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Written by Brian Rutherford

There’s a lot of artists out there doing a lot of genres and quite honestly, very little can set them a part from each other in vast technological schemes of the 21st century. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Dallas Green, lead singer of City and Colour and Alexisonfire who is attempting to make that effort.

Of the instruments you played for the recording of Little Hell, which did you enjoy the most?

I got to play the drums on the very last song [Hope For Now]. Whenever I demo’ed the songs, I knew that was the one, and I’ve never really got a chance to play drums on a song.

Though, they won’t play live again til July 1st at the Hop Farm Festival in Kent, UK, Dallas sounded very much at peace with his current lineup.

I’ve known Scott [Remila] and Dylan [Green] about half my life, we met through the wonderful world of skateboarding. They were already friends and became obvious choices for a great rhythm section. And of course Daniel Romano who comes from a band called Attack In Black. He’s sort of like a wiz kid.

City and Colour’s first single “Fragile Bird” has already become the bands highest charting single to date, getting to #1 on the Canadian rock/alternative charts this past April. The last album was based on a Bukowski book title. What about this one..

I wrote a song called Little Hell a while ago and I dont know Little Hell just kept coming back to the forefront, as I thought about it more, it made more sense. For me Little Hell is sort of the trials and tribulations and how you deal with the personal problems every one has in life. Whether it be an emotional relationship or something with your parents, just life in general, do ya know what I mean? There’s definitely some songs that deal with that (romanticism) but its about everything.

What was it like working with producer Alex Newport?

With Alexis we recorded with Julius (butty). With Alex, he already has 20 years of experience recording with tape, which was greeat which is something i really wanted to try. He’s very meticulous, he always hears things i dont hear, I would do a take and think i nailed, and he would say no do it again, which can be frustrating

…so he’s a bit of a slave driver?

I guess, but there was that common goal. There’s a lot of times, you feel, you’ve got it, but mentally its just cause youre tired… or you think you’re saying you got it cause you want to get to the next thing. But thats the good thing about him, especially with tape. There wasn’t a lot of lee-way, either do it well , or do it again….I feel the songs i write, benefit from that sort of warmth that tape provides, but also i wanted it to sound real. Its not like pro-tools where you can just move it around. I think I’ve always wanted to do it that way.

So why would we suppose that Dallas’ approach may be more sincere than most?

I really tried to go as far as I possibly could [on previous albums] but this time I wanted it to seem more authentic, is that the proper word?