Raine Maida

Raine Maida and his band Our Lady Peace set the Canadian music world on fire with their 1997 album Clumsy, which sold more than a million copies in that country. The album would eventually be certified more than nine times platinum there, and subsequent albums made Raine a household name, though Clumsy only went Gold in the United States. Still, for a while, it looked like Our Lady Peace, whose name came from an obscure Mark Van Doren poem, might be headed for a place among the alternative post-grunge pantheon, especially when “Superman’s Dead” became a popular single.

But success never found the band beyond that cult audience here in the states. And though Raine Maida remains something of a household name in Canada and among Toronto’s music elite, here in America it’s not uncommon to find only a handful who remember him or Our Lady Peace beyond “Somewhere Out There,” the unexpected top 40 single which came from 2002’s Gravity. So when he signed with Nettwerk and launched plans to release his first solo record, The Hunter’s Lullabye, on November 13, the decision was made to release the album as an “online only” collection in the United States.

Raine took an hour to sit down and speak with Stereo Subversion about his new album, his recent fascination with slam poetry and spoken word, the difference between being earnest and pretentious, and what it’s like being a poet trapped in the world of a lyricist.

SSv: How would you say the recent video shoot went? You said you couldn’t bring yourself to do another “narcissistic look at me” rock video. Would you say that the fundraiser was successful?

Maida: Yeah, I mean, even beyond what I was expecting, whatever my expectations were, that day we raised $23,000. Beyond that, the next day I went to the War Child offices here in Toronto and we went over the breakdown of the hard costs of building this school. Basically what we were was about one classroom short in funding.

They’ve built I think eleven schools so far in the Congo, so they know once you hit that mark it’s “this thing’s a go, we need to tell them we’re going to be able to reconstruct this school.” So we called the person in the Congo, and by the next day they showed us pictures of the entire community gathering supplies to start building this school, which was so inspiring.

SSv: Do you wish you had more opportunities like this to get out with your music and support a cause?

Maida: I think, yeah, obviously I’m at that point in my career where that kind of thing becomes really important. I’ve always, over the last five or six years, I’ve done a bunch of trips with War Child — I’ve been to Iraq, I’ve been to Darfur. And you see the power of it all. I’m not exploiting what I do, but being able to use my voice as something positive, it’s something good. It’s become such a fucking narcissistic industry these days that anything I can do is worth doing.

I don’t even really give a shit if people think it’s an ego thing. I’ll take the punches, I just feel as long as someone’s doing something it’s better than nothing even if there are people who become spiteful because it’s a movie star out there doing it. We’re just in such a dire worldly state that it’s better to do something than nothing, no matter who you are.

SSv: I hear stories of how apathetic people are these days, yet you were surprised by the generosity of individual donors during the event. Do you think people are waking up to the problems in places like Darfur? Or was this event successful because you had the name recognition to pull it off?

Maida: Well, this was a very simple thing, and I think the good thing about it, like I was saying before, is that it’s a very tangible thing. Everyone who stopped by that day or did interviews surrounding it, learned that we’re building this school. It’s a conflict zone, and War Child deals with kids, so we need to reconstruct this school so kids can go back to school and be kids again. It’s very simple in peoples’ minds.

When you start to talk about things like Darfur, being there and seeing what’s going on, seeing the horrors and the unspeakable sadness in this region, that’s a much bigger thing for people to digest and understand. Just talking about genocide, it’s so hard to conceive that I think basically what you’re dealing with is that people just at some point have to shut off because one it’s too horrifying to actually think that this is going on, and two it’s so far away, so I think while apathy plays into it, I also think it’s that our nerves can only take so much — you can start to feel really hopeless.

SSv: You’ve said you have a hard time wrapping your head around the difference between pretentious and earnest. Do you still have difficulty balancing that in your music?

Maida: I think I always will. Once you start to tackle any issue, anything you say politically or socially, as soon as you write that down in your little book of lyrics, it’s like: “Oh fuck. Here I go …” You know what I mean? But then again, I’d rather do it and take the punches and end up on the pretentious side of the fence. It’s all part of the learning process. Whatever. I figure I’ll always make mistakes and be perceived as both.

SSv: Is it even possible to be earnest without being a little bit pretentious? Would you ever want to truly be that balanced?

Maida: Probably not. I guess if you were so good at it, like a Bono…

SSv: Even he’s not that good at it.

