Repulsed by Boredom: In Conversation with Eamon McGrath
Repulsed by Boredom
an interview with Eamon McGrath
A few months back, hot on the heels of a surprising seven album release on streaming platforms December 31st, 2022 via independent record label Cassettes Records Imprint, Canadian musician Eamon McGrath gave some insight into his experiences within the music industry. McGrath at first glance appears to be a relic from a different time. A poster child for DIY music and punk, the musician often finds himself at a culture war with modernity. Specifically, McGrath has a bone to pick with the current state of the music industry. In an age of accessible music with every single album available at the press of a button, an uncomfortable but perhaps necessary question arises: how has the attitude of the average listener changed towards music listening? Are we still engaged just as much as we were twenty years ago – pre-Spotify and pre-internet days? Or, as McGrath suggests, have things shifted from something we once experienced into a culture of consumption?
There are moments during the call that feel as if it’s someone twice his age calling out the state of the industry. Phrases he uses and attitudes articulated seem to hail from the pontifications of an old man that’s lived a thousand lives. And yet – McGrath has yet to reach forty. But then again – this is the same musician that’s recorded over 300 songs under his belt and has toured Europe and Canada multiple times within the same year over the last decade. The guy doesn’t rest. It makes sense that years on the road performing in venues from obscure cafes to packed festivals would lead to certain kind of hard-earned wisdom that you only get when you’ve lived the very thing you’re talking about. So maybe we can forgive the abrasiveness of the attitude and instead focus on what he’s actually saying: that perhaps the music industry and in turn its devoted listeners have strayed from what music was all about: something meant to be experienced.
Back in the mid-2000’s, McGrath released a slew of CDs via the aforementioned Cassettes Records imprint (which is run by McGrath and Sheila Roberts) . He did the same thing again in December 2022, this time releasing seven (yes, seven) albums out into the world via the label. Skip to the fall and winter of this year, Cassettes Records has shifted into the music promotion side of things with shows booked into the winter; this is a collaborative effort alongside Winsdor locals in revitalizing the Windsor/Detroit music scene (at the time of writing, December 6th has artist Pkew Pkew Pkew alongside Trophy Wife play at the Dominion House. December 28th has Canadian favourites By Divine Right and Burning Hell at the same venue. One of the more memorable acts the label recently booked was Tommy Stinson of the Replacements back in October).
Cassettes Records is the embodiment of the DIY attitude McGrath has carried with him over the years; rather than wait for a traditional record label signing/contract, the musician has instead veered left and independently funded his own work. Is it a subtle fuck you to specific components of the industry? Perhaps. But a better question might be: why would an artist feel like it was necessary in the first place?
Independency is hard. Generally, when you’re working to start off on your own, you’re likely your own voice, your own agent, your own promoter etc. It’s essentially taking on several jobs at once while either just barely breaking even or, at the very beginning of such a move, working at a loss.
So why do it?
In the interview below, the answer to this becomes clear.
Check out the conversation below:
[phone rings. McGrath picks up. We exchange pleasantries before getting into the swing of things]
Interviewer: I wanted to ask, do you ever take breaks or anything like that? You seem to kind of always be on the move.
McGrath: Uh, I try to be on the move. I mean, it's like in my line of work, it's kind of one of those things where if you're not working all the time then you’re not eating. It’s, just kind of like yeah, there's definitely a bit of a self-imposed pressure to sort of deliver. Because if you don't, you're not in business. [pause] Especially, [when you consider] the huge insurmountable cost of living that involves living in Toronto. That has definitely been the impetus for a lot of that work ethic over the last ten years. 12 years. I don't intend on slowing down now that I'm moving. I'm just looking forward to having less of a pressure cooker kind of hanging over me when I am on the road. It's just going to be more chill. I kind of look for different things in life now. I’m not twenty-something anymore. And I'm just changing my approach a little bit. But yes, I really do love touring. I love writing; it’s just like what I do. And I'd rather make $1,000 bucks playing three shows than make $300 dollars playing one. That's the way I've always kind of done it. I want to work. I love it. It’s what I do.
Interviewer: You don't get exhausted or anything?
