Local band passes up possible L.A. story

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This article was published 11/06/2011 (5578 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Details’ new album was almost a true cherry bomb.

The Winnipeg indie-rock band was approached by legendary/infamous manager/producer Kim Fowley about working together following a chance meeting in Austin, Texas, during the South by Southwest music conference in 2009.

“We had just done up a bunch of press kits with early demos of the new songs and we were really trying to network down there. A guy in the elevator was like, ‘Are you in a band?’ and we said, ‘Of course we’re in a band.’ Everybody is in a band down there,” recalls drummer Shaun Gibson.

Bassist Keli Martin gave the stranger a press kit, but he offered up no credentials or introduction of his own.

Martin’s bandmates — Gibson, vocalist-guitarist Jon Plett and guitarist Sean Vidal — gave her some ribbing for giving away a press package to the weird-looking guy, but a few weeks later she was vindicated when Plett received a call from the man in the elevator, who turned out to be none other than the svengali best known as the manager and producer of the all-female rock group the Runaways in the 1970s.

“He was trying to get us down to California. He said over the phone to Jon, ‘I have played your songs to record executives and radio stations over the phone and, let me tell you, they have loved them.’ I guess he played those MP3s over the phone to them. I think he meant well, but he’s a little behind when it comes to technology,” Gibson says with a laugh.

Fowley’s resumé impressed the band, but in the end the Details declined his offer and decided to stick closer to home. Weakerthans’ guitarist Stephen Carroll was chosen to serve as producer on the band’s new album, Lost Art, which gets its official local release tonight at the West End Cultural Centre.

Carroll is no stranger to the role of producer, but decided to enlist the help of his friend Brandon Reid (production manager for the National) to work the board.

“Stephen was excited about it from a songwriter’s perspective, but he wasn’t comfortable on the board. Brandon Reid worked with the Weakerthans as a tour manager, so Stephen called him up and brought him in. I don’t think we could have had a better person to come in and man the board. The album (the National’s) High Violet, of all albums, is the definition of the sound we wanted,” Gibson says.

The Details released their debut album, Draw a Distance, Draw a Border, in 2007. The gap between releases is simple to explain: the band toured the album for a couple of years, then took its time writing and putting a team together that could help make the followup the best it could be.

Draw a Distance, Draw a Border was written entirely in the studio over a six month period, but Carroll wanted to get Lost Art done a lot quicker — 12 days, to be exact — so the band spent a lot of time on pre-production and working out arrangements, Gibson says.

“I don’t think the three years were a fluke; it was pretty deliberate spending that much time, figuring we probably wrote and rewrote some songs a half-dozen times to make sure we were getting the right feel for the album. With the first album we got the right feel for the time, but it sounds like a studio album. With this one, people have said they can imagine us sitting down with acoustic guitars and crafting it, which is what we were going for,” he says.

The result is probably different than the one they would have achieved had they taken Fowley up on his offer to go to Los Angeles.

“I don’t know if we would have been able to make the album we wanted to make, but I think we would have had a great life experience,” Gibson says with a laugh.

— — —

The Details CD is the big local release of the week, but another album with local ties is now on sale.

The soundtrack for the film The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom, shot in Manitoba and Quebec last summer, is available at McNally Robinson, coinciding with the screening of the movie June 10-16 at Cinematheque.

The soundtrack features Parton’s original version of Love is Like a Butterfly, along with covers of her songs by Winnipeggers the Wailin’ Jennys and Genevieve Toupin, Martha Wainwright, Coral Egan and Nelly Furtado, as well as the original score by Luc Sicard.

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca

Concert Preview

The Details

Tonight, 8 p.m., with Royal Canoe

West End Cultural Centre

Admission: $20