Halifax's underground music festival, the Obey Convention, kicks off with a free show at Lost and Found tonight. I'll be here holding your hand through the weekend, but here are two little pre-interviews with Divorce Records and Tobias Rochman of Grand Trine to get you prepared.
Darcy Spidle, manager of noise/ punk/ experimental label and distributor Divorce Records, has been running the Obey Convention since 2007, with a growing number of shows each year. Obey’s mission is a “festival of free ideas in both music and art,” and this year’s lineup includes an art show at Lost and Found, an experimental video screening, workshops and a zine and record fair, in addition to the music performances. I spoke with Spidle for some festival background.
How did the first Obey Convention get started?
“The first Obey Convention was just three shows—-we were bringing in this band from California, Bastard Noise, they’re the band that pretty much defined the genre of power violence. They were friends of Sandy [Saunders], Torso (local noise musician). The show was great, it was really polarizing for the audience. I like doing shows that put people to the test.”
So you started the festival kind of incidentally?
“Yeah, this band was coming, I thought it would be cool to build a little festival around it. The next year I thought we’d make it a little bigger, bring in some punk bands from out of out. The year before [the first Obey Convention] we’d done a couple shows at the One World, and it’s just been steadily growing, now there are a lot of people involved.
I think it’s a good size now. I’ve got so many people helping out, I can kind of let it run itself. We’re trying to be a lot more diverse this year, I don’t know if we even have an agenda any more. We’ve got bands like Dog Day playing that make it a little more accessible. When it’s just punk and noise bands people can find it alienating. Still, I can see common threads from Torso to Dog Day—-they all have an interest in being experimental, a willingness to explore ideas.”
Spidle is mum on big names that fell through or are anticipated through the summer and for next year’s festival, saying only, “We went for some smaller bands, and more of them.”
“It’s great working with [some of the other organizers and volunteers for Obey]. I get this sense of how good people are in Halifax.” Last year’s Saturday night show at Gus’s Pub was tainted by a crowd heckler who broke a window, which the bar asked Spidle to cover the repair costs for—-a big deal with Divorce Records’ budget already strained and a baby on the way. “Twenty-four hours later we had half the replacement costs covered just by donations. The community here is great like that.”
Tobias Rochman, formerly of favourite local noisemakers Be Bad, speaks about the festival and his new band, Grand Trine, playing the Khyber on Saturday.
How have you been involved with Obey?
When I lived in Halifax I was involved with the label (Divorce). Darcy [Spidle] and I were working on [the festival] every day. I’m living in Montreal now so I’m just setting up as much online as I can, and helping with booking some of the American bands like Tyvek. Divorce put out my old band’s album so I guess that’s how I knew Darcy and got involved.
How do you feel Obey is benefiting the community?
Last year Career Suicide played and these drunk Marines threw someone through the window and we had to pay $500 to fix it, we asked for donations and immediately raised half the money—- then we went down to the police station and made the guy pay the other half. Something like that really shows how supportive people are.
The attitude surrounding the festival from the community has been really positive. I’m glad that this year we’re boosting the art and community involvement. I know a large portion of the musicians [who are playing] have been trying to get releases out in time because this is a big thing. We’ve been scrambling to get our new tape out, Pig, this high school band from Truro, has a CD coming out, Dog Day is having their all-ages album release. It’s great, it’s really good for the community.
I feel like what Divorce did, around 2005, the One World Cafe started putting on shows, a lot of people came together for the first time, and a lot of those people live in Montreal now. I’m glad we’re focussing on Canadian content, I’m trying to judge what’s going to be popular. I’m just excited to see so many friends convening on the scene at the same time. A lot of people are making travel plans, especially people who used to live in Halifax or still have families in Halifax, I haven’t seen my family in a year since moving to Montreal. I think you’re going to see a lot of weirdos around.
I’m glad it’s art/ music/ culture now. There’s a cool festival in Vancouver called Music Waste that I just found out about online, that seems to be pretty similar. It seems like there’s a lot of festivals around the world doing similar things right now. I feel like maybe everyone’s got the right idea. Halifax is so isolated, it’s kind of like you need to have a whole festival and put in more effort [to bring in] bands from the States. You have to make it a big deal. And you get whatever you put into it…Darcy and I have been sending each other a lot of motivational emails.
When did you start Grand Trine?
Last summer; we’ve been playing shows for six months. I met Shub [Roy, guitarist] on tour with my old band in Ottawa, then we met Scott [Monk, drummer] and we got an apartment together. It’s like a 24-hour thing, it’s not like a cult or anything, I don’t want to be dramatic, but it’s kind of like being on tour 24 hours a day.
We put out a tape on our friend’s label, we only made 100 copies and it sold out in a month. We’re putting out a new tape with a band from Ottawa, and we just found out our first tape is being re-released on Alien8 Recordings. In the summer we’re putting out an LP and going to the States. I’m not sure if we’re going into the studio or not, the other stuff was recorded on a four-track, I kind of like it being kind of rough.
How does Grand Trine differ from Be Bad?
What I was into in [Be Bad] was just 25% of the songwriting, now it’s more of what I like. Be Bad ended and I was set free to explore what I was into, it’s kind of what happens when you’re in a band when you’re really young and you’re in that band for four or five years. Those guys really liked math rock and bands like North of America that I’m not into. Shub and I are both into psych and stuff like that. We all have similar tastes, we’re not forging new ground and we don’t care what genre we sound like. It’s sort of futuristic and paranoid and we’re also into proto-punk. In the other band we were just trying to be weird, you’re painting yourself into a corner running away from convention, I felt trapped a bit. You can kind of trace what everyone brought to Be Bad in all our new bands.
