In Conversation: Fawns
In Conversation: Fawns
Ty Vanden Dool
My hometown of Lethbridge, Alberta is full of many things: Wind. Pickup trucks. Deer. Conservatives. Pizza places. And a surprising amount of artists at any given time making genuinely good music. One of those artists is Fawns, fronted by their namesake Mercedes Fawns on guitar and vocals and also currently featuring Richard Charlton on additional guitar and vocals, Clifford Westcott on keyboard and Chris Morden on drums. After holding over in the early months of the pandemic with the drop of two singles that began life as live staples, the band have now come out with a three-song EP titled Unsafe. I had the pleasure of interviewing three of the members in two meetings on behalf of Cups N Cakes, if not for more information on the release then at least to catch up with old friends.
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TY: How daunting was it to practice with the band and record this EP in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic?
CHRIS MORDEN: I think, like, we kind of found a bit of a sweet spot at the end of summer where we had an opportunity to actually kind of be relatively close in the same room… We haven’t practiced together in six months or something like that, so it’s not like we’ve been spending time jamming out together or rehearsing songs. I can’t even really remember how much we were rehearsing at that time of year, it seems like so long ago.
MERCEDES FAWNS: It was like, because the cases were so low we were able to just, like, get in there right before everything kind of took that turnaround. But as for actually putting out the EP, planning that online as a band definitely had, I think, like, its share of, like, struggles with us not being able to get together and collaborate our ideas together. And you kind of put not being able to play together and do, like, what we love to do together on top of that, and I think that kind of had its share of struggles for sure.
CHRIS: Yeah, it has been a while.
MERCEDES: [Laughs] Yup, too long.
RICHARD CHARLTON: A little bit… Originally the sessions that were meant to be this EP were actually booked way back last March with Matt [Rederberg of the Farm Studios], and it was kind of that grey area where everyone was trying to figure out what was kind of considered OK and what wasn’t OK. So we were already fairly prepared in a lot of ways for the session, and by the time we finally managed to kind of find an opportunity again later on in August, I think it had just become a matter of kind of shaking the rust off and making sure that we were still ready to go since we had kind of sat idle for four months. So the actual tracking process felt very similar to a Farm experience. We of course were being a little bit more selective with who was there when and, of course, we were all masking before the mask mandate had gone into play, so that was, in a lot of ways, my first exposure to, you know, wearing a mask for eight hours at a time out in the unconditioned Farm and everything like that, so that was kind of trial by fire. But honestly, you know, like, Matt is so good at making that environment so welcoming and comfortable that even with the COVID kind of precautions, it still felt like a Farm experience and was still a lot of fun to get done.
TY: Mercedes has hinted before that her songwriting is based on personal experiences. In that light, which song has been the most cathartic to write and record?
MERCEDES: I am going to say probably “Unsafe” was, I think, the most cathartic, because Richard came to us with this melody and this string of riffs that he had written on his guitar, and it was one of the first times that we’d ever built a track, like, together from the bottom up as a band. And so for me it was like there was just something about, like, what Richard kind of brought that, like, I don’t know, it, like, made me feel very nostalgic and it really reminded me of the poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg. And so for me that’s just my favourite poem that’s always resonated with me for a lot of different reasons. And so it was just really great to be able to finally write that ode to that poem that I’d always been wanting to do, and it’s just something that’s very dear to my heart.
TY: Were there any specific artists or songs you took as references while writing and arranging the tracks on the EP?
CHRIS: Nothing that was, like, front of mind in the process, but these songs and recording these ones together, they’ve been… not the first I guess that we’ve done as a group, but some of the first that we’ve kind of, like, all kind of contributed equally, and it’s not like people had a song that we… came in with and we kind of built around. Like, a lot of the first album [I Grew up Here], Mercedes, you had those songs kind of written already and we came and played with you and played on them, but this was like everyone… whatever the influences were, kind of brought them all together in their own individual ways as we were writing them. I don’t know exactly what those influences would be for everyone or if they were, like, intentional or anything like that, but yeah, I think, like, the process of everyone just being in the same room back when that was a thing and just having those influences kind of bleed out into each other was new.
MERCEDES: I think too, because we all listen to, like, in our personal lives, listen to kind of different types of music too, and so I think that those influences, like you said, like, are the things that kind of bleed out a little bit when we all get together, and it’s nice to be able to, like, jive like that - do something you wouldn’t normally do or hear something you normally wouldn’t, like, hear.
CHRIS: Me, I’m always trying to be Carter Beauford meets Danny Carey meets John Bonham meets whoever, I suppose. Mixing up everyone; all the Travis Barker punk rock influences from being a kid, like, I don’t know, it’s all in there somewhere.
MERCEDES: [Laughs] Yeah. For me vocally, it’s always like Raine Maida and Alanis Morrissette were my favourite vocalists growing up, so I love that, like, you know, when I get that opportunity to kind of just, like, howl and whine and get a little squeaky, and it’s fun for me.
RICHARD: I think we all kind of had different points of reference since we all kind of wrote and arranged our own parts on this EP. Like, it was of course collaborative in the sense where we all worked at a jam space, but at the end of the day everyone’s parts were written kind of individually and then brought together. So I know when we were kind of, like, trying to find the sounds when we were tracking, I know for “Astraphobia” I was listening to a lot of, like, Arkells tracks, kind of for that summer pop-rock kind of sound, and, like, “Resist” and “Unsafe” are definitely a lot heavier and a lot more kind of stadium rock-ish… Anyone who knows me knows I listen to a lot of Queens of the Stone Age and other bands like that that like their fuzz and that really kind of specific kind of guitar tone. So I referenced a whole bunch of that, especially on “Resist” and a lot of my rhythm parts for “Unsafe”, things like that. Beyond that, I mean, it still felt like we wanted to make something that sounded like it was from the ‘90s. This one probably ended up being a little bit more of the grunge end of things I guess, with some of the heavier tracks and stuff like that, but I felt like it was just about kind of taking a lot of the vibes and the sounds that we already had kind of worked with and just mak[ing] them sound bigger I guess.
