Absorb The City & Colour WithAlexisonfire's Dallas Green

Tue 24th Jan, 2006 in Features

Dallas Green co-vocalist and guitarist for Canadian screamo band Alexisonfire have released a very mellow collection of songs under the name City and Colour. Like day and night is a comparison of the styles but the common thread is an enormous talent. FasterLouder talks to Dallas Green about his softer side.

Dallas, currently suffering the chill of a Canadian winter, is rehearsing with Alexisonfire band mates George Pettit, Wade MacNeil, Chris Steele and Jordan Hastings for an upcoming run of shows. I asked Dallas why he released his solo effort Sometimes under the name City and Colour and didn’t use his own name.

“Well City and Colour kind of is my name, Dallas is a city and Green is a colour so it worked out well. I just don’t feel comfortable putting an album out with just my name on it. It just makes me really uncomfortable, I don’t know why I just didn’t want to do it. You know, I don’t want to get to a point either where it became ‘Dallas Green and the…’ or ‘The Dallas Green Band’. It just feels better to me to do it this way.”

Sometimes is a collection of songs that Dallas has written over the last decade, some reaching back to his teenage years when he first learned to play a guitar. The album came to fruition at the incessant request of far-flung fans from around the world that have gotten a taste of Dallas’s softer stylings on a limited edition EP released in 2005 and the growing demand for the softer, acoustic version of Alexisonfire’s searing Sidewalk When She Walks that Dallas often performs in the encore of their shows. It is such an awesome moment at the show as the whole crowd sings so loud that it almost feels like the small, tattooed man, singing alone on the big stage, might well be consumed by the din. It is one of those songs that you hope after doing the acoustic version, he will turn around straight after and do the full electric version.

Alexisonfire hails from Ontario, Canada and takes its name from ‘the world’s only lactating, contortionist stripper’. Rising through the underground music scene in Canada in 2001, they released their first album, a self titled outing that introduced the music scene at large to their uniquely bittersweet, raw and strangely resonating realism that captured the imagination of the angsty who like it loud. Their follow up album Watch Out! was a huge success for the band and they have since recorded a killer EP with fellow Canadian emo favourites Moneen which sees the bands cover each others songs. Alexisonfire are in the process of putting out their next album. City and Colour comes at the perfect tie to satiate the fans hungry for a new Alexisonfire hit.

“Kids kept leaving posts on our site asking for the songs so I finally gave into the demand and put out Sometimes. They had heard them on some obscure recordings and on some sites and it just grew from there, kids from as far away as Australia were e-mailing and asking for them to be released. It got to the point where I thought, why not?”

Although the emotional rawness so engrained in the Alexisonfire sound is very pronounced in the City and Colour album, the sound is much different, predominantly acoustic and leaning towards balladeering. It is a great album as much as it is a great departure in sound.

“It isn’t really an outlet or reaction to the loud stuff I do with Alexis, its more just stuff that I’ve written that wasn’t Alexis stuff. Some songs just lend themselves completely to interpretation by Alexis, you can imagine George singing this part or that and others just don’t fit at all but are still good songs. That is how this album came about.”

The songs on the album range from subject matters such as impulse to matters of introspection. Save Your Scissors for instance is a song about the desire to change your partner and the absolute certainty that it ain’t gonna happen!

“When I wrote Save Your Scissors I had seemed to be dating girls that always tried to change me into something I wasn’t, something they thought I should be. Kinda some promise of something I hadn’t promised them and I was just saying ‘Save you scissors for someone else’s skin’ because I’m not gonna be who you think I should be.”

With songs written over such a long period of time and you would imagine, from a larger pool: how did he select the songs that made the cut?

“I picked the songs that still seemed relevant to me and to the way I look and feel about things. There are some songs that you write and when you look back on them you are a little embarrassed because you’ve grown musically or you were being an idiot when you wrote it. There are even some Alexis songs from the first album that we kinda cringe at when we hear them but they are part of where you’ve come from so you I don’t discount any of them, just may not add them to the next set list. You know what I’m sayin!”

One of the reasons for the slavish devotion of Alexisonfire fans is the common man voice and the bands ability to create a really catchy melody, whether it is a vocal, guitar or rhythm section melody, the band knows how to get a point across.

“We all write the songs, we bring a piece each and put them together. I don’t rock up with a song written and say ‘this is how you are going to drum, and this is how you are going to sing that’ we work together and pull it together.”

At this point the avid fan in me takes over momentarily and I ask Dallas about my favourite Alexisonfire song, Happiness By The Kilowatt. For those who haven’t heard it, apart from shame on you!, the song is underpinned by this unique drum time signature that gives the song a building intensity that really packs a punch.

“Yeah I think came up with the drum piece you are talking about. It’s my favourite Alexis song, I love playing it. We’re proud of it”

It is interesting to listen to an Alexisonfire album and Dallas’ solo album back to back as you can hear many similarities even though they are very different genres, at times it seems like only the volume is different.

“I like to think that the emotional sort of honesty comes across in both Alexisonfire and my other songs.  I sing about things that I see and experience but with Alexisonfire, it’s not really the vehicle to be singing about some girl breaking your heart. It is like every band you see is getting up and singing about some girl breaking some guy’s heart and that isn’t Alexisonfire so much. That is something I feel is more personal and would address on a solo album when I’m just speaking for myself, I guess.”

Dallas started learning guitar and writing songs when he was 15. By extension, when learning songs to play and writing them he was required to sing along a little but couldn’t have imagined that a decade later he would be most recognised for his unique, emotive voice. His next personal musical goal was to teach himself piano which seems to have been accomplished with the practical mind of natural musician. 

“I want to do an album that is all piano but you know… I play piano like a guitar player, like the piano is a guitar flipped on its side. It isn’t concert quality, classical piano or anything like that but you know, I can make it sound pretty.”

Dallas is currently in rehearsal for an upcoming North American Alexisonfire tour and has no immediate plans to tour behind the solo album or focus full steam on another solo album:

“I have a really full schedule with Alexisonfire and the solo thing isn’t something I’m doing as an avenue out of Alexisonfire or anything. It is just an organic kind of thing that happened and I’m happy to have put those songs out but Alexis is what I love doing. I love touring and playing with these guys and we have so much going on that a solo thing just isn’t going to be a big thing. I might do a few of the songs at some of the shows every now and then but I don’t have time to do solo shows and it isn’t something that is much of a priority.”

Colour and City Sometimes is available now and it’s well worth a listen and a must have for Alexisonfire fans!