Woodpigeon Interview

Woodpigeon Interview

Field Day Festival, London, 01.08.09

Louise Morris interviews Mark Hamilton


Woodpigeon are an ensemble of friends and musicians based in Calgary, Canada, mixing traditional folk sounds with haunting harmonies, narrative lyrics and very long song titles! The group’s format changes frequently so you are bound to hear new renditions of old favourite songs making each show unique. I met the ever (unjustifiably) self-deprecating Mark Hamilton at Field Day Festival in London’s Victoria park. Cross legged on the grass, Mark talked about fleeing from German police, only wanting to perform with mediocre bands and sightseeing the ugliest building in Britain...

LM: What was your favourite festival experience?

MH: A festival in Canada. Well, who played?...Deerhoof played. Do you know Sandra Perry, from Toronto? Well he played which was kinda special ‘cos we’ve made records together, we saw Lightning Bolts who were also amazing, Sonic Youth, just all these bands I’ve wanted to see for a long time. Um, yeah and everybody was just really kind, there were no queues for anything. Kim Gordon ran up to me at a party ‘cos she thought she knew me and then when I said hi she just walked away. So that was my Kim Gordon experience!

LM: Who would you most like to share a stage with if you had a choice-alive or dead?

MH: Alive or dead!? Gosh...I dunno every time I play with bands I really like I get so depressed because I think they’re so much better! So I’d like to share the stage with really mediocre, average bands. [laughs] To make me look better!

LM: I heard you played with Andrew Bird a while ago...

MH: There’s a perfect example! Of making yourself feel bad. We did a show once with Grizzly Bear, in a church and as they started I was just like I don’t want to do this anymore! I mean they’re incredible; it’s amazing to see what is happening out there.

LM: So how do you feel about working as a sort of collaborative of various musicians as opposed to a set group? How do you enjoy working in that way in a freer manner?

MH: Umm, it’s certainly got challenges to it, but it makes the songs really interesting for me, ‘cos some of them I have to play like a hundred times in front of a hundred different people, each song, probably by this point, has at least fifteen, twenty different ways to play it, so that’s really exciting for me. And I’m always trying to find new friends.

LM: So, how do each of you contribute to the different harmonies, when you come up with the song do others influence the making of it or bring something new to it?

MH: Yeah. Yeah there’s lots of suggestion and there’s lots of...I don’t know how to write musical notation out, so there’s lots of humming and humming seems to be like, what’s that game when you sit in a circle and everybody whispers round to each other?

LM: Chinese whispers?

MH: Chinese whispers! It seems like that. Every time you whisper a harmony to someone they then do it their own way, so that’s always really cool for me too.

LM: You seem to have a lot of really beautiful but long song titles, and I was wondering- is Love in the Time of Hopscotch inspired by Love in the Time of Cholera?

MH: [laughing] Yeah I’ve never had cholera. I thought it was like...well ‘cos I grew up in a nice Canadian city and at our school had these hopscotch fields, on the pavement, so just thinking about that really, and I think I’d just finished the book so I was just thinking about how brutal it would be to have, huh Love in the Time of Cholera! My upbringing was much commoner.

LM: A lot of your songs seem to have a storytelling element to them- were you ever consciously inspired by particular authors?

MH: Well, I wanted to write books and things. And do you know Cassio Tone the musician? Well he’s this large fellow from Portland, who plays keyboards, and he sings these really great narrative songs and I met him in Scotland before I played music. We both had similar backgrounds, we both went to film school and learned to make films but it never really worked out, and went to Edinburgh. So um he realised he could tell stories better through songs, and then I gave it a shot, partly influenced by him. I dunno. For me this method of storytelling i think works a lot better.

LM: It’s more interesting or...?

MH: I think if you were to write a book, there’s always that risk of just going on and on, but if you write a song you’ve got to fit it into a framework of some kind. And I think you can say a lot with five words.

LM: I’ve also noticed that travel seems to be an integral part of many of your songs- do you feel that it’s an essential experience to have had to become a better songwriter?

MH: Maybe to be a better person too, I think. But I’m always struggling to figure out where I should live, where’s the best place...and I thought I’d found that place when I was living in Scotland...but then it didn’t quite work out in the way that I hoped it would, so. I’m still trying to figure out the best place for me. It takes a lot of time in my head.

LM: I guess being on tour gives you that opportunity, to see more and to think.

MH: Yeah, yeah. You get to see a city in seconds. We played Ipswich the other day which I’d read had the ugliest building in the UK, the bus station, so I asked this fellow at the show to drive me out there to see it and I took pictures with the ugliest building in Britain.

