It’s been more than four years since You Say Party! We Say Die! were last allowed to tour the United States, but with visa issued cleared up and their third LP, XXXX, still new on local shelves, the Canadian band are finally making their way back south for a month of shows including six in Austin during SXSW. Before the band got on their way, lead singer Becky Ninkovic phoned in to talk about the upcoming trip, the making of the album and how they’ve embraced the X’s that keep following them around.
Urb.com: What kept you out of the US prior to this tour and how did it get resolved?
Becky: We had border troubles with our visas and it was kind of an unfortunate stream of events that Stephen our bass player being banned for five years. So we’ve been working with lawyers just working really hard to get everything sorted out so that we can come back and finally finally we’re going to get to do it.
Urb.com: Has much changed for you since your last tour of the US, is this going to be a different band?
Becky: I think we’ve definitely gone through a lot of changes a lot of growth and definitely learned a lot from being on the road. We’ve traveled in Asia and Europe. We’ve been to Asia twice now and Europe five or six times and crossed Canada nine times, so we’ve been very busy just exploring all the other territories and I think there’s a lot that happens to a band when they hit the road for long periods of time. You get really close and you go through a lot of challenges and all those challenges bring about good growth. I hate to use the word maturity, (laughs) but we’ve definitely matured a lot from those early days.
Urb.com: Has all the touring affected your music, what’s different sonically for the band?
Becky: I think so. So much about creating music is psychological, and when you go through changes and work through challenges you definitely come to new realizations psychologically, emotionally and relationally together. All of those changes bring about new sounds and topics to sing about. That definitely comes through in our new album. I kind of came through a bit of a dark storm and came out on the other side feeling a lot more good feelings of love and all those wonderful realizations you have when you come through something.
I think our new album definitely captures a lot of that. We are just a lot more connected in our songwriting now too. The way we communicate with each other, we’ve really gone through a lot of adapting as humans do.
Urb.com: Where are most excited about visiting when you get back to the states?
Becky: It’s a tough call. I’m very excited to get back to New York. I have an awesome, wild aunt who lives in Santa Rosa so will be at our show in San Francisco. She’s been raving to me about the venue in San Francisco being a cool one, and I’ve always enjoyed going to San Francisco. I’ve been there a lot in my childhood so I feel a connection there. I’m just really excited to get back to the states. I’m actually a dual citizen, my whole mom’s side of the family is from California. I spent a lot of time growing up going on family vacations there and up and down the Oregon coast, and it’ll be nice to see that again.
Urb.com: Is there something about Canada that’s really good for musicians or good for making music?
Becky: I don’t know per se. I think the scene is a lot smaller than I ever realized it was, it’s just that we have a lot of land to cross, so you get the sense that it’s this giant place and this giant music scene and yet, like now we’ve crossed it nine times and every time I discover what a small world it actually is. We’ve just had such great opportunities to meet many bands and kind of realized how close-knit the family of music is in Canada. Even if we’re all playing very different styles and genres, there’s still kind of that family feeling in the same way that, I guess what I’m trying to get at is in a family you’ve got the crazy aunts and the super conservative parents, and you’ve got so many different people in one bag and I kind of find that’s the way it is in the Canadian music scene too. And yet that doesn’t seem to get in anyone’s way from making connections and becoming friends and supporting each other. I think that’s pretty cool about the scene.
Urb.com: What can people expect from the band when you get on state during the upcoming tour?
Becky: When we get on stage it really varies a lot show to show. There’s a lot of energy that the crowds create and I really feed on the energy in the room. I don’t know, there’s just a lot of natural energy that hits us when we hit the stage. No matter how tired we are, or what we’ve gone through that day, when we get on stage it’s like something takes over us and we just really come alive. There’s just something natural that happens there that I really appreciate.
We like to change it up while we’re playing to just see what happens and let whatever magic is happening kind of take over. That might dictate some song changes and we like to keep things spontaneous with a kind of loose structure.
Urb.com: On your latest album it’s titled XXXX and it’s used in some of the song titles and in lyrics sheets. Can you tell my why you choose all those X’s?
Becky: When we were finished writing and talking about what names we wanted to see for the album, we couldn’t help notice that there was quite a theme of love coming through and a lot of the lyrics are about love in all its forms. We wanted to tap into that, but not in a way that was very obvious.
The problem with the word love is that it’s been used so much that it often falls into stereotypes and clichés. Even if the clichés are whole truths, they’re these cliché statements, so we were trying to stay away from that. At some point I kind of realized that our first EP that we ever made, it was called danskwad, when I was making the artwork for it, I cut out these paper X’s. I cut out four of them, and I glued them on, and I remember thinking to myself as I glued them on, L-O-V-E, love, and it was kind of my secret language there. Just a little moment between me, myself and I. Those X’s have made their way into all of our album artwork and T-shirt artwork and one way or another even if they’re tiny, tiny, tiny, they’ve always stayed there. Everyone in the band has always liked those four X’s, and I always liked to see that that love kept continuing throughout everything we’d been creating. So, I let the band know that that was actually what they stood and everybody just loved that and it just immediately made sense that we call this album XXXX.
Urb.com: is using that as the title for the album then a sing that you feel this is the sound of the band really hitting its stride?
Becky: Yeah, definitely. It’s something we all discovered in one way or another. We’re such different individuals. Each one of us is so different and yet somehow through those challenges and experiences that we’ve gone through together, I think we’ve all developed an understanding of what it takes to be together and to be a band. It really does come down to having a spirit of love within you that no matter what that person is doing or saying, that like it or not you can kind of look through all that and recognize that underneath it that soul inside of them is totally worth loving. For me that was a big realization I came to and it was kind of an attitude of reverence that you hit. I guess that’s where we were at when we created this album.
I feel like all of our albums are snapshots of moments in our development, moments in our life. I’m happy that we came to such a positive place for this album. I think we all feel really united in how we feel about this album. Whereas with past albums there’s definitely a variety of mixed feelings among all of us.
It also was really nice to be able to work with Howard Redekopp, and he was able to really pull out the best in each of us. And having a lot more time to spend in the studio with him and really discover each of these songs on their own, kind of allowed the life of the songs to just exist without use coming in and arguing and competing for places within the songs to play. It was definitely an attitude of more openness and just respect for the songs.
Urb.com: Has that same attitude continued from the studio back onto the stage?
Becky: I think so. For You Say Party, it’s always been a learning process. I think every show we learn a little bit more and see what works and what doesn’t. It’s always a new experience night after night. I like it that way. It keeps things interesting.
Tour dates:
March 9 – Seattle – Chop Suey
March 10 – Portland, Ore. – Doug Fir
March 12– San Francisco – Bottom Of the Hill
March 13– Los Angeles – Echoplex
March 15– Phoenix – Rhythm Room
March 17– Austin – Canadian Blast Party @ SXSW
March 17– Austin – Pure Volume Showcase @ SXSW
March 18– Austin – Casablanca Publishing/Maggie Mae’s @ SXSW
March 18– Austin – Paper Bag Records Party/Speakeasy @ SXSW
March 19– Austin – Consequence of Sound Party/Black Sheep Lodge @ SXSW
March 19 – Austin – Lose Control 2010 Party/Vice @ SXSW
March 21– Memphis – Hi Tone
March 22– Atlanta – The Earl
March 23– Charlotte – Snug Harbor
March 24– Baltimore – Ottobar
March 26– New York – Knitting Factory
March 27– Boston – TT The Bears
March 29– New York – Piano’s
March 30– Detroit – Pike Room
March 31– Chicago – Empty Bottle
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