Far from the tree

>> The Acorn document a hard family
history and represent for Honduras

OAKY DOKEY: The Acorn

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Before Glory Hope Mountain, the Acorn’s debut album on Paper Bag Records, there were the Blankets! and Tin Fist EPs, nuggets of intricate, acoustic Canadiana saddled with sweet melancholy and euphoria. These records were clearly the work of a band, but not long before their release in 2006 and 2007, there was only singer Rolf Klausener, a guitar and a computer.

“My intention was never to start a band,” Klausener explains. He was already playing with several Ottawa acts when, one by one, they all went on hiatus and many musicians around him began dropping out of the scene to settle down and get real jobs.

“I still wanted to make music, so [the Acorn] started off as a way to channel some of that anxious energy,” he says, “but after I played a few shows live, solo, I started missing the dynamic of having a live band.”

Enter guitarist Howie Tsui, bassist Jeff Debutte and drummer Jeffrey Malecki, recently joined by Montrealers Keiko Devaux (keyboards) and Shaun Weadick (a bit of everything). (Malecki now lives in Montreal too, and, full disclosure, works for the Mirror.)

“It was incredible, our initial practice,” says Klausener. “It just really came together. Most of us were already friends but we became even better friends over the course of the next few years.”

Getting friendly facilitated the Acorn’s next move, which was to write a record about Klausener’s mother, an immigrant from Honduras. Klausener’s father, a Swiss-German diplomat who died when his son was 15, handed down a family tree dating back to the 16th century—the band’s moniker, chosen when Klausener was still solo, refers to the three acorns on his family crest. And yet Klausener knew little of his mother’s life, only learning about the violent father she finally threatened to kill (an event that turned her into a pre-teen runaway) when he interviewed her prior to making Glory Hope Mountain. As these stories unfolded, it became clear that penning the lyrics would be a significant undertaking.

“I’ve never tried to be a narrative songwriter, at least it’s never come naturally to me,” says Klausener. “I was really afraid because I knew that I had to somehow translate these stories into something that was palatable as a song. I spent months working on some of these lyrics. I wanted to be sure that I could look back on these songs a few years from now and not feel completely embarrassed.”

Musically, the band researched native Honduran music, from Smithsonian field recordings to more contemporary Garifuna stylings (which feature a strong West African influence), in search of an angle that they could easily access and integrate into their sound. The result is subtle, more inspiration than sample, but it was a long time coming, and nearly never got off the ground at all.

“When I first heard the native Honduran music, I actually didn’t like it,” Klausener admits, “but then when I listened to Garifuna, I was just like, ‘Wow, this is incredible!’ My intention was never to do a Honduran song with English lyrics, I was just looking for a new palette to paint with,” he says, assuring that future Acorn releases are bound to feature fresh colour schemes. “If the next record turns out to be all kazoo and marimba, then that’s what it’ll be. At this point, we have this wonderful group of musicians that really collaborate well together, so it’s really unpredictable.”

With Elliot Brood at Casa del Popolo
tonight, Thursday, Oct. 11, 9 p.m., $10