Earl Pereira and Safwan Javed of Wide Mouth Mason
Wide Mouth Mason, that great Canadian band we all know and love, recently toured along side The Moffatts during the month of January. We had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Safwan and Earl about the tour, their new record Stew, as well as their Juno nomination. Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of calling this trio an Ska straight ahead rock group. Their music is so original and diverse that they couldn't possibly fit into one genre.
Congratulations on your Juno nomination! Did you expect it? What are some of the feelings you have about that?
Earl Pereira: No! When The Junos come around, I don't even notice. A few years ago, we were nominated for something and the whole experience of being there wasn't all that great.
Do you plan on going this year?
Earl: If we're in the area we probably will, but if not, I'll just stay home and watch it.
Do you have any hopes of perhaps winning that Juno?
Earl: I never have any hopes that we're going to win anything. I hate competitions like that. That's why I got out of sports because I was tired of the competition. Now it's happening all over again.
Do you think there's another band that deserves your nomination?
Earl: If I knew what records were out. It all depends on time lines, how a band gets nominated; if your record comes out at a certain period of time. I think they made all the right calls, like Treble Charger...
If you could nominate a record, any record, if there were no limitations?
Earl: You know what? I haven't been listening to much Canadian rock music. Really, to tell you the truth, I never really did. I'm not a big fan of Canadian rock. I like listening to 70's funk, The Beatles, stuff like that. I'd rather put on a Bob Marley CD before I put on Sloan. Not to say they're not a great band, because they are, but I go for the classics. I grew up with blues and jazz-oriented stuff. Bands that do that like Philosopher Kings. I just wish there was more of it. People seem to think that if you're from Canada, you should play Bryan Adams Canadian rock. What really pissed me off was when we first got interviewed by Bill Wylicka. When our first record came out, he said: "Yeah, so you guys are straight ahead rock." No. This one song may sound like it to you, but there are a lot of great Canadian bands. I just talked to my friend Bob today. He called me (he's from 54-40.) He just called to congradulate me on my Juno nomination and I congratulated him right back. It was like "Do you think you're gonna win?" "No. Do you think you're gonna win?" "Not a chance! It's either the Hip or Treble Charger!"
They interact with you and give energy back.
There's a lot of controversy right now in the music industry regarding Napster. What are your views on the whole free music trade?
Safwan Javed: I love Napster! I think Napster's great! In the history of music, in the history of the music industry, things like new technology is what moves it forward. Be it CD development, digital music, digital creation, all that stuff. All this is gonna do is move the industry forward. Everybody that says otherwise is just scared because they don't want to move forward. If you're a big gigantic band, you'd be fazed. I can understand why Metallica and Dr. Dre are fazed because they sell a lot of albums and now they're selling a lot less albums because you can get their stuff for free. For everyone else, it shouldn't make a difference. They should be actually applauding Napster, because like I said, it makes the whole thing move forward which is good for music.
Do you think you guys have reached your artistic climax or do you still expect it to come?
Safwan: It's still coming. We're still building. This last album is finally the first one where I think we all rolled out going "Yeah! That's what it's supposed to sound like!" So wait until we get some time and a little more of a vibe where we can experiment a little more. We're still waiting for our climax. We're still learning.
You guys released Change a little while back and it's been doing well so far. Do you have any plans to release another song in the near future?
Earl: Yeah we do. It's just that picking songs is always tough for us. It's like picking your favorite kid and it's hard to do, so which ever one comes up. There's songs in the running. The best way for us to judge is to go to our website and see what the fans think. That's how Change was picked.
Do you visit your site a lot?
Earl: Quite a bit. Saf's our webmaster.
Safwan: I'm a bit of a webmaster.
Tom Drummond designed your album cover, which is really nice. Did you have any input on how it looked or did you just kind of leave it up to him?
Earl: We put a lot of input into it and we left the rest up to him. It was just great to finally sit down with him because we'd been doing it over the phone for months and it was getting hard and nothing was getting done. You've gotta sit down with him and just watch him do something. To watch him do it on-the-spot in five minutes was pretty mind blowing.
So you basically had your album drawn in five minutes?
Earl: Yeah! He just sketched it!
Safwan: The basic concept. For one thing, you spend about a week and a half doing the finer details with people who are doing creative stuff, putting in creative input into the whole project, be it visual or audio-wise, like an engineer or producer, video directors, graphic arts designers, artists who are drawing covers. Whatever it happens to be, you want to leave them a little bit of leeway to do what their craft is. Give them a little bit or artistic license to go experiment with some stuff. Other than that, you want to make sure they're in the same head-space and going in the same kind of direction as you want.
If you guys could write a theme song for any movie ever made, what movie would it be?
Safwan: That's a good question. That's tough man! I'd say Shaft is probably right up there. I would of love to have done Shaft. The next Shaft, any action movie I love, any Bollywood stuff, because they need to up that. We gotta modernize that stuff. Of course they got the flavor and stuff, but it's not quite in the main market. You bring those two together. And then maybe a nice kung fu flick. Maybe a Jet Li movie...
Earl: Yeah! Jackie Chan!
Safwan: I would've like to do that Crouching Tiger one. That would've been a cool one to write the soundtrack for. Nice question!
Did you get a chance to watch the CBC special Wide Mouth Mason Playing With Poison?
Safwan: We saw it before. We didn't get to see it that night because there was a Knicks game on. We were both watching that. We saw it a year before when we first finished it.
Earl: You're not thinking of the band Poison are you?
Oh no. That's what it was called.
Earl: Oh, okay. Good!
Safwan: Yeah, it was cool! It was weird to see yourself, a history of your last six years documented. It was just weird to see all the different hair 'dos and just ways of acting and stuff like that, even musically. It's kind of like having a video journal without you having as much say in what's shown and what's not. I think they did a really good job. It showed a sort of behind-the-scenes thing, which was pretty cool to see of what the business itself and what the industry's like and what people try to do.
A lot of your fans seemed to really like it a lot.
Safwan: Yeah. I think it's because it was such a naked look.
Earl: For real hardcore fans, it was stuff they already knew. They were hunting for a more in-depth look. I think they were kind of disappointed in what they finally got to see.
A few years ago, you were playing for small audiences at your graduation. Do you like the small audiences or do you prefer the big ones your playing to like at tonight's show?
Safwan: I like how we're at the point where one night we'll be playing for two to three-hundred people and the next night, we're playing for ten thousand. It's good because it gives you the contrast. At a big show like at the Skydome or the Air Canada Centre, there's that incredible rush that when you play something or when you walk out, you just hear "Haaaaaaa!" Two-hundred people can't do that. Even if they're all sitting there literally going "Haaaaaaa!" It just doesn't sound the same. At the same time, in a small room, you can see the whites of people's eyes and you can see people sweating. You can see the impact of individual people with your music. They interact with you and give energy back. It's a whole different vibe.
Earl: Basically, as long as we're into it and whoever is there is into it, it doesn't matter how many people there are.
When will we see Wide Mouth Mason headlining their own tour across Canada?
Safwan: We're planning to do our own national tour in fall, but we're just in the process of making plans for it. Probably in the summertime you'll see us at festivals, maybe a couple of shows, then like I said, fall. We'll see what happens though. This is a funny business. I don't even know what's happening as soon as this tour's done.
We heard about your problems in the States and how that just didn't work out.
Safwan: Who knows. At any point, anything can happen. You just kind of play it by ear and always make sure you have lots of luggage!
