{"id":443,"date":"2010-02-04T09:59:14","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T15:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=443"},"modified":"2010-02-04T09:59:14","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T15:59:14","slug":"ian-la-rue-and-the-condor-small-chest-muscles-huge-wingspan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2010\/02\/04\/ian-la-rue-and-the-condor-small-chest-muscles-huge-wingspan\/","title":{"rendered":"Ian La Rue and the Condor – Small Chest Muscles, Huge Wingspan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jenny Henkelman<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo by Andrew Workman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“I\u2019m cooking on the tour,\u201d Matt Magura announces between bites of his \u201cLittle Tadpole\u201d breakfast at the Toad in the Hole on a Saturday afternoon. \u201cI\u2019ve got a Magic Bullet and a butane stove. I\u2019m going to make fucking curry wraps. Smoothies every morning!\u201d Bassist Louis Lev\u00e8sque Cot\u00e9 is agreeable to the notion; he and Ian La Rue start discussing the possibility of getting an inverter so that the Magic Bullet and possibly a rice cooker could be operated while the van is in motion.<\/p>\n

This kind of creativity is surely inevitable when you have seasoned musicians looking forward to a tour. These guys have been around. When Ian La Rue and the Condor (drummer Magura, Cot\u00e9, and guitarist Andrew Workman) list their other current and previous bands, the lists are long and overlapping. La Rue and Cot\u00e9 have both done stints in Boats and the Paperbacks, for instance. Workman has played in everything from the Horribly Awfuls to Cone Five.<\/p>\n

But this is the first time this particular combination has come about, and that, Cot\u00e9 says, is all because of La Rue. \u201cThe Condor wouldn\u2019t be a band outside of Ian,\u201d he says. For La Rue, though, having the Condor behind him is a dream come true. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking forward to making a full band record for my whole life. This is it\u2014kinda like the pinnacle of my career,\u201d he says of the new record, titled A History in Layers<\/em>. \u201cIt was a big move on a couple levels, because I always recorded my own stuff, played all my own stuff. So this is the first time I\u2019ve let someone else record it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That someone else was Mike Petkau\u2014a longtime staple of the indie rock scene. Petkau is known for playing in bands like Les Jupes, being a sought-after recording engineer and producer and for creating the celebrated and successful Record of the Week Club last year, where he invited, on a weekly basis, three disparate musicians to write and record a track in a single night. Lately, he\u2019s ascended to the position of Artistic Director at the West End Cultural Centre, a move that the guys are all excited about. (The general consensus of his biased-but-honest friends was that he\u2019s going to do an awesome job.)<\/p>\n

The West End is the venue for the CD release on February 12, but decision to have the show there was not a simple one, given La Rue\u2019s anarchistic and DIY proclivities. \u201cWe struggled really hard with how to do this release,\u201d he says. \u201cWe thought about the Park [Theatre], we thought about doing it Create-Your-Own-Venue, Artspace, whatever. But in the end, most of us have connections to the West End.\u201d Workman reassures us that they\u2019re not moving too far from their roots. \u201cWe played a show at the Rocker the other week. It doesn\u2019t matter if there\u2019s a state-of-the-art sound system or a crappy P.A. We just want to play in an authentic space.\u201d And when you work hard on a record, you want it to be played to its best advantage in a true listening room. \u201cI take music seriously,\u201d La Rue says. \u201cSometimes too seriously. Writing can be painful for me. It\u2019s a difficult process.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pain of birthing new songs is another reason that La Rue is happy to have the Condor with him on this new record. But the Condor is not just Ian La Rue\u2019s support group (though he does say, \u201cI\u2019d be hopeless without you guys!\u201d). What do they bring to his music? \u201cPower,\u201d La Rue says without hesitation. \u201cAnd bigness. I\u2019m serious. I guess when I\u2019m writing I always have a band in my head.\u201d The band enables him to realize the sound he imagines, though Cot\u00e9 notes, \u201cIt\u2019s not always easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it isn\u2019t,\u201d La Rue agrees. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of trial and error and blank stares.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIan\u2019s put a lot of trust in us,\u201d Magura says, \u201cas the band that\u2019s making the things you got in your head come about. It\u2019s pretty organic.\u201d The guys say that though the band plays the songs La Rue writes, it\u2019s a collaborative process developing them for the record and the live show. \u201cI think the Condor is definitely not just a backing band,\u201d La Rue says.<\/p>\n

The band name wasn\u2019t just picked for its cool phonetics or the currency of the wildlife motif. \u201cWe were originally going to be called Ian La Rue and the Sparrowhawks,\u201d La Rue explains. \u201cBut they\u2019re less powerful. The condor to me was really\u2026 strong. And I like the idea that the condor, as a bird, almost went extinct, down to 12 animals, and they brought it back up to a more healthy number. And they have ten-foot wingspans! But listen to this: they have really small chest muscles. They can\u2019t really flap very well. So it can often take them awhile to get off the ground. And once they get up there, they just soar on the thermals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t flap very much. We have small chest muscle,\u201d Cot\u00e9 summarizes. Magura gets a thoughtful look on his face and asks, \u201cIsn\u2019t the condor the one with the disgusting skin head?\u201d<\/p>\n

La Rue nods. \u201cSmall ugly heads. And as for the singular vs. plural\u2014well, having many condors, that\u2019s crazy! One is all you need, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you saw one condor in your life, that would be enough,\u201d Workman says.<\/p>\n

\u201cExactly,\u201d La Rue agrees.<\/p>\n

Ian La Rue and the Condor release A History of Layers<\/em> at the West End Cultural Centre on Friday, February 12, with guests Nova and Cannon Bros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jenny Henkelman “I\u2019m cooking on the tour,\u201d Matt Magura announces between bites of his \u201cLittle Tadpole\u201d breakfast at the Toad in the Hole on a Saturday afternoon. \u201cI\u2019ve got a Magic Bullet and a butane stove. I\u2019m going to make fucking curry wraps. Smoothies every morning!\u201d Bassist Louis Lev\u00e8sque Cot\u00e9 is agreeable to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[444,563],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-ian-la-rue","tag-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}