Track-by-Track: Dallas Green on The Hurry and The Harm
Dallas Green takes us through his just-released fourth LP track-by-track, citing the impact the disbanding of Alexisonfire had on it, why it’s so self-effacing and dark, and why a track originally written for Kimbra changed the way he viewed his craft.
The Hurry and The Harm
A lot of the times I’ll write a song and know exactly where it’s gonna be. Like especially the first and last song, I can tell right away. I had a good idea that it was going to be the first song but then when we came up with that distortion and swell at the start – that was just one of those happy accidents in the studio, I was warming up to do the part that sits underneath the whole song and Alex [Newport] my producer was just rolling the tape waiting to start and then when we finished the track he just happened to reverse the volume fade as opposed to it fading out and I thought that was really cool. As soon as it happened I thought ‘this is going to be the first song’, it’s a perfect beginning to a record I think.
[As a title track] I don’t think it’s as thematically concurrent as Little Hellwas [to the last record], but I do think there are similar things on a lot of the songs. When I wrote The Hurry and The Harm I just kept saying it a lot and I thought it was the perfect name for the record. I think that with anything, people can listen to the record and draw their own conclusions about the songs, and there are – like with all my songs – you can draw a lot of comparisons to the themes of them, but I wouldn’t want to go and say [the album] is completely based around the title.
Phonetically it just sounded really good and as a singer, those things are important – some words I just don’t think I could ever sing, they just don’t sound right coming out of me, whether I like the word or not. The fact the song lyrically is sort of a reaction to the way I feel about life is going right now. We live in this world where everyone wants everything as quickly as possible without necessarily worrying if it’s the truth, or if it’s the right information, or of it’s the wrong information. You want your web pages loaded as such, you want your coffee as quickly as you can get it; it even goes to when I’m playing a show and trying to get people not to film it with their phones. They’re trying so desperately to remember it so quickly that they’re not even experiencing it.
Harder Than Stone
Harder Than Stone is a fun one for me because I tried to write that song about five years ago, and I came up with half of the lyrics, which if you’ve got your thinking cap on you’ll notice are lyrics from an Alexisonfire song. When I started writing that song it was right around the time that we were starting to write songs for [2009 LP] Old Crows Young Cardinals. This is another example of how my mind was torn in two, we had written the song Born and Raised and I tried out the lyrics that I come up with for this song for Born and Raised and they worked so well that I kept them in that song. But what happened was, I could never finish writing this song because every time I tried writing new lyrics I would just sing the Born and Raised lyrics and I thought ‘well I can’t use these’. As time went on, it was at some point at the beginning of last year, that song came up again, we were trying to write and I just said ‘fuck it, we’re going to do this song with the original lyrics’ – if anyone can rip me off, it’s me. It worked because I was able to complete the song with the lyrics I had originally written and it worked well with the feel of the song and what I had been writing about; the idea that I could walk away from this, and be okay. And what I mean by this is I don’t mean music, I mean I could walk away from the idea of having to pursue music professionally, or send it out and have people comment on it. Life is hard no matter what and you can’t really worry about what people are going to say about you.
Of Space and Time
I wrote that song when I was making [2011 LP] Little Hell and tried to record it probably four or five times and it just wouldn’t come together; I don’t know what it was, it just wasn’t sounding right to me. I think now as I look back, subconsciously I know that song was about me leaving Alexisonfire. Mentally I had left but publicly I hadn’t so subconsciously I hadn’t allowed myself to put it out there because I knew I wasn’t able to talk about it. Once we finally came to terms with our decision, and we became friends again and organised the last tour, so one day last summer I just went down to my basement and rewrote the song as you hear it now and it’s strange how when I look back I can see that’s why it wouldn’t end up on Little Hell, it just wasn’t the right time for it to come out. You listen to it and you can see where I was and what I wanted to say.
I don’t know if [Alexisonfire] have heard it or not; there’s one thing we’ve never really talked about, and still don’t, is City and Colour. I never really liked bringing stuff up or showing them songs I was working on just because I didn’t know how they were going to react to them. I didn’t know how they were reacting to the success of it, or maybe if they knew or of if there was an idea that I was going to leave. We try to keep them pretty separate.
