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    Interview: Tegan and Sara

    As sonic landscapes go, the distance between the Calgary, Alberta-born duo Tegan and Sara’s debut album, 1998’s Under Feet Like Ours, and their recently-released Love You to Death, couldn’t be wider. The looser, neo-folk jams of their earliest records seem half a world away from the precise synth-driven sharpness of new cuts like “Boyfriend” and “Stop Desire” – but for the Quin sisters, their stylistic shifting is just a vehicle for what lies beneath. “You know, we’re the same people we always were,” youngest sibling Sara explains during phone conversation between us last month. “And the thing that always was sort of the glue emotionally or lyrically, or whatever – it’s still there. Anyway, I feel excited, and I feel like we have the privilege of being able to move around a bit.”

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    Love You to Death is an exciting listen, fueled by producer Greg Kurstin’s (who co-wrote and produced Adele’s omnipresent “Hello”, among other hits for Sia, Ellie Goulding, Beck, Pink, and Kelly Clarkson) knack for lush, nuanced arrangements. Tegan and Sara’s capable songwriting is the real substance that bubbles beneath – and their tight vocal interplay is the thread that effectively ties the swirling programmed keys and drums together.

    Anyone who is quick to dismiss Love You to Death as pop sheen that’s intent on chasing the ambitions of the likes of Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande will probably – and unfortunately – miss the astute and compassionate social and political conscience of the duo’s work. The album’s “Faint of Heart”, as just one example, is a hopeful celebration of queer and transgendered youth, and its accompanying video puts them front and center as featured performers – a powerful counter to the community’s lack of visibility. Their ability to use their growing mainstream influence to bring attention to issues in the LGTBQ community is not lost on the sisters, who are both openly gay. “You know, we love music and love doing what we do in music,” Quin reflects. “But we’re looking for opportunities to move into a different world where – behind the scenes – we can do some tinkering that can make some real change, especially for queer and trans women.”

    That meshing of heart and artistry is affording Tegan and Sara no shortage of enthusiastic audiences. The band has played nearly sixty tour dates so far this calendar year, and are scheduled for at least a dozen more through the end of November. On October 25, they will stop in Columbus at EXPRESS LIVE!, with opening support from Georgia-based singer-songwriter, Torres.

    Meanwhile, Sara Quin and I continued our discussion about fame, family, and politics – and a little music, too.

    People are now referring to you and Tegan as ‘veterans’ in the press, which I suppose fits the bill since your professional career is pretty close to closing out its second decade. Do you feel like the band has been around for almost twenty years?

    “Yeah, I mean there are times where it’s surreal. It’s sometimes similar, I guess, to talking about any sort of advancement in anyone’s career…where you start to look back at the struggles and the learning – the things that were really challenging. Or there were things we felt were such obstacles, stuff that we had to overcome and thinking ‘wow that seemed so daunting and now it feels totally different.’ There’s definitely a lot of analysis and reflection that happens when you release your eighth album and people call you a veteran. But, I also sometimes feel like there are so many people ahead of us, you know, that we look up to and have had even longer careers. We still look at ourselves as being in this unique position to still be taking cues and notes from people who have been trailblazers and who have managed to have these really long stretches of careers that sort of have evolved or changed. And we think ‘oh, we’re so lucky that we’re one of those unique bands who have been afforded the opportunity to change and to sound different and re-create themselves with every album’. I know that isn’t something that’s just a given with most bands, so we really sort of look forward to this opportunity to evolve. And there’s always this nagging mortality – I mean, there’s real mortality and there’s band mortality – that sneaks in every once in a while. You know, so we talk a lot about that and…you know, we’re sort of planners (laughs), so we’re almost always talking in a fatalist kind of way ‘okay, so when our career is over, what’ll we do? What are our strong skills? How can we transition?’ (laughs) So, I feel okay, you know – I don’t feel the hysterical existential panic I did in my twenties when I think about what our career is and what it could be. Actually, I just feel really inspired.

    Sometimes I feel guilty because I know that we don’t necessarily have the talking points or the perspective that a lot of people do. I’ve never cared about jumping on the bandwagon of, like, ‘how will we survive if people don’t buy our CD?!’ or ‘people are ripping us off!’, or whatever. I can’t be bothered with that. I can go there – I can certainly agree sometimes. But then I just think ‘well, that’s not going to make anyone want to buy our records, ultimately, either, so…’ We’ve always been sort of pragmatic and have thought ‘how do we make people to buy something so we can put gas in the tour van and pay people to come and tour with us?’ So we’re like ‘okay, we’ll just tour more. We’ll do more things.’ So, we try to be objective – I don’t want to abandon our peers and the legacy of making music and having people pay for it, but I’ve always looked at our career as us having to be very creative about how to make a living. No-one buying our albums…it hasn’t actually panicked me that much.”