McGrath: I'm fucking exhausted all the time. But any breaks I do take, um, to kind of benefit the work that I'm doing, yeah, it can get to be a lot. But now that I've been doing this for 15 years, my ability to sort of mortgage my time is better too. And I treat myself a lot better than I used to. I quit drinking a couple of years ago. I was like a fucking notorious world-renowned party animal. And I just got sick and touring became difficult so I had to turn my life around. Now, I feel better in general, and it’s way easier to tour when you’re not shivering with a hangover all the time.
Interviewer: Yeah. I will add to that too…I was talking with my roommate about this [ the lifestyle]. Even if you're just like a photographer or whatever, it's so easy to have a drink at a show either before or afterwards. There's a weird sort of drinking culture surrounding the industry a little bit. Either you get paid in drink tickets or you're…
McGrath: That's a really good point. You know what? That’s like the gateway into living that way. It's exactly what you just said. It's funny you mentioned that because I was actually, no word of lie just talking to someone about that like twenty minutes ago. That's the biggest thing that kick starts alcoholism is…it is a form of payment. It is a form of payment. And so you feel that if you're not drinking everything that’s been bought for you, you’re not….that you’re selling yourself short a little bit, you know? And then what happens is you start treating it as a form of payment. So you indulge. And then you feel like shit. And then eventually booze starts becoming the thing that cures you feeling like shit. So in my opinion, in my experience, the hair of the dog thing is what actually contributes to alcoholism. Because your body just starts to associate booze with just feeling better. Like any addiction, that's the line in the sand: when there's a functionalism to drinking. [pause] When I was super bad, I was like doing tequila shots at load-ins and shit because I was just so hung-over that was the only thing that would get me through the show. And it was like it became a tool that I relied on to get me through a day. And I mean, I know millions of people like that. And I mean, I probably let it go four or five years too long. I think I probably should have quit when I was 27 and I quit when I was 32.
Interviewer: Wait, what was the turning point? Sorry to interrupt you a little bit there.
McGrath: No, I mean, it's just like all that stuff like I just mentioned was just like all the roads were sort of pointing to me quitting. I got really bored of it. I felt like, um, I grew up in like a really fucking…uh….surrounded by punk rock in Edmonton in the mid 2000’s. It was some of the most hard partying punk rock shit in Canada.
Interviewer: Yeah, I've heard stories.
McGrath: That was me. I mean, I was like at the fucking epicenter of all that and uh, like legendary, infamous shit. So that became commonplace. The point is that I love rock ’n’ roll so much and I love punk rock so much. I got to the point where it didn't even feel like it was fucking…didn't even feel badass anymore. It didn't even feel like…I didn't even feel like partying. So it was like, what's the point? And that was amazing. I'm so repulsed by boredom that it just got boring. Got really boring. And it was just, like, wasn't even cool. And now it's funny because I tell people that I'm way more hardcore now than I was when I was in the depths of the abyss, fucking drinking all the time. And I mean, look at exactly what we were just talking about. I can go and play 34 shows in a row and not feel like shit now, and I can put out seven records. I can focus on resurrecting my record label [Cassettes Records], and I can book tours for other bands. I can do all this cool shit. Like, all this rock n roll badass stuff. Whereas before it was just that much harder when it was like, trainspotting. It's a way better life, and I like it way more. And I'm capable of doing things that are way more hardcore than I was when I was partying super hard. I’m way more rock and roll now. And it's like, just a good spot to be in.
Interviewer: Hang on, you said something that I don't know, it's very interesting. Uh, you said repulsed by boredom. Is that kind of why you constantly work and constantly put out records and write? [Is that] a huge part of it?
McGrath: For sure. Yeah, it's like, probably maybe to my detriment, it's like, why it's been really hard to classify what I do, because the minute I feel like I settle into any kind of mold, I want to sort of destroy it. Uh, for those records you've been reviewing, they're all over the map. You know what I mean? And that's what I like. I like songwriters that don't think that you have to play like, cowboy chords. C. F. G., you know, just to be considered a songwriter. That, to me, is just really boring. I like everything. I like Fellow Tuesday as much as Discharge. I like Scott Walker as much as I like David Bowie. [more musicians are rattled on] I want to do everything I just think that’s interesting to me. [It’s] a really good way to, uh, really great remedy for boredom. That's my worst nightmare is, like, getting to the point where it's just like, you're so marketable that people don't even hear your new album. They just come to your shows to hear the old shit. And there's so many bands like that. They put a record out and then go on tour and then no one even buys a fucking thing because they just show to party or something. Or to hear the stuff that they heard when they were sixteen. I don't want to be one of those artists. I refuse. It just doesn't interest me at all.
