CMW part one (part two): the first show...

Day 1. Things in Toronto do end early. They start early too. I’m still on Montreal time, 11:30 is a reasonable time to arrive at a show. Apparently it doesn’t work that way in Toronto (though it is a Wednesday night and this is Toronto so everyone does have to work tomorrow) by the time I get there the last band is just going on. At first I’m a little disappointed, but I’m glad I went.

The Speaking Tongues, the last band of the night, at Tattoo play fast and loud, dirty blues crossed with garage rock and roll. They’re derivative as hell but they do it well, and after a day on the bus a little rock and roll is just what I need. A Detroit influence runs through their songs, inviting the obvious comparison to the standard bearers of the sound, the White Stripes (the fact that they’re also a two piece makes the comparison almost too obvious). But it’s not something they deny.

“Obviously the white stripes are a pretty big influence,” said drummer/singer Pete. “But then you look behind that and there’s all these other great Detroit bands like the Dirtbombs, Detroit Velvets, and Soledad Brothers and then even behind them, they’re all playing covers of these ancient delta blues musicians.” Adding, “We draw most of our style from those deeper southern blues influences.”

“It’s kinda like Detroit meets Mississippi,” said Aaron

Despite the lack of a bass player the guitar has a thick heavy sound, but singer/guitar player Aaron says it just worked out that way, he plays a used amp, which he describes as “very bassy” he only effect, “a $60 distortion pedal.”

“It’s all out of necessity,” he said. “It’s all we can afford, we just gotta make it work”

“We pretty much embrace what we have” Pete adds, “those drums I’ve had for a long time, I gave them up forever, and then I pulled them out of the closet, dusted them off…that’s the sound”

The two met at work. “We started playing together like two and a half years ago,” said Aaron “we played our first show a year and a half ago.”

“Our first show just kind of came out of jams,” adds Pete. “we snuck way our on to a list and wrote all our songs and that was it.”

“We booked our first show with one song and then we wrote five more for the show,” said Aaron, “and played for like fifteen minutes… we’d never been in a band before this.” Aaron, “we cut our chops by playing with each other, everyone else I know in a band, they’ve been playing for so long, he was the only other person that I knew, who had never been in a band before.”

The idea of working with what they have seems to be a common theme for the band.
“Originally we were going to be an instrumental band, because neither of us wanted to sing.” Pete, who sings on several songs – while playing drums. “Again [it’s] the same thing, we said there’s two of us, why don’t we make the most of this, so we both practiced singing.”

But Pete said that playing drums and singing isn’t any harder than singing while playing any other instrument. “It’s the same thing as playing guitar.”

“Most two piece bands only one person sings.” said Aaron, “it’s kind of strange when you think about it.”