Edmonton blues-punk artist Eamon McGrath says he “lost his shirt” when his band toured Europe last year — so now he’s decided to strip down completely.
McGrath is set to head out on a Canadian tour and he’s looking to cut costs everywhere, from transportation to food and lodging. And he’ll accomplish that by paring down his four-piece band and touring with only one other bandmate — lap steel player Peter Dreimanis — and rearranging his songs (not to mention his gear) to “fit in a backpack.”
“We were trying to figure out a way to streamline touring to get it economically feasible and sustainable, and trim the fat,” McGrath said in a recent telephone interview from Toronto, where he now lives.
“In doing that, we ended up kind of artistically trimming the fat of all the songs. So now, we’ve taken these songs that were recorded in a way that’s fit for a four-piece rock band with tons of gear and drums, and we’ve rearranged all those songs to fit eight limbs.
“So in kind of this economic situation we’re in, just being broke — the art has ended up getting cornered into this really interesting, specific sound.”
Interesting but also quite different.
In order to head out on this thrifty tour — McGrath drew his inspiration from the “jam econo” philosophy of ’80s California punk legends the Minutemen — he had to make rethink his approach to all the songs he typically performs from his two albums, the most recent of which was 2010’s Peace Maker.
Onstage, McGrath and Dreimanis plan to try to play up to three instruments at once.
They’ll be seated next to one another, with a crash cymbal and a floor tom positioned in-between that both will be able to access. McGrath will have a tambourine connected to a high-hat stand that he can control with his foot, and will play guitar or lap steel while singing and also operating a drum machine or sampler.
Dreimanis, meanwhile, will play keyboards and a lap steel — occasionally at the same time — while helping with drums.
McGrath, a 22-year-old who holds a day job as a linecook at the hip Toronto spot Saving Gigi, is aware that the set-up could look a little ramshackle, but he says they sound surprisingly good together.
“When people see our show they’re like: ‘Oh, this is really amazing, because there’s all these sounds coming from just a big pile of crap,”’ said McGrath, who originally tested the two-man setup with a few shows during his last European tour.
“It just looks like a pile of cables and acoustic stuff on the stage — it’s just a trash pile.”
“(But this) has been responsible for one of the best artistic rewakenings I’ve undergone since moving here. We were so shocked at how big a sound you can get out of four arms.”
The tour begins Thursday in London, Ont. For three Ontario dates, McGrath will hitch a ride with his opening act, the Goodnight Webcams.
The duo will then fly west for shows in Saskatoon and Edmonton (McGrath says they found a “wild” seat sale to justify the expense), where they will borrow Dreimanis’s parents’ car to shuffle around for more gigs in Alberta and B.C.
And on the way home, McGrath will take a Greyhound bus from Edmonton back to Toronto (with a stop for a show in Winnipeg).
Fans who make it out to those shows might not be familiar all of the material McGrath is playing, though.
The driving punk tune “I Am A Deer” sounds entirely unrecognizable from the album version, while the galloping growler “Cut Knife City Blues,” turns from heavy, distorted blues-punk to a “spooky country thing,” McGrath explains.
Some songs didn’t work at all and had to be left behind — particularly those tunes with a heavier soul influence, he points out.
“The goal has never been: ’OK, how are we going to recreate the sound of the album with these instruments?”’ he says.
“It’s like: ’OK, let’s arrange these songs in any possible way that might work with what we’ve got.”’
While McGrath says repurposing his songs has been an inspiring creative exercise, he’s now working on tracks for a new album, one that will again be produced by Dave Carswell and John Collins (a member of Destroyer and the New Pornographers).
But he’s not sure yet whether he’ll ever record music with the unique stage setup he’s adopting specifically in mind.
“I think what’s going to be constant about my music and how I think about my music is the inconsistencies and the diversity and schizophrenia and the constant jumping back and forth,” he said.
“So, I don’t know. I’m really into it right now and I think it’s working really well — but everything gets boring after a certain amount of time.”