Interviewer: Do you have fears of becoming that as you get older?
McGrath: Well, I mean, if it feels like I do, I mean, I usually change gears or drive the car into the ditch a little bit, you know? I'm sure that’s prevented me from some fucking level of success that other people are attaining. But I mean, I just don't like the idea of being this ‘colored by numbers’ musician. The minute someone thinks that I'm too much of a country singer, I want to go and make an electronic record. The minute that I do that, people think I'm weird. Then I want to go and put out a fucking basic Americana album, you know?
Interviewer: Yeah.
McGrath: That's what I'm currently in the process of doing. This new record, A Dizzying Lust is, like, a pretty fucking typical acoustic folk album. It's very minimalistic. It's very true to form in terms of what you'll see when you come to see the shows now. It's a total singer songwriter album, but that's on the heels of seven albums that were totally all over the map, and that was very much intentional. I don't give a shit if people think that I'm difficult to categorize or impossible to pigeonhole or whatever. I want them to be confused. I want them [the audience] to be surprised. To me, that's just interesting. That's what makes music cool. That's what makes rock and roll exciting. People forget that. People forget that rock and roll is so ubiquitous, and it's just become such a huge part of pop culture. People forget that there was a time when Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, all that stuff, it came out of fucking nowhere. And it was so shocking. And at the heart of it, there's an inherent surprise to rock n roll that's so crucial to the art form. And it's really sad to me that that has been forgotten, like commercialization and marketing and record labels and publicists and everything. You know, it's become really watered down. And I just think that's just not true to form. You should go to a show and want to have your mind blown and want to be shocked and want to be taken aback, and all my favorite bands have done that to me. So why wouldn't you want to do that to other people? That's the feeling that I like when I go see bands that I love.
Interviewer: Hang on. It sounds to me that you grew up with basically everything, because when you say you love music, it sounds like you really love music.
McGrath: Yeah, I really do. I mean, the bands that I loved growing up like The Clash, and what made them so great was the fact that we were able to articulate and produce such a wide spectrum of sound. Right? I mean, look at Sandinista! Like, that record has everything on that album, from calypso to punk rock to reggae to fucking…I mean, it's crazy. It's everything all at once. That's exactly what I mean. Like, why would you want to call yourself inspired by The Clash and then not also channel the wide variety of music that they were influenced by, you know? Makes no sense to me. People say that they're inspired by The Clash, and then every single song they have sounds like ‘Police On My Back’ [clash song] It makes no sense. The same thing is with The Replacements. You listen to an album like Hootenanny, it's totally different from Let It Be. Totally different from Tim. Totally different than Don't Tell A Soul. All those albums are so unique and that's, uh, again, just really exciting. That's the aspects of all that music that I really connected to, the diversity and eclecticism, um, being all over the map. And that's what makes it cool.
Interviewer: How did you wind up discovering some of the bands that you loved? Was it like, you walk into a cafe and suddenly you hear some bands? Or did you just go to a show and were just like, “oh, hey, I love this band.”
Mcgrath: I'm like the last holdout. Like, I was born in the 80s. I'm like the kind of the weird little middle child between the generation now, like the Shazam generation or whatever, and the people that came before me that actually had to work for their discoveries. I worked for my discoveries, and I still do. I actively go out and try to discover new shit. And I read Maximum Rock and Roll religiously, and I was on the Profane Existence mail order and I got my friends to make me mix tapes and I went to record stores and I asked questions, like, I did all that shit. I'm from a really analogous upbringing. I'm old enough to remember seeing the internet for the first time. I'm not a digital native, so for me, it's like, yeah, that was a huge part of it. I used to love that. I still try to do that, you know? Now, I make a point of, like, going to shows and asking questions. And if there's something that I've never heard of before, I want to know all about it and I try my best to understand it. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the band Unwound.
Interviewer: I’ve heard of them, yeah.