Maida: [Laughs.] No, he’s not, he’s not. But that’s a guy who, you know, man does he try hard, maybe a little too hard. But he’s got so much experience, if he can’t keep it in balance, maybe that ideal is unobtainable for someone like me.

SSv: What place does political ideology play in meaningful music? How do you balance your politics and your music?

Maida: That’s tough. I mean, it’s funny. I didn’t grow up with all the Dylans, the Woodie Guthries, but you think about how vocal people were back then, and I think now it’s unfortunate that even with all the music that’s out there, it feels like no one’s really saying anything. In terms of how much music is out there, the percentage of people who are actually saying something that is worthwhile, the percentage isn’t very good.

I view it as there are a lot of people who talk about it. Everyone talks about, everyone on the left anyway, talks about how much they hate Bush. It’s so easy to go against the war and all this stuff, but they’re really just talking among their friends on the Internet, and maybe watching Bill Maher, but no one’s really doing anything. It’s like we’re all in such a bubble that we feel like we’re expressing ourselves when really we’re just expressing ourselves to the believers already.

But that’s happening on both sides, so it does feel like a really apathetic time for some reason, even when it’s probably the most politically and socially strained time in what may be the history of the world.

SSv: What would you define as “meaningful” music?

Maida: Music has always served as two different things for me. One, it’s been like an emotional journey. I remember the first time I heard the Pixies, albums like Radiohead’s The Bends and Grace by Jeff Buckley — I’m just naming the kind of records I’d put on and fucking just play over and over again, fall asleep to, just live these records.

I think those records always did two things. They were escapism in a very guttural healing way, and then there were other things like when you’d put on a Rage record or Johnny Cash or Dylan, where you’d get a little spite and bitterness in the lyrics. And it wakes you up. And all of a sudden you feel like, “Okay, this is an energizing thing, makes me feel part of this world.” You develop something like a camaraderie with the artists in that way.

That was a really powerful thing for me as well. It’s like I was saying about today, it’s not that music’s not quite as meaningful, it’s just lost some of its cachet for me. Whereas with the spoken word stuff these days … I was just judging a poetry slam on Friday night here in Toronto, and it’s just amazing that these spoken word poems, which I’m more and more considering “music” these days because it’s so rhythmic. But you get guys like Saul Williams and Sage Francis, the shit that these guys are saying, it’s what musicians should be saying. They’re really tackling things that are poignant, relevant.

I don’t know if it’s really a disconnect between an artist who maybe feels something but then has to write a song, record it, then try to get it heard, whereas a spoken word poet can wake up in the morning, read the paper and see something and write about it instantly. That probably helps keep things relevant and on topic. It’s mind blowing because it feels like it’s touching such a nerve, all the time. That’s to me, in kind of a weird way, that’s what’s more meaningful in music being made today.

SSv: You’re a producer, but you say on MySpace that what you are most proud of, we’ve likely never heard of. So who would we be taking the time to hear right now?

Maida: There’s this artist who I’m working with called Billy The Kid. She has her own record label, called Lost Records, and she’d been in punk bands for a bunch of years but she started making what I guess you’d call the antithesis of punk stuff. It’s really beautiful music and we’re just working on making a record. That’s a record I’m working on right now that I’m really excited about.

There are a lot of great independent artists, obviously. I don’t know if it’s harder to find them these days. I mean, I’m a big Kings of Leon fan, not because there’s anything, you know, meaningful there in terms of “change your life,” but there’s a quality there to them, in his voice, that I love. That’s more of an escapism record.

SSv: You know they’re enjoying themselves.

Maida: Yeah, you feel like they’re a bunch of kids in a rehearsal space making a record and, like you said, you get that feeling they’re enjoying it.

SSv: The Hunter’s Lullabye is supposedly about the quest to be a “decent human being.” What, in your eyes, distinguishes a decent human being?

Maida: I don’t know, it’s like there’s different levels. I think there’s got to be some level of self-realization that you’re not just living in a bubble. I think that’s the biggest accomplishment these days for most people. It’s just so easy to get wrapped up in whatever — paying your rent, car payment and your job — and unfortunately there’s just so much more going on with this planet that we need to be aware of as well. So that’s really the biggest challenge.

And it is for me too, even after being in Darfur and being shot at by the Janjaweed, and seeing Iraq right before the second invasion, that stuff just gets in your pores. But come back, you know, to North America and western culture and it’s funny how easily you get sucked back into thinking about non-important shit. We’re all susceptible to it, but somehow we have to find that perspective.

