When I saw The Shilohs open for Real Estate this March at the Rickshaw Theatre, frontman Johnny Payne took the stage in boyish highwaters and a slim 70s-style trench coat. On their debut album, So Wild, the band inhabits the kind of well-worn rock postures that take the back cover of dusty rock LPs.
If So Wild were a moment, it would be thumbing through the LP racks, sunlight filtering in, at Vancouver’s great green-carpeted music institution, Zulu Records, where Payne is a clerk.
Those warm moments are mostly absent on The Shilohs’ self-titled second LP, The Shilohs, which strikes a decidedly darker tone. On “Ordinary People,” the Shilohs proclaim their status as regular joes without trust funds to assuage their financial worries. The Shilohs even sing about the most quotidian of musicians’ topics: band practice.
It’s a cautious celebration of the ordinary moments that fill all our lives. Johnny and I met briefly at a Kitsilano coffee shop to talk about the new album.
The Peak:Listening to The Shilohs it seems like there is a pretty broad variety of records you’ve listened to, perhaps coming from having worked at a record store. On the first record especially though, I get a 70s Brit vibe. Is that big in your collection?
Johnny Payne: I’ve definitely learned a lot about music working at a record store, and yeah 60s, 70s, the first record is a lot of that for sure. It’s big in my collection, but I like a lot of records, man. The Beatles have always been my favourite band since I was a little kid. From that, you go to the Zombies, then you figure out the Kinks, then you eventually get into the Stones, and then you get into way more obscure rock and roll bands from the 60s and 70s. You can go American; get into the Velvet Underground, the West Coast pop scene, the Beach Boys. When you mix it all together that’s kind of our thing on that first record.
P:I heard that you recorded your debut in the summer of 2010, and then took some time to release it.
Payne: We just shelved it because we wanted it to come out and we wanted people to hear it. We had made an EP before that and we put it out ourselves, and it just sucked. The art looked bad, the way we pressed it out was lame, and we didn’t have any way to distribute it. That was a failure. We spent money on it, so we decided a label had to put the LP out. We tried and tried to get labels interested, and Light Organ were the first ones who took a chance on us. It took two years.
P:You guys toured with Real Estate, and opened for them at the Rickshaw. How did you connect with them?
Payne: We played a show at the Biltmore with them a couple years ago and they really liked our band! Something clicked. We had a great time. The next day Matt Mondanile emailed me and said he wanted to put out a 7” for us of the first two songs we played at the show. Strangely enough, they were “Private Lives” and “English Roads” and we hadn’t recorded them yet, so we thought it was a good idea. We went to JC/DC and did it
We did a couple of shows in New York after that, and we always hung around with those guys. Then we became friends with their friends and it became kind of a big thing, so they just called and asked us to go on tour.
P:Dave Carswell of JC/DC did the new record as well. He’s definitely on that classic pop thing you were talking about.
Payne: Dave is so cool. He’s the best around. We recorded a lot of it at Mushroom studios, which is, of course, this legendary place that is gone now. The equipment there was really, really nice so that could contribute somewhat to a slicker sound.
P:The Shilohs seems like a more mature record, kind of like Real Estate’s latest album.
Payne: Well, I hope so! More juvenile would be bad. If I turned 30 and made an even more immature record, that would be bad.
The Shilohs will perform at Fortune Sound Club on June 19. For more information, visit theshilohs.com.
