Little introduction is needed for this half of the indie rock duo, Tegan and Sara. So, without further ado, I am proud to present you with V.I.A.’s latest Most Awesome, Miss Tegan Rain Quin!
What makes this city so awesome? There is no way to say exactly in my opinion. I have lived in Vancouver 8 years and I still get butterflies when I drive into downtown. Each time I land at YVR and see the mountains and the neon green grass I feel lucky. The weather is much more moderate than most think. The people are friendly but not suffocating. It feels like a small town but also like a big city depending on which corner you’re standing on. It has the BEST food! The shopping is endless and no matter where you are you’re either looking at snowy mountains or the ocean!
Favourite Vancouverite? Gabor Mate. I saw him speak last year and was very moved. My moms partner Mike leant me some of his books and I am currently being BLOWN away by “When the Body Says No”. They should make it mandatory reading in High School. He works at the Portland Hotel on the Vancouver East Side.
Favourite new band out of Vancouver? The Good News (www.myspace.com/wearegoodnews). Incredible live show. Great songs. Currently making their 2nd record.
Favourite Vancouver band of all time? SNFU.
What’s the most awesome restaurant in Vancouver? Right now The Cascade is my favourite. (the best Mojito I have ever had by a long shot) I also love The Narrow which is on Main street as well. Great ambiance and the food is delicious. Of all time? I love Indian Flavor. Its Indian Food Fast. You can find it in City Center Mall and Tinsletown.
How many of your songs have been inspired by things/relationships that went down in this city? 4 records and counting…
Whens your “electronic side project” coming out? What can you tell us about it? I have a side project with Hunter from AFI. We have been collaborating for 3 years now. The songs are not going to be released any time soon but we have chosen 3 to work on for the new Tegan and Sara record.
What’s your favourite venue to play here? The Orpheum was fun. The Commodore is great!
Do you have a memory of a favourite show you’ve ever played here? Recently we played with Broken Social Scene at The Orpheum which was really amazing. It felt like a milestone in our career. We did two shows at the Commodore last year which was huge for us too. Its nice to play to friends and family! My favourite show ever was with The Killers at The Vogue. They were just about to close it down and it felt really special that night being up on stage.
When’s your next local show? We are currently on a break before we head to Victoria to rehearse the new songs with the band. Starting in May Sara and I will being recording our 6th studio album in Los Angeles! YIKES! We’re so old!!!
i don’t know about you, but i feel like there are more pictures of us on the internet than dollars in the obama bail out package. that reality aside, we are wild at work putting together three amazing photo books to be released sometime...in the future. you spearheaded this project, and i'm wondering if you ever feel like you've bitten off more than you can chew? are there any other "tegan moonlighting" gigs you want to tell me about?
I do wonder sometimes if I've bitten off more than I can chew. Mainly because sometimes I dream up ideas that seem "fun" or "easy" and then end up being much harder or more difficult than intended. The books are going to be amazing though and that's how I generally talk myself off the edge. I have no other gigs currently. Though I have been playing my electric drums A LOT!
we had a few days of "pre production" with our band and chris walla in vancouver last week. didn't chris look handsome at the grammys!? i think we should make him wear that three piece suit in the studio? no?
Chris Walla did look very handsome in a 3 piece suit but I imagine that might get restricting. Not that there is much need for him to physically exert himself while recording, but just in case jeans or some sort of cotton pant seems more appropriate.
in pre production we spent one whole day working on a song of yours. its really fast. in fact we were playing it at 163 bpm. that's a punk song. my right arm is really sore from strumming. the muscles are still spasming. why don't you take some time over the next month to write some slow numbers?
It is my intention to write "some slow numbers" this month, and next. I enjoyed playing that song that fast very much. (it was actually 166 bpm) But listening back I don't think i sound very good so I think some adult contemporary hits (where does the good go) are going to pop out of me any second.
we now have a few weeks off to go on vacation, visit with friends, water plants, alphabetize stacks of books, bake pumpkin muffins, snowshoe, ice skate, stare at the ceiling etc. actually those are the things i'm doing, what exactly will you be up to over the new few weeks?
I plan on doing a bit of travelling. (I'm in Portland today) Last week I alphabetized my CD collection (mom complained that it was hard to find CD's at my house). I am growing my hair out a bit so I can get a FRESH hair cut for the first day of pre production. My big goal is to practice the guitar for one hour everyday. While I feel confident that I write great songs and play both the piano and guitar with passable quality it has become apparent that I cannot just "get by" anymore. Pre Production reminded me that we play with very talented musicians and if I am to not feel intense embarrassment over my skills I need to at least memorize your songs before we begin.
when i asked you if you wanted to live together during pre production you got a big grin on your face. you were excited weren't you? do you think it means that our sister relationship is maturing? or do you think we suffer from mental illness?
