Oh! Canada vs. Dan Mangan

It would be fair to say that Vancouver troubadour Dan Mangan has been winning his fair share of admirers of late. TLOBF first encountered him at the Canadian Blast showcase Great Escape festival earlier this year. Shortly afterwards TLOBF staffer Andy Johnson raved about his Roboteering EP and what is fast becoming his signature tune ‘Robots’ appeared on the first of our Oh! Canada compilations. With his new album ‘Nice, Nice, Very Nice’ due out in Canada next week, Oh! Canada checked in for an extended chat with the man himself.

Hi Dan. For people out there that have never heard of you, give us three reasons why they should…
Erm….
1.Big fan of the film Princess Bride
2. I live in Vancouver and it is a nice place
3. erm…………….because I have a stack of cd’s here and one of them is by Chad Vangaalen. That’s a good reason.

Can you recall the moment when you first decided you wanted to become a musician.
I remember going on my first tour 4 years ago with my first record. I had no idea what a label did, what distro was. I booked myself a horribly routed tour, but on this tour I basically went alone and met a number of people and I came home and couldn’t share those feelings with anyone. I said to myself this is what i want to be doing. Forever.

You recorded the first record before you knew it was going to be your life?
Yeah, I wondered how much it cost, and what it takes to do a full record. I soon found out. Its not cheap! Then it was like, what do I do now? It was a beautiful naive time….Now I know how you make a record, and now I know what you do with it. But I still fondly remember that time …all the glossy photos I had done. I mean, when was the last time you saw a posed glossy photo?

If you weren’t making music, what do you think you’d be doing?
I was going to university. If music hadn’t taken over my life I guess I’d probably have been a teacher, I’ve always been interested in History and socialogy. At the same time I was working at a retauraunt….and still am actually. You have to get paid!

It’s not like you can exchange CDs for a loaf of bread.
Maybe that’s the future of the music industry. Going back to a bartering system. People used to trade a sheep for loaves of bread. Now you can trade in kind. You know, you can get mangoes and a nice peice of brie…

…then you can barter and make a sandwich. So, you are going back to brass-tacks bartering as a way to distribute your music?
Yeah! if anyone presented me a mango and brie sandwich after a show then I would probably give them two cd’s…maybe even of my own music. It would be amazing!

Speaking of live shows, do you prefer solo shows or playing with a band?
I appreciate both. If I do too many with one or the other I get lazy. Band shows are great because of the dynamics, but sometimes you lose the vitality of holding a crowd on your own. But then likewise, if you only play on your own you forget to play with people. Ideally for the rest of my career I’ll do both- a big tour with a band, and the next on my own. I like the idea that the live show will be a bit different- take the songs on the album and work out what you have and what the most interesting way is to present that material. This fall I’m going across Canada with a four peice band, but there won’t be any drums, one guy playing upright bass and bowed banjo, Erin from Hey Rosetta! is coming to play violin and then a girl named Laura who’s going to be playing Wiesborn. It’ll be a fun opportunity to try on the songs and see what happens.

So the reinterpreting is key to you?
I like the idea that the album is finite but the songs on it are infinite and can evolve and change. I toured with Jenn Grant, and she toured with a bass clarinet player playing all the different parts, totally different from the record- the traditional bass drums guitar quartet is great, but there is so much room to do other interesting stuff

It’s three years since the first record, how come?
Basically any time I started thinking about recording something cool came up. I booked studio time then got invited to play in Australia….then that kept happening, so I ended up travelling. Some of the songs were simmering all that time- ‘Basket’ was written just after the last record.

And am I right in thinking you got really ill? You got pneumonia. When was that?
Yeah.. that took three weeks of my life. Actually this beard is the result of that. And my relationship with my girlfriend was too. After work I started having convulsions and spasms. I had a pericardisis, which is a swelling of the muscles around the heart. It was pretty intense. I went and camped out at my mom’s and watched a whole series of little britain. And grew a beard. It made me a man!

Did the illness change the way you wrote songs?
It’s the closest i’ve been to death- even though I wasn’t really that close really. It just felt like it. If you can imagine falling asleep at the zoo and then waking up with a two tonne elephant sat on your chest. It may well have subconciously affected things. But then all life experience does that, and sits in your head. The song Basket is basically about that-all the little things you do, stories and experiences, they all go into this basket- thats what makes you you. The song is about my Grandfather- As he got older he started forgetting and confusing things and people- you no you can no longer keep all the stories together- losing track of those memories and experiences but you have to fight for them. It all adds up to how you percieve things….

