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Interview - Canoe
Canoe is Portland, Oregon's own indie-folk group success story. They combine the sweet and classic melodies of James Taylor with the modern folk approach of Sufjan Stevens, and what you are left with are truly memorable songs that can be appreciated by anyone. Canoe's debut album Places will most likely be stuck in your CD player for weeks.
According to Canoe, they were formed in the fall of 2006 by Matt and Sofia Hoiland after the Portland group If Bears were Bees disassembled. The band is a family affair: Matt and Sofia are husband and wife, Carl and Matt are brothers, and Dave and Cameron slept on the same bed at the Econolodge in Tacoma. The band is as follows: Matt Hoiland, songwriter, guitar, and vocals; Sofia Hoiland, violin, mandolin, and vocals; David Westhora, all things percussion; Carl Hoiland, bass and vocals; Cameron Steineckert, guitar, keys, and other things percussion.
Recently LLH and Canoe got together to pull this insightful interview together for you. Hopefully you will leave with a better understanding of who Canoe is and why their music is so unique.
How did you get started in music and become a band?
Whether because our parents wanted to live the music dream vicariously through us (and so, therefore, encouraged the purchase of instruments) or through our own unique penchant for it, we all started playing instruments when we were young. Matt and Carl are brothers and have been playing music together for years. They added close friend, Dave, on drums back in 2000 when playing with Of Pawns Design. The addition of Sofia on violin, whom Matt married in 2006, gave rise to the current Canoe. Cameron, also a long-time friend, joined in 2007 to complete the sound.
Indie-folk music is not mainstream today. Why did you decide to work in that genre?
It's what we love, and it's how we feel most able to express ourselves at the moment. There is also a certain flexibility in the genre, or the fan-base associated with it, that allows artists to stretch themselves and to try new things without fear of alienating their listeners. We also enjoy the sense of community that exists within indie music today. Maybe it's the sincere loyalty of the scene, but somehow, being out of the mainstream can make you feel more in the mainstream than anything.
What do you classify your music as?
Music our moms would listen to; indie-folk-rock or singer-songwriter meets indie-rock.
Do you like performing live? What do you like best about performing live? Worst?
Yeah. We love seeing how music can be the means for building community. It brings people together and makes us all more aware of our own humanity, a sort of refuge from the mundane routines and isolated affairs of modern society. So getting to experience the music as a group, and getting to see the emotional expressions of the audience, and meeting each other afterwards are all really rewarding aspects of live performance. But the worst part has got to be how exhausting the whole ordeal can be. It's draining, emotionally and physically.
Do you like performing or recording better?
Matt: I think recording is my favorite, but it does you no good if you can't perform the music for people to see how it impacts them. I can sit in my room all day and record what I think is my masterpiece only to have people say it's boring. You need that feedback that a live performance offers.
Canoe: Performing has immediate rewards, in that you get to see instantly the effect your work is having on people. Whereas, recording can take months before anyone will even get to hear it. So as nice as it is to have a finished product, stamped in time, engineered exactly the way you'd envisioned it, there is something so real and organic about performance that keeps us drawn to both.
You started your own label; how did that happen and why? What do you like best about owning your own label?
We'd been playing for years in various bands, and had seen many different angles to the idea of being signed as an artist. We didn't like the artistic control and pressure that an outside label could impose, and we didn't like the way most labels managed their artists, valuing them merely by their profitability. But we did see how important the legal and business side of the music industry is. An artist needs legal representation, publication, distribution, publicity, etc. to be competitive in today's market.
So how to get the latter while avoiding the former? Create our own label, with our own thesis of what a label's role should be: a collective of artists with the business to represent them and a community to support them. We like the freedom this gives us to pursue music in the way we feel to; and we needed the flexibility this would give those of us who are juggling other obligations, like school, faith, and family.
How long have you had your label now?
We've been a legal entity for about a year.
How hard is it for someone else to make their own label?
It really depends on what you're trying to do with it. Are you just looking for a way to represent yourself? Or do you want to branch out and sign other artists? Do you intend to do distribution yourself, or maybe you want to stick with digital distribution only? Do you have a way to finance your operations or perhaps you would be all right skimping on costs until you've gone on for a few years? All in all, it's what you make of it. For us, though, it can be full-time work for six people with little financial reward; luckily, though, it is flexible, and we do love doing it. So our advice to someone who is serious about music and who can't seem to find an existing label that works for them is to go ahead and do it. You can learn as you go. The industry is full of helpful and encouraging people who will be willing to lend more specific advice as it's needed. Just be constant, committed, willing to adapt, and wise about avoiding debt on false assumptions that you're "going to make it" within a certain time-frame.
Do you sponsor other musicians or are you looking for new artists?
Yes. We are currently working with two other bands: Johan the Angel, originally from Oregon, and Adam and Darcie, from Utah. We really believe in their music and in their intentions for making music, so we've added them to the label this past year. We also try and tour together when possible; we'll be playing a number of shows together this August throughout the southwest.
What other musicians influence your music the most?
