![\"iansucks\"](\"http:\/\/www.stylusmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/iansucks-500x500.jpg\")
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By Laura Friesen<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the scared part of our lives, the part that doesn\u2019t know what to do\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m assigned to interview Winnipeg band iansucks, but tracking them all down and getting them in one room is a little tricky: Emma\u2019s away at school in Australia,and David\u2019s out of town right now. With some patience and only mild schedule-finagling, I do end up meeting in person with drummer and songwriter Ian Ellis at the Good Will, where bassist David Schellenberg and keyboardist Kelly Beaton pop in periodically when work is slow to add their two cents.<\/span><\/p>\n I quickly get the sense that Ian\u2019s reticent and carefully considered thoughtfulness (his sense of self-deprecation is basically where the name iansucks came from) makes talking about the band way harder than being in the band – writing and playing songs and bringing them to life is the easy part. I arrive to the interview having listened to the album they have up on their Bandcamp, <\/span>Boring Stuff Go Away<\/span><\/i>, which is a collaboration between Ian and singer\/songwriter Emma Mayer from back in 2014 before David and Kelly joined.<\/span><\/p>\n Those recordings are charmingly homemade and awkward and cautious. They excellently capture the weirdness and not-knowing-ness of not being a kid and not being an adult. The undercurrent running through all these songs is \u2018what now?\u2019 When we chat, Ian confirms this. Instead of talking at length about specific goals for the band or what the songwriting process is like, we instead end up ruminating on the weird scariness of finding something in your life that\u2019s fun and fulfilling, and knowing that it\u2019s probably not the responsible adult path to take. That can also delay the feeling that you\u2019re an adult who somehow has all the answers, or at least the solutions to some of your problems.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is the scared part of our lives, the part that doesn\u2019t know what to do,\u201d Ian explains. He and Emma have found a way to make that uncertainty about life into something they can rely on: namely, the band. When we talked about work\/life\/school\/band balance, he mentioned that this is the most fun part of his life. \u201cIf this is the one thing that\u2019s fun, you\u2019d do it whether it\u2019s good or bad for you.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to tell that having a way to express things that a lot of people are hesitant to talk about – fears, hurt feelings, insecurity – is important to Ian. The stakes are high. I was wondering how the songwriting partnership of him and Emma came about and how they\u2019re able to be so open with one another. Turns out they\u2019d been friends long before starting the band.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Emma and I emailed as well, and her equally thoughtful insights on the band and her relationship to it follow.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stylus: Where does your impulse to write songs come from? How long have you been doing this? <\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Emma Mayer:<\/b> My impulses to write songs come from boredom a lot of the time, or frustration or sadness. Usually I write songs to distract myself from something else I am supposed to be doing, like homework. I think that\u2019s how most have started. I\u2019ve only really been seriously writing songs since I was about 19 or so and in terms of collaboration with Ian we only really started writing together about two years ago. Before that it kind of started as Ian having these songs that he wanted somebody else to sing on or play a violin part on, and so I would just come to his house and sing or play whatever part he had written for me. It was just kind of a fun casual thing to do as part of our friendship. Eventually Ian had all of these songs that he wanted to release on an album and so we came up with a title and looked through my sketchbook for a drawing to use as our album art. I think of the first album as mostly Ian\u2019s creation because I didn\u2019t even really know he was thinking of putting out an album at all until he was like \u2018hey, is it cool if I release this online?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stylus: What are your songs about? What do you prefer to write about?<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n EM: <\/b>I think a lot of our older songs are about being sad, or tired, or songs to fall asleep to. Some of them were about being happy and in love, like \u201cFire\u201d that Ian wrote, but I think the older ones are mostly about bad feelings we didn\u2019t know how to deal with. On our new album (which I hope is coming out this summer) and the songs that people hear us play at our shows are a bit more upbeat and happy feeling. I think we like to characterize ourselves as a \u2018sad band,\u2019 but I\u2019m not sure our sound really reflects that – the content of the songs might, though. In terms of songs we\u2019ve written in the last year or so they have been about a bunch of different things like sitting in a Robin\u2019s Donuts after the end of a relationship, crying, and cute dogs. \u00a0We write a lot about about relationships and love and depression. They are mostly about personal experiences, I guess. I think generally we write about our feelings or things we don\u2019t want to talk about. So I guess that is a common theme. I would really like to write about happy feelings which I hope to do in the future. I think most of my old songs were written as ways to pass the time during times of intense depression. But I\u2019m feeling happier lately so I hope my new songs can reflect that.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stylus: What’s the relationship like between you and Ian in the band? Who takes on what roles, or how do you balance?<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n EM:<\/b> We\u2019re all really good friends, which makes practice and playing shows fun for us. We see each other almost every week (except for the last three months that I\u2019ve been in Australia) – either at practice or at the Good Will or at each other\u2019s houses. It\u2019s really a blessing to be in a band with some of your best friends. Ian takes on the most responsibility out of all of us. He is always writing and arranging and recording music. He books most of our shows and handles all the business-y stuff. I do some of the songwriting and composing too. We all also pitch in at writing our own parts during practices to help round out songs.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stylus: How do you feel about performing? How often do you perform? Is it a fun thing for you?<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n EM: <\/b>Performing is something that really terrifies me but is also something that I really love doing. It scares me and Ian a lot, I think. We play shows maybe once a month generally and usually we get really nervous and overly critical but I think it\u2019s really good for us to do it. We\u2019re both pretty shy people, I guess so we don\u2019t exactly seek out the spotlight very often otherwise. I think the only reason we actually started performing was that about a year ago Micah Visser asked if I wanted to open for him at the Purple Room but I was too scared to play a set alone so I made Ian put together a band for us so we could play iansucks songs together. So that\u2019s how Kelly and David ended up joining us. They are both very calm and collected and professional when it comes to performing so that really helps us I think.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stylus: Has the band dynamic changed since Kelly and David joined?<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n EM<\/b>: Before Kelly and David, it felt more like we were just producing music in our bedrooms – we didn\u2019t have a setup that would enable us to perform or anything. So I don\u2019t know that we really were a band before Kelly and David, actually. I think if anything I feel more confident and positive since David and Kelly have joined. I think before them, Ian and I were more likely to nitpick and shut down our ideas. Now it\u2019s kind of like we can throw our ideas out there and talk about them more objectively. We definitely accomplish a lot more now that we have them as part of our band.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stylus: Is writing and performing and being in the band a release or catharsis of some kind? Or what kind of role does the band serve in your life?<\/b> By Laura Friesen \u201cThis is the scared part of our lives, the part that doesn\u2019t know what to do\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nEM<\/b>: I would definitely say that being in the band is a big release in my life. Playing and performing and practicing is a really amazing outlet for frustrations and anxiety and really helps to pump us up. I think we all generally feel really good and revved up, if you will after, after practice. That\u2019s definitely something I\u2019ve really missed these last couple months that we\u2019ve been on hiatus with me studying in Australia. I\u2019m really looking forward to coming home to Winnipeg and playing music again.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"