Amos the Transparent

From recording with members of Stars and Broken Social Scene to sharing the stage with The Dears and Tokyo Police Club, the signs of the next great Canadian act are showing themselves in Amos The Transparent. Their debut, Everything I’ve Forgotten to Forget, dropped in ‘07 and placed the six-piece indie rock act squarely on the map. This year’s Big Teeth only solidified what early clued-in fans already knew – that Amos was the start of something special.

We recently sat down with Jonathan Chandler and Chris Wilson from the Ottawa collective to tell us about finding the right personnel, the role of trust in a musical community and their plans for a new album for the new year.

SSv: I know there was a lot of turnover early in the band. Can you talk about how you found the right people to play in Amos the Transparent?

Jonathan: People lives came into play and we never really fired anyone. I mean, no one ever really quit. It’s all in good humor. Some people just left and we just whittled down to what we needed to have a good live performance. The six we arrived with was a perfect match.

Chris: Yeah, you’re right. It’s chemistry. It’s everything. Before that, even though everyone was friends, the mix wasn’t the best thing just with the difference with personalities. But knowing these people we’ve played with for the last year, it just keeps growing and the input from all the different people has been a huge benefit to Amos as a whole.

Jonathan: Even going along with what we’ve been doing lately, we’ve been writing as a six-person entity, as opposed to in the past when I’m only writing songs and then assigning parts to different people. I mean, they’d add their own flavor, but lately it’s just been that big six-person collaboration and that’s made it that much stronger.

SSv: How did you find that ability to let everyone in versus crafting it for the most part?

Jonathan: There’s two parts to it really. One is sheer laziness on my part. [Laughs] I got extremely lazy in arranging complete songs and at the same time, it was just the right time. People just wanted to step up and incorporate their own ideas. It was the perfect mesh of everything at the same time.

Chris: I think you have a lot of people who wanted to have that input, too. Maybe that was part of the problem when Jon and I started out early on was that you just had people come play and you told them their part and what they should do. Whereas now, it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s get creative. Let’s hear what you want. Let’s let you be the artist that you are instead of being the player.’

SSv: Can you talk about the role of trust in that as well?

Jonathan: I think there is a level of trust that has to be involved in that. I mean, when you write your songs, they’re your babies. You want to make sure that the right things are happening to them. But if you get the right group of people, then that’s just part of it. I mean, I want to know people’s input. I want to know what they think. I want to know if they hate it or how they can make it better. I want to hear their ideas. That just comes with the great mesh of people. If there was a different group of people playing, it might be a different story. It might still be that same thing. But over time, you realize how people play and how their minds think and you realize that everybody wants what is best for the band and for the songs. So there’s a fair bit of trust in us.

Chris: It is trust, but it’s also the maturing the band. From Jon’s perspective it is different because they are his babies. But if they are going to mature and really grow, we have to have that aspect of trust that’s now there. The guys we have within in the group are people we do trust. They’re guys that Jon and I have known for years.

Jonathan: Years and years.

Chris: Yeah, they’re not new to us. People became available and it became the perfect timing. It was the perfect storm to put all these people together in the same room, in the same club together. That’s what has been so special about I think. Other bands break up for us to grab them. [Laughs]

Jonathan: True. [Laughs]

SSv: That’s interesting, the point you’re making, because you’d think that having the original friends as a part of things would make for that trust level. Yet the music requires something more than that and it wasn’t until you had some turnover that things came together.

Jonathan: I’ve noticed too, at least in this town, Chris and I have been playing together for a lot of years. What is it, Chris?

Chris: Twelve, maybe?

Jonathan: And I’ve noticed in this town, when you’re young, everyone has time to be in a band. And everyone wants to be in a band. But slowly people kind of wean off. So what’s left are the people who had another band not work out, but they still seek what we seek. So there’s that natural progression of how you come together.

Chris: That’s totally true. The people who really have that passion are going to stay with it longer and others just let things take over their lives. You have to have a balance, but those are the people that you have left. Others want to start a business or a family. The people that want to be there are the ones who are there. And those are the best people to work with.

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s just that natural progression of finding each other after all these years. Dan [Hay] is an example of someone who played for years with The Fully Down. I’ve known him since high school, but we never had the opportunity to play together until a year ago because he was doing his thing and I was doing mine. So it’s just that progression.

SSv: I want to discuss the new album. It’s been a bit since Big Teeth came out, so did it do what you wanted it to do or are you still in process of making that happen?

Chris: We’re still in process. It’s funny because when we put Big Teeth out, we were having issues with the label we were with at the time. We were concerned that we didn’t have anything in two years or whatever it was and we wanted to get something out there – something new, something fresh with the new line-up and change in sound. We released it for off-stage sales back in March. Then we started going through these discussions with management about when to release and types of promotion. So I feel that it’s almost just starting even though we’ve been sitting on it for so long. But I also think that something might happen with it over the next few months. But then we will follow up with something pretty quickly with some new music.

Jonathan: I agree completely. It just came out for us to say that we’re here, we’re still around, we have something new. And for months, it was only available off-stage. Only now is it available digitally. We wanted to make sure everything was going to be available through the proper means at the time. Now that everything has come full-circle, there’s a bit more we will do with that. But it also won’t be another two years before we release something else. So we’re starting to work toward that already.

Chris: There’s a lot of promotion going on. There’s a U.S.-wide radio campaign going on now for Big Teeth. I think that’s going to something like 350 radio stations in the U.S. for college radio. We didn’t have the funds before to do that and we needed some help to know what to do and how to do it. There’s been some good people to step in and help with that. That’s been really good.

SSv: That concept you brought up of Amos maturing as a band, do you have a process for that or an idea of what that means?

Jonathan: Well, that question could go in two parts. One is the business aspect of it and, yes, we do chat and say, ‘This is what we need to do. These are our goals and the steps we need to accomplish those goals.’ Then the other side is stylistically and musically. And I don’t think there is a vision where that will go because I think we just want to make the best music possible in whatever way that comes. I don’t know which direction it will go and I don’t imagine it will stray too far from where we are now. But that’s the beauty of music and art is that there’s no right or wrong. Whichever way you paint the picture, you’re still painting the picture.

Tagged as: Indie Rock, Ontario, ottawa

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