Matt: James Taylor for his guitar style, Cat Stevens for his emotion, Belle & Sebastian for the feeling you get when listening, Joanna Newsom for setting the bar high for captivating lyrics, and Paul Simon for beautiful melodies.
How do you write music? What is your process?
Matt is the songwriter.
Matt: When I get the urge to write something, I'm usually in some sort of mood which helps me find a few chords that fit that mood. Then I mumble along with a little melody that accompanies the guitar. Slowly the mumbling becomes words, phrases, and eventually ideas and sentences. I then sit back and analyze what these words could mean in the context of a theme or story, then I put the guitar down and sweat over the lyrics for a time on paper. Then add other instruments to taste. I also find that recording the base structure is a great way to place layers of arrangement on a song.
Canoe: We can usually all understand fairly quickly what his vision for the song is, and can begin to contribute our parts to the composition before he's completed the lyrics. There'll be room for dialogue and experimentation, and we sometimes learn how the song needs to be shaped only after performing it live a number of times.
Music is very personal. Do you worry about sharing too much of yourself?
Sure. But that's the risk all artists have to take.
What are you trying to do with your music?
Carl: Music is a means for building a community, connecting people, and creating dialogue. We try to keep this in mind when writing and performing our music, recognizing the power for good and creative expression. So if that has happened, or if someone is lifted or encouraged, and if people are brought together, then we have achieved what we've set out to achieve.
What inspires your music?
Necessity, people, places, things, life, interactions, and moments. Rilke says "a work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity," so I guess necessity inspires the music. Necessity meaning: only picking up the instrument and writing when the moment hits you. I think it's damaging to start writing just because you feel that you need to. Wait until life introduces you with a new emotion and message before jumping into it.
What inspires you to create music?
Sofia: This sounds kind of emotional, but I enjoy listening to others' music when my heart aches, or when I feel words would do me injustice (when I am upset).
I think love, or loving someone, also fuels making music. Time also inspires creativity; having time to meditate often brings me to pound and ponder on the piano or fiddle around with other strings.
How do you come up with your lyrics?
Matt: There seems to be two processes I use. One is simply mumbling along with a melody I like until a phrase or a few key words come together and then filling in the rest. The second is having a predetermined message or story I'm trying to tell and fitting it into the rhythmic space already created. But I most definitely write the music first. Some people write lyrics first and fit the music around it, which does create unique rhythmic structures, but it's just never quite worked for me. I'm a fool for a good melody, and that's always where I start.
How has the technology, like Facebook and Myspace, influenced the way you're making and producing music?
Canoe: They haven't influenced our music-making, so much as simply our methods for networking. They have required us, however, to promote songs as individual compositions rather than as pieces of a whole and continuous album. Myspace's touchy music player has also required us to remix those tracks specifically to sound good on Myspace, since that is often the first encounter that listeners will have with our music these days.
Matt: The new avenues that people discover music these days have certain limitations that aren't necessarily bad. Since most people are discovering new music online where the MP3 quality is poor and the speakers they listen to are even poorer, it necessitates the artist to place less emphasis on recording quality and more so on the emotional performance. I think people are sick of emotionless static recordings made in million-dollar studios. But don't get me wrong; when you combine the two, it does create a magical thing!
Has it changed the way you produce your music? Do you think about your fans on these sites when you write?
We do think about our fans on those sites when we write. We talk about it often, but more than anything we have to accept that we can't cater to them. Doing so would be to their loss, in that we risk writing without sincerity.
It's tough, because Myspace is preferential towards songs that have an immediate hook, are up-beat pop ballads, with simple composition designed for small computer speakers and persons with short attention spans (since web-surfers are accustomed to getting results fast, they, like us when listening on Myspace, make their decision within the first few seconds). So we have to select the songs that we put on there hoping that they'll appreciate the slower, more meaningful songs when they buy the album and listen to it more leisurely.
What do you think of the current music scene?
Cameron: The evolution in the current music scene is the epitome of the world we live in. So many rules of music business are being thrown out. We don't need them any more. Music is more accessible than ever. Music sharing is an every day experience. Nearly all of us are broadening our taste (for example, video games are bringing classic/hard rock my brother's high school girlfriends).
Listeners and artists alike — is there really a distinction anymore? — are heading into uncharted waters. Both are free to experiment like never before. It's wonderful.
I love the current collapsing of music boundaries — folk with indie with pop with rock with hip hop with everything else. I only hope we keep taking the garbage off the radio. And more Nintendo core would be nice.
Do you have a favorite song you have written so far? Why?
Carl: Journal or the Vineyards, because they resonate with me exactly how they are, and I don't necessarily tire of them like I can with the others after having played them all so many times.
Matt: Yes. It's the title song Places from our album. It's simple, honest, and has a special message to me.
Any road trip rituals?
Canoe: Doughnuts. Making sure to visit "the thing to see" wherever it is that we travel to. Like Mighty-Os in Seattle, One World Café in Salt Lake City, or El Diablo in Missoula.
Matt: Lots of liquids and good music.
Check out Canoe's website »
Check out Canoe's Myspace »
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