by SCOTT C

I can clearly remember the first time the New Deal came to Montreal for a show, strangely booked at the now defunct Jai Bar for a 5-to-7 cocktail gig. People showed up not fully knowing what to expect and promptly got blown out of the water by the pure musicianship of these three dudes taking it somewhere else on stage. The next time they were here, they sold out the Spectrum to the delight of a new throng of fans and curious parties. What’s the deal? Live, progressive, breakbeat-based dance music built on a healthy diet of improvisation and experimentation.

The New Deal has managed to give a new sound to the world of the jam band, which up until just recently was largely dominated by folk-funk and prog-rock noodlers who wish they were hippies every day of their lives. Dan Kurtz (bass), Jamie Shields (keys) and Darren Shearer (drums) have enjoyed the sweet smell of success because of their ability to marry the sounds and feel of house and electronic music with the immediacy of a live performance. Since signing a multiple-album deal with Jive/Zomba USA in 2001, and then dropping out for the indie route, these guys have constantly been touring and pushing their sound to the limit. The Mirror spoke to Jamie Shields.

Mirror: How would you describe the average New Deal fan?

Jamie Shields: That’s a pretty good question because there seem to be a few different kinds. I’ve pretty much divided them into three different types of people that come out to see the shows. It really has nothing to do with listening to electronic music, either. One type is the person who comes out to enjoy the rhythmic element, simply dancing and getting their groove on, but then there’s another group of people who like the improv element and want to see what’s going to happen that day. Then there are people who are into how we try to develop songs on stage, melodically or harmonically, and as a result you see all of these people at our shows. They all share an openness to music.

M: So the fans essentially mirror exactly what’s going on on-stage, in three parts.

JS: Pretty much. We really try to have a strong musical personality of our own, so we’re not really playing funk music, or electronic, and the people who come out are there to see just that.

M: Because of the improvisational nature of the music you play, I’m sure things have evolved since those first few times that you were trying to find your legs in a live performance. Has the fearlessness and fluidity of the band always existed to some degree?

JS: Well, we’ve played about 450 shows since we started, and I guess the natural result of those many shows being played is our ability to interact very easily without having to explain what we want. We have a series of hand signals that we use and have used for a long time, but what I see now is the ability to communicate just in the subtle differences of what we’re playing and how we’re playing it. Even when we started, I found that our ability to communicate musically was far stronger than any other band that I had ever been in.

M: Sounds kind of like a good inside joke among friends.

JS: Yeah! Exactly. Things happen on-stage that we could never predict, but somehow we all feel it going there and can react interactively without saying anything. We couldn’t say anything anyways because it’s too loud up there. On our very first record, which was our very first show, I listened to that and realized that we were stopping at the same time, getting quiet at the same time. Even the sound guy from that night, who is our sound guy now, almost seemed like he knew what we were going to do before we did it. It was that recording-performance that really opened my eyes to the potential of this band.

THREE THE WRONG WAY

M: Now, does this ability to transcend the conventions of rehearsal and all of this openness virtually eliminate the notion of a mistake being made?

JS: Oh no. Things go wrong all the time. Another thing about New Deal fans is that they accept the mistakes made on-stage. They realize that this mistake is a result of us trying some thing new, or different or fresh. Even if it train-wrecks, people know that it wasn’t tried before. For us, if you liked 50 per cent of your own improv after the show, that’s a pretty good track record.

M: What’s the worst that could happen?

JS: Exactly.

M: No, really. What is the worst thing that could, or has happened on-stage?

JS: Oh. We all play a different song at the same time. That’s happened. A song gets called, and Dan hears one thing and Darren hears another and we all go into separate songs. I was listening to a show the other day and just cringing. Bunch of amateurs. One of the three of us cut out all the time just to see what will happen, so that doesn’t slow us down. All of us launching into disparate keys and different songs, that’s another story. It keeps it funny for us, at least.

M: It seems to me that your fan-base is a solid, loyal group of people that spans all across North America, and you could do a show pretty much in any major city and draw. Did that support start in your hometown of Toronto, or did it boomerang back after time?

JS: We certainly worked hard, but we were blessed with a large number of people coming out to see us early on, even in Toronto. I always thought that if we could find one per cent of the population that liked the stuff we were doing, then we were set. There had to be other people out there who loved what we were doing, because I loved what we were doing, not in a personal-pride way, but just in an interesting-music way. :

With Denise Benson at Club Soda
on Thursday, Oct. 3, 9pm, $16, all ages

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