McGrath: Unwound is, like, commonly known as the West Coast Fugazi. Unwound is like this revered band. And you know, I'm not a fan of Unwound, but I have tried to understand the new side of music time and time again. And it's like, stuff like that. I really want to get it. When people tell me that I'd love something, I want to do the work to understand what it is that I would love about it.
Interviewer: Even if you don't actually like the song?
McGrath: No, because it's like, maybe there's a point where you get struck by lightning, you know? And that feeling is so great. That feeling of being captivated by music and having it stopped time and all that. That feeling is why we do what we do. Right? That's why you're a music journalist, that's why I'm a musician. That's why you're a photographer, because you're trying to capture those moments. That's the fundamental thing that would shape it is that feeling of, like, stopping in your tracks and being just, like, blown away by something that you think could change the world. That's the fucking point. Uh, yeah. I think it's a quest worth undertaking. Searching for that thing like you're digging for gold, it's worth it.
Interviewer: When was the last time you'd say you were hit with lightning and that you had music just stop you in your tracks? When did you have that feeling last?
McGrath: I remember, they're called Status Non Status now, but the band WhoopSzo. Um, the first couple of times I saw WhoopSzo like that, it was just like a religious experience. The first time I heard the Afghan Whigs was like that. First time I heard, uh, ‘Slave Ambient’ by The War on Drugs was like that. Um, I saw this band called Gut Rot. I played with them in January in Montreal. They blew my mind. They’re like a thrash band from Montreal. That was totally one of those, “holy fuck, this band is amazing.” You know, when you're looking around at each other and are like, “this is fucking serious shit.” That was really great. Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't happen as often as I wish it did, but I mean, that's also kind of good because the fact that it's so rare and unique and fleeting is sort of evidence of it being really special. Right?
Interviewer: Totally.
McGrath: So to me, that's a sign that when it does happen to you, that it's something that actually exists in the world. Because I think if I felt that way all the time, it would just be a little unbelievable.
[some preamble about local show veterans. I off-handedly mention one local guy that goes to just about every single show here in the Edmonton/Calgary music scene]
McGrath: He's the best. He's the guy that absolutely understands what it is about music that’s worth fighting for. His favourite band is Dead Moon, you know? That's a band that absolutely channels and represents what I'm talking about. People like that are who I make music for. I have no real vested interest in creating something for the TikTok generation. I don't give a shit. And so maybe that's why I just have no interest in being particularly “marketable”. I don't make music for people that think of it as something that just gets crumpled up and thrown away.
Interviewer Yeah.
McGrath: Everybody refers to Spotify as the way that we “consume” music. That fucking term is so gross. Like, the idea that music is something that's just to be, quote, unquote, consumed is fucking disgusting. And again, maybe it's because of my age or whatever. It's like the fact that I was just on the tail end of when everything became shitty and digital. But I remember so distinctly being a kid and getting a mix tape. And discovering an LP in my parent’s basement. Like hearing Psycho Candy by the Jesus Mary Chain for the first time. I heard that on vinyl, the actual vinyl, the actual copy that my dad bought in actual Scotland, in actual 1982, you know? For me, it’s just so special. I would never want to ruin it.
Interviewer: Okay, on the opposite end of that though, you don't think that maybe Spotify and things like that might be a little bit more accessible to this newer generation? Uh, especially with the economic times right now, it's a little cheaper to get a student subscription than it is to buy like a couple of records. Now I think records are going for like $25. Which adds up. I do get what you’re saying with the magic of vinyl and analog. Nothing beats that. But I think we kind of live in different times now a little bit.
McGrath: I think you're right. I mean, I don't have an issue with Spotify specifically or anything like that. But I have an issue with the way they've gone about it [music distribution] I think they've been way more destructive than people thought they were. [They’ve] homogenized music to the point where, um, it's so oversaturated, it's so ubiquitous, it's so at your fingertips, it turned it into something disposable. Yeah, that's also on the fault of the listener. But I don't have Spotify. I don't use it. I don’t have a subscription. I never cared. I just don't care. I know that I'm kind of maybe weird to say that, but I'm just not caught up in that club. And I guess, like, what I'm saying too, is that if you're making a conscious choice to listen to music that way because you understand that it's special and you know that it's meaningful and you've done all the legwork to have a pattern in your life, then more power to you. Right. But the problem now is that people just don't know that there's another way. The problem is that it's just become so ubiquitous that people have just operated under this assumption that's the only way that we listen anymore. And that, I think, is really troubling. Regardless of how old you are, you know? We're not taught to value it. Spotify, that's one of the things that it's done. It's brainwashed people into thinking that it's not something worth cherishing. And the ripple effect of that has been felt on so many levels.
