Interview: North Of America
2010 seems to be the year of the reunion. We’re only two months into the decade and we’ve already got reunions from monumental acts like Pavement and Soundgarden, plus local heroes Rockets Red Glare, The Bicycles and From Fiction (all in the same week, no less). Halifax’s North Of America are the latest on the reunion train, celebrating their ten year anniversary in their hometown late last year.
Thankfully for fans not located on the east coast, the quartet (plus original member J. Lapointe) will be venturing westward, playing two reunion shows in Toronto and Montreal this Friday and Saturday, respectively. We spoke with guitarist Mark Mullane about the reunion as well as North Of America’s extended hiatus.
“We did the reunion last year to celebrate our official ten year anniversary as a band,” says Mullane. “We didn’t think we’d do it again, but then Blue Skies Turn Black, the promoters from Montreal, contacted the band, saying they’d love to have us play their ten year anniversary shows. We did one of our first shows with them, so we felt it was a no-brainer to say yes. We added a Toronto show, so we didn’t leave anybody out.
“We’ve always enjoyed playing together. We never lost that. We formed other bands, and we’re still pretty active in playing music in other ways, but I think ten years is kind of a special thing. We lucked out that everyone was in the same place at the same time. It seemed appropriate to do that for the occasion.”
Though they’ve remained friends throughout the years, Mullane maintains that he, drummer Michael Catano, guitarist Mark Colavecchia, bassist Jim MacAlpine and former guitarist J. Lapointe never intended to break up.
“It was more of a long hiatus than a breakup,” he explains. “In 2003, we decided to have a bit of a break. That was spurred on by me more than the other members. I was working a job in the television industry, and it was getting harder and harder to tour and commit to doing a lot of that. I still work in TV now, and I can balance it now, but at that time I felt it was time to take a break and focus on other aspects of life.”
The idea of a reunion is not a novel one for the band, as they got back together once before, only to split up once again.
“We got back together in 2005 to do a tour with Ted Leo. That was pretty fun, because we had toured with him before. We started writing five or six new songs at that point, and we had hopes of doing something with the band then, but life got in the way. Everyone moved to different parts of the country, and we never got to finish those songs and live out that idea of playing again. But here we are, five years later.”
Though most bands call it quits for individual members to follow often less interesting pursuits, the men of North Of America all have jobs that most would agree seem far more appealing than life in a tour van. Mullane works with longstanding CBC series This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Catano lives in Chicago working in public radio, Colavecchia is a labour lawyer based in Vancouver, MacAlpine superintends a high class golf course, and Lapointe owns and operates his own recording studio – all enviable positions to say the least. Would they ever ditch these jobs to hit the road full time?
“That’s a good question,” Mullane muses. “We’ve always talked about it. It just depends on the timing. At this time, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea or a bad idea. I wouldn’t want to put out a bad record. I would be a little bit hesitant to say that we’re going to do another full length record or another tour, but if the songs are there, and we felt confident about them, then that’s another thing.
“We’ll see how this weekend goes. If we’re all getting along and having fun, then who knows? We live in a day and age where we can all transfer files back and forth to each other, so it wouldn’t be too hard.”
It’s also a day and age when band reunions – at least on a local level – don’t immediately appear to be a cash grab. With the musical landscape shifting, the job title of “career musician” seems less and less common, with more acts adopting the “tour when you feel like it” mantra, eliminating the notion of a band feeling like a job (to an extent). As a result, these reunions seem more fun and appealing to both the bands and their fans; at the end of the day, the objective is for both parties to have fun.
“If it wasn’t going to be fun, I wouldn’t do it,” states Mullane. “Now, I think people still care about [our band]. There are kids I’ve talked to who are 18 or 19, who didn’t listen to North Of America when they were ten years old. Now, they’ve heard that, and they never got to see us, and they’re always asking if we’ll ever play again. Hopefully we’ll be as good as we were back then.
“Looking back, our time [as a band] was great and the people that got exposed to it at that time really loved it, and I can’t wait to see them at our shows,” Mullane concludes. “It’s going to be a blast to see everybody again. Hopefully we’ll have people singing along to some songs. Hopefully we’ll play everyone’s favourite song. Just don’t request anything, because we won’t know how to play them.”
North Of America will be playing their two reunion shows in Toronto at the Silver Dollar this Friday, and in Montreal at Il Motore this Saturday.
