music sort of generates this… well you just end up drinking a lot and you just have to scale back. Like, I just can’t anymore. We did a four-day tour with Dinosaur Bones and I didn’t sleep for the four days. We all partied every single night so hard that I got home and I was dead. I tried to wake up the next day for work and I woke up at like 9. My body was so wrecked. And when you do like a 35-day tour – and a lot of bands don’t realize it – you can’t give it every single night. You’ve got to pick your nights. We have a huge show in Calgary and we have a lot of people coming, and so we’ll probably have fun that night. But the four shows before that… It’s hard to control.
Jason: You’re in a bar. You show up and you soundcheck, and say you’re in Lethbridge and you have no friends there. You’re hanging out and you have a couple of hours to kill, and all your stuff is at the bar so you hang out at the bar.
Wes: You go there and they usually feed you. Then you get your food and they’re like “Hey” and put down a pitcher of beer on the table.
Jason: It’s like, “Oh God, its 6 o’clock.”
Well, its free beer. I guess you have to drink it.
Wes: I was just thinking about how our big CD Release in Toronto is June 3rd, which is my birthday. So we have the limit rule for drinking, but I know people will be buying me drinks all night. So I’ll just have to hide them, or something. Or sell them. Or do the throwing-it-over-my-shoulder tactic.
You mentioned Ryan Miller before. He took that photo of the Darcys that’s everywhere, right? The one with eyes scratched out. What’s the story behind that photo?
Wes: It was sort of my idea because I was really sick of the, like, band standing. Like, do you know how many bands are photographed right here in the park? By a tree? It’s the worst. So we were like, what can we do that’s cool but still hits the points that a press photos should?
I’m going to have to take a photo like that today of you.
Wes: Sure. But your photo is not with every press release we do, right? We were like, “What can we do that is interesting and engaging, and not the same old?” And then I was like, “Why don’t we just erase the eyes?” And he was like, “Okay.” It took forever because we had to shoot everyone individually against the same background.
Jason: And in the same light.
Wes: We were originally going to get rid of the layers, but then I thought those lines looked really great so we left them. And then we put the letterbox in there. I was pretty happy with it.
It’s a cool photo.
We: When people put it up they always say nice things about it. Some people could hate it or think it’s stupid, and I think that’s better than no one caring. I think when you take a photo in a park, no offense, it’s just different. People don’t care.
Is there some sort of hidden meaning to the photo?
Wes: I don’t know. I think there is. But I’m not going to tell you.
Is it hidden to you as well?
Wes: I just… you know. I think we were trying to capture something that gave the same vibe the new band and the new record sort of has. It gave a certain feel, like a haunting feel. But I think it also had a futuristic vibe to it. I think that’s sort of what we were going after.
Is that in accordance to your music?
Wes: I think so. Other than the Heidegger reference.
Jason: I guess something in our music is like, it’s kind of created out of familiar sounds and elements but arranged in ways that many times can be very unfamiliar. Depending on how you listen to it, I think there’s a lot a listener can do to change that. It can, very well, come across as a rock record then on the other side, come across as an atmospheric record. Like, noisy and layered.
Wes: And I think that’s part of the photo too. Some people just glance at it and don’t realize that we don’t have eyes.
Jason: And then you look again, and see what’s missing. It’s like being robbed. You don’t really know what you’ve lost until…
Wes: What? Come on…
Jason: Yeah, I don’t know about that.
Wes: You’re not allowed to do interviews anymore.
Jason: This root beer is making me drunk.
Wes: This is the last chance for you.
Jason: All future interviews will be done by Wes Marskell. And Dave Hurlow.
………………..
That’s enough for part two. But click here to read part three; it is, indefinitely, worth your time.
– INTERVIEW AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAKINA SHAKIL