by Sheldon Birnie
For the past six years, Winnipeg’s Chic Gamine have been carving a name for themselves not only at home in Canada, but as far afield as Europe, the States, and beyond with their tight vocal harmonies and their tunes that at once are at once fresh and modern and yet also a nostalgic throwback to 60s era girl super groups. From the Winnipeg Folk Festival Main Stage, to the concert halls, to European clubs, and everywhere in between, Chic Gamine have been blowing audiences away. As they prepare for a big hometown show, a short European tour, and recording their new album, Alexa Dirks (somehow!) found time to speak with Stylus about it all.
Stylus: So Alexa, what’s new and exciting with Chic Gamine?
Alexa Dirks: Well, I guess our main focus is we’re writing for a new album. That’s the thing we’re most excited about. Right now we’re kind of taking some thoughtful time off touring, so we can just be in the creative process and just dive in to the writing of this new album. We’ve already started, which I guess is why this show [Saturday, November 23] is exciting, too. We’ll be presenting the evolution of our band, and we’re playing in a new venue that we’ve never played in Winnipeg before. We’re kind of showcasing some of our newer material, which should be fun to see peoples’ reaction. So yeah, we’re taking some time off the road, though we are going to Europe in December for a couple weeks. Other than that, which is a two week run, we’re going to be writing and focusing on this album for the next few months, until spring or summer.
Stylus: Sounds like that’s a bit of a departure for you folks. You seem to always be on the go…
AD: Yeah, it’s totally what it’s felt like for the past few years; like we’re always on the go, all the time. So we’re happy to be taking some downtime to really, really focus on being creative, and giving this album life, and getting it to be the way we want it to be.
Stylus: It may be too early to tell how the album will sound, but you mention that you’re trying to demonstrate [at this show] the evolution of the band. Can you tell me more specifically what you mean by that?
AD: Well, we started six years ago. We started pretty folky and barebones, which is quite a lot different than where we are now. We’re not trying to put down where we came from, but we’ve really come a long way and evolved into this bigger band, a bigger sound, that we always envisioned. It just took us a while to get here. We’re at a place where we’re all playing instruments, we’re singing in different ways, we’re coming up with material in different ways, we’re jamming more. The material is a lot heavier, I feel. It’s kind of, yeah, it’s rockier. And I hesitate to use cliched words like, but it really is a little “edgier,” heavier, and darker. I hate using those words, though. But yeah.
Stylus: Do you have recording plans in place?
AD: We’re going to be doing pre-production in Montreal for basically all of January and a bit of February. We’re going to be getting together and fine tuning the songs we’ve been writing for the past year. We’re really going to be trying to put our best effort forward. Then in March we’re going to be recording in Winnipeg for the first time, so we’re all really excited about that.
Stylus: You have been travelling around the world for years now, showcasing what you’ve done. What’s it like playing such diverse stages or to such diverse audiences as, say, the Folk Festival Mainstage, to like a club, and then a theatre?
AD: It’s fun. It’s great, we really have done such a variety of things. The way we started, our configuration was different in that we did play a lot of softer venues. We played a lot of performing arts halls, a lot of like “series” where people would buy season tickets, and we would just happen to be a band that was playing. People wouldn’t necessarily seek us out so much. That’s completely different than folk festivals that are open, fun experiences with crowds that are just excited to hear music. I mean, those performing arts crowds are excited to hear music, too. But its a completely different context, a different energy. And clubs are completely different, too. Sometimes there’ll only be two people there! And sometimes there’ll be 100. They’re more unpredictable, and that’s something we’re looking to get more into; not being as maybe comfortable as we have been in the past. It’s not necessarily conscious, but I think it’s come to the point where that’s where we fit in better. What I think is good about us, is we can fit into a number of different environments, and we can find ways to make venues work for us. Which is cool. We’re really looking forward to playing the Union Sound Hall, because we generally always play the West End Cultural Centre, which is great and we love it there. But we’re excited to play a different venue that is open a bit later, and hoping to get a new audience that maybe hasn’t seen us before to come out. We’re really looking forward to it. We don’t really get to play in Winnipeg as often as we’d like. So we’re looking forward to it, hoping people will come out and party!
Chic Gamine play the Union Sound Hall Saturday November 23, with the Reverend Rambler opening! Tickets are $20.