I’m really fortunate, I’ve been able to go to those places, so it’s always bouncing around in my subconscious reminding me of that stuff . But most people, I understand what it’s like — if you work a couple jobs to just try and provide for your kids, yeah! Why would you give a shit about anything else? You have to stay so focused on just being able to feed your kids. It’s a difficult time to ask people to get outside themselves, but I think that’s really where we need to be.

SSv: You’ve said you’re not sure where your album fits in the modern musical climate. Is it important to you that you figure that out?

Maida: Not really, no. It’s like I said, I think in realizing that my album doesn’t fit the mold, a nice calmness took over this whole record, because it’s just it was never done with any ambition of what my band did or what’s achievable in the music business. It’s just about making a record. I did it at home, I own it one hundred percent. It’s a really different place for an artist to be, especially after being on Columbia Records for ten years — it’s very cliché, but it’s so liberating to be able to make music the way you want to, knowing that no one’s going to want to come back and go, “Maybe if you changed the lyrics on that chorus, we’d be able to get this on the radio if you cut out the negative”

SSv: How would you hope people would judge your music in the future?

Maida: That’s such a tough question for an artist. I think my expectations are low in the sense of — even with my band Our Lady Peace — with some of the stuff it was presented so that people would be able to take the music on many levels. Some people will get into the band on a deeper level and get the lyrics, while some people hear it on the radio and just like the sound and can hum along.

SSv: Like when “Somewhere Out There” became a huge hit here out of nowhere?

Maida: Yeah, it’s one of those songs. It’s like I know that “Somewhere Out There” is one where like fifty percent of the people would say they just like to sing along on the radio while they’re driving home from work. I think The Hunter’s Lullabye probably is not for those kind of people. I’m not discounting their taste, this is just something that probably pushes people away a little bit on first listen.

Which is fine, like I said, there’s no commercial expectations on this, it’s kind of a selfish thing I guess. When I found out I can own this record, that kept really telling me to dig into it and finish it. And really it was a selfish kind of record, but something I’m really proud of. I want to continue making these kind of records for me, as kind of an offshoot from my band.

SSv: Has your songwriting process changed now that you’re working on solo material?

Maida: Well, this album was different. Usually I sit down, press record on this little cassette recorder I have, and just strum in acoustic and melodies pop out, and chords and lyrics. That’s the way I’ve always written songs. I have all these pages of poetry sitting up on my console, and I try to find the rhythm within the words, the beats that work with the words. It’s more of a hip-hop approach, really, even though it’s not really hip-hop.

That was the challenge for me, because I came at this in a completely foreign way. Just doing that, in itself, makes you feel really reborn as an artist because it’s a challenge. I didn’t feel once like “Oh, I’ve written this before!” I mean, like most artists, you tend to go to the same kind of chord progressions, you sing within your range, and the same kind of melodies pop out all over. This was just like being that kid learning to play guitar again. Any artist would understand that now I want to exploit the newness so much more, I want to keep making records like this.

SSv: Have you developed anything in this process that you’d be able to bring back to Our Lady Peace and make the recording process more enjoyable?

Maida: Well, we’ve done that already. This record was the complete antithesis of what we’ve done on the last two records we made with Bob Rock in Maui, that just did not suit me at all. So with OLP, with my solo record and the negotiations for that, we managed to own most of our next record, our seventh record, for Sony. So in that we’ve decided to just kind of record the same way I did my record.

Every three months we get together and we take ten days and write a few songs, record them right away, to capture that instant thing where we haven’t been able to find ourselves since our first record. Because your first record, even if you’re signed to a major label, you don’t know or give a shit about the business, you just care about the music. It isn’t until you taste what the music business is, that it affects you on any level.

Unfortunately — or fortunately now — we’re in a place where we feel really energized, where it’s amazing to be making a record just the four of us in a room, no one hearing it again and not having to worry about expectations. Right now my expectations are: “Did that feel great? Is that a take? We just played the song live, are we proud of that? Is it good enough? Did it move us?” I’m not worried about radio and all that other bullshit.

SSv: I remember reading in Rolling Stone that you and Our Lady Peace recorded more than 40 songs for Healthy in Paranoid Times which you then cut back to a dozen or so. But when you spoke to Canadian Musician about Happiness Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch, you said the band recorded and released nearly every song written during the sessions. Is it harder now to find “the right songs?”

