KEVIN DREW: Q&A

Growing up, Kevin Drew rebelled against the family piano, but was always rocking out with a tennis racket or vacuum cleaner, admitting, “My brother and I put on some serious AC/DC concerts when we were younger.” He, and everyone else in Broken Social Scene, enjoys a wide variety of music.
Growing up, Kevin Drew rebelled against the family piano, but was always rocking out with a tennis racket or vacuum cleaner, admitting, “My brother and I put on some serious AC/DC concerts when we were younger.” He, and everyone else in Broken Social Scene, enjoys a wide variety of music. Don’t think that this record, or any of their records, musically defines them. Drew, both an admirer of hip-hop and a self-professed reggae fanatic says, “It’s important to love music, and I adore it, but sometimes you make the music you make.” Concerning Spirit If…Drew was quick to point out that they weren’t making a record, they were just having fun recording and he was getting to “pour out all my shit.”

How was this collaboration different from a typical Social Scene record, besides fact that you wrote all songs?

We really wrote a lot of the songs together; I wrote a lot with my producers. “Big Love” was theirs, and “Bodhi Sappy Weekend,” the band did that, so there were a few moments where I felt like Avril Lavigne, having songwriters for me, but I liked that a lot, I really did.

What inspired these tunes?

What inspires me is anxiety and the quest to try to change things in my life. I started jogging and I think I’m going to start taking up boxing, because I just find myself pissed off most of the time. I’m just not into the idea there’s always something better somewhere else. You know, I got addicted to endings and beginnings and to the idea of always moving around. I remember when I was 18 and traveling Europe, I got stuck in Switzerland. I got off the train, couldn’t find the hostel, had a six-dollar coffee, was young and broke traveling on my own and this old guy comes up to me and says, “Speak English? See that fucking shit!”  There’s an American flag behind me and he says, “F***ing Americans everywhere!”  I’m like, “Whoa buddy, I’m Canadian,” and he goes, “Same thing! You guys and your knapsacks, you fucking Americans, you all love Jack Kerouac, you love On the Road, and you’re all addicted to that, always on the road, always moving, always got to be somewhere else, always got to do something.”

You write a lot about hope and fear. What do you fear?

My greatest fear is myself, but there’s a lot to fear out there. What scares me most is how I can’t see much responsibility or boundaries any more in my surroundings or society.  That’s what Spirit if… is-it’s the battle of what if.

Who are some of your heroes?

I got lots of heroes, but I try to turn inward for my heroes. I try to turn into the people I know.  I’ve got a few mentors in my life that I follow closely, I watch the good and the bad, I see the quality of humans they are and I’m trying to be my own hero so I can get this life going and just be happy, make sure the people around me are happy, and make sure I’m responsible to the idea of making the people around me happy. I’ve been the greatest and the worst, and I need to find a balance. Everyone’s reaching or falling from something, and I think we need more of a median. I don’t mean erase the passion or destroy the want, those things we need. We need to yearn and feel alive and want to go swallow everything we see, but there’s a balance somewhere.

Do you need to be miserable to write good songs?

No, the idea that miseries create art is something that’s been said to us all by people that have become glorified heroes. I don’t praise a lot of the heroes these days, especially the way they’ve lived their lives. Obviously, whenever you’re going through something that’s the best time to create, if you’re going through something amazing, or horrible, or nothing at all you should be creating. Unfortunately, the songwriters of today generally torture themselves to make sure they’re writing good songs and take it a little too seriously. The only people who become a victim to that is them and their audience, it’s the kids, the kids are going to lock themselves in their rooms, huff glue and slice their arms so that they can say they’re a painter.