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The night’s still young
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It’s perfect synchronicity that Brian Dixon, rhythm guitarist of L.A.’s dirty reggae revivalists the Aggrolites, manned the mixing board for Hit & Run, the sophomore Stomp release from Montreal’s One Night Band. Sure, both bands hone in on that tough but tasty, turn-of-the-’70s Jamaican sound. Furthermore, both bands were assembled for one-off gigs. The Aggrolites formed in 2002 for a quick ’n’ dirty session backing rocksteady icon Derrick Morgan, while ONB’s moniker is self-explanatory. Both have not only remained intact but transformed into serious road warriors. Clocking in the clicks cost ONB their horn section, but that’s only allowed Larry Love’s purring and bubbling organ work, a key component of the era they’re referencing, to shine even brighter. The Mirror spoke with singer/guitarist Alex Giguere during a brief window between, you guessed it, jaunts down the highway. Mirror: It would be wrong to call you guys a ska band. I hear old-school soul, reggae, rocksteady of course and garage rock in the crunchiness of it—but not much ska. What do you make of that? Alex Giguere: There’s one ska song on the whole album, it’s “Let It Go.” For some reason, we really got into early reggae, as you said, by listening to the Upsetters, and obviously the Aggrolites and bands like that. We don’t have a horn section in the band anymore, we tried some different stuff. We changed bass players—we had this friend of ours from Toronto who we played with back in the day with the garage band, les Mods. There were just the four of us, so we tried to mix in other influences, like soul and garage music. These influences suited early reggae more than ska, so that’s why we went all the way with early reggae. M: What makes the music so strong—not just you guys but early reggae across the board—is that you achieve this balance. On the one hand, you have this dirty, gritty, almost aggressive feel to the music, and on the other, it’s so sweet and delicious. Are you guys conscious of that? AG: Not really. We just wanted to make the best record possible. As I said, we don’t have a horn section, so we aimed to put the organ up front, and we recorded with old-school instruments and microphones, so that’s why it sounds so raw. And we recorded 22 songs in nine days, so we didn’t have the chance to look back at what we did. We did two or three songs a day. We didn’t really think about what we should or should not do, we just did what we thought was best for us. Skanks for the memoriesM: Above and beyond the equipment you used to get that retro feel, that rushed recording approach is probably much more in the tradition of the music. It’s not like the original reggae bands had two months at a beach resort to record. It was you’re-in-you’re-out. AG: Exactly. That’s what Brian really wanted to do. He had a tight schedule, he was going to Warped Tour with the Aggrolites, so he basically had 12 days to record and mix the album. That’s the way he likes to work, anyway. He likes to work fast, and he wants the band to be ready when they get into the studio. We wanted something old-school, done in an old-school way, and that’s what Brian is best at. M: Now, I said before you’re not a ska band, but in the loose sense of the term, you’re pretty much, aside from a couple of really young bands, the last men standing in what used to be the very busy Montreal ska scene—which could be a good thing or a bad thing. It does leave the field open for you. AG: I know what you mean, but I don’t really like it. I’d like to have a strong scene in Montreal and in Canada. When we tour in the States, there are so many good bands to play with. The scene is stronger because of that, because if there are only bad reggae bands on the scene, people won’t come out to the shows. To get the word out, you need good bands, and I really wish we had that in Montreal. It’s gotten better these past two years, but there are no touring reggae bands in Montreal that go west in Canada, or to Europe and the U.S. I really wish that it was like in the ’90s, with the Planet Smashers and the Kingpins. The scene was obviously different, but it’d be a lot better for us—we’d draw more people, we could put less effort into promoting the band just because the word of mouth would be better. CD LAUNCH WITH FEELIN’ 6 AND SOUL |