Maida: No, what we lost sight of I think as a band is that, with the business of music, everything got more serious, with record sales declining. And a lot of bands will toe the line, a lot of bands on a major label — I wont name names, but big names who everyone knows — all of a sudden they’re coming to outside songwriters for the first single. I’m still an artist first, I’m not some hired gun bullshit songwriter. So what happens is, and we fell victim to that as well, we had to keep writing and writing and writing for the last record because Columbia was like “we really don’t hear a first single.”

And we kind of lost sight of the fact that it was never about that at first. That’s the damage that’s done to a band once they do have a big single or a couple hits. You get that pressure, where if you’re in the middle you’re in trouble. If you’re a band like the Chili Peppers, you’re okay because you’re going to sell a certain number of records regardless. But even for those bands the stakes are higher now. It’s just a tough place to be when you’re on a major label. I think ownership these days gives you a whole different perspective on your music. It feels like it’s bringing it back to being about art again.

SSv: You once said: “When you’re a brand new band, there’s a tingly sort of feeling you get when you play a song you just wrote.” Do you still get that feeling?

Maida: I do again now. I got it with my stuff during every minute, every second it felt like I was explaining before, it was something completely different. So it was like being with a new girl on those first few dates, the first time you both “get together.” You get those feelings. So that’s how I felt making this record. And then with the band, again, there’s something about ownership. You know that you own it, you’re freed of all this stuff you might not even have been aware of.

Every time we’ve gotten together — it’s been three times now, and we’ve recorded seven or eight songs — the only way for us to describe it is that it feels like we’re making our first record. It feels like when we were in our garage writing. Even though we knew we had a record deal, you have that kind of attitude where you really don’t give a shit, because you don’t know anything yet. You’re still totally naive. That’s a really great place to be as an artist.

That’s a problem these days in music. I think it was Chris Rock who said “who wants to hear fucking music from someone who wants to be a mogul in the music business?” And I think that’s a big problem. I don’t think it’s the artist’s fault, but it’s this thing that’s been put on everyone. It’s like if you’re an independent artist, you’ve got to do it yourself, you’ve got to know it and be aware of everything. If you’re a huge artist then you have to have a shoe company or maybe be president of a record label as well. There’s just no middle ground. You’re not allowed to be just an artist anymore and just focus on writing music everyday. That’s a really sad thing.

I’m pretty lucky because no matter what I’m doing, whether I’m producing or writing or making records for my band and for myself, I’m just in my studio every day making music, writing songs. And I’ve tried to really keep it as simple as that.

SSv: Has your humanitarian work fueled your musical passion in recent years?

Maida: I think as a human being you become hyper-aware of things. It gives you a better sense of things you want to speak about. You have to define those for yourself. I parallel it to learning any craft. Once you really are able to dig into it, you’re better able to understand. It’s like the middle east. I never really understood, until I went there, why it’s really such a fucked up region. All those countries are just so close together, all of a sudden it starts to make sense — it’s a crazy place because all these different cultures are trying to exist within this really small area.

If anything it just gives you that perspective that I wouldn’t have been able to have, because I’ve always wanted to incorporate bigger issues into my music, which goes back to the whole pretentious-earnest thing. You’re on a different level once you’ve been able to truly experience it and be there. I’m glad I got the opportunity to get involved with War Child when I did.

SSv: Our Lady Peace built a whole album, Spiritual Machines, out of discussions you and former lead guitarist Mike Turner had with the band about Ray Kurzweil’s book. What reading has fueled your most recent work? What should we be reading that we maybe haven’t?

Maida: Not so much reading, but it was really more of the spoken word stuff. I’ve done some performances — I do a little spoken word myself, and I perform with Saul Williams and others like him, and in the course of the past year or so I made friends with this cat named Jared Paul, and being inundated with that sound, seeing where all those people are coming from, politically and socially, how they put words together, you can’t help but be inspired by it because it’s just so relevant. What they’re saying is so matter-of-fact.

For me it was the same as when I first heard Nirvana or U2, you feel that kind of sense of: “Wow, finally someone’s really fucking saying something!” That was really the biggest influence for me. I’m there, but I’m not one of those guys. I think Saul’s the closest thing to Ginsberg that we have, so I’m not trying to be full of myself or say I’m a spoken word guy. I’m not the guy who’s gonna go up and blow people away with my words, though I can try to incorporate a little of that fire into what I do.

SSv: I’m sure you get asked constantly about where the name Our Lady Peace came from. Does it bother you that more young people these days haven’t read Mark Van Doren?