The Lonely Life
If I had to pick – even though that song is not necessarily a love song – that’s the love song on the record. I had come up with the chorus, the please don’t pass me by, because I thought it was a beautiful melody and I really like the phrasing, and I had to write verses around it, I had to write a story around it. I came up with the idea that it’s about a person who decides that it’s time to move on with their life, but then they realised that that was the wrong decision and how he would be affected if he had left, knowing that he had left the love of his life, for the wrong reason. Leave it to me to find the darker side of things, but that’s where that song comes from.
It was just sort of an idea in my head, like what if I decided to leave my wife, or what if my parents weren’t together anymore – even though they’ve been together 40 years and are obviously the love of each other’s lives. What if one of them left and then realised that it was the wrong idea.
There’s a quote that Charles Dickens has about the lonely life of a writer, that you’re married to your words and married to the idea of trying to find whatever it is us writers are trying to find. It’s like a tragic comedy, you know like comedians who are always depressed even though we’re trying to make people life. So The Lonely Life, that’s you know me, the character, going off and looking for something else or something else to try to write about.
Paradise
I was writing that song when I was in Alexis and trying to find happiness. I was living in such an unbelievably blessed life where I had not only one but two of these projects where I was throwing all of my life and self into and all I ever wanted was for people to listen to my music. And now I’m stuck with this depression and this decision that I have to make because I can’t find happiness in either of them. A lot of the lyrics are about the nights that I would lay awake wondering why I can’t be happy when I have all this happiness to be happy about. All these wonderful thing are happening in my life and I’m not happy and I don’t understand why, so that’s where that song comes from.
Commentators
Commentators is a two part song. One it’s a reaction to lazy journalism, and the second is a reaction to the faceless, ignorant commentating that goes on in the world on the Internet. At the click of a button, behind a screen name, people can say the most horrible things to one another without really having to worry about any accountability. I don’t personally care what people say about me, because I’m a musician and I write songs and I don’t expect everybody to like it, that would be very hypocritical of me. But whether it be someone saying something horrible about my wife on Internet, or if I’m watching something on YouTube and it’s a video of a song I play and I’m watching people argue back and forth whether or not they like the song or whether or not they know what model of guitar I’m playing which isn’t wrong but they’re yelling at each other, calling each other faggots – to me that doesn’t make any sense. People like to talk about how the world has brought people closer together but really I think it’s driving a wedge in between actual human interaction. It’s sort of what The Hurry and The Harm is about too and that’s what I meant when I said there was an underlying theme in a few of the songs.
Thirst
I actually wrote that song for somebody else, that’s the first time that’s ever happened. I’d never been really approached to do that for someone and I’d never attempted to write something for someone else. I got a request, through the grapevine that there were people looking for a song for someone and I thought well I can’t do that. then an hour later I’d written a song, and that’s one of the first times I’d ever written a song that quickly. I surprised myself. But as time went on we never really heard anything back about it and I started liking the song a bit, as my own. It occurred to me that I can write a song that has nothing to do with anything in my own life, and still like it. That’s a good indication that I can still write good songs and it doesn’t have to be so attached.
Sometimes you can listen to one of my songs and you can think that I’m singing about something in my own life, because that’s the way I write, I tried to make it as relatable as possible. But where I was coming from with that song is I wrote it from a woman’s point of view because I was writing for a girl. It was for Kimbra. When you listen to it, there’s things about the vocal lines that you can tell I was thinking about her singing it.
It wasn’t directed from her, it was the label people who were looking for people to write songs, or help write songs. It’s funny because when I met her I said ‘did you hear the song I wrote for you?’ she was like ‘nope’. I said ‘yeah well, it’s mine now.’ Laughs. Musically I think the reason why that song is so different is because I didn’t write it for myself, but I ended up liking it, it turned out to be very cool and the first single. It’s a really, really fun song to play and sing. It gave me a chance to explore a different side of me, rhythmically and sonically; I like to do that. So when you listen to it you can hear in the vocal that I’m imagining her singing it.
