The Saint Alvia Cartel is the definition of indefinable. Comprised of a who’s who list of southern Ontarian “punk rockers”, the experienced individuals’ latest endeavor can hardly be stamped with the punk rock certificate of authenticity. Sure, they may have a couple of songs that if listened to all by their lonesome might appear to fit a mold; but if you give their self-titled debut a few good spins, you’ll hear that there is a lot more to these Burlington, Ontario natives. What exactly that is, well that answer is a little more complicated. Even the band members themselves -- Greg Umetsu Taylor (Vocals/Guitar), Ben Rispin (Vocals), Rob Pasalic (Vocals/Guitar), Greg Fisher (Bass), Brandon Bliss (Keys) and Matt Richmond (Drums) -- have trouble explaining where they land on the musical plane. One thing they all agree on: wherever they’ve landed, it’s right where The Saint Alvia Cartel want to be.
Four years ago Greg Taylor was fronting Jersey, a band that evolved from the beloved Grade. Around the same time, Rob Pasalic was plucking the strings in the largely successful Boys Night Out. Today both men find themselves taking part in the musical revolution that is The Saint Alvia Cartel. What happened between then and now?
As Pasalic puts it, “Not much; [Boys Night Out] just wasn’t happening for me anymore. It was the wrong band, and this is the right one.”
“Jersey, I don’t really know what happened there,” divulges Taylor. “We were nine years in and there was definitely tension between some band members. I wanted to start branching off and starting some new stuff and nobody else really wanted to except for Jordan (who plays with Alexisonfire now). And then that’s kind of where it ended up. We had come to the point where we tried to write a new record and it was a chore to go to practices. Everyone was just mopey; and one day I was just like ‘do we even want to do this?’ and everyone said ‘no.’ I’ve never felt so good [as I did] after that; so free. I took maybe a year off of playing music and I was just trying to write some stuff on my own. I was thinking about writing for some other people, perhaps, when I ran into Rob at the bar and he said ‘let’s do some stuff.’ I’ve known him since he was a little kid, the same with Ben. We’ve known Ben for a long time, and I was doing sound at a bar that he was working at and we said the same sort of thing, and it just ended up being the three of us writing songs in my basement. We wrote probably 65% of the songs that are on the record in my basement with drum machines. Then we got the rest of the guys going, said ‘let’s try this live’, performed, and [now] it’s been about a year and a half.
Being that all the band members hail from the same city (Burlington), as well as the members of their former projects (Jersey, Grade, Boys Night Out, Video Dead), one might find it odd that they’ve recruited from the same well so many times before. Taylor, however, disagrees with the recycled musician theory.
“It’s not really weird at all,” begins Taylor. “If anything, it’s kind of ‘un-weird’. It is people you’re familiar with; people that you like and admire. And now I get to see what it’s like to be in a band with these guys. It’s pretty cool. I think it’s almost weirder when you start a band with a bunch of guys you don’t know.”
While the guys are definitely invested in their future in music, that doesn’t mean there isn’t time to get their kicks in, sometimes even at the expense of an unsuspecting journalist… When questioned about comments in another interview stating that none of the band members drink, Rob (the originator of said comments) slyly replied, “I don’t know where you would’ve heard that.” Ben on the other hand, wasn’t so subtle, “It’s an absolute lie.” So what is the truth behind the phantom comment, Rob? Was it just for fun? “Yep,” Pasalic says, amidst everyone’s laughs. Thankfully Taylor decides to elaborate, “When somebody asks Rob ‘what is one thing that nobody knows about the band?’ he thinks of the most obscure answer. The thing that’s probably the most true, he picks the opposite of that.” Pasalic isn’t the only member of the band that comes up with quote-worthy material. Taylor recounts a highlight by none other than the man on the mic himself, Mr. Benjamin Rispin. “One of our best interview quotes -- I don’t even remember what the question was -- but it was one that Ben did, and the answer was that he ‘was so excited about something that it made him want to dig up Jesus’ bones and give his skeleton a high five.’” For those of you who are curious about Rob’s oath to quit drinking, playing music and doing drugs, he did adhere to one of them. “Oh no, I drink,” starts Pasalic. “I stopped doing drugs; I don’t do drugs anymore.” And music? “I