“When I put this band together, I wasn’t looking for friends, to be completely honest with you,” Green says. “I was looking for something specific. I had been through a band with my friends, Alexisonfire, for so many years. When City and Colour was evolving I got my friends involved. Then I made a decision to make The Hurry and the Harm [2013] with people that I’d never met. I decided to try it – I got a bunch of players that were really good and hoped that it would work. I ended up with four people that, while also remarkable players, are also four people that I would happily call some of my best friends.
“Over the last two years, playing with them and getting to know them personally has been something I’ve really valued. I think we connect because we’re older guys that have been doing this forever. We’ve all done this on so many different levels. We’ve all toured in the van, slept on the floor, played to no one. We’re still here. We’re still doing it. It’s a testament to what we’ve been through.”
If I Should Go Before You marks some notable changes for City and Colour. Along with being the first album made since solidifying the lineup, it’s also the first album that Green himself produced. Although Green has always at least assisted with production – most prominently on his 2005 debut, Sometimes – he decided to take complete control this time around.
“I had a vision of what I wanted the album to sound like,” he says. “Having my friend Karl [Bareham] on hand to engineer was a big help – he’s been a friend of mine for something like 12 years now. I think that if we had brought in anyone else to produce this album it wouldn’t have reflected what we wanted to do. This was about building our confidence. Having this band and having Karl around really gave me hope that I would be able to achieve what I wanted out of this record.”
Having a fully invested band by his side also made the composition side of things much easier for Green. “With the older records, I played a lot of it myself and had people coming in and out,” he says. “This time I had a specific guy for each thing that I wanted to do. I approached the songwriting and recording that way – I could get Matt to cycle through organ sounds, or improvise a bit of pedal steel, I could get Doug to go between brushes and sticks. I had roles set out and everything at my disposal.”
Fans’ first taste of the album came via its opening number, the colossal nine-minute suite Woman. It’s the longest City and Colour song to date, as well as the song that perhaps stretches the furthest away from the project’s original aesthetic.
“That one built out of a huge jam session,” says Green, who takes a comparison to Neil Young and Crazy Horse with the utmost grace. “Basically, the only rule that we set out was that if I motioned toward the mic it meant I was going to sing. As soon as I moved away, all bets were off. We must have jammed that for like 30, maybe 40 minutes. I’m pretty sure I still have a half-hour demo version lying around somewhere. We just knew that we were onto something really special with that song.”
Despite cutting it back to a relatively modest nine minutes, there’s always the option of extending it live. “Exactly,” laughs Green. “I’ve called it ‘the festival killer.’ If a set’s ever going badly at a festival, we’re just going to play Woman for however much time we have left. We could be one song in. It hasn’t happened yet, but we’ve got it in the back pocket should it arise.”
In terms of technical nuts-and-bolts, Green mentions that going out and buying new gear is part and parcel of an album’s creation for him. Each time he enters the studio to make a City and Colour record, he brings in a whole lot of new toys to play around with.
“I’m on an endless search for tone,” he says. “I always go out and get new amps, new guitars, things like that. I love finding new ways to produce sound. I tend to have the same few guitars that I write music with, but the great thing about recording is that it gives you the freedom to explore what each song can sound like.”
To illustrate, a recent off-hand purchase was key to realising one of If I Should Go Before You’s eleven songs. “I bought this weird old 12-string electric guitar. I’d never used one before in the studio, and I didn’t even think I’d use it. I just thought it looked neat – it wasn’t a particular brand or model or anything like that. It was just something that I came across second-hand. That guitar ended up being used in the song Wasted Love – I played the guitar solo on that track with this 12-string. I don’t even know why, but for some reason it just felt right. You never know where that search is going to take you next.”
Having experienced an eclectic array of Australian festivals in the past – including Soundwave, Splendour in the Grass and Groovin the Moo – Green and co. will return to Australia next Easter for the Byron Bay Bluesfest. Green himself is greatly intrigued by the lineup and excited to take in a different aspect of Australian festival culture.
“I’m always interested in playing new festivals. There’s so many now, and they’re always run differently. There’s different people who attend. I’ve played just before Metallica with Alexisonfire and I’ve played just before Neil Young with City and Colour. I feel really welcome at all of these places. It’s really exciting to play with a band like The National as well as a guy like Joe Bonamassa and a bunch of those blues veterans. It’s another challenge in order to adapt to a new environment. I can’t wait to experience it. Anyone who knows me knows that, if I could, I’d be on the plane to Australia tomorrow.”
BY DAVID JAMES YOUNG
