Green Go vs. Ruby Coast
What do you do with two bands we’ve already interviewed at the Singing Lamb? We become lazy of course and make them interview each other! The following interview between the members of Green Go and Ruby Coast took place at No Shame’s 100th show at the Horseshoe on September 18th, enjoy! Also, I’ve provided you with witty colour coding to help you distinguish between bands. That’s what we’re all about, folks – innovation.
Jessica Tollefsen: Why don’t you tell us about recording your new album?
Keith Bradford: Well we’re just setting up right now! We’re going to be recording February in Montreal with Howard Bilerman and we’ve got a month there and hopefully it turns out good; he’s done a lot of great albums, he just did Basia Bulat and he did the new Wooden Sky album which sounds good and so we’re pumped to do that.
Ferenc Stenton: It’s their turn now…
Keith: Oh, it’s our turn! So I know you guys like the vocoder stuff, I like it too. How do you guys feel about the auto-tune scene that’s going on right now?
Jessica: Ooh, I just got asked that question today!
Ferenc: I recently acquired an auto-tune plug in on my computer.
Keith: No way!
Ferenc: And it is the most fun thing to do ever! I’ve had multiple parties after the bar and I tell people, “I have auto-tune in my house! With the condenser mic; you can come over and we can sing like T-Pain!” and people come over and we just bust out the T-Pain! It’s great!
Keith: So you’re for it?
Ferenc: Not so much in Green Go but I do have some side projects that will definitely be busting out some auto-tune. Maybe namely, possibly a cover of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” with auto-tune…might be coming soon!
Jessica: I don’t know how I feel about it. I think it’s fun if it’s used in a humourous kind of way but in the mainstream they’ve just kind of gone crazy and I hate it!
Keith: It’s like you don’t even have to be able to sing.
Jessica: Yeah, which is the point.
Ferenc: You actually have to sing badly for auto-tune to sound good. If you sing in tune it really doesn’t do anything! So where did you get your name from?
Corey Marshall: Justice was working at Home Depot – the famous Home Depot – and it was one of the kitchen counter tops. Very interesting!
Ferenc: Is there a side-note now, a little plaque that says, “Once worked here”?
Corey: For a couple of weeks!
Ferenc: Flipping through counter tops, do you see a little ad for you guys?
Corey: Well it’s actually “ivory coast” first of all. And “ivory coast” was too controversial because a bunch of stuff went down there. So we went for Ruby. Where did the name Green Go come from?
Ferenc: Oh shit, is this going to be a trend? Are you guys just going to keep on asking questions that I ask?
Corey: Possibly!
Ferenc: We’ll find out! Green Go comes from me living in Brazil as an exchange student. So over there, they use Gringo as an endearing term for foreigners. I mean it’s not always an endearing term; in Cuba and Mexico they say “Gringo home” That’s where it comes from, like the green back American soldiers or money coming to South America but I just kind of took it from it’s original origin and it’s got a lot of connotations which is good. It’s an open-ended sort of name. Although I just wish I wouldn’t get so many Google “Go Green!” alerts. I get about 30-40 alerts a week and maybe one of them is about us and the rest are like, “Go Green! New Mopeds on sale!”
Jessica: Okay, I’ve got a question. What has been the biggest lesson so far as a group?
Keith: Well I would say we recorded an album a while ago where we spent a lot of money and we weren’t quite ready to record. So we thought we could record right away and we spent a lot of money and about a month after we recorded them we just thought, “Okay, let’s start fresh,” and threw them all out. So we could’ve used that money to record other, better songs; that’s the biggest lesson.
Corey: It kind of haunts us because we would hand them out to people and some people are still like, “Man, you don’t play your old stuff anymore, what the hell! What’s wrong with you? Your old stuff was so much better!” So yeah, it comes back to haunt us!
Keith: How was your west coast tour?
Ferenc: The west coast was really, really good to us. This was our first chance to tour as a band; we’ve never been on more than a four-day trip so it was the first week we spent together as a band and it was just beautiful to see all that scenery. It was like the best place to tour period. Sound guys were all really nice out there too.
Keith: You guys flew out there?
Ferenc: We flew to Calgary and did Calgary and Edmonton and then flew to Vancouver and did Vancouver and Victoria and flew home. I’m glad we went for one week before we jumped into doing two weeks or three weeks. It’s kind of a good starter.
Keith: Yeah, like the routine of spending every waking minute together.
Ferenc: We’re pretty good to each other though; we’re kind of like family. Like if someone’s grumpy we’ll tell them they’re grumpy.
Jessica: And we also understand that if someone’s grumpy it’s probably because they haven’t eaten or they’re tired or they’ve been driving all day. Or they’re the one who’s driving and everybody in the van is wasted.
