Jason Collett Is Helped By Ghosts

05/30/08 12:30pm

by Matt Littlefair (CHARTattack)

It's damn near impossible to capture the easy swagger of Toronto-based singer-songwriter Jason Collett's voice. That same laid-back lilt you hear on his records comes through in conversation, too. The effusive and talented solo artist and sometimes Broken Social Scenester took some time to talk about his latest effort, Here's To Being Here, the sentiment behind the title and the development and growth of his music since 2005's Idols Of Exile.

ChartAttack: Can you talk about the title, Here's To Being Here? Where did it come from?
Jason Collett: I was pretty much wrapped up thinking about this record, except for one song, and I still hadn't found a title. Usually these things sort of arrive in some way. Anyway, it was around the time of my birthday and Emily Haines from Metric gave me this book of her father's poetry. His name is Paul Haines, and Emily put together this collection of his life's work and it's called "Secret Carnival Workers."

I hadn't started reading it yet and I was sitting down and wondering where the hell my title was, and I did one of those silly little things, like you spin the globe around and put your finger down on the country for the destination. I was just flipping through the book and read the first poem that I randomly came across ["Here's To Being Here"] and I put the book down and thought, "Wow, that's a pretty decent title." I mulled it over for a moment and then thought, "Nah, fuck, that was way too easy." So I just randomly did the same thing again and I kid you not, the first poem I looked at had that as a title, "Here's To Being Here." So I got shivers down my spine, and I felt like Paul's ghost was in the room whispering in my ear or something, but that sealed the deal.

I've actually grown quite fond of it, I really like the sentiment of it. To me it's not ironic, it's a simple cheers, you know? You're really just capturing where you are in that moment. Whoever plays that solo that day in the studio could be affected by the weather, by the bad coffee they had or whatever it is. It'll be completely different on another day.

What you're saying seems to play into the way the album plays. It sounds a little more immediate than Idols Of Exile did.
Yeah, it wasn't the revolving door of a million players coming through. It was very focused and that was the intention, to take this sort of vibe that [Collett's touring band] Paso Mino had created with me on the road the past couple of years and try and capture some of that in the studio. So that required recording in larger spaces where we could get the whole band in and get enough out of the separation, but enough vibe.

You've spent a good chunk of time touring since Idols was released. Was Here's To Being Here written on the road or once you got home?
A little bit of both, but I tend to do a lot of writing on the road. I'm a pretty busy family guy at home. I have way more space and time when I'm on the road to catch up on reading and writing. I also find that there's something to being in motion that makes things more lucid.

I like the opportunity to have a lot of monotony during the day so I can just write. I tend to do a lot of the writing when I'm physically in motion. Hotel rooms don't really do it for me. For some reason landscape whizzing by, just being outside of that limbo of nine-to-five culture, it's a good vantage point.

This is your second record with producer Howie Beck. You two seem to work really well together.
What's always been key with Howie is how he's wanted to do it. I typically like to work with people who just want to do it. You know they're gonna do a great job.

Howie has great ears and he's very passionate about the ideas. We share a certain affection for mid-'70s FM radio sounds, the Fleetwood Mac and whatnot. It's easy to talk with one another and it's easy to have arguments with one another, too. We both like to work fast and not get too fussy over things and shit. I refer to him as the Woody Allen of rock 'n' roll. He's quite obsessive and self-conscious and all of those classic foibles, but he wears 'em well. He's a bit of a mad genius in the studio.