LM: I think there are some contenders around London for that title...

MH: Do you have a favourite ugly building?

LM: Uh, I guess...they knocked it down though. There was this one right in the middle of a roundabout near Waterloo, it was pretty distinctive, but they bulldozed it.
MH: This British architect came to my city, William Alsop, do you know his work?
LM: I think I’ve heard it before.
MH: Well part of what he wants to do is restructure cities and make them more usable for people and he’s done an English city, I can’t remember which one, he showed us all these diagrams and then someone asked him what he would do to Calgary and he said “bulldoze it all down and start over!”

LM: What?! I also wanted to ask what you thought about this sudden emergence of Canadian talent that we’ve noticed over here. In the last few years in England it seems many of the really great new bands are Canadian. What do you think sparked this rush?

MH: Umm, I don’t know, well I think with a Canadian city you’ve got that element of being really isolated and so you’ve got kind of a bubble that you work within. The closest cities to you are typically a six hour drive and you don’t undertake that really often. As to why a lot of good stuff is coming out of Canada at the moment, I can’t really answer that, maybe it’s just...I remember reading an interview once I think it was with Björk and she said that the reason Iceland is so interesting is because there’s nothing to do but stay inside and make music or art. To an extent I think that may be true for Canada. And you know, we’re kind of making up our own culture, because we don’t really have an overriding culture, it’s not an old country, our culture is a shadow of Britain as we’ve been a colony for so long.

LM: Communities of bands seem to differ hugely depending on the place, how do you think the musical scene in Canada differs from that in say, London or Scotland?

MH: I’d say in Canada as opposed to Scotland everyone seems to be really nice and patient with each other for the most part. I don’t really know what London is like to be honest, when I come over I go to a lot of shows and there’s always a lot of crossed arms. I think there’s so much to see and to take in, people are just waiting to be really, really impressed. London is always maybe one of the shows you dread! [laughs] “oh this better be good!”

LM: I think that’s why it’s nicer for us up in Newcastle, because bands that will play big venues in London seem to play smaller ones up North.

MH: Well Newcastle’s still one of my favourite shows

LM: The one at the End bar?

MH: No it was one before that. It’s a name that starts with a “C”...

LM: The Cumberland Arms?

MH: That’s right, I loved that. That’s where we met Beth [Jeans Houghton]. We’re playing the Cluny next. Is that nice?

LM: Yeah it’s really nice, it’s supposed to be one of the best pubs up North. I wanted to ask you about your next album, what was it like working with Ryan Morey, considering he made such a big impact worldwide with a Canadian band, Arcade Fire?

MH: Well, um we sent it to him and asked if he wanted to work on it and right away he said yes I really do, and he’s just so easy and simple to work with, I mean it sounds amazing. He really did a good job with it and he always sends little nice notes and things. He’s a wonderful guy, I mean I don’t totally understand the mastering process but I just I went to see the last record being mastered and I didn’t understand it but I just wanted to be able to trust somebody with it.

LM: And how has your sound developed from the last few records?

MH: Well the next one we’ve tried to make like really, really big, really grand. We put together an orchestra of our friends who play classical instruments and we made a choir of thirty bands that play in Calgary, so it’s pretty big. The thing that I like the most about it is that I can still play the songs on my own, they hold together both ways. That’s my big plan!

LM: So you want to play more solo shows?

MH: Yeah. I guess it’s like really epic and really small at the same time, its good and Mark suddenly catches sight of another band-there’s First Aid Kit, they were awesome!

LM: I heard that your next record is really influenced by your German heritage and travels around Germany, I travelled around there myself this summer and was wondering if you had any recommendations of things to see in Berlin?!

MH: Ah well there’s this cool old amusement park called Spree park, right by Treptowerpark, I actually have another band called Spree park, it’s kind of stupid dance-rock. And Spree park is this amusement park that closed down in 1989 and its sat derelict, there was a couple of times that I’ve been able to jump the fence and climb in and you just wander around all these old roller coasters falling down, this ferris wheel that’s slanted and all these old rotting rides, funhouses and things. I remember the next time I went, I took a friend who’s a photographer and within five minutes it was swarming with security, so we had to hide under like this rotting umbrella in minus 10 weather and it was raining and gross, and we were sat there for 3 hours and they would actually walk by our heads, that’s how close they got. Um so after 3 hours we were like let’s just forget it, so we jumped up and ran, and jumped the fence again!

LM: Did they chase you?

MH: They did a little bit! It’s worth seeing if you can make your way in.

LM: Well thank you for your time, its been really interesting to talk to you, i guess you’d better get ready!