Guthrie Talks Human Highway

10/09/08 11:53am

by Noah Love (CHARTattack)

Canada is no stranger to the "supergroup." Broken Social Scene and The New Pornographers made the expression ubiquitous, and others are popping up all around the country. But two of the country's best songwriters recently came together to form something new... a super-duo.

Human Highway are Jim Guthrie and Islands frontman Nick Thorburn. Their Moody Motorcycle debut spent most of the summer on the campus radio chart, and with good reason. Its easygoing tunes were the perfect soundtrack for the dog days of the season.

But the best part of the album was that it featured Guthrie's return to indie rock, a medium he was ever-present in during the early part of this decade, but has been completely absent from for the last five years.

ChartAttack caught up with the man who wrote the infectious "Hand In My Pocket" jingle to discuss Human Highway, his solo return and what exactly he'd been doing between Now More Than Ever and... well... now.

ChartAttack: You guys did Moody Motorcycle on a pretty short timeline, right?
Jim Guthrie: I feel like everybody should make a record with Nick. He's really easygoing and fast, and he writes a lot of songs and doesn't hold back. I have a lot to learn from him in the sense that, like, I think I censor myself. Like, I play tricks on my mind when I'm writing. Like, I'll have an idea, but I'll go, "It's not good enough because I thought of it too fast."

We did it all in a week. I did all the recording, and then he left and I did some poking and some mixing and threw in a couple of things, but we pretty much had 95 per cent of the record done in that week. It was really fast.

Was the writing done while you guys were on tour, or did you do it independently and bring songs in?
I had maybe three or four half-baked song babies, and Nick had a bunch, too, he had a bit more. And then we sort of created this shell, a couple of chord changes. I had some things that were already recorded that didn't have any singing on it. There was two songs like that, so that sped things up. But there was a lot of stuff we got done.

We'd get up in the morning and just record all day. It was really how I want to make records, really fast and don't look back. Because I've got to finish my own record, and it's been about eight months. I have to learn something from it.

Was Human Highway an idea the two of you came up with while on tour with Islands?
Yeah, while we were on tour, he was sort of strumming on something and then we just did it on my laptop while we were on tour, and I sang on it. That was sort of the first song that was going to be on the record, "My Beach." So that one, too, was already almost done. We did a few things over top of it at my house. That was really natural and organic, and it was a sign we could probably do more songs than just that.

In the spring, Nick expressed interest in doing more Human Highway. Do you think the project will continue?
Yeah, I think we will. I think it's, like, "Let's get this one out of the way and then we can think about another one." But I really feel like if we got together again we could do something again really fast. It's just the way he likes to work, and I guess I have enough ideas when I have someone to pull them out of me. We can get lots done because it's only music, in the end. It's fun.

How far along is your new solo record?
I'd say I've got all the bed tracks done. That was all live off the floor, most of it, so I just have to sing over top of it, and then I have to do a bit of overdubs, but I'd say it's about 80 per cent done. I figure it's just the singing. I guess that's a pretty big job. Maybe I should say 70 per cent done. But it's 12 or 14 songs.

I'm looking forward to it. I opened up the songs the other day and they sound really good. I did them in a church, so it was a big room and it sounds really nice.

What else were you up to in the five years since Now More Than Ever came out, besides touring with Islands and writing ubiquitous television commercials?
I was in Montreal a lot. I scored two films, one's a documentary, and this other movie stars Randy Quaid, which was an odd thing to do, but I did that. I don't know, it's just one of those things where it's four-plus years later and you're like, "When did that happen?" But also, a lot had changed.

The label [Three Gut Records, which released all of Guthrie's music] ceased to exist. I did some stuff with Royal City, and then everyone moved apart. It was sort of a transitional thing and I wasn't really feeling like I needed to make a record right away.

I think you should, as an artist, be writing as much as you can and making all the records you can in the short time we all have, but I've always sort of been reluctant if I'm not 100 per cent on board. If I'm not exactly in the mode, I feel like the art will suffer. So I've sort of been picking and poking at it. It's been a lot longer than I've wanted it be. But yeah, I've only been working on it for eight months, so it's not like the record I've been working on for five years.

You get enough emails from people where you sort of go, "Yeah, I should really finish the record." I guess it's one thing that you know you have to paint the shed, but you don't get, like, 900 emails from people saying, "You know, I would really like to see what the shed looks like when you're done. I'm really excited to see the shed." So yeah, you don't get those reminders for other things, but it's really one of those things that I need to do, whether I get emails about it or not.