Earlier today I got the chance to talk on the phone with Ryan Rae from another one of my favourite local bands, the Armchair Cynics. Last week they released their sophomore album “Starting Today” from 604 Records, and we talk about putting the album together and the band’s personal lives.
Who are you and what do you do?
My name’s Ryan Rae and I play drums for Armchair Cynics.
So you just released your album, “Starting Today”, where did the title come from?
Yeah, you know, there’s a song on the album called “Starting Today” and, we tossed around a few names, we tossed around the idea of calling it “On” and, there was a few different names we threw around, and, you know, nothing really clicked. So we’re like “Why don’t we just call it ‘Starting Today’?” because it was kind of a bit of a relief for us after the old one. We already had the song “Starting Today” so we’re just like, “Let’s just call it ‘Starting Today’!”, it’s like “Yup, sounds great! Let’s do it!”
The album artwork, you’ve got a chair on fire, does that just go with the theme of [the single] “Ablaze”?
Well, yeah, basically. Again, we were tossing around all sorts of different ideas and were thinking, why don’t we just get literal with it and, get an old chair? We actually did an ad on The Zone and The Fox in Victoria and Vancouver about wanting fans to give us any old armchairs that they had kicking around. We actually had a guy give us and old armchair which we took out and burned. And that was the idea, get a fan to give us a chair, and that could be the album artwork.
Where did you record, Victoria?
Uh, nope, we recorded in Vancouver. We did the drums and the bass at the warehouse, Bryan Adams’ studio, and a lot of the guitars and overdubs at the Sonic studio, and it was mixed, also, at the warehouse.
How was the recording process. switching between the two places? Fun? Hectic?
I love it. It’s long days, you start around 10 in the morning and usually go until, around 1 or 2 in the morning, but, coming from a normal job to that, it’s what we love to do. I could do that for weeks on end, it’s almost like a vacation in the end. It’s like touring; a lot of people think “Aw, what a bunch of hard work.”, but it’s like, whatever, let’s just get in the studio and do what you love for hours and hours on end.
So, what made you choose “Ablaze” and “Kelly” for singles over other songs on the album?
It’s a collective decision between us and 604 Records and Universal Music, who distributes us. You kind of take a look at the album as a whole, and usually a band, especially a modern rock band, will try and put out a rocking song first, because there are other singles on the album that’ll be, sort of, ballads. But, we just try and hit ‘em up with a good, fast-paced, rock and roll song to get the energy going and get the ball rolling the attention up for the next singles to follow.
So, yeah, we just put all the songs on the table, and, kind of, decide what fits and take a risk on it, because, at the end of the day, you never know what’d going to work and everybody just says “You know, what do we like?”, and it happened to be “Ablaze” and “Kelly”.
Diving in to the band, itself, how did the Armchair Cynics become the Armchair Cynics?
The Armchair Cynics were born with our singer Ken and the bass player Aran. They originally formed the band, I think in 2000 and there was two other players at the time; a different guitar play and a different drummer, and they went on for about two years. And it didn’t quite work out with the guitar player and drummer. I’m quite quite sure what happened there, but, myself and Adam Sutherland joined the band in 2002 and we’ve been strong ever since!
To someone who’s never heard of the Armchair Cynics, how would you describe your sound to them?
It’s modern rock. It’s along the same thing as other Canadian bands, like Our Lady Peace, Mathew Good, but with our own twist. I couldn’t quite pin it on to an exact sound. You’d have to listen to the album, I guess, and judge for yourself, and give us some feedback and tell us what it sounds like.
Where do you find the inspiration to write music?
A lot of people in the band – Ken’ll come in with, like, a guitar riff or line, Adam’ll come in with a vocal line or guitar riff, and we just sit there and jam on it. A lot of the writing and stuff doesn’t come to us without the band sitting there and hashing it out in the jam room. Maybe Ken will think of a guitar line, played all by itself, and have an idea for it, and then the band sits down and rehearses it, the song will come to life. It just sort of happens as a collective in the jam room, and away we go.
When you’re not writing, recording, or touring, what do you like to do in your off-time?
We do a variety of different stuff. Ken, he’s big in to, like, fashion and styling and cooking; I could see him owning his own restaurant, and being like, oh what’s that chef, um, err, chef Ramsay; Ken in the chef Ramsay of the band. I’m the type of guy that goes out in to the woods on the weekend and collects firewood and goes camping and jumps out of airplanes. Adam runs his recording studio — Adam, by the way, is not in the band anymore. He left the band about a month ago and we got a new guy, Brendan Walker, and, I don’t know what he does in his spare time because I’ve just met him a couple of times so I couldn’t tell you. It’s a mystery. And Aran builds stuff around his house, he’s always got, about 15 projects on the go, whether it’s building a deck or installing a hot-tub. He’s a family man, he lives at home and works on his house.
What do you like to listen to?
I like a little bit of everything. If it’s Friday night and I’m going out partying I might want something dancey, like some Metric or Maroon 5. And if I’m going to goof around in the forest, maybe crank up Metallica or Pantera. If we’re cruising down the road in the tour van, we might get only AM radio, and I’m happy to listen to classical music. So it completely depends on the mood, like I’ll listen to hip-hop, to rock, to classical, jazz; everything.
What does the future of the Armchair Cynics look like?
Obviously the goal is to make this a career. We’re making music that we love, and we’d love to just be able to do that and make a living at it and not have to work day jobs. “Kelly” just came out to radio recently, so we’ve starting looking at booking tours before Christmas, and probably head up to Ontario in March and just hit the road, try and make a success.
My greatest thanks to Ryan for aptly agreeing to the interview!
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