That fits with the idea of you being a socialogy teacher too. Your writing seems to be very observational.
I am a big people watcher. I’m also a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut- he was the best at that. He had a kind of cutting and interesting way of viewing the world. This social dynamic he percieves in humanity- im interetsed in people, words, the way people interact and what people do with their time. As i have gotten older my writing has got more involved with people in general and less to do with me. I think in general a lot of humanity is just absurd- more and more I’m trying to move towards dealing with those issues.

Is there an awareness that people are starting to take note outside of Canada?
You know, it’s been there for a few years now. Saying you are Canadian really helps when your looking for gigs, especially in the UK. BSS, Arcade Fire, The Dears, Godspeed…they’ve all helped put Canada on the map. I mean, we’ve had Bryan Adams, Celine, Nelly Furtardo, but for almost 9 years now we’ve had these really artistically interesting things coming out..God Speed…..It’s really opened the door for people like myself. I think the next thing will be this alternate folk movement- people like Deep Dark Woods, Elliot Brood, Myself, The Wooden Sky, Sheepdogs..- a lot of really interesting stuff. All of them are really rooted in what folk music is, on some level…but they’re all so different at the same time- no one’s playing really trad folk but everyones got an angle….

The Canadian scene seems very supportive right now. Everyone works together and plays on each others records. I like to call it 7 degrees of Rolf Klausener…
HAHAHA! Yeah you know, he’s a good anchor for that, geographically he’s central, and artistically, allot of people know rolf…he books shows, he has BBQ’s, house concerts….he’s also just a sweet sweet sweet fellow.

Its a very small scene in Canada. The more i’ve infultrated it- it’s amazing. Theres a lot of gossip but its a vibrant scene to eb a part of right now. It’s great to progress and make new relationships. It’s great to realise that all these people making this music are just the sweetest people. They listen and want to help. It’s really special.

As well as Canada, there seems to be good things coming out of Vancouver at the moment…
When I talk about sweethearts in the scene- have you heard Said The Whale. There’s a community here in Vancouver who have all grown up together, been to school together all getting radioplay together, tour together……Japandroids, Brasstronaut, Said the Whale, Mother Mother, Hey Ocean, Hannah Georgas…

Everyones really propping each other up…in any way they can. Ado who plays in Brasstronaut- he’s tour managing with Japandroids- it’s all really supportive. Then a few years ago there was You Say Party We Say Die, and Ladyhawk. There are a few people saying ‘The New Montreal’. It’s kind of funny cos i know a lot of people who moved to Montreal to be in that scene…..now those people are trying to move back.

So people can’t call it the ‘No Fun City’ anymore?
Yeah. I was in Red Cat looking at the board of shows. If I had $1000 and nothing to do for the next month I could go to great shows every night. Theres great local and touring bands too. I think you have as much fun as you seek out. I think it is to do with liquor laws. But it changes, a few years ago all the radio used to play was Nickelback…and the scene was quite back stabby….but now theres two new radiostations that are really supporting home grown music.

You’ve just played the Van folk festival. How was that?
I played 6 shows in two days! 3 workshops with Great Lake Swimmers and Stephen Page (Bare Naked Ladies) which were great. We play in the round, and they get bands together and poeple take turns playing and join in with each other. So it’s a great chance to play with these other bands. It’s like an advert for your full band show. Then the band show got a really crammed house- we got a double encore- which is really cool. Then i got invited to do ‘Robots’ on the main stage and had a few thousand people singing that which was amazing. And I got to be part of the finale after Mavis Staples and we all sang ‘I Shall Be Released’. It was magical- a mountain view behind with loads of lights and lanterns and 25-30,000 people there.

Robot’s seems to be getting you a lot of attention, and always seems to win crowds over. Did you think when you wrote it that it would get such a response
I think with that tune when i finished writing it I thought to myself, that is the hookiest, catchiest song I’ve ever written. I didn’t think how other people would react. There’s something really familar about it that people seem to catch on to. It’s hard to predict anything, but that song for me was a milestone for me in MY writting. You know i’d done all this weepy singersongwriter bullshit time and time again and to put that song together was like going wondering in the pop realm! You know, I don’t want to be Damien Rice….I want to be more Chad Vangaalen- I like the idea that he morphs all the time. I don’t want to just be a singer songwriter, with a guitar. I think the next record will be a lot different to this one. I don’t want to ever make the same record over and over again. I never want to get too comfortable, just to keep pushing.

Dan’s album, Nice Nice Very Nice, comes out in Canada on August 11th. In the meantime he’s been good enough to give TLOBF a track from the album as well as one from his debut ‘Postcards and Daydreaming’. Enjoy!

mp3:> Dan Mangan: ‘Road Regrets’ (from Nice, Nice Very Nice)
mp3:> Dan Mangan: ‘Unnatural Progression’ (from Postcards and Daydreaming)