Additional Information
Following the release of ‘Tournée Nationale’, a mini-film documenting their tour with fellow DIY compatriots ARRETCOURT, I met with Oscar, Marlie, and Vincent from STAIRS to talk about their tour, their music, and to learn about the trials and tribulations facing up and coming bands in Montreal today.
PAN M 360: Hey thanks for taking the time! Tell me a little more about the tour.
Oscar: Yeah sure. It was the first tour for us and another band called ARRETCOURT. Together we drove across Quebec for 8 days, played in a few different towns, and we called it the ‘Tournée Nationale’.
Vincent: Yeah that was sort of the theme of the tour and it gave us a reason to do a double tour, there’s lots of people around us who do that to save money in cars and we used all the same gear. The other band are a bunch of friends of ours before we were even making music.
PAN M 360: And did you find it was worth it?
Vincent: Yeah, for sure for the fun and the experience of it all. It was amazing to play in places like Tadoussac, which I didn’t really know, but we don’t get paid much. Well sometimes even barely get paid.
Oscar: Yeah, but we managed to stay in the green and that was kind of a surprise. Well with tours in general you don’t make much money but we managed to like reduce costs. We made the most money in Montreal on our second show and practically paid for the rest of the tour with it. And squeezed into two cars, the eight of us, nine actually.
Marlie: But in between shows we would get the chance to stop at really nice places. We went swimming along the way and we did just like a lot of fun stuff. We met some really cool artists like Confiture Maison, which is a really cool band in Rimouski. They started Bain Publique, which is a solid and spectacular new venue there.
PAN M 360: In 2023 with all the ways people consume music nowadays, do you think touring is still kind of the purest way of getting your music across?
Oscar: Well there is such a tradition to it. But it is very resource consuming and it’s not the most ecological thing to do. Being in Montreal, we see a lot of people who come here on tour and from far it doesn’t seem to reach as much. Anyone with a bit of resources can tour and book a small thing but the impact is hard to predict.
Vincent: I find that is really authentic. Just going to a place you don’t know, hoping people will come to see your show. Already in Montreal it’s really fun for me when someone comes to me and says ‘oh I didn’t know your band and I came to see the show’ and that’s why I think it’s pure, hoping people will come even if they don’t know you, like that’s what you’re there for.
Marlie: Yeah, there’s a really special feeling of having strangers in the crowd really vibing to your music. You make a true connection with that person. It’s less quantity, but it’s quality relationships when it’s someone who discovers your music and likes it without knowing everything that surrounds it.
PAN M 360: Is STAIRS a live band as much as a studio band?
Oscar: Definitely. We kind of have two separate approaches though. It’s lots of experimentation but once we get in the studio, we’re trying to rethink the songs and the arrangements.
Marlie: Yeah. The parts don’t stay the way they are played live. The drums have a lot of different parts, different layers, especially the stuff on our new record which isn’t out yet.
Vincent: We tend to let the songs open, and when we play live we try to change the set every time, rethink things for what feels right, that’s what we did during the tour.
Marlie: And we have these open interludes that are like never really written, so when we play a lot, like during the tour, sometimes we end up changing everything. The parts are just so open like that. No one’s waiting for someone to play that riff to start this section, you know. There’s no cues like that.
Oscar: Yeah, it’s also like a Frank Zappa thing. He is a very technical composer and opens up these huge spaces. We’re not as extreme as that and we’re not Frank Zappa, but having these open space where there’s a huge risk, we do it in one of our songs, “You can only make one dot at a time”, once we get to a certain part I have to think of a new bassline. And the music has to be interacting with how the crowd is feeling. If everyone’s like tired we will go soft and if people are really partying, then it becomes more of a rock show.
PAN M 360: Your tour was called the Tournée Nationale. As a band that sings in English in Quebec, do you notice the language politics in the music scene?
Oscar: Inside Montreal there’s this huge thing between the French and the English, musically, which is weird. Even for instrumental music for jazz you have separate bars, playing the same standards, with no lyrics. Yeah. We have friends who go to Quai des Brume like five times a week and they don’t know Casa del Popolo exists and vice versa. So I find it very important to mix those two.
Vincent: It’s two different scenes with different styles of approaching the music. Because I’m mainly a French speaker, I do music mainly in French but in English too and nowadays we’re getting in the scene of like, more English speakers that come from Canada to come do a little tour in Quebec. So we meet those people, but like there’s a gap.
Marlie: Yeah but still there’s something, I imagine, very French and Quebecois in our music, even though we speak English, just because our influences musically, instrumentally, are also francophone and Quebecois. The lyrics are written in English but the music comes from everywhere.
Oscar: I think the production on our new album might have more of a francophone production style. I have that feeling that there’s a way to mix for francophone pop that’s different from other English music, which is interesting to say.
PAN M 360: How do you describe your music then?
Vincent: No one knows. Yeah. You know, it was always evolving but we use now, when we are applying for stuff, we say something along the lines of, ‘pop, indie, psychedelic, rock’.
Oscar: Something like that, but there’s soul in there too. Especially our last album.
Marlie: Yeah yeah, there’s funk, there’s groove.
Oscar: But funk is like a bad word right now. So we don’t say it too much, because we’re not exactly funk-rock you know. The new album definitely takes on some new influences of post-punk, new-wave, like Talking Heads.
PAN M 360: Aside from the next album, any future plans for STAIRS?
Oscar: Yeah, so July 29th, we’re playing with Glutenhead and Holly McLaughlin from Toronto. They’re putting out a single on that day, a really interesting band that’s kind of like midwest emo mixed with psychedelic rock. We will start playing more shows in the fall for sure. We’re recording over the summer, we should be done by the end of the summer.
Vincent: Yeah. And we’d like to film or video clips to the for the next album to have more funny stuff for people to watch
Marlie: And we want to play outside of Quebec!
PAN M 360: 2023 is really a crazy time to be making art of any sort it seems. Are you optimistic about or pessimistic about the state of the industry?
Oscar: I mean there’s something optimistic about the industry failing right now? Yeah about it all falling down. But I don’t know, it’s hard to say.
Vincent: I don’t feel very optimistic because it’s really hard work for not a lot of rewards but we get the rewards otherwise, spiritually, so yeah. It’s the community thing.
Marlie: We’re a band but we’re also building it like a philosophy behind it where like, it’s our way of seeing life and you know, working together.
Oscar: That’s what I like with this band especially. It’s working together with people and just building something that you love together. You know Marlie is my sister, Vincent and I have been friends since we were six years old. I have known Zak since the beginning of high school, so like we’re big friends. It’s just like having a community garden or something where we’re not trying to make huge crops to sell but just having something wholesome, nourishing, to offer. Yeah, it’s coming, it’s going and yeah, we can feed off our own garden.