Corey: We have two drivers, the youngest two. “Where are we crashing tonight? Where do we have to go, I have no clue…Where’s the McDonald’s? Where’s the bar?!”…
Adam Scott: We’re painting a bad picture of bands in general here!
Ferenc: Trust me, everyone who wants to start a band out there, it’s way more fun than it sounds!
Jessica: What’s Ruby Coast going to up to in the next three months?
Keith: Hiding away in our secluded barn, where the cows moo…seriously. And just writing as many songs as we can and taking as much time as possible to write our first full length.
Ferenc: Maybe we can telepathically channel each other because we’re kind of doing the same thing.
Adam: We don’t have a barn though!
Ferenc: We don’t have a barn! We need a barn! We need cows that moo!
Adam: It would cure all of our writing woes!
Keith: Sometimes you get some cow tracks on the demo.
Ferenc: Remember that milk commercial with the rapping? And then he’s squirting the milk into the pail and it’s like *makes the sound of squirting milk*
Keith: It’s such a weird commercial; there was a bunch of people skateboarding!
Jessica: Didn’t they say, “We be chillin’”?
Everyone: Yeah!
Adam: So do you guys have any surprises planned for tonight’s show?
Keith: Uhh, we can’t give our secrets before our show!
Corey: Yeah, we’ve got some horns actually.
Ferenc: I think we both have new instruments on stage.
Keith: What do you guys have?
Ferenc: We have another member called Michael Brooks who will be joining us. He plays guitar, bass, keys and drums. He’s quite the multi-instrumentalist. Watch his face onstage; he’s got this eyes-closed, Mick Jagger face, head bob. Kind of like a pigeon, or Evan Gordon when he’s playing the bass.
Jessica: Which you’ll see tonight!
***
The Singing Lamb: So tonight is No Shame 100; what is your favourite No Shame memory?
Jessica: Wow, there are too many!
Ferenc: Probably the first No Shame show I’ve ever been to and that was Spy Machine playing at the Tiger Bar and that was the first time I met Lauren. I remember I thought I didn’t have to pay cover because I was on the guestlist and she was like, “No no no! You have to pay!” and that’s why I really like her, because she’s good that way to bands, Lauren’s always been so good to us.
Corey: I’d say, I don’t even know if that was actually the last Tiger Bar show but that’s what they said it was, remember? Like, the first show we played downtown was No Shame but that was not the best show just because we weren’t…I don’t know. So we thought we had the last Tiger Bar show and it was closed for month and then reopened.
Jessica: I’m pretty lucky because I’ve gotten to play with three bands for No Shame. I got to play with Spy Machine, with Green Go and with Rouge which is my other project and Lauren’s just been so phenomenal; they’ve all been at Tiger Bar but my favourite memory is probably the Rouge show we played because that was mine and Kelly McMichael’s first show together in Toronto as Rouge and when Green Go played the Tiger Bar…
Ferenc: I was wearing a kid’s tiger costume that cut in half; the legs would’ve finished where my waist was.
Jessica: But there are some great pictures you can find from that show!
Corey: Me and Justice, because Mark went away to Halifax for the week, we were like “What are we going to do for a week?” So we started this band, just me and him and we got a show with Lauren because she’s awesome like that and it was me and Justice and it was called Engines With Names because it was named after Thomas The Tank Engine and it went horribly wrong but kind of funny-horribly wrong so maybe not the best memory but it was pretty memorable!
Jessica: There was another time that Spy Machine played – this really wasn’t No Shame – but Spy Machine played a Wavelength just after Pop Montreal and it was on Thanksgiving weekend, and Lauren and [Lauren’s boyfriend] Kevin made us Thanksgiving dinner. They cooked all day for us, so we came into town and had Thanksgiving dinner because they knew we weren’t going to be with our family. That was really nice of them to do that.
Everyone: She’s amazing.
And finally, if you were a singing animal what would you be?
Nathan: I’d be a philosoraptor.
Ferenc: That crazy bird on Planet Earth that puts its wings out!
Jessica: A singing turtle!
You’ve answered that already!
Jessica: Did I? Damn it! A singing squirrel.
Ferenc: I feel like a singing squirrel would have an annoying voice but a singing turtle would sing nice and slow.
Jessica: But I can fly through the air and sing!
Ferenc: Oh a flying squirrel changes things!
Keith: I think I’d be a…I was about to say a flying whale!
[Everyone laughs]
Keith: Yeah, so I’m just going to stick with that, a flying whale!
***
For more Green Go and Ruby Coast:
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/rubycoast
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/greengomusic
