by Sheldon Birnie
Jeff Stuart & The Hearts are a six-piece indie roots band out of Edmonton. Two albums deep, and with a bunch of festival gigs and big-time opening spots behind them, Jeff & The Hearts are taking to the Highway to spread their sound across Canada. With a stop in Winnipeg tonight with local lovelies The Sweet Alibi, Jeff took some time out of last-minute tour prep to chat with Stylus about their latest record, Equal Parts Reason & Moonlight, and touring and writing with a large band.
Stylus: Where are you folks headed from Winnipeg?
Jeff Stuart: We’re just going to head back through Regina and Saskatoon, back to Alberta. Just a short little western tour, then hit Ontario up in the spring.
Stylus: Your latest disc has been getting some great reviews. Can you tell us a little about the album and its reception so far?
JS: It’s about a year old now, and we’ve had some good feedback. The record’s led to some good opportunities. It did fairly well on campus radio across the country, and we had some national exposure on CBC. So that was good, it got out there. It was self-produced, everything from the songs and everything that goes along with it. There’s some nice strings on the record that we scored in house and had some friends come out and work to execute all that. I think we give a fairly good representation of what that sounds like live. We’re a six-piece, we can sort of represent all those sounds as best we can. It’s kind of an indie-pop, rootsy record. As I said, it’s given us some good opportunities. We’ve played some festivals as a result, we’ve done some things like the Calgary Folk Festival and been able to open up for some people like Ron Sexsmith and a number of other things like that. It seems to be rolling along.
Stylus: As a six-piece, that must make it a little harder to do things like go out on the Highway and tour. How do you work around that?
JS: Well, you’re totally right. It does make things more challenging. But for us, in order to represent what we do and what the record is all about, we really do try to play as a full line-up all the time. It definitely is a bit more expensive and challenging to co-ordinate six people’s schedules. We’ve been fortunate that everyone is really committed. We just try to do all our planning well in advance so we can put things in place so that it works for everybody. We’ve been working hard and have been able to consistently make it work. We’ve got a good little rig, a van and a trailer and the whole bit. We do it, and make it work.
Stylus: What can the crowd at the Park Theatre expect from you folks?
JS: We’re a fairly high energy. As a six piece we’re representing a lot of different sounds and that. Lots of vocal harmonies and, I think, good arrangements. It’s a good mix of roots and poppy stuff. As much as we take our music very seriously, we try not to take ourselves too seriously, so we try to have fun with it. I know we have a lot of fun playing together. One of the things that consistently comes up when we’re hearing feedback after our shows is that that fun comes across in the music and the live show, and I think people have a lot of fun watching us. So hopefully we can bring that to the people in Winnipeg after a long travel.
Stylus: Are you folks working on anything new yet, or still just pushing the last record?
JS: This record still seems to be getting some traction, so we’re not letting it drop off the radar. We’re still trying to support it. But in the meantime we’ve been writing and working on some arrangements. We’ve started pre-production on the new record. We do have that happening.
Stylus: When it comes to writing, do you bring the songs to the band and go from there? Or is there some collaborative writing? How does it work with your group?
JS: Well, generally I bring the outline of songs anyway. I write the lyrics and come up with the basic structures and melodies primarily. Gavin Dunn, who’s in the band, he’s also the primary producer when we record. The way things generally work is we start with a basic structure and work out some ideas for how to add the layers, to make the arrangements a bit more interesting. What happened [with the last record] is we did that, brought it into the studio and refined it, recorded it, then sort of had to come back and relearn the songs. Nothing changed drastically, but we almost had to work backwards to present it live. With six people, there are a lot of different ideas. We do work collaboratively. There’s a couple tracks on there that were kind of co-written. I happen to be the primary songwriter, but that’s not to say that there aren’t other things coming forward. There are. And they all compliment the song in the end.
Make sure to check out Jeff Stuart & The Hearts, along with the Sweet Alibi, tonight at the Park Theatre.