    I’ve talked to other musicians who fall into one of two categories: one is those who envisioned being famous and chased it to completion; the other is those who started out pursuing music as a hobby or distraction, and things evolved from there. Where do you and Tegan fall along that spectrum? Have you two felt all along that you were destined for success?

    “I think we were probably somewhere in between…I definitely think we had a sort of sense that we were charismatic, and there was something about being twins and being outgoing that made us natural performers. Not as actors, necessarily – I remember when I was in high school drama, nobody was saying ‘you should really act!’ But I remember that I was comfortable on stage, and I was also really comfortable creatively. In twelfth grade, we had to write scripts and we had to direct and we had to utilize these other behind-the-scene skills. I excelled at that, and I remember thinking ‘oh, maybe I could do that. Maybe I’ll be a writer and I’ll direct, or I’ll be a teacher, or I’ll be a…I don’t know. I remember there was definitely a natural inclination to be in front of people and performing things for people – even if it wasn’t me doing the performance. And so it makes sense that we sort of transitioned into music really easily. You know, the thing that was lacking at the beginning of our career was not vision or entrepreneurial spirit – we were dubbing cassette tapes and selling them at school and booking our own shows. We had merch…we were so good at that. It was skill with music that actually lacked. We weren’t great singers, and we were really rudimentary songwriters. It’s interesting because in a way our career…because we weren’t really good at music initially. It prevented us from having this idea that you could just ‘well, I’m just going to have this career in music.’ We decided we were going to have a career – we were good at that part, but then we said ‘we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to be better musicians and how we’re going to be better songwriters.’ I guess in a weird way I never thought we were going to be famous – I just remember thinking…

    I actually don’t feel famous. I don’t feel like we’re famous people. I think we had set for goals for ourselves around success within the infrastructure of the music industry…we said ‘okay, there’s this top echelon of people, and that will probably never be us – nor do we really want it to be us. But there are these metrics that make sense to us, like touring, making albums, and having a publishing career.’ We learned that there were places where we could get a foothold and actually make a decent living from it. And it’s weird because each album cycle you sort of adjust your goals or the markers you want to hit. But it only started in the last handful of years where we were like, ‘oh, I think we want to be more successful than we were.’ We really only started to think in those terms in the last seven or eight years.”

    I can think of several family bands who have experienced a lot of frustration or conflict because their relationships add this complex set of layers on top of the challenges that are inherent to a public career in music. You and your sister seem to be in a good place – has that always been an easy thing for you both navigate?

    “It hasn’t always been easy. definitely…I mean there are real, real challenges to being in a band with a family member – especially a sibling. But, the two things I will say is this: by society’s standards if you’re sort of looking at the marriage model of ‘you find your soulmate, you get married, you stay together forever, divorce is bad…’ – that sort of matrix everyone enters into – I’m bad at that. By society’s standards, I’m not good at that. I don’t really subscribe to this idea that you meet someone and you just click, and they’re your best friend and your soulmate, and you also want to sleep with them for the rest of your frickin’ life, or whatever. That’s just never been the structure I’ve been interested in getting into, and I’ve sort of had what I think are very successful relationships that…obviously I haven’t gotten married and planned on spending my life with one person, but I’ve had really successful long-term relationships. Not just with the women I’ve partnered with, but also with my friends – my best friends are the girls I met when I was fourteen years old. And Tegan and I have been with the same management team for thirteen years. We’ve been with the same record label, you know, for like nine years. Our introduction to the music business was Elliott Roberts, who signed us to the label he runs with Neil Young – we’re still connected with him. And I believe in long relationships that have ups and downs and that sometimes are deeply connected, and other times are peripheral. But, ultimately I’m a very loyal and connected person, and I think my relationship with Tegan is the origin of all of that. It’s my primary relationship – probably even more than with my mom because Tegan and I were in the womb together. For most people, their first introduction is their mom – and for me it was like ‘you’re my second introduction…I’ve already connected with this girl.’

    I think it’s made for a very unique dynamic, because there are times when our band…we’ve been working really hard and touring all the time – and Tegan and I are almost perfect strangers. And then there are times like right now when I see her every day and we talk all the time, and there’s a very harmonious element to what we’re doing right now. I guess that’s sort of a convoluted way of saying that I don’t feel like Tegan and I always have to get along to make this band successful – nor do I think not getting along makes it unsuccessful. I just think we’ve given each other space to grow and change, and I think that is a big part of why the band can stay connected. Because if I were just in a band with a random person, I don’t know – maybe we would have given up. Or seen it as a life cycle: ‘okay, we’ve had a good run and now things are cooling off, so let’s go do something else.’ With Tegan, I know she’ll be around again when I want to be connected again.”

