Born Ruffians will be heading here to perform their catchy, raw and stellar indie rock repertoire to Australian audiences this summer with shows lined up for the Peats Ridge Music Festival and a handful of sideshows. I was lucky enough to chat to lead singer and guitarist Luke Lalonde about touring, recording, fans and their songs in commercials.

You’re based in Toronto.

Yeah, we’re mostly based in Toronto. I live in Montreal right now for the time being but the band is pretty much rooted in Toronto.

What’s your touring schedule like at the moment?

It’s pretty busy I guess. We’re in between tours right now. We just finished the US tour about a week ago and we’re home for two weeks and we head to Europe for a few weeks and then we have some time off for Christmas and then we’re going to Australia at the end of the year.

(Nice!) Do you have a favourite place you’ve toured?

Um, I don’t know. There are definitely cities in each tour that are my favourite. If I had to choose a country, I guess it would be Australia because it was such a beautiful time of the year and the whole thing was just really fun. This is a couple of years ago, the first time we did Australia. The festival was great, it was just a really, really good memory I guess and a lot of fun. But we have good times and we have good shows in the States in New York and LA and there are definitely some highlights we have there and they’re always a great time. Paris, France is really good for us and London as well. It’s hard to choose a favourite.

Could you tell me a bit about what your live show is like?

I don’t know, we just kind of keep it sort of organic. Our thing is just to go out and do it and give it is as much energy as we can and try to be as real about it as we can. We’re definitely not a theatrical band, we definitely don’t do a lot with lighting even, and we just kinda do our thing. I mean a lot of that is what’s within our means for what we can do. There’s just four of us, we recently added Andy as our fourth member who plays guitar and stuff. I don’t know; we’re just a band and we play music, that’s what we do.

Do you find there’s a different dynamic with a fourth member?

Yeah for sure, it’s hard not to change the feeling on stage from three to four but it’s a good thing. Musically it feels better having another instrument there. It takes the pressure off me a lot too; I can lighten up on the guitar sometimes and focus more on the singing if I can hand it off to Andy to do a guitar part, just simple things like that. It’s just nice to have another instrument there, another person to look to and feed off while you’re playing.

Was there a learning process from making the first album that you applied to making the second?

Yeah, I think the first and second record go hand in hand in a lot of ways production wise and musically they have a lot of differences. But the vibe of the records…have a lot of similarities. They were both with the same producer Rusty who instilled a lot of the same techniques in recording both of them; using the knowledge he gained in between and building on his repertoire of recording. He brought a lot more to the table the second time around but we still recorded live. Everything was recorded off the floor; there’s no auto tune, there’s a minimal amount of editing and there’s no absolutely not compression or EQ added during the recording. It was recorded to tape which is pretty old fashioned. So both records long story short are sort of old fashioned style recording, not a lot of new or digital technology was employed for either of them so I think that’s sort of where they’re sort of similar in their general energies to me.

So why the conscious decision to not make it over produced?

I think we were more relying on Rusty to take the reins as to how the production side was going to go. We really didn’t question him that much; we kind of gave him creative control over those decisions, recording to tape and all that stuff. The next record is probably going to be fairly different in terms of the feeling of the record. I’m pleased with the way it sounds.

When are you planning on recording the next album?

I don’t know, hopefully next year. After Australia we have a tour of Canada in March and after that it’s just kind of time to work on a new record. So I’d really like to get going on it as soon as we get home and just keep writing and start to bring songs I’ve done on my own to the band and working with them on arranging them. Hopefully throughout 2011 we’ll record a record and put it out.

You’ve had a few songs of yours featured in commercials, is it strange to hear your song in an advertisement?

Yeah, most of the commercials we’ve done are outside of Canada though, so I don’t think I’ve ever turned the TV on and had our song on a commercial. We did one in England that had a lot of airtime and we did one in Australia. They’re all out of my earshot which is kind of nice. I think if I had to hear it all the time it’d probably drive me mental.

Have you had any negative feedback or do you feel as if people have accepted musicians licensing out their songs?

Yeah I think people have. I actually really haven’t had any negative feedback. May be behind my back. I think people have accepted it and it’s common knowledge that record sales aren’t what they used to be, especially for bands on independent labels. It’s tougher to make a living if that’s what you’re doing. If that’s what your job is then it’s understood that if you sell your song commercially every once in a while, it’s just a pay check and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s more a personal thing, I think it’s harder on the artist to come to terms with it sometimes, to go “wow I could use this money to fund my art but I don’t know how I feel about selling the song to promote a product”. I think if you decided to do it, it’s not really anyone else’s place to judge you for it. The only time that I have problems with it is if the song is on every commercial break, I start to hate the song and when I listen to that album by that artist I tend to skip over those songs. I just hope that never happens for our fans, for those songs; having to skip the songs on those records because they’re so sick of them from commercials.

How would you describe your fans?

I don’t know. That’s really tough. I feel like a lot of our fans are younger than me but we just finished a tour where we had a lot of all ages shows and a lot of 18+ shows, because in the States the drinking age is 21 so it’s sort of silly. We have a lot of fans who are between 17 and 21, or younger so we try to keep all of our shows all ages. It just doesn’t always work with the promoters… Our fans are enthusiastic; the past few tours we’ve done this year for this record have been so much crazier than ever before. Our fans have been showing us how rowdy they can get I guess. Sometimes they can get completely out of control; we never expected that, moshing, crowd surfing, breaking stuff and like leaving with bloody noses and stuff like that it’s kind of confusing. We’ve kind of found our fans becoming more enthused, which is a slight understatement. Certain cities really surprise me with their energy, the amount of screaming and craziness that happens at some of our shows is just weird, but great.

Is there anything you’re hoping to see in Australia if you have some free time?

I think there’s the country side, the beach and doing summer things I’m excited about. The last time we were there we did some touristy stuff. We saw the Opera House, we got to go around Melbourne a bit, we had a bit of time there to take in the nooks and crannies of Melbourne. We mostly had time off in Sydney, so I guess I saw a lot of Sydney but I’m excited for summer and excited for the next Australian tour.

Published on The Dwarf – 29/10/2010