Dan Mangan

The Singinglamb: So you recently played an in-store at Criminal Records and you’re on tour with Will Currie and the Country French—how’s it going?

Dan Mangan: It was great to do a show there [at Criminal Records], everybody was very respectful and it was awesome…a good time! It seems like they do an in-store at least once a week or something like that.

Yeah it’s great! I love getting a little preview of the show that’s going on that evening.

Dan: Yeah we played at the Rivoli on Friday night.

So you’re on tour with your newest record, Nice, Nice, Very Nice that came out in August and there are a lot of positive things being said about the album. You also won the XM Verge music award very recently—kind of awesome!

Dan: Yeah kind of crazy, I mean it’s amazing that things like the Verge Music Awards or Polaris Awards even exist. Just the fact that they are rewarding non-mainstream music with cash prizes is unbelievable, and nobody needs cash like musicians, I can tell you for sure. It was amazing, it was not expected and something that totally knocked my socks off, of course. It couldn’t have happened at a better time, you know, just before the tour. It’s been great with the profile shift [it’s created] and it’s really helped us along the way with getting some good crowds out.

So you’ve noticed a difference [in the audience]?

Dan: Oh yeah! I’ve done many tours of Canada playing to smaller crowds and I’d say probably about half the shows we’ve played so far [this tour] have been sold out. Just to have nice full rooms of people who’ve been anticipating the gig—we’ve met so many awesome people these past couple of weeks. There’ve been so many lovely, lovely folks who’ve come up at the gig and we’re very appreciative of it.

You have many talented people playing with you on this album, how are you translating that into the live setting?

Dan: Well actually funnily enough, nobody who was on the record is playing with me on the road.  I made the record in Toronto working with John Critchley, and you know, I just pulled in—I kept asking all these people I had met previously on the road these last couple of years, if [they’d] like to be involved and if they had time—if they could work it into their schedule. And they kept saying “OK”. So it’s great being able to pull in people like Veda Hille and Justin Rutledge and Mark Berube and some of the guys from Elliot Brood and it’s awesome to have such pros working [on the record]. They come in and they lay down some really fantastic stuff. The songs have changed—there’s no question their influence morphs and changes the songs in a certain way. When it comes to the live show on this tour I really wanted to go in a different direction. I mean, we weren’t going to be able to get many of the same players that we had on the record to come on the tour because of people’s schedules and it’s a long tour. So I was able to pull in all these other players I had met and it’s a really lush kind of situation: we’ve got upright bass, and banjo and violin and keyboards and guitar, and there are no drums, which I think is a little rare. It’s been a lot of fun and I think people have been responding to it fairly well. If nothing else, we are projecting these songs in a new light from the record. That’s something that’s been important to me: I think that a record is finished—it’s done—it’s a piece of work you can never change, but the songs are going to be slightly different every single time you play them. So I’m not afraid of straying from what’s on the record in terms of the live show and I think the live show is where you have an opportunity to try to make the same songs even better. On the same level, whether it’s better or worse [doesn’t matter], it’s just different. [The tour’s] been a lot of fun, we’ve got great players and it’s a nice opportunity to play this many gigs with a bit of a unique orchestral sound.

Yes, it’s nice to go to a show and get something a bit different from what you’ve heard all along—

Dan: It’s really easy as a songwriter with an acoustic guitar to fill in all the gaps with a snare drum here and a bass there and play the songs the same way I normally would, except all of the sudden there’s a bunch of people playing along and it was important to try something a little different.

You mentioned that you recorded the album in Toronto, but you’re from Vancouver—

Dan: Yes I’m from Vancouver. I actually lived in Toronto for a little while when I was a kid so I’m familiar with it, but I live in Vancouver. It was nice, I spent about five-six weeks in Toronto actually taking the streetcar an hour every morning and an hour every night from The Beach to Parkdale. So it was an interesting experience to have that time transplanted in a new city, or a different city, and having so much time to reflect on the recording process and how everything was going.  John was really good to work with and we were recording in a place called Green Door Studios. He’s kind of been around and seen a lot of things and he’s a very humble guy—the more time you spend with him the more interesting stories come out of the wood-work and he’s a very respected individual in the Toronto music scene.

So you were in Toronto to record with John and to get a bit of a different setting for the recording?

Dan: Yeah he had recently recorded with Elliot Brood and I was on tour with Elliot Brood in Australia, actually, when I was talking about needing to record a record and they suggested John and recommended him very highly. So I sent John a couple dozen demos and he gave them a lot of attention, actually, and really invested his time and energy and focus into them—I was really impressed by his dedication to the songs and trying to figure out how to make these songs as strong as possible. We spent a lot of time talking before we went into the studio…we spent a good 10 hours on the phone just talking about the songs and what kind of record we wanted to make and trying to get on the same page.

So thinking about what kind of record you wanted to make, how would you describe the difference between your first record and the new one?

Dan: It’s a lot more light-hearted I think, and it’s certainly a lot more upbeat. I think the last one was fairly slow and kind of melodic and a dark record but this one is much more—I wanted it to be a little toe tapping. It’s important to be able to try new things. I didn’t want to get boxed into the male singer-songwriter niche/label. It was important to try different sounds and pull in all kinds of different instruments and I got some friends to write some arrangements for the record. I think I made the right decision in terms of who I got to arrange them because they were really at times very unique and kind of an alternate look at horns and strings. The record turned out to be a very orchestral piece and that’s kind of what we were aiming for. I really wanted to grow from the first record and I think that my songs have gotten better over that time…they’ve matured and I’ve gotten a little more comfortable as a performer and writer.  I really wanted to express that on the record and try and sonically hit a variety of sound structures and genres.

Yeah there’s definitely a difference from the first album which was more melancholy than this one—especially as seen on new tracks like “Robots”.  It’s receiving a lot of attention, getting good play on CBC Radio 3 and things like that—

Dan: Yeah, they’ve been good to me. The support from the CBC has just been out of this world and everyone I’ve met or been introduced to at the CBC has just been unbelievable.  I’m a huge, huge supporter of the CBC and very frustrated with a lot of cuts that they’re facing, and I think our Canadian heritage—much of it is based on the fact that we have this incredible broadcaster and I think we need to keep it around.

So in the spirit of fall and chillier weather, what are you currently listening to?

Dan: Well in the van we’ve been listening to Grizzly Bear and Sigur Ros, Wilco, and a lot of Radiohead. Being on tour is a nice time to catch up on music listening. We’re listening to a lot of the Acorn, you know, catching up on our Canadian indie—and listened to Amy Millan yesterday. It’s funny, you have these records on your computer or Ipod at home and being in the car for a long stretches has allowed me to kind of revisit them and get back in touch with them. We’ve also been listening to a lot of audio books or podcasts, you know, like spoken stuff. There’s a podcast called This American Life that we’ve gotten kind of addicted to. It’s nice on the drive to have something to focus on…time tends to pass by very quickly when you’ve got a story developing or a plot or some kind of radio journalism and it’s great for passing the drive.

And the signature Singinglamb question:  if you were a singing animal, what would it be?

Dan: Hmmm, well this is probably quite unoriginal, but I’m a huge dog-loving dude. We played at the Black Sheep Inn last night—I don’t know if you’ve ever been there—but they have a pug named Lucy and I spent about half the night petting Lucy. It was a nice little chance to reconnect with my canine side.

Ah canines, so do you have a favourite type of dog?

Dan: I don’t know, I think I like labs. Labs are good pups. Although I’ve never been one for small dogs, I was quite charmed by this pug last night. But generally big dogs are my favourite.

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