Interviewer: Yeah, you brought up the issue of that. Okay, so what would your solution be if you were to come up with one?
McGrath: I think one thing that has to happen is the payment model needs to change. I think it's crazy that a music listener has no direct way of controlling where their money goes. It’s fucking stupid. Why should Spotify take my money and give it to say, Beyonce? I've never listened to her. It's bullshit. That’s one thing that could change. I mean, it's like, I buy a ticket to a show for a band I like. I go to the merch table and buy a t-shirt. That's the fundamental thing. I don't have a problem with the platform. I love music. I want to be able to listen to any record ever. But I want to support music that I love. And Spotify takes away my right as a listener to do that. And that's another reason why it's bad. So the whole system is just flawed. But I mean, I don't know, hopefully that'll change. Because I think that for every Spotify subscriber, that's just like treating music like a Jackie Wallpaper. For every ten of those people, there's one that’s going to grow up really loving it. [short pause]. So yeah, it's not all bad. For me, it's like, I've been able to use it as a way to promote small scale shows that I really enjoy playing that are really intimate experiences for people that really want to be there and care a lot. That makes me really happy. I think that's awesome. I don't think, like, 15 years ago, I never would have been able to play a, uh, really great show in Paris, Ontario. I was able to do that. Like, I played in sold out crowd in Paris, Ontario in fucking January a couple of weeks ago. I mean if you could have told me that when I first started touring Canada, that in 15 years I'd be able to do that, I would have told you that were fucking crazy. But the internet has made that possible.
Interviewer: Okay, so if you're not going to use like, TikTok or anything like that, how do you market yourself?
McGrath: I don't know. I use Instagram and I just play constantly. I'm always fucking touring. And I really do believe that's the number one way to get your music out there. I mean, how would it not be when you're playing it for people? Anyone that's there is going to hear it. I refuse to ignore the reality of that equation, you know?
Interviewer: Yes.
McGrath: If there are ten people at your show and they are listening to your song, they will hear your song. It's not fucking brain surgery. All this shit that people talk about with how to use influencers or algorithms or whatever the fuck that is. I don't think they're actually talking about hearing the music. I think they're talking about the quest to become famous. And for me, that's never been a motivator. I just don't care. I like being able to walk down the street and no one knows who I am. But what I do care about is people connecting to the music that I play and songs that I write. And I tour to do that. That's what I do. I play songs. Literally. My job is literally, I drive around the world, and I play songs. I sell songs to people that want to buy them. And that's how I make my living. And it's quite simple.
Interviewer: It sounds like you kind of live and breathe music. So I wanted to ask, when you take a break, what do you do to unwind and step away from making records and touring and traveling and all that?
McGrath: I do try to do that. If I have two weeks off, um, I try to close the guitar case and not open it. I think that is really a distraction. It's very healthy. Um, but having said that, it's like I got to eat. If I'm not on tour, I'm probably writing or recording or something. But I think that's also just a really good way of distracting yourself from below. Recording and playing are just completely different art forms. So it’s like…even though there's music involved, they're so radically different that you can't really do both at once. So yeah, if I'm not on tour, um, I'll usually make a record and try to figure out a way to put another record out.
Interviewer: Wait, you mentioned they're different. Like different how? Like in what aspects?
McGrath: Well, I mean, it's just like one's performative and one's not in the way that it's like comparing dancing and painting or something. Like recording, you're creating an illusion and replication of something. And when you're performing for someone, you're doing your best to show them the real thing. It's a completely different art form. Uh, there's very little performance quality to recording music anymore. I mean, it depends how you record. Honestly, nowadays there's so much editing and software. I don't mean that in a bad way. I just think like…I mean, you’re painting somebody a picture. All of it is kind of like painting someone a picture. It gets closer and closer to the intentionality of drawing something than it is to making something happen in real time. Um, so that's how I see it.