TY: During the low points in infection rates, you managed to smuggle in a few live appearances. Was there a sense of relief in being able to play in front of people at a time where it seemed virtually impossible?
CHRIS: I don’t know if it was relief for me. It was fun, it was exciting… It seems so long ago now, but it felt like, I don’t know, just like a little breath of fresh air in the midst of all that chaos when things kind of settled down for a while and we were able to, yeah, like, play, like, the Geomatic Attic show outside, which was really cool. So that was exciting. That felt like, I don’t know, just having people back together in one kind of common venue was nice. Yeah, it wasn’t necessarily relief but it was, yeah, a breath of fresh air in many ways.
MERCEDES: I think for me, it felt like this, like, huge whiff of, like, I don’t know, just overwhelming gratitude. Like, when we were playing that Geomatic Attic show outside, I felt really, like, emotional, I think just because we had a couple shows - well, a show that was cancelled and then we were gonna go on tour and we were gonna go out to Vancouver and stuff, and we weren’t able to plan that; and so for me, it was like, “Oh,” like, “there is hope!” I don’t know, yeah, it wasn’t necessarily relief but just, like, “Thank you for, like, giving me this if maybe we’re not going to get to have it again for a while,” and it’s this thing that I keep kind of drawing back on, like, “Oh, well, we had that, like, in September, we can get there again.”
CHRIS: Yeah, that was nice. That, and what else did we play? CASA I think, around that time. Those two shows close together was really nice.
MERCEDES: Yeah, and then that was great, ‘cause CASA ended up giving us those videos too, so it kind of just helped us, like, have something to look forward to and be able to put out for the audience even though we weren’t able to play.
CHRIS: Yeah, the arts were not dead, they were just dormant!
RICHARD: A hundred percent. The couple shows that we did manage to play were all kind of gifted to us by Jason Eveleigh who runs a lot of sound for Geomatic Attic and other city events; and, like, that big outdoor show especially was just fantastic, because while everyone, you know, was in groups of two or four in their little individual bubbles, like, beyond, you know, our first time playing in forever, that was our first outdoor show like that. So even though there was maybe, you know, a hundred people scattered across this huge field, it might as well have been a big sea of people, just ‘cause it was fun to play outside; it was very cathartic, you know, fun to see other people play live too, not just, you know, experience it from one end and it fades. So that was a huge boost in morale… I guess we wrapped up the EP kind of right before that too, so I think we kind of had the energy of finishing that [EP], and then going to play the songs, as we kind of had now heard them in the studio live, and now that kind of feeling that you get after you record something and go back to play it and it just kind of feels a little bit different.
TY: Back in 2020 you released two singles, “Melody in the Night” and “Past Rivers”. Are there plans to include them in a future release or are they intended as standalones?
MERCEDES: I’m not going to say that maybe one day we won’t, like, release a different kind of collection of songs, but I think for the time that it was and stuff, we figured that they were the kind of perfect segue into some of the new material that we’d been writing.
CHRIS: Yeah, I don’t think we have any plans to put them anywhere else other than what they were last year. Just keep throwing new stuff out there, keep building on it, keep going forward.
RICHARD: I think we debated. At one point we were talking about maybe throwing them on with this EP, but ultimately we just decided that because they were recorded a year apart us as a band had, you know, kind of improved drastically. Matt as an engineer and producer had grown a lot. I think that we had just decided to kind of leave them as their own thing, and maybe it makes them a little bit more 2020 to just be kind of separate by themselves as singles just ‘cause that was kind of the climate we are in where it was just like, “Eh, you know, whatever.” At first, when everyone was feeling that kind of lockdown motivation, it was like, “Well, let’s put content out and, you know, we’ll cross the bridge of whether it’s on a different release or whether, you know, whether we’ll keep doing singles later.” But now that it’s kind of been a year, I think we all kind of just liked that they were singles and they kind of speak for themselves in a certain way. And never say never, but at this point I think we’ll probably leave those ones as singles and just work on getting new stuff ready.
TY: Now that we’re seeing the tail-end of the pandemic with vaccines being rolled out for almost everyone, are there any stops outside of Lethbridge you’re hoping to make when it’s safe to go on tour again?
MERCEDES: Everywhere. [Both laugh]
CHRIS: Anywhere.
MERCEDES: Yeah, how about that? Fort Macleod! [Laughs]
CHRIS: Anywhere… We had one or two Calgary bookings that we had to cancel. We’ve had to cancel Castle Mountain back-to-back years, so really, yeah, anywhere, like, to get out and play again would be super nice.
MERCEDES: Yeah, maybe reach out to some of our pals up in Edmonton, that would be cool.
CHRIS: See other human beings again. [Mercedes laughs] I love my pets, but I’m getting a little sick of just seeing them all the time.
MERCEDES: Yeah, and they’re getting way too needy too.
CHRIS: Oh, the worst. [Laughs]
MERCEDES: Yeah, they’ve really grown to expect you’re just always going to be there.
RICHARD: Safe answer’s Calgary, because all of our really good band friends are all there and we really miss playing with people like Bretton Lee John and JONNOR and just a whole schwack of people that we were meant to play with before we shut down. So we haven’t even gotten to the point of discussing what a tour would look like, but I think it’s always been a goal to make it out to the west coast, so I imagine our first committed tour that we put together will likely try and make its way out to Vancouver and back.