Tyler Shipley is a busy man. He’s been involved in scads of musical projects over the years (The Horribly Awfuls, The Poets) and is currently working on his PHD in Toronto. But the most passionate thing Shipley gets behind is his politics, and that’s where his band The Consumer Goods come into play. Recently releasing the sophomore full-length Happy Bidet on Grumpy Cloud Records (which Shipley is also behind), he is a happier guy but no less of an activist. I recently had a chat with Tyler about the new record, his move from Winnipeg to Toronto and the idea of having many incarnations of Consumer Goods.
The band currently consists of Shipley on vocals, guitars and various other instruments, Ryan McVeigh (bass, guitars), Ottawa’s Matt McLennan (bass, guitars), Ian Jeffrey (guitars, pianos, organs) and Matt Hildebrand (drums). But with the move to Toronto last year, he has been performing predominantly as a solo artist. With the release of Bidet, Tyler went on a “mini-tour” of sorts. Playing in Toronto, Winnipeg (with a full band) at his favourite venue The Times Change(d), Calgary with McLennan for three shows, Saskatoon to play an impromptu house party and eventually finding himself back in Winnipeg before the inevitable return to Toronto.
“It’s nice because Matt and I can do a show just the two of us and it still comes off as a lot of fun. It’s not the same as when we do a full band but it’s still a reasonably fun experience for people that are there,” tells Shipley. “They’re all just such good musicians that they can adapt to the situation.”
From the success of this tour, he looks forward to another one in the late summer, even if it is just him and McLennan. “It’s hard to actually get four or five people to solidly commit to going on tour because everybody has to be off work, or off school.” Which is why the solo-artist in Toronto gig works so well, or does it?
“I don’t hate Toronto but I don’t love it. From a musical stand point it’s not the place to be. It sucks. I’ve been playing but I don’t really know in some respects where to get started in Toronto. I think there are little mini scenes, and they sort of group around this venue or that venue.
“The thing about Winnipeg is that there’s a level of encouragement, and that’s why it seems like this never ending stream of kids entering the scene. It’s nice that bands have a common commitment to making music work here. In Toronto, there’s so much going on, you’re not just competing for audience members when there’s a few other local bands, you’re competing with Spoon or The Elected or whoever is coming to town. I’m not really fixated on ‘making it in Toronto’. If I get ignored for the rest of my life there, well, fine. If there’s a lot of people in Winnipeg that are into it then that’s enough to keep me making records.”
The title of the new record Happy Bidet started out as a knock against Beyonce’s Bday release but became much more with the subtitle A Scientific Inquiry Into the Non-Denominational Same-Sex Marriage of Social Justice and Scatological Deflectors. A little on the lighter side then the heavy handed politically charged debut Pop Goes the Pig-Dog!, it still kicks ass and takes names with the anti-Bush pop ditty “Rovie Wade” and an “eff you” to Winnipeg’s Mayor, Sam Katz.
So as a songwriter and activist, can you find the happy medium between politics and personal songs? When your politics are what you hold most personal, definitely.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been really comfortable with writing personal songs unless I twist them into something political, “Gunboat Diplomacy” for instance. When I wrote it, it was just a coincidence that I happened to be reading about Cuba and I actually had some more personal things happening. I didn’t really want the person who it was written for to know it had been written about them. It’s ostensibly a political song but was written in that moment in a very personal way.
But personal doesn’t always have to be “about a girl”.
“I call the band a political band and people need that to sort of understand what it’s about. The songs are very personal, when you take your politics very personally and seriously there is no distinction between the two. The process of writing a song itself, they usually only take a few minutes to write but it’ll be something I’ve been thinking about for weeks.
“There’s a strange dynamic here because on the record I’m being very snarky and cynical and satirical and cheeky and at the same time there’s a kind of earnestness to it as well. And sometimes the earnestness is put on but sometimes it’s legit.”
So does that make Pig Dog the “angry young man” record?
“I think with that record I was only starting to get into this mentality of trying to have fun with political radicalism. That very first song (“Christmas in Camden”) is all big and crashing and loud. I had driven through these slums in Baltimore and had been profoundly affected by one of many examples of abject poverty and racism, going through this predominantly black slum and driving five minutes up into Camden yards and this pristine, predominantly white downtown Baltimore. So I was really pissed off. There was a dark anger flowing through that record that got kind of exhausting. It gets exhausting on your personal life when you’re angry all the time.
“As an activist, you can get really burned out by the fact that nobody seems to care and you go to a bookstore and 85% of the books on the wall are ideological crap, like The Presidency of Ronald Regan. But the more you learn you recognize that not everybody has time, most people spend 8-14 hours a day working. As much as I want to talk about the way that workers at Wal-Mart are exploited, these people can’t get out of these jobs. You want them to understand that they’re exploited that they don’t have to work twelve hours a day. It’s totally fucked up that they’re making donations to Wal-Mart’s charities which they then use themselves because they can’t afford to live on the job that Wal-Mart has given them because it’s only 30 hours a week and doesn’t have proper health or pension benefits. And as an activist you want people to rise up against this and fight it and they don’t and you can’t figure out why it is and that’s because they’re doing this work.
“My mental state in the last year has been much more laid back from that anger. It’s a balance. So the new record defiantly comes out as more fun, more playful and poppy. Which I think is really healthy and probably comes off in a better way to the listener because it’s not heavy handed.”
The recording of Happy Bidet took only a day and a half and occurred in Ryan McVeigh’s home studio. Basically, Shipley showed up with his guitar and showed the band the songs. From there, everyone took their positions and recording commenced.
“I was really lucky this time to have people that understand songs and music. Everybody was so good at knowing what the songs needed. After the initial day and a half it was sort of Ryan’s thing. Not only did he do all the mixing and mastering but he added parts.”
But an activist can’t change the world on his own. That’s where the collective of Grumpy Cloud Records comes in. Comprised of Shipley, long-time collaborator Gareth Williams, his wife Laurie, McVeigh, McLennan and Kevin Scott, the group decided it’s easier to support each other than spending all their time working on getting a label’s attention. The fifth and final release (Ants in the Sugar) from Winnipeg’s now defunct Cone Five will finally see the light of day via the Grumpy Cloud.
“It’s so, so good. It’ll be their best record for sure, and probably one of the best records I’ll ever own. Fuck is it good!”
Other records include a new release from Calgary’s Lonely Hunters and of course, The Consumer Goods.
“We’re gonna push these things, get serious about it. We just want to be able to make records for as long as we want to make records.”
For more information on Consumer Goods check out these links:
http://www.theconsumergoods.net
http://www.myspace.com/grumpycloudrecords
