Octoberman Interview (Canadian Music Week special)

Here is an unpublished feature I wrote for Two Way Monologues last March.

By Michael Bulko

There’s this ongoing image of musicians living on the road. Whether it is in huge entourage-filled cavalry of tour buses, or modest utility vans with equipment and musicians strewn about indiscriminately, the musician’s lifestyle is always portrayed as a nomadic existence.

But this image seems tame when compared to Marc Morrissette of Vancouver BC’s Octoberman who seems to relish in, and whose music is usually created by, escape and travel.

“I always seem to get a lot of writing [done] when I’m on the road. To me, the perfect place to write is in some dodgy motel room.”

Morrissette left the Vancouver based band Kids These Days in 2003 in a last-minute decision to join his girlfriend on a backpacking trip through South East Asia, Turkey, London and Amsterdam.

“I brought along my guitalele (ukulele-sized guitar) and would pull it out when waiting for trains or buses,” he says when reminiscing on the experience. “The locals would sometimes stop and listen or ask to try it out. It led to some interesting interactions.”

While on his travels, Morrissette continued writing songs and it was after he returned to Vancouver that he recorded those songs at a friend house; creating Octoberman.

“In the end, only half of those songs made it on the album,” he says of the songs that he wrote during his sojourn. “But the rest still had a kind of wandering theme to them.”

The album was Octoberman’s debut release, 2005’s These Trails are Old and New, which featured Rob Josephson and Jason Starnes from Kids These Days as well as other Vancouver talent. These Trails… helped to establish Morrissette with a rave review in the Globe and Mail as well as attention from many other Canadian publications. Octoberman’s seven-track live-recorded Laguardia EP was released the following year, and serves as a testament to the intimacy of Morrissette’s solo acoustic performances.

But Octoberman isn’t always a one-man show. Morrissette has been known to be accompanied by up to seven people on stage at times. Morrissette says he likes seeing what ideas his other band mates bring to the table, but also enjoys the challenges of “trying to hold things down on [his] own”.

“I’m generally open-minded to what the songs can sound like. Some of them work better either solo or with a band but it is fun trying out different arrangements.”

Last year’s full length Run From Safety saw Morrissette return to the studio backed by many more friends and musicians than before, and this is evident in the music. Many listeners have been noticing Octoberman starting to adopt more inspiration from the sound of Kids These Days, which Morrissette agrees with.

“Every Kids member plays or sings on the new record, so it makes sense that it has a bit of that vibe.”

As for his CMW show at the Reverb on March 7, Morrissette says he is taking to the stage as part of a six-piece, and that fans can expect some new songs to show up during the set.

Octoberman will be going to Ottawa in April to start recording a new album with Dave Draves (Wooden Stars, Jim Bryson, Kathleen Edwards), and then to Portland this summer to finish with Larry Crane (Stephen Malkmus, Elliott Smith, Cat Power).

“We just played a show in Vancouver where we played mainly new songs” he says.
”And people pointed out that we are a lot noisier than we used to be.”

“I guess that's a good thing, if you like noise.”