tried [to quit]. It’s a bad habit.” “I think generally just whatever comes out is what we are; whatever we feel like playing,” Rispin explains. “[Although], I don’t mind any comparison to The Clash.” Fisher finds the comparisons are few and broad, “We don’t actually get a ton of comparisons. Maybe to those bands a little bit; but most of the time people just say ‘it sounds like a lot of different stuff’ and they have a hard time generalizing it and just throwing it into one genre.” “Yeah, I think people do that comparison when they hear one song and have problems defining us once they hear the whole record,” continues Rispin. Fisher further supports Ben’s thoughts, “It may seem all over the place but I think there are constants throughout the record that definitely make it our own. I mean, it’s channeling a bit of everything, whatever we think sounds cool, or is more challenging for us.” “We say it in every interview,” says Pasalic, as he begins to sum things up. “But the whole premise behind starting this band was to do everything that you couldn’t do in your other band. So, we can never say that doesn’t sound like our style.” “[There are] no rules,” concludes Taylor. “Whereas maybe before there was playing a certain type of music with too many rules.” Having all been in multiple bands of varying success, it can be hard to keep a positive outlook and not wonder “when will this chapter come to a close?” It seems as though the members of The Saint Alvia Cartel have learned many lessons along the way, and truly believe (with good reason) that this band is “the one.” “This band is an anomaly on its own,” enlightens Pasalic. ”It’s a lot of strong personalities. It’s hard to try and figure it out because it’s constantly evolving.” Fisher has his own take on things, “I can’t speak for everybody [but] I know when I started doing this, it was just for the hell of it. Now that we’re here it is like ‘ok, yeah, this is the one.’ It’s got to be the one that we make a living out of because we’re putting so much into it now and -- especially this far along in my life -- I put so much into music. That’s definitely not saying I’m writing for that reason, because as I said when we started it was just for fun, but now that I’m here it’s like, ‘yes, 110%, got to make this work somehow.’ I hope people can just give it an honest shot, not a once over. I find that peoples’ response to this band is not just ‘oh, it’s those guys doing that.’ [Instead] it is somewhat of a sleeper.” “We’re not a scenester band,” Taylor proclaims. “We’re just doing our own thing.” Rob finds the words to converge his bandmates’ thoughts, “It’s pretty infectious to the people that give it a real shot. It takes a bit of time to kind of get what we’re trying to do, but we’re just hoping that people can take the time to do that.”
As a species that teaches through example, it is not uncommon for someone to try to define a band by comparing them to those that came before them. As such, the occasional comparisons to bands such as Rancid or The Clash are not out of the question. So what of these comparisons? Who does The Saint Alvia Cartel sound like, other than, well, The Saint Alvia Cartel?
With their collectively established credentials, it didn’t take too long for shooting to begin and end on The Saint Alvia Cartel’s first two videos. While the video for “Don’t Wanna Wait Forever” might not have turned out as they had hoped, it sounds like “Time To Go” came out of the oven just right. “The first one wasn’t quite what we wanted to do, or thought it was going to be,” confides Fisher. ”We’re way more stoked on the new video. It has a lot more substance and meaning to it. It’s a little more homegrown; it came (moreso) from us this time. I don’t know what it (‘Don’t Wanna Wait Forever’) should have been. We had an idea of what it was gonna be and then when we got there it turned out a lot different.” As this journalist wasn’t about to make the same mistake as those that came before him -- and likely many after him -- Taylor took it upon himself to do the honors. “Rob, what’s one thing that people should know about Saint Alvia that they don’t already know?” asks Taylor. “Well I’m recently a new father of a young baby girl,” responds Pasalic. “She’s going to be a year [old] soon.” “Isn’t it a hermaphrodite?” “Nope. Just a baby girl.” Ladies and gentleman, I give you: The Saint Alvia Cartel. The Saint Alvia Cartel has just finished a mini-tour with Billy Talent, but don't think that's the end of their time on the road - they'll be back on tour this winter with Matt Costa and Bedouin Soundclash. Be sure to drive through the snow and watch them melt your faces. Oh and when that's over, hobble over to the merch table and buy a few records.
