Kevin Drew Wants To Put Out A BSS Record Next Year

"If I hear 'Broken Social Scene Presents' one more time, I'm gonna go insane," Kevin Drew said at his CD release party at Toronto's Lee's Palace on Thursday night.

That's probably because, as he distanced himself from the BSS moniker this year, he's found himself closer to the band than ever.

The revamped Broken Social Scene lineup that will be on the road for much of the fall includes regulars Justin Peroff and Brendan Canning, Uncut's Sam Goldberg, former Treble Charger member Bill Priddle and American Analog Set's Andrew Kenny. They're playing a mix of songs from Drew's "solo" debut, Spirit If..., as well as a handful of songs that you'll likely recognize. Surprisingly, while the album prominently puts Drew at the forefront, almost all of Social Scene's famous contributors appear on it.

We caught up with Drew mid-summer to talk about the record, the band and his ever-entertaining thoughts on the music biz, and you can read most of it in our forthcoming October cover story. In the meantime, here are some of the outtakes from the interview.

ChartAttack: You guys toured pretty constantly after the self-titled Broken Social Scene record came out. Was Spirit If... done afterwards?
Kevin Drew: It was done from Feb. '05 to Feb. 2007. But only in terms of, you have to understand that we were on the road a lot and we started when we took a break from [Dave] Newfeld, took a break from making the Social Scene record. And Brendan and I went over to Ohad [Benchetrit]'s and we just started to record. And then we went back and finished the Social Scene record. Songs from Feb. '05 would be like, there's a lot of B-sides, but it would be like "One Night Man," which you'll hear eventually, "Fucked Up Kid," "Big Love" was Ohad's song from I don't know when. We recorded "Broke Me Up" actually in August '04, and there was no — I would just go over to Ohad's and record my acoustic songs, and a great example is "Broke Me Up." I went over and played it on acoustic guitar and sang and made up the lyrics on the spot, which is what we did with most of these things, and then Charlie [Spearin] and Ohad put the bass lines and the horns underneath it.

Then we got Brendan in to play piano, then we got Amy [Millan] in. So that's a perfect example of how things were starting. But then what happened was that we would all come in and be together and start screwing around on things. I basically kind of moved into Ohad's house on a day-to-day basis, and I basically became the last man standing, between myself, Ohad and Charles. A lot of the time we would just be screwing around, but we'd constantly, constantly, constantly record. In October of last year we decided, "OK, we're gonna make this a record now." We didn't quite know what it was gonna be. But we just knew that because we didn't have everyone there, it didn't have that Social Scene feel to it — obviously because Newfeld wasn't doing the production. Anyway, so we decided to figure out how to make this into a record. We had a lot of songs unfinished and a lot of songs finished and, eventually, we just started putting it together and getting the stuff finished that we needed to get finished. When I went there, Ohad's kid was one, when I left she was three, and she wasn't talking at first, to the point where she was screaming my name. And his family was incredible. We made it in the afternoon, no later than 9:30 p.m. We were always out of there by that time. All it was was coffee and cigarettes and glasses of wine. There was no debauchery record-making process, there was no candlelight, no running out into the forest to find the magical rock to inspire the chord change. None of that happened. It was just a very, very easy, open process.

So was some of this material part of the stuff you previously talked about that could have made up an Ohad-produced Social Scene record?
No, it was a couple of those tunes, like "Big Love" and "Bode Sappy Weekend" and "Fucked Up Kid," but everything else was made up on the spot. I hope to put out, with all the B-sides I have, another record. Like, within the year, compile another record.

There was some mumbling from the BSS camp last time that the self-titled album was less Broken Social Scene and more a Kevin Drew record. Was putting your name out front on Spirit If... a way to avoid that kind of chatter?
That's not true. That's not true by any means. If it was anybody's, it was Newfeld's record. He was the one who got lost in the whole mindframe of the thing. You know, we go in, we record songs, and inevitably it becomes Brendan, Newf and I sweating it out 'til the end. But in the very end, Newf's the guy who stays up til 10 a.m. We leave at 4 a.m. The last record, the only thing that was missing was that we didn't get together before and jam. We just kind of started jamming in the studio. With the next one, it'll be more of a band-related record. One thing that really came from that record was the idea that I needed to make this one. And I remember Ohad said, "I don't care what this becomes, I don't care if we call it Social Scene or whatever — you made this as a Kevin Drew record. And that's what was important." I always thought it was really great that he said that because it was true, I just needed to do this. And Brendan went off and started making his record for the exact same reason. He needed to make music. He needed to be recorded.

I know you guys agonize over deciding when an album is finished. How did you feel when you finally mastered this one?
Having it be finished is amazing because you feel like you're letting it go, which is an incredible feeling. It's very difficult to let something go while you're still working on it and you're still listening and listening, and it keeps reminding you, "You're depressed." You're like, "Ah, fuck! I was having a good day and then I started working on this song. My day went to shit."

Does the idea of Broken Social Scene, the band full of all those people you know, end at this point with these solo projects and the BSS Presents thing, or do you see the band making more records in the future?
I want to put a record out next year. Whether that happens or not is up to the powers that be. I'm really looking forward to getting back in the room with Whitey and Charles and Justin and Jimmy and everyone. It's really gonna depend on what happens with people's careers. Because I think everybody wanted to really distinctly separate themselves from Social Scene, not musically and emotionally, but just establish that they have their own fucking sound and their own band and they're doing it. And that's happened now. So some people, their attitudes may change. They may say, "If I'm coming back I'm gonna need this or need that." And that's just not gonna fly. It'll be like, "Look, this is how it is. Yes, you might help us sell way more records, but back in the day everybody helped everybody sell records and got people out to the shows. If it doesn't remain a community, there's no point. But there's no way it can't remain a community. This next year's gonna be beautiful. It's gonna be tense. People are doing better than others. There's gonna be some fall-outs and some fall-back-ins, but that's just the nature of life when you're creating.

You always have pretty strong opinions about the music industry. How is it running a label that's constantly getting bigger and bigger?
The whole music industry as we know it, it's like "Oh mah gad, oh mah gad, what are we gonna do? What's happening?" People are leaving jobs, people are getting fired, records aren't selling, records are selling. This record's selling. Why? I don't know. This record's not selling. Why? I don't know. Radio? It's a fight for radio. You gotta do this for radio, you gotta do that for radio. More and more, it's getting this urgency where it's like, "If you're not gonna do this, we're not gonna do that." Everyone's running around with their heads cut off, feeling like it's a high school mentality of you scratch my back — what's that famous Metallica lyric? "You scratch my back, I put a knife in yours," one of those things. And the greatest thing about our band and the greatest thing about how we're doing this is we're never, ever put into that spotlight because we're always going to be indie rock. And in indie rock, you never get blackmailed into doing things to sell more records or get your name out there, and all that shit that is the last thing to do with music. But at the same time, it's such a system that's been put into effect. And there's so much fear that surrounds all that, that everyone's just frightened.

Here are Kevin Drew's Canadian dates, with Broken Social Scene:

Sept. 29 Halifax, NS @ Marquee Club
Oct. 25 Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
Dec. 6 Montreal, QC @ Le National
Dec. 7 Ottawa, ON @ Capital Music Hall
Dec. 8 Toronto, ON @ Kool Haus
Dec. 14 Calgary, AB @ MacEwan Ballroom
Dec. 15 Edmonton, AB @ Edmonton Events Centre