Interviewer: That’s kind of a funny way of looking at it. It feels like a very Eamon answer. Like, “okay, yeah, I take my breaks by working more.” It’s very funny.
McGrath: Yeah, it’s just for me. It requires a completely different part of your brain.
Interviewer: Yeah.
McGrath: And so I turn off the part of my brain that has to deliver a really honest performance every night by turning on the part of my brain that requires a different result.
Interviewer: [there’s a] literary quality to your work. Is there any inspiration you draw from the stuff you read?
McGrath: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a huge fan of Clarice Lispector. She's a Brazilian intellectual that has probably some of the most beautiful writing you will ever read in your life. Every single sentence is like a jaw-droppingly beautiful poem. Um, Louis Ferdinand Celine is another writer that I really love. The same kind of thing. It's just that everything is so beautiful, but also, like, so ugly at the same time. Celine has this really incredible way of, um, describing these moments of just, like, brutality with poetic eloquence that I really love. The contrast in his writing is amazing. JD. Salinger, another writer that I really love. When I first read Catcher in the Rye, that was just life changing, you know? Within the book, there’s that feeling, like, just getting washed up in that little motif of innocence. And that book was so beautiful. I’m a huge fan of concrete poetry like BP Nichol. Ah, there’s such a different quality to what he does. And I really love the playfulness in the writing. It’s really inspiring. Um, yeah, I think that there's so many things that work so well lyrically in songs that might not fare so well when you see them written on the page. And I just try to be really aware of that. There’s a musicality to language that’s interesting to work through. I like a lot of writing.
[we move on to discussing the record he’d just released as part of ‘The Seven” as part of the Cassettes Records revival back in January 2023]
Interviewer: What can you tell me about the album? I was curious about a couple of things. I think mainly “Shortest Day,” which on your bandcamp you mentioned was written by your mom?
McGrath: Yeah, so my mom is a writer. She’s written a bunch of books. And she has a poem that I liked the phrasing of. Her and I just did a co-write remotely. That Liar’s Paradise was recorded in peak fucking shitty COVID Winter 2021 in really, like, desperate times Toronto. Very dark period. I lived in this house with this girl I was seeing at the time. The rental market was just at this record low. And yeah, there was a guy living in the back, in a shed. It was just fucking hard times, man. Like really fucking brutal. In some ways the city [Toronto] has not recovered. Not even close. It was just a sign of the ongoing jury view of passing responsibility around thinking things weren’t going to last long, like COVID - people thought that would be a shitty three months and it actually ended up lasting two years. And yeah, my mom just wrote this poem about not having a family around for Christmas. We're not religious people whatsoever, right? We’re hardcore atheists. But it's nice to be around people you love, and the weather sucked. So yeah, I think the song was really just about that. It was during a really sort of dreary point of winter and I just connected with it. And her and Danny, [Danny Miles, drummer for July Talk] the drummer that I recorded the records with, they’re also collaborators. Like Danny's a photographer. He does beautiful bird photography. And my mom and him were working on a couple collaborative poems and photos and stuff. So, it was really cool to be able to involve everybody. All three of us worked on the same song. It was a way of sort of bringing people together at a time when you couldn’t be together. Um, a lot of the music I made during COVID is ironic in that way. Everybody had all this time and no excuses to say no to something. And…so, you know, even though everybody was apart. It was actually sort of nice, a sort of burst of creativity, where you could actually go and make the records that you wanted to make with people. Like Danny and I…. The last record we made together before we put out all these ones was Exile in 2014 before July Talk really took off. And he and I have been talking about making records together for ten years and we never had a chance. And finally, COVID happened and then suddenly that’s all we did! And that was really weird. It was like, we were like, “I haven't seen the guy in eight months, but we're actually more creatively in contact than we’ve ever been.” So that was cool. I mean, there’s so many examples of that. And yeah, that record, that Liars album is no different. It's like a really nice way of reconnecting with someone that I haven’t had the chance to see in ages. Um, so anyway, it was nice because it was a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. And it's like, it was super shitty fucking winter. But there was all this hope, and in some ways, I think I'm still kind of trying to ride that wave a little bit.
Interviewer: Why call it ‘Liars Paradise’, the album?