We had specifically requested to NOT have to live together while making this record and so it made me feel very special when you asked. Hence the smile. I suppose our relationship is maturing. Naturally of course. We don't yell or hit anymore. I can't remember the last time someone close to us said they would have to go to therapy after being around us for an extended period of time.
i just read a great book called 'neatherland' by joseph o'neill. it is one of the best books i have read in...years. it was so beautiful that it made me do the strangest thing. i called someone and insisted i read a passage to them. do you think i've turned into our mom? when did i become so sentimental?
I still read to people all the time. Did you know coming back from the Gold Coast in Australia from our beach day I read aloud to the vanload of band/crew? Yup. I bought the book yesterday in Powells Books here in Portland. Mom loves to read out loud. Nothing wrong with that. It only makes you sentimental if what you're reading is sentimental. The actual act is just...sharing.
recently the city of montreal changed the recycling and garbage days without telling me. i haven't been home in over 3 months, and it was extremely disorientating to know that entire municipal cycles can be altered no matter how long it took you to remember the schedule the old way.
We have a garbage room in my building. I can recycle and throw away garbage any day!
did you watch the grammys? i did. i really enjoyed radiohead’s performance. especially the dancing. i sort of envied thom yorke in that moment. i want to dance like that on stage. what if i started dancing like that? would people think i'd lost my mind? i'd be so embarrassed for you if you did that. why? in junior high we used to dance all the time. not together. but at DANCES. and then eventually at RAVES. and i never laughed at you. in fact! no one laughed at me when i went to raves with my broken arm/thumb in a giant ugly cast and danced as if it were a prop.
I love to dance. I go out a few times a week to dance when I'm home. I don't have to be drunk and I'm never embarrassed the next day. If you feel like dancing you should. I agree that on stage it would be very awkward. But if you WANTED to I would understand. I didn't watch the whole broadcast of the Grammy's. So I didn't see Radiohead's performance. I'll Google it.
we decided that we wouldn't be doing very much documentation on this record. what i mean is, we wont be recording a talk show in our basement every night. do you feel relief about that?
I do in a way. But I do think we need to capture as much of the actual recording as we can. Be it through our own filming or photography or through someone else's camera etc. Looking back there are so many tours we didn't take any photos or footage of and I feel sad about that. We definitely need to be more diligent about capturing it all for the treasure chest of memories. That being said I will not be putting on a wireless mic everyday this time NO.
recently i was feeling sad and so i googled the "ptosis" video. in particular i wanted to watch the blooper reel of that video. i was laughing so hard that i started crying. sometimes i think that is the funniest video i have ever seen, and i know that it’s because i was there. i know other people think its funny, but not hilarious and that’s understandable. but until i die, that will remain my favorite video of you. if i was really sad or sick i would play that video for myself.
Agreed. I've shown it to quite a few people. It’s genius. I'm a genius. Obviously. It’s not funny because you were there, it’s funny because it’s actually really funny. So many people I know have not watched it. When I'm sick or sad I like to send the link to people. It’s important for me to feel like OTHER people think it’s funny for me to enjoy it.
now that we are going to disappear under a cloak of mystery to make our next album, do you have any final thoughts for the kids to tide them over?
We won't be gone long. And when we get back we may give you a present. So be good.
hello emy. thank you for answering these questions about the "tegan" and "sara" macbeth shoes that are about to be released!
as people may already know, this is not a "tegan and sara" shoe. these are TWO separate pairs of shoes. a popularity contest! why would you do this to us emy? why? what kind of a monster are you?
we were supposed to do this interview in person, but tonight i had a superbowl party and i feel so sick i might need to go to the hospital. the combination of french onion dip-sour cream and onion ruffles chips-frozen french fries-strawberries-six cups of coffee- one large dill pickle- and two beers has brought me to my knees. that's why i asked you to leave my apartment so abruptly. i wanted to cry and rock back and forth clutching my guts.
so! here are ten questions i thought up in my food poisoned delirium.
1. i realize you are hermetic and rarely "collaborate" with other human beings. why do you continue to work so closely with me and tegan on designs for our band (including these two nifty pairs of shoes)?
i wish i had been hermetic tonight for the superbowl because then i would have avoided eating a whole bag of chips-almost all the onion dip-20 salami cheese pickle roll ups-baby carrots-strawberries-cheetos - sugar pie and what now feels like 100 heinekens, and i wouldn't be here rocking back and forth clutching my guts either. why football? why do you make me eat everything?
working with you and tegan is more habit than anything. i can't seem to shake you. i thought i would design some good sneakers that i could wear while running far far away from you. just kidding, tegan and sara is my favorite art project!!!! most clients don't really allow you to get so closely involved with every aspect of their visuals. it's so fun to work out every detail. it makes things look so much nicer i think.
2. would you wear this shoe? for real emy.
yes i would!!! i love that they are made of denim. i love that the insides of the sara shoe are purple. you know, wearing someone else’s clothing, or clothing that represents a person is a gesture of genuine affection. it's no secret that i love you and tegan more than life itself.
3. would it be terribly embarrassing if at our next "tegan and sara" concert i wore the 'tegan' shoe on my right foot and the 'sara' shoe on my left foot?