Maida: [Laughs.] No, not really. The Van Doren thing was one of the poems that I had from a literature class when I was in college. He’s definitely not one of my favorite poets. I’d rather they dig into the Kerouacs, the Ginsbergs. But no, that would have been really pretentious if we’d been named for one of those guys.

SSv: You and your wife are both successful recording artists. Do you two ever become competitive musically, or do you prefer working together?

Maida: I don’t think we get competitive, I think we get heated. I think we’re both really passionate about what we do. It’s really easy for us to riff on each other, like whose idea is better, or which idea we should use. We collaborate a lot. I think that’s healthy, I look at it as a challenge because I really respect Chantal [Kreviazuk], she comes at music in a completely different way. Her idols are Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon, while mine were more of the alternative, like the Pixies, early U2 and early REM.

And it’s amazing when you get those two different forces in a room. Sometimes it works and it’s really interesting, but sometimes we just disagree and stop — sometimes that’s the way it’s got to be. It’d be different if we were both coming from the same place. I think that’s why it works so well, we each bring something new.

SSv: Do you each have your own recording studio areas in the home?

Maida: We have a studio in our house, there’s like a live room and then the control room. We have three pianos, all these keyboards and guitars strewn all across the house. So I mean if someone wanted to write, there’s a million places to do that. But when we’re recording, I’m in control. She can’t work all the gear. I’ve tried not to teach her. [Laughs.]

SSv: If you don’t mind me asking, how do you go about sharing your love of music with your children?

Maida: They’re just around it every day. Our philosophy is that, in today’s society, where everybody’s got these cleaners, everybody’s trying to keep things so sanitized, we try to get our kids to play in the mud and get dirty. And if they want to hear a song, they’ve got to play it. I’ll pick up a guitar and be like “let’s sing!” Or play the piano, or my kids love to play the drums, like most kids. I want them to feel it and have it in their hands, not to think that music is something you just “put on.”

It may be different because we’re artists. But I understand just how powerful music is, because it saves me every day. No matter what mood you’re in or what’s going on, you put on the music you want to listen to and it alters your life, really. So I wanted them to have that, whether they get into the music business or not. I want them to be able to sit down and play an instrument, write a song, to just escape within that instrument. It’s … fuck, it’s so important.

SSv: Several years ago, Duncan Coutts gave an interview where he said: “Raine is pretty cryptic, or he can be, when it comes to his lyrics. He can be pretty tight-lipped � I think he prefers it to be left for the listener to interpret.” Does that really sum up your aim?

Maida: Well, I think the misconception there is that at first, in writing for a rock band, I got into music because I loved creative writing. I loved writing poetry and I loved reading poetry. And early on I found out that when I was writing for our first record, I was writing poems. And when you get into the format for a song — and with a rock band, I don’t care what anybody says, there is a format. You’re talking about three and a half, four and a half minutes, and you try to smash a poem into that and it just doesn’t work. It gets compromised to the point where you read back that song when it’s turned into a lyric and it’s a shell of what it used to be. It just doesn’t make any sense anymore.

I quickly realized that wasn’t working, I had to write “real lyrics.” Which are more cryptic and more ambiguous. It’s more cut up and maybe I’m just not very good at it, I’d totally admit to that. But now in this new format, it’s a different song structure. Being able to put in more syllables, being able to take on a little more of that spoken word thing, I can finally tell a story. I can feel like it’s viable, that I’m not compromising anything. I think that’s where he’s coming from in saying I was a little bit cryptic. Really it wasn’t me, it was more of the format. I’m not writing about chicks and cars, so it’s more of a challenge, something I don’t find is easy to do within the confines of a typical song.

SSv: But then again, I’d hear songs like “Wipe That Smile Off Your Face,” where one reviewer looks at it and says it’s a breakup song, while another reviewer hears it and says it’s about George W. Bush.

Maida: [Laughs.] That’s awesome! That’s so great … maybe that’s it, because what I think happens, Jon, is that you can’t give enough information to really define what this is about exactly. And really I think what I realize is that with a lot of music maybe it’s not my job as a lyricist to really explain it one hundred percent, so defined, that that’s really what I’m talking about. To where you can’t interpret it your own way. The music video did that, to where suddenly there you go, it’s an image to the song. Like it or not, that’s what you’re going to see when you hear the song.