    You split your time between Canada and the U.S. As a person who has always been politically minded and socially aware – what are some of the major differences you’ve noticed between them? Or is there a difference in your mind?

    “I mean the short answer is ‘yes’. (laughing) The longer answer is: I’ve always been a political person, and I was encouraged as a young person to be educated and invested in what was happening around me. I think there’s been an interesting parallel in terms of the things that are important to me and that I care about – and that are more personal – those things have changed and there’s more visibility as we’ve become a bigger band and have been more successful and had more visibility…I think there’s a correlation there. And what inspired me to be more political when we first started out was calling out or at least being somewhat conscious of the fact that we were being treated differently than a lot of our straight peers – and certainly different than our straight male peers. Those things now are pretty commonplace – that you’ll read about that or to string that narrative through an album cycle, it doesn’t feel that cutting edge, it’s just like ‘oh yeah, of course. Right. That makes sense.’ But back when we started, to say ‘oh geez, it’s interesting to be the only girls on alternative rock radio. Huh.’ Or ‘we’re one of four bands at Coachella that are queer or are women’. Things like that now…people use the internet to raise awareness about those inequities. I guess in a way it’s encouraged me to be political, and I think in Canada – it’s not that I don’t feel political – it’s just that I feel it’s a bit easier…there are just certain things that are just institutional. I didn’t grow up feeling…we were a low-income family with a single parent mom. I didn’t worry about things like education and healthcare. We went to really decent public schools. When we needed to go to the hospital, we went to the hospital. When we needed a pediatrician, we had a great pediatrician. Even though my mom was struggling, those were things we didn’t have to worry about. And I think that sort of inherently makes you more comfortable and trusting of the people who are responsible for those things – i.e. the government. I would say the two big takeaways for me are: Americans love conspiracy theories…and why wouldn’t they? Things seem really crazy and whacky down here. And – it’s a much more religious place. Religion does sort inform the moral code of the government and society. Those things can have negative implications and they can make things much more challenging to change.”

    You have given a lot of voice and visibility to queer and trans people, and I know you and Tegan are both such vocal advocates for the GLTBQ community in the broader sense. I believe queer and trans issues are just beginning to surface in the minds of the majority of people in our country, but there is still a significant disparity between the level of justice that has been achieved between them and their GLB counterparts. What do you believe needs to change to correct that inequity?

    “It’s a complicated answer – one of the things Tegan and I are interested in right now…we’re sort of in the middle of launching a foundation. Because we ask ourselves those questions all the time. We want to actually help and we want to do more than we’ve done in the past. I can answer you right now that one of the big areas of inequity is really with queer women and trans women. There’s been tremendous work done in the gay community for so many – incredible trailblazing, things that have happened. But also, when you look at those organizations and the work that’s been done, it’s been by predominately white, gay males. Some of those giant organizations are run by gay men, their boards of directors are made up of gay men. I think here’s still a tremendous amount of work to do for queer and trans women – specifically, off the top of my head, I can tell you there are inequities in economic opportunities for women. When you have two women that are partnering, there are just not the opportunities and advancements that can happen for two men who are partnering. And the things two men care about are often very different than what is happening with women.

    And that starts in school. It starts when people are young and they’re developing their self-esteem – and their goals for post-school life and their post-secondary education choices. There is huge inequity and problems in their healthcare – especially in the United States. And that starts with education and resources for people who are going to treat queer people and who are going to be dealing with them and their health concerns. Those are very unique situations, and that needs to be dealt with. And then representation in what we do. What we portray in the media. We’re seeing a lot more gay people and trans people in television, in film, and in music. But the other day I saw this statistic that…it’s a very low number, especially with women – something like ten percent of characters in TV and film are actually lesbian. And then something like thirty-five or forty percent of them will die. So, what does that mean? What is that conversation? Is it because we’re expendable? Does it mean we’re always going to be tragic? Do we always going to be raped, and murdered, and die unhappy and alone? So, I know that’s a lot of information, but those are the things that we talk about and look at, and Tegan and I want to start doing work in those areas – especially in early education and health. Those are the things that will help with economic opportunities and will help get more queer women and trans women into positions where they have power and safety, and they can create legislative change – and social and cultural change. That is a mission for me and Tegan moving forward.

    Because, yes – we can all get married! But there are a thousand other things that really influence the economic and psychological well-being of queer women in the world right now.”

    You’ve talked frequently in past interviews about the support and nurturing you and Tegan received when the band was up-and-coming. For new musicians who are just finding their way in the industry, what are the most critical things you believe they should focus on in terms of artist development?

