“All I can do is be me, whoever that is.” – Bob Dylan

It’s very, very late in the day to make a fuss about Bob Dylan’s voice, though whole flocks of second-rate comedians and online jokesters are still making damp hay about it. At this point, nearly a half-century into the man’s singing career, pointing at that Dylan’s pipes lack the range of Judy Garland and the sweetness of The Beach Boys is not exactly going to set the collective jaws a’dropping. Notions of “authenticity” in pop music are often only reductive, snobbish constructs, but there is a kind of music lover who, in part thanks to the work of Mr Dylan, both as a singer and as a lifelong proponent of oldey timey music, prefers a throat full of frog than a velvet fog.

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Full disclosure: I’m no theatre reviewer. Further disclosure: Prior to attending a performance of Jersey Boys at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, I couldn’t name two songs by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. Now, I’m not about to say that I was dragged kicking and screaming to the performance by my very much better half, but musical theatre is far higher on her list of priorities than it is on mine. Now, I may have to reevaluate.

Right from the opening number, a French hip-hop mash-up of the group’s hit “December, 1963 (Oh What a Night),” the performance rolled along with incredible energy. In fact, for someone whose attention span has been whittled down to nothing by the Internet—I have a hard time maintaining interest in hour-long dramas on TV—this show was just the ticket.

First of all, I’m not sure what lead actor Jeff Madden (“Frankie Valli”) is on, but I want stock in the company. Throughout the entire performance, his level of energy had just two settings—10 and 11.

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Edmonton’s Poet Laureate, Rollie Pemberton, knows how to do a thing or two beyond expressing himself with rhyme and metre. Pemberton, aka rapper and producer Cadence Weapon, is a dab hand at the art and science of the remix.

“I like finding melodic cues in weird sounds and putting them together,” Mr. Weapon says. “I like the recontextualization of someone else’s music in the most direct way.” Rollie agreed to walk DRIVEN through the process of putting a new spin on someone else’s tune. Read More

Halifax, Sept. 29-Oct. 4 – There are few moments more groan-inducing as when, at a concert, the extinguishing of all spotlights – but one – heralds the beginning of a dreaded drum solo. (Seriously, Buddy Rich v. Animal is one thing, but does everyone have to do it?)

Still, in the right context, there are few things more viscerally exciting than live drumming, which may be the secret behind the success of Drum!, a percussion-centred show that its web site calls “a spectacular musical production featuring 20 musicians, dancers, drummers, and singers from four principal cultures – Aboriginal, Black, Celtic and Acadian – brought together in a heart-pumping fusion of music, dance, poetry, video, rhythm, and song.”

Starting life as a Halifax tourist attraction ten years ago, the show has travelled all over North America. It returns to it home city for a six-day, eight-show run at Dalhousie University’s Rebecca Cohn Auditorium.

Being a one-hit wonder is a little like being a famous assassin – you are known forever for one act. In 1958, Sheb Wooley, who died on September 16, 2003, was an actor and moderately successful country and western singer closing in on 40. He had played one of the heavies in High Noon, had a small part in Giant, and had appeared in a few dozen other movies and TV shows of a western bent. (Though it has never been confirmed, and wouldn’t have any significance for decades, he is also believed to have been the voice actor behind the original “Wilhelm Scream.”)

And then came “Purple People Eater.”

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This past weekend saw the first live performance of an extract from “Longplayer,” a composition – or, perhaps more accurately, musical system – by Jem Finer (ex of The Pogues). The composition started playing at midnight on December 31, 1999, and will play continuously until the same day and time, 2999, at which point either the apes who rule the planet will either turn off the computer that has been performing the thing thusfar, or it will start all over again. (Prompting some listeners to renew their shouted requests for “Sweet Home Alabama.”)

The first live performance of the score – which is performed entirely on Tibetan singing bowls, for a lot of highly philosophical and abstract reasons but mostly because they are intensely beautiful and haunting to listen to – was done in London, England over 1,000 minutes, from Saturday morning to Sunday evening. There is even video of Finer performing some of it himself.

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Brooklyn-based guitar goddess Marnie Stern has a hard-earned rep for dazzling finger-tapping theatrics and hypnotic solos; she is that rarest of cases where the phrase “you have to see, to believe” applies. Despite a penchant for sonic Eddie Van Halenisms that lean more Math Rock than Metal — for that matter, more (Philip) Glass than Metal — Stern’s recording catalogue has been edging closer to pop accessibility with each subsequent LP. Her latest, 2008’s labyrinthinially titled This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That, was certainly a solid step in terms of alt.rock accessibility. The fact that she had a kissing booth on the tour didn’t hurt, either.

Your tour schedule is daunting — do you write new sounds on the road?

No. Never. Never. I couldn’t even. I can’t imagine trying to like, sing, with all of the people in the band. I don’t get a chance to. And that’s the one thing that I really don’t like about touring. I miss sitting in front of the computer every day, working. I use a totally different part of my brain when I’m doing a tour. I’m not even thinking about it.

What do you like about touring?

Well, it’s nice to be out and appreciating life. It’s nice to be out doing things.

Had you started playing live when you first started sending out demos?

Oh, yeah, I was playing all over NYC for years and years and years and years and years. It’s just no one was there.

I know that you felt like you were always struggling to find your voice, like that was the one thing that eluded you. Do you think you’ve found it?

I do, but I’m afraid of getting pigeonholed. It takes so long to find it, but then maybe you don’t want to get stuck in that formula.

How has your music evolved?

