Total Gravy

After having waited around for a couple of hours the very apologetic Black Cabbage steps into the lush U.C. dressing room, decorated with complimentary plastic cups of water. So far the night has been complete chaos and confusion. Tristan has had to run off to play at the Jazz Festival downtown, Sheila is somewhere in the Yukon, and Kate's in B.C. biking around somewhere. I had a dream of her the night before whizzing across Saskatchewan but unfortunately she didn't make it to the show in time Saturday night in P.C.H. After the band finally tracked down a drum set, got an order of food that was not entirely mixed up and ran around the U.C. with prographer Jen, we all settled into the not so soft couches for a relaxing chat.

Ontarion: I'll start first by congratulating you because that's what Peter Zowski does at the beginning of his interviews.I'll give you the easiest queston first. Could everyone give me one adjective to describe the CD?

Mike: Lumpy

Sam: I think that's an unfair question. One adjective...fast

O: I will grant you a sentence.

Sam: Good low end.

Dave: I think its great

O:Swell

Dave: Rock Hard

O:What's the band's history-any interesting stories?

Dave: Nick actually started it

Nick:This band began approximately three years ago and it was just an idea. There was no band, it was just a group of people. We'd get together and sing acoustic, kind of weird cover tunes [at the Bookshelf every second Tuesday]. It was a fairly large group of people that played, and lots of people started showing up to tis ting. We decided to try and do a paid gig. Member fell away and members joined, and we became a band slowly even though, its not really a band--it doesn't really act like one. Its three years now and we have a record.

O:When did you stick the name on the group.

Nick: It was the very first thing done. It wasn't a name for a band, it was a name for the event that happened at the Bookshelf. The Black Cabbage was a night and it felt so fun and good that we decided to make a go of it.

O: How many of you were at those first nights at the Bookshelf..out of your stable band members?

Mike:I don't know how stable any of our band members are. One member is in B.C. and one in the Yukon.

Dave: One summer 2 years ago we played Jimmy Jazz almost every week and had a fairly stable core of eight. We completely went for it and fell on our face half the time. We made a lot of wonderful mistakes and I think that's where we learned to do what it is we do, and how to make it different. There was rarely ever anything rehearsed about it. It was always and still is a strange live experience. I think that's what people like about seing us. And that's certainly for a lot of us what we enjoy the most about playing in this band, the unpredictability ofit.

O:It seems like there's something really "Guelph" about this band....

Dave: We've been told that a lot lately.

O: Why do you think you have so much success in Guelph?

Sam:Well there's eight of us and we all know at least two people.

Dave: Also I think we're sort of a community feeling band to watch because when we play, we are interacting with each other. It's like we're jamming, yet we're working within a frame work. Its more solid we're playing, but we're still really hanging out together., and I think that's probably pretty nice to watch. Also we really like to connect with the audience and get as close as we can, because the more fun they're having, the more fun we're having, and vice versa.

O: So, your creative process is mostly a spontaneous on stage thing, but how does it begin?

Mike: I think if everybody in the band weren't playing music, they would probably either go insane, or do something else witha hell of a lot more vigor. For my self, I just write so I can deal with being alive and the beauty of it. Its my expression. So I'll take my song, and maybe go to Kate and say, "Could you put a harmony to this?"

Dave: There is chaos there too, but its relatively well directed because we play well together.

O: Do you think you have a similar philosphy or inspiration in common between you all?

Dave: I think we're all tolerant of other people. We're very different a lot of us. Not interms of being extremely right of left, but we really have different characters.

Nick: It's like when you write a sitcom. You want a cast that is very well rounded.

O: How did you decide that you wanted to produce the album this way? I'd hear you had some other offers.

Mike: We made a decision that we had to capture this. Initially, because we were dirt poor, we just wanted to doit as cheaply as possible. when we started doing it, we thought we could put out something really half assed, and whip it off. But its very hard to capture a band like this, as opposed to a strictly guitar band. We decided to do it properly, and take the time and spend the money.

O: You seem different from a lot of bands out there who just want their picture on the cover of Life.

Dave: I'm not going to lie. That would be great, but if this band were to split tomorrow, I'd be incredibly happy and satisfied. With the span of this experience, we've reached so many peaks already. If it goes any further, that's total gravy.

Mike: I think my idea of success towards where we're going would be just that we're not afraid of change. That would kill anything. Its not that we're sticking with the trends or trying to keep up with them. right now we've got all this other stuff that we're working on that's just different. Now we're exploring on completely new ends.

Dave: Yeah. I find the diversity of the band very exciting, and one of the most exciting things I find now , having release this is that we already have at least 5 or 6 really good new songs, and that's encouraging, because it's not like we're putting this out, and will be playing the same songs for the next year.