    “Going back to what we were talking about earlier, because Tegan and I had work a little bit outside of the traditional structure of the music industry…(it) made us cultivate these really important relationships. And because we had that support network around us, during these kinds of ups and downs – I hate calling them ups and downs – but during these periods of time where there was growth and there were times where there were plateaus, or maybe we were feeling frustrated because there were opportunities we weren’t able to access…that infrastructure and that group of people we built around us became key. Those become your allies when you don’t have the musical currency or leverage to get yourself to certain places, those relationships can become life or death for the band. And just one specific example – all it can take is one person with whom you’ve created a strong relationship to go to battle and go out on a limb for you, and by them making a decision to work with you or use your music, it can change your life. We certainly experienced that on So Jealous – that was a real turning point record for us, and there were a handful of people who I really, truly, seriously see as taking a bit of a risk and supporting us. Those people really made a difference – Jack White covering “Walking With a Ghost”, and Ronnie (Vanucci, Jr.), the drummer for The Killers – he was a big part of why we were given that opening spot on that important Killers tour when Hot Fuss came out and was the biggest deal. And there was a music supervisor who we had never met, but she came into our world and said ‘geez…I’d really like a lot of this music for my new TV show’ and it happened to be Grey’s Anatomy – and it turned into a huge show and our music was suddenly…you know, we couldn’t get on radio, we couldn’t get on TV, but suddenly we were on TV. Like, we were on TV. It was crazy. It’s amazing – and it seems like a no-brainer – but I always tell new artists to be kind and to be nice to people and show up on time. Show up early. Be pleasant. If you have to go back into the van and scream into a pillow or get a dart board, or whatever. If you have a good reputation, people will come out for you and they’ll back you when you need them. So, I always say t’s easy to be a critic or be too cool for school when you’re on the way up, but, holy shit, we’ll all be on the way down at some point, and you’ll want good people with you when you hit it.”

    Reading the press for I Love You to Death, there has been a lot of commentary about how you and Tegan have “gone pop”. You’ve received a lot of praise for this new album, but I think it sort of sounds back-handed in that respect – almost as if you took this new direction to be more relevant. I disagree, but I want to hear what your line of thinking was as you shaped the record’s sound.

    “It’s interesting because obviously when you’re in the band, everything feels like an evolution. I didn’t feel like we were suddenly like ‘oh, let’s go make a metal record!’ Or ‘we’re going to try and do a hip-hop thing.’ There are so many…we came from a generation where we grew up on things like Bowie, Kate Bush, and Madonna. The building blocks of our songwriting have been totally, one hundred-percent about the music we grew up on. And so it feels like this natural evolution – we were teenagers in the nineties when grunge rock was so popular…of course we started out in grunge. There was a natural evolution, but a lot of those early ideas – the way we would have learned to think about music and make music – really started with those big pop acts from the early eighties and nineties. So, it has felt very natural for us. One thing I will say is that I don’t think every band can just evolve – there are only a few bands that I think have done that successfully. Obviously, Radiohead is a very popular one. But I will also say that I attribute the support and the freedom to move around in these genres to our queer audience. Which is not to say that straight people haven’t supported us, too. But that original queer female audience… when we first started playing music and our audience was coming up, I don’t really think those people even listened to the kinds of music we were making. I think they were there because we were representative of something that was lacking in music – it was our voice, our lyrics, our perspective. In a weird way, our early days were convincing people to like the kinds of music we were making, and we had an audience that was kind of there regardless. Then when we were starting to be more of a synth band, they were like ‘ew! We hate that!’ – we were like, “trust us. Remember last time? You’ll like it. You’ll get used to it.’ And now, as we’ve sort of ventured into pop music and dance music, there’s that little kickback sometimes. Not just from our gay audience, but just our audience in general. We’re very comfortable and familiar with that sort of disgruntled, confused, unsure feedback. And we just say, ‘trust us. Trust us.’

    And who knows? Maybe the next record will be something entirely out of the pop world. I think there’s a very, very good chance that our next album will not be defined as a pop album.”

    Tegan and Sara will be at EXPRESS LIVE! (405 Neil Avenue in the Arena District) on Tuesday, October 25th at 7:00 pm – featuring opening act Torres. Tickets are $34.50 (plus applicable taxes and fees) for general admission seating, and can be purchased via Ticketmaster. More information about Tegan and Sara, including tour dates, merchandise, and music downloads, can be found on their website.

    Looking for more live music events in Columbus? CLICK HERE to visit our events calendar!

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    Grant Walters
    Grant Waltershttps://columbusunderground.com
    Grant is a freelance writer for Columbus Underground who primarily focuses on music and comedy. He's a Canadian transplant, born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and schooled in Vancouver, British Columbia. Grant is also the co-author of two internationally acclaimed books: "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1960s" and "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1970s." He has also penned numerous articles and artist interviews for the nationally recognized site, Albumism.
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