I certainly am more comfortable on stage now. But everything builds on top of the last thing. I was much more timid when I started, and I looked down the whole time, which I still do a little bit. But I know I feel much more comfortable on stage now than I used to. I’ll tell you, last night we played in Seattle, and people were sitting at their tables, eating dinner, and there were candles lit, and it was like, Vegas or something. I was really nervous on stage. Haven’t been that nervous in a long time.

It sounds like you were booked at a dinner theatre.

Yeah, I know! It wasn’t, but that’s what it felt like. I can’t gauge what everyone’s doing because they’re sitting and eating! Are they liking this, are they hating this… You can’t tell. Sorry. Side-track. What’s the next question?

Your songs are all positive in nature, at least on your two most recent records. Was that the case from the very beginning?

Always. Very intentional.

Why is that?

Because I’m bummed out so much. So I’m trying to pep myself up, and tell myself that everything’s gonna be good, because I like hearing people say that. Ha!

The latest record [pictured below] is much poppier, so now you’re really sending out positive vibes.

I agree, I think so too.

Will your next release be poppier still?

I don’t know. I feel odd about it, to tell you the truth. It just seems so extremely pop to me, but I don’t know. Who knows? I don’t know. You think, I think, ‘No, I’m sick of that, I’m not gonna do that.’ So for a week I’m doing something else, and then a tiny part comes from that week, and the next week, I kind of get back on another train. In the end, it’s all different thoughts coming together over months and months and months. I try not to judge anything because then I’ll filter myself and I can see my thought process going, ‘Don’t do this, you can’t do that,’ and that messes me up. It is what it is.

Marnie Stern images via sexydrugrock (live) and kirstiecat (portrait)

Gutsy axe-meistress Marnie Stern.

Roll model (pun intended) Jennifer Herrema, the driving force behind RTX.

Multi-project princess Amy Millan of Stars and Broken Social Scene, not to mention an upcoming second solo effort.

These women show more contrasts than commonalities — aside from unquestioned musical talent and double-X chromosomes, and the fact that DRIVEN admires each of them. Before you check out our interviews, try to guess which woman recently turned towards pop, which crashed a Jaguar, and which one  calls Europeans “really bad thieves.” (We’re inclined to forgive them these little transgressions, regardless.)

Both as one half of semi-legendary garage-sleaze duo Royal Trux (with then-partner Neil Hagerty) and as the original CKone girl, Jennifer Herrema was responsible for some of the most iconic music and imagery of the 1990s. Her latest project, RTX, embraces those roots while telling a much different story.

It’s been four years since you struck out on your own and formed RTX. Are you happy with how things have played out?

Yeah, it’s perfect. It creeps up on you. I never had an endgame in mind, but there’s always this thing up in my head that’s, like, ‘Let’s do this,’ and then when you look back, you realize that every step was a proper step because this is exactly where we wanted to be. If you keep this thing in your head, it just kinda pans out if you just follow the thing. That thing! [Laughs]

Do you see RTX taking any more experimental turns down the line, more akin to your work with Royal Trux?

Well, there’s never a conscious decision to veer off path. But as it is with genres, I feel like we’re still creating our own. It encompasses a lot of genres that have come before that we love and respect. We’re trying to define our own.

RTX is obviously a much more personal project for you than anything you’ve done before. It almost seems like if you had your druthers, this is what Royal Trux would have sounded like, too.

RTX is more of a product of being in Royal Trux and being me. It’s what I listened to growing up, and all the things that really had profound influences upon me. Those are very different from what Neil [Hagerty] grew up with, my partner in Royal Trux. So RTX takes the diplomacy out of it. It’s more straight-on.

You once compared RTX to [visual artist] Jeff Coons. What other non-musical influences do you channel?

He’s definitely one of ’em. I’m not lazy at all, but when it comes to creating stuff, I get a picture in my head and it’s not like I’m gonna sit there and create it and hammer it out. I like bringing influences together. I produce the whole thing, stage the whole thing. I know what I want the guitar to sound like, but I’m not gonna play it ’cause, fuck, I can’t play like that at all. I feel like a master of ceremonies in many respects, and I feel like that’s very much the way he operates as well.

You’ve done your share of modeling in the past. What draws you to that world?

It started with Steven Meisel and Calvin Klein. I was on the cover of some magazine, and he cast me for the CKone campaign. A couple years later he cast me again for the jeans and stuff, for commercials. I never went to an agency — I never did that — but there were different photographers who were interested in working with me, and they would cast me. Whenever I do that work I get to be myself; the models have to be so professional, everything perfect, toenails, fingernails, they can’t drink on the set… I can do whatever I want. I like that. It works out.

The kind of music that you make — both now, and back in the ’90s — is not commercial (latest album, JJ Got Live RTX, pictured below). And yet, Virgin Records signed Royal Trux to a famously huge record deal that would never happen today.

No.

Do labels still matter?

I think that what we see on MTV and commercials and major radio play, those three platforms are completely driven and run by major labels. Do I think that what they’re putting out there is necessarily relevant? Not so much. It’s only a matter of time before the public absolutely catches onto that. They’ll get tired of being force-fed. There’s not a lot of platforms, still, for independent labels and independent bands. It’s coming up, but as it is right now, the pocketbook rules. But I think it will change, for sure.

Meantime, what ever came of the Jaguar that you reportedly bought with the money from the contract?

The Jaguar got totaled. We were in the mountains and there was this old doctor, and it was late at night, and he ran through a stop sign and crushed the car. Neil was driving, but Neil wasn’t hurt. Yeah. So we got some money and I bought a racing car, a 1972 Monte Carlo with a V8 engine, and a turbo on it. It was super cool.

Very nice.

I totalled that one.

Oh, no.

Yeah! It got like ten miles to the gallon. It was so insane. But yeah, that one got totaled. Then I got sensible and I bought a Saab.