TLOBF Interview // A Classic Education

Geographic distance between band members can often present challenges. Even if it’s the bass player refusing to lug his amp up a big hill for weekly practice sessions. But when your band has members split between Italy and Canada how do you start to work that out?

Adrian Mules caught up with Jonathan Clancy from A Classic Education to find out a little more about what brought them together and how things work.

The band is part Canadian and Part Italian. How did you all meet?
We met upon the dark mountains above Bologna and Modena. The wind was howling away and we gathered to play rock and roll. We always have a satellite pointed towards Ottawa if someone gets homesick.

Did you encounter difficulties with geographic distance or language barriers?
Well we had to enlist a translator for most of our sessions. He had a hard time translating the word “grind”. Now we all speak the same language!

Phew, so do you all live in close proximity now?
Sort of, between Bologna, Modena and the Garda lake…nice touristy area up north.

When Stefano comes down from his house on the lake, he takes his small sailboat across, Luca picks him up and then they come find us!

That sounds idyllic; how do you describe the lovely sound you make?
That’s always the toughest thing, we like to think of it like “night music for lazy afternoons”. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I can see where you are coming from.
There are six of us in the band but we’d like to think that our music can also be intimate. We like the sense of creating classic songs with sonic depth…something like that!

Are there bands that the whole group agree on as being great?
Not really, I mean the classics maybe, Beach Boys, Dylan, Cure, Waits…things like that always work!

And how did you decide upon your name?
Three words, no “The” but “A” in front….that was the basic idea behind it…we loved the sound and the images that came randomly to mind with those 3 words…

Staying on the education theme, what is the most important thing you learnt at school?
“This is gonna be useful one day, yes it is, yes it is, yes it is, right?”

You’ve toured with quite a few big names, is there a highlight you’d like to share with us?
Meeting Johnny Marr and talking instruments with him while he was with Modest Mouse. Although I think when we played Cake Shop in New York the first time and saw those little lights on the ceiling that we had seen in a thousand pics; well that was a neat moment!

And what keeps you sane when you are on tour?
Discussing our favourite drink from the night before, like appreciating the different mixes and flavours! Finding the perfect carrot cake.

I’m loving the EP, is there an album in the pipeline?
Yeah most definitely, although we are really proud of this EP…we don’t really see it as some in-between thing. We will hopefully record an album before Xmas!

Is there a producer you’d like to work with?
Can you bring Joe Meek back? What a dream that would be!

We’ll see what we can do! So, who in the band has the most exciting non-musical talent?
Paul has many weird tricks up his sleeve, stuff like the “trocadero”… an insane underwear-only dance!

Wow!
Yes, and Giulia instead sometimes goes on a random “madquest” where she becomes “Pazzy Giuly”…pazzy is crazy in Italian…

Amazing!! So can you recommend us some other great new Italian bands?
Mmm our friends are all a source of inspiration, we could say Welcome Back Sailors, Banjo Or Freakout, Death In Plains, Crimea X. These are all projects that helped us out on some remixes that will soon be out.

Italy has a great garage punk scene…bands like Buzz Aldrin, Vermillion Sands, Movie Star Junkies, The Tunas, Love Boat etc…

I’ll be sure to check all of them out.
Their ‘Hey There Stranger’ EP is due for release on the 21st of September and you can listen to or download a track from it below.

A Classic Education: ‘Gone To Sea’