Most people I think are disappointed. I always was, except for a couple Radiohead videos. I think I started to take that on, something of me not trying to give it all away. Leave it a little more universal, more open ended, where my new record, The Hunter’s Lullabye, is definitely not that. It’s not cryptic and in its format I’m allowed to express thoughts, to really lay out the story, which I’ve found really exciting.

SSv: Clumsy has always been my favorite Our Lady Peace record. It was the one album my friends and I stumbled on at that time which hooked us on the band. The line “does anybody ever know that the world’s a subway?” always stuck in my head. Have you ever explained where that line came from?

Maida: Well, to me it’s funny, because I grew up in Toronto. I spent all my teenage years on the subway, coming to concerts, traveling — I lived outside, just west of the city, so I would take the subway. And the subway was always a metaphor for me, like I’d hear people talking about how they were going to get downtown, they’d say “my friend’s got a car.” And I’d say fuck it. I’m taking the subway because you’d get somewhere so fast. And all the advertisements always going by, it always felt like this fast, incredibly quick mode of, obviously, transportation, but at the same time it was this metaphor for this lightning speed kind of thing.

And then, when we were making that record, that song started to brew, and that metaphor became really powerful because I felt like I was living in a world that was turning into that. And you look at the world today and it’s like fuck! The kids don’t even listen to a whole song anymore, they’re just skipping around. It’s weird, but that thing, that lyric, I hoped never would really come to fruition, but man it’s gone way farther than anything I’d ever expected.

In your case, the magazine industry, it must be crazy! I did this interview with a magazine in Canada, it’s like a hipster free counter-culture skateboards, everything, kind of magazine. And I was just blown away, like we did this half an hour interview and I saw the magazine the other day and it’s really maybe like three hundred words. It’s insane! Insane!

SSv: Does it ever bother you that, while you’ve become successful in Canada, you’ve never been able to build anything more than a “cult” following here in the United States?

Maida: No, I think what we have in the U.S., it’s really amazing. Outside New York and maybe a few cities in the U.S., we get the chance to do the theaters, maybe a thousand, or twelve hundred people, that’s such a great place to be anyway. On the last Canadian tour, except for a few towns which didn’t have a nice theater, so we had to play their arena, we did that. And Neil Young, he’d just put out his Live At Massey Hall — Massey Hall’s this really great 2,200 seat theater in Toronto, a famous classically beautiful theater, and we did that place instead of playing the Air Canada Centre.

It was a little bit more fulfilling, since at that point, in that kind of setting, you knew the people there are real fans. The fans who hear “Somewhere Out There” and prefer to sing along in the car probably aren’t going to buy tickets to your show. You’re making that connection with the real fans, and I think that’s what usually happens in the U.S. The people who are at our shows there get the chance to forge a real bond, and that takes a lot of work, a lot of touring. If you hear a great live band on a tour, hopefully you’ll stay really united as true fans long term.

SSv: Most of my favorite bands hail from Canada. So, here’s an odd question perhaps. Is there something in the water up there that breeds musical brilliance?

Maida: I think anyone who grew up around Toronto — like I said, there was a station here, but it’s changed a bit — they were the first station I think in North America to play Radiohead, one of the first stations to get on Blur and all those other premier UK bands. They’d come here and break first because they got the radio support.

I think the diversity here has something to do with it. Again, they’d play all the great American bands as well, but you would have that balance. So there’s more of a uniqueness to our music, where the influences are coming from a broader palate. Definitely for me that happened. Without a doubt that was a big part of music for me, having both sides. Because I remember when we first started touring we’d go to these so-called alternative stations but it was just Dinosaur Jr. and Nirvana or the Pixies, and no one was playing bands like Blur, at least until they had that “Song 2″ hit. Just being exposed to all that stuff helped shape what I was musically. You could pull from more things which felt unique.

SSv: What question do you wish you’d never be asked again?

Maida: You know, at this point I’m just happy that people ask questions.

SSv: What question do you wish someone would ask, but they never do?

Maida: That’s interesting. I don’t know, I feel like I’ve probably been asked anything to the point where people are probably sick of hearing me. It’s kind of like I even get sick of hearing myself talk. I think I’m probably at that tipping point where I’ve heard enough [variety].

SSv: I guess that makes interview days like this one fun.

Maida: Yeah, definitely. No, it’s different when you’re talking about something that’s not another Our Lady Peace record. To talk about OLP much more in any depth is a bit redundant. But when it’s a new project, like with this solo record, I feel like I do have something interesting to say again.

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