Two Coins
I have always had an interest in mortality. I like that idea, I think it’s one of the two things that connects to everyone in the world: we’re all born and we all die. It’s my favourite song on the record and I think that’s because when I came up with the chorus, the vocal “I’ve always been dark with light somewhere in the distance” – that’s sort of like my mission, that’s always been my music, that sums up me as a person, to glow on the darker side of thing. That song is very very special to me, it’s just my favourite. I came up with the chords a long time ago and I could never really figure out what to write the words about. I went through a bit of a hard time when I was out on tour with Little Hell and I was dealing with the Alexis decision all coming to a head and the words just kind of poured out of me. Not only that but sonically, it sounds as I had always imagined it.
Take Care
I came up with the guitar line first and for me anyway, it’s a complicated, finger-picking song. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to sing over it while playing because I’m not the greatest guitar player in the world when it comes to finger-picking like that. I had that guitar line for a very long time and slowly I was able to conquer that with a melody and a vocal line that I really liked.
That song lyrically – I’m sort of singing that song to myself. I know you could take it as if I’m singing that song to you or think that I’m worried for somebody. I was worried for myself actually. Again it was sort of in that same period where I was in a bit of a dark place in my life. I was losing hope in a lot of things and losing the joy in what I was doing, and probably not behaving in the right way, drinking too much – I just wasn’t taking care of myself. When I started to write that song I realised I was singing to myself, trying to tell myself to settle down and get back to finding the real reasons to why I do this.
I feel much better [now]. I think a lot of it has to do with things sort of wrapping up [of Alexisonfire] and obviously making the record and being proud of it helps. There was a prolonged sadness when I wrote Little Hell and when I wrote this song it was during that prolonged sadness. I think coming through all that and rekindling the friendships with Alexis and being able to close up that part of my life, in a good way, it’s allowed me to move on and be happy, or happier.
I think it’s one of those songs that you can listen to and you don’t need to know that I’m singing it to myself, you can take it for what it is.
Ladies and Gentlemen
I had this idea to write a song about evil. There’s an old Howlin’ Wolf song called Evil, it’s not as dark as that it’s more just about the bad things that can go on. I just started writing these little lines down like the part ‘It’s the poison running through your blood’. And then after a couple of months just coming back and forth with these lines I had, I came up with an idea for a song. It’s definitely a darker song, it’s kind of a catastrophe kind of song.
A lot of these songs I had the ideas for a long time ago, and once I had finished the cycle of Little Hell I was able to piece them together and it all kind of came to together.
The Golden State
It’s not necessarily about my beef with California, it’s more my beef with everybody who writes songs about California. It just came to me one night, I think I was watching television and a song came on, one of the many, many songs that deals with California and I thought to myself ‘why does everybody still sing about California?’ I thought that’d be a good line for a song and took it from there. I think too it’s a very ironic song, I’m singing about California while singing a song about people singing about California. Really at the bottom of it is probably just jealousy because I live in Canada where it’s really cold most of the time and California doesn’t really have a seasonal change.
Death’s Song
That song is about the idea of – again, like Harder Than Stone – of walking away from all this. It’s about the death of Dallas Green as a musician, a public figure; the idea of what would happen if everyone just stopped listening to me, would I be okay with moving on. If I ever decided to walk away from this, it’s having a song for it – finding a resting place.
I don’t know [how I feel when I question walking away]. That’s that endless search, that wonder of where I’m supposed to me and what I’m looking for. Because at some point I have to look at myself and say ‘why am I doing this?’ I don’t write songs and put records out because I want them to go #1, or because I want them to win a Grammy or because I want to sell out shows. Obviously those things would be nice, and are nice, but really I write because I love it, I write because I love to sing and play and that’s my number one reason behind it. So, at some point you have to look at yourself and go ‘why do I put myself through all of this?’ what am I striving for, what is the end goal? If I don’t set those goals for myself, what am I doing this all for? Why am I constantly putting myself in positions where I write songs about taking better care of myself or I’m putting myself in positions where I’m unhappy or I’m depressed. And it’s because of this, because of whatever it is that I’m looking for.