McGrath: I mean, it's a reference to the fellow that was living in the back, the guy was a fucking hardcore drug addict. And, um, he was obviously very secretive in both his spins and his habits. And who knows what he's doing, man. When my landlord finally kicked him out, which was a really tragic experience, by the way, the guy had nowhere to go. And, um, uh, the last I saw of him, it was about nine in the morning, he slammed like three quarters of a two-liter grower’s cider, and got behind the wheel of this car he was living in and drove to Peterborough. Like, it was so dark. And anyway, I just thought of this idea that he was lying to everybody – himself included- about what he was doing back there. Um, yeah, and then my landlord let me into the dilapidated unit that he was sleeping in. It was just like, it smelled like crap. There was just fucking spray paint all over the walls. It was just such a stereotypical drug addict moment. But you think to yourself about the ambiguity of what happiness is. I don't know, it's just so sad to me that this guy was living in total squalor. But who am I to say that there wasn't bleeding joy that he found at some point in his life, like, whenever he gets his fix. Just suffering masquerading as happiness or something, you know? It just was such a weird feeling being in that room when I was taken in to see it. And that's what I sort of thought myself as I was describing it as a Liar's Paradise. It's just so dilapidated and ironically kind of honest, you know?
Interviewer: Yeah.
McGrath: Anyway, yeah, it was just a really dark, super dark moment. And, there's this kind of like Dante's Inferno element to it, maybe. Like the nine circles of hell. Maybe the lying, I don’t know if you’ve ever read The Divine Comedy but as you approach the center of hell, the punishment gets sort of more and more severe. And it was very clear to me that the, uh, person within this very serious form of peril that I think they maybe just didn't want to admit it to themselves. And that was kind of the inspiration for the whole record.
Interviewer: Some heavy stuff.
McGrath: It was heavy.
Interviewer: Yeah.
McGrath: Super heavy. It was just so dark, and it was just such a snapshot of where Toronto was at as a city that whole time. It was just such a desperate place. [after a brief interlude on the rough path urban cities have taken]: Again, though, there's hope, right?
Interviewer: Yeah, I would say so.
McGrath: Music was what got me through that really shitty winter. And now I'm leaving. There's hope for me. I'm really happy. I'm going to be doing great.
Interviewer: How do you find hope? Like you were mentioning about the dark area in your life.
McGrath: I know that there's something worth fighting for. I mean, I play music for a living. No matter how shitty things get, I can't deny the fact that when I stand on stage every night, I feel like the world is becoming a bit of a better place. I know that I can change things about what makes it shitty. And one of the ways that I can do that is by not living in decrepit, frozen, corporate shittiness. And I never used to. And it's really shitty that people have stolen it from us. But I can't control that.
Interviewer: I don't want to say, like, spiritual, but would you say you've become a little bit more “enlightened” in the last couple of years? You mentioned sobriety and all that.
McGrath: Yeah, I like to think so. Um, I think that I'm not as angry as I used to be. I think I've gotten way more control over my logistic career now than I used to. I was a pretty rambunctious renegade punk rocker for a really long time, because things were way more left to chance than I maybe thought at the time.
Interviewer: Well, you mentioned, like, you were angry. What were you angry at in your younger days?
McGrath: Well, I just think at the world. I just saw the world as a kind of a really dark place, and it still is. But I just think that now I've just got a better means of controlling my own reaction to it. I'm not at the whim of all the stuff that makes it bad. I think I just have more of the wherewithal to try and direct my energy at things that are going to make me feel better. So, one of the things that I can do is play music really well.
Interviewer: I really like the way you said that. You can't necessarily control what's going on in the world, but you can control your reactions to what's going on.
McGrath: Yeah, exactly.
As McGrath suggests, in times of despair or in times of the bleakest depths, there is hope. Change isn’t easy – whether that be through personal trials or navigating a complex working environment that seems to change each year – but it is possible.
So is there hope for the music industry? Absolutely.
You can find his newest album, A Dizzying Lust on the artist’s band-camp and other streaming platforms. Alternatively, if you’d like to support the physical copy and McGrath’s Cassettes Records label, purchase the album (including “The Seven” – one of which is Liar’s Paradise) from the artist himself. Head on over to his socials for purchasing info. For everything regarding the Windsor/Detroit music scene, give Cassettes Records a follow on socials.
- Josalynn Lawrence