3b. can i wear these shoes and not look narcissistic?
i'm curious as to why you'd want to do that. it reminds me of that story you tell about kriss kross day in junior high. i would avoid wearing a tegan shoe and a sara shoe at the same time. they are like oil and water.
in response to 3b. - you can wear the shoes without looking narcissistic for sure. initials are mysterious like that. besides, i thought the main thing about these shoes was that you and tegan gave me direction based on what YOU wanted from a shoe. at the time that we collaborated on the design tegan was really into surfing and you were crazy for the alphabet. every conversation it was waves and letters, waves and letters.
back when we did our DC shoe, we weren't necessarily thinking about whether or not you'd want to wear the shoe. we just wanted to do something crazy.
so this macbeth shoe is a way for people to get closer to you. it's like - not only is it your brain child, but you also wear your baby and they can too!
4. you have secretly told me that often, clients, including our band, "always pick the wrong" designs. in the case of these shoes, did you feel like we ignored your instincts and picked the "wrong" shoes?
4b. if these shoes fail, will you think to yourself, "i told you so"?
it is true that from the design options i present for a given project, i am occasionally left feeling that the client has not picked the best idea. differing taste? color blindness? vengeance? who knows what leads them to do it. i did not feel that you picked the wrong shoe designs in this case. this is because the design process went like this:
sara - " i want an S on my shoe"
tegan - " i want a hand drawn wave on my shoe"
so i found a cool old font, stuck an S on your shoe, scribbled a wave stuck it on tegan's and you were both like, "good." and then we went to the arcade.
5. i love shoes, and so do you. in fact, we both have a LOT of kicks in our closets. did you like designing a shoe? was it confusing because there were so many surfaces to consider? would you like to give up life in the city, move to the country, and open up a little shoe shop where you could stitch little booties for newborn babies?
i do love sneakers. i envy your sneaker collection. i compare my success to your own by the number of sneakers we each own. currently i'm registered as failure compared to you. but then again i do have some choice kicks that you would have to trade me ten pairs to give up, so don't forget that it's about quality not quantity sara. designing a shoe is tricky business because you can't see what it's really going to look like until the prototype is done. on the other hand, there are only so many elements that you can affect on a given shoe: material, colours, patterns on the insole, etc. so a shoe is not a bottomless pit of potential ideas. now designing the style of the shoe - doing a whole new model, i bet that would be challenging!
in this case though, we were just re-designing a pre-existing macbeth model so it was a piece of cake, and the macbeth people were very nice.
the whole project definitely made me want to become a cobbler and live in the mountains.
6. it’s not a secret, you helped turn "tegan and sara" merchandise into a multi trillion dollar industry. the first cheque i wrote you for your services went towards a pony. will the large dividends from this business venture into shoe designing expand your pony enterprise?
it was pretty magical watching your merchandise empire grow, like i was the nanny and it was my little baby made of t-shirts. back in the day i used to set up that elaborate light display and my customized suitcases full of cds and postcards and buttons...we used to sell a reasonable amount of t-shirts every night in the olden days. but the baby grew and grew and now you've had to get it its own house, like some child actor.
thank you to all your fans who must eat those shirts for dinner. where do they all go?
i unfortunately had to sell my pony to pay for food, but i plan to get another one just as soon as i build myself that little mountain home.
7. do you think the "sara" shoes is more of a summer/spring shoe because it’s white denim? where as, tegan’s shoe, being black denim, would be more appropriate for winter and autumn?
7b. you and i, like most people in montreal, rarely wear "shoes" during the winter months. except when we go to the bar, in which case we wear high heels with no socks. even if its -30. do you miss wearing sneakers in the winter? is this a bad time to release a shoe!?
in my opinion the black/white clothing rule does not apply to shoes.
it is true that i have not worn anything but massive boots since the montreal's first snowfall in november. i miss my sneakers so much.
however, i think that tegan and sara fans everywhere learned through the sale of the DC shoe that supplies are limited and you can't wait for the appropriate shopping season to purchase them or you might miss out. also, with large groups of fans living in california and other warm clients less affected by winter shopping patterns, i think it's safe to say that february is a fine time to release a shoe.
8. tegan told me that her shoe was inspired by the black light aesthetic of her high school bedroom. does this mean if you like tegans shoe, and its darker sleeker look, you are a glass half empty kind of person? does it mean when your mom told you to make your room look a little less "trashy" you protested by removing every single stitch of poster and personal item, leaving four walls and a bed, not unlike a prison cell?
yes
9. if you're drawn to the gentle pillowy white denim-ness of the "sara" shoe, inspired by the feathered hair of girls i crushed out on in elementary school, are you the kind of person who still has all of your mix tapes from high school in a playstation 2 box in your storage closet in the basement of your apartment building? does it mean that you can't let go of the past?
yes
10. thank you for designing these shoes for/with us. i hope a lot of people buy them. it will be so sad for you if they don't. you would feel like such a failure, and i'll end up feeling bad and buying all of the overstock on line. then one day you'll be down in my storage locker and you'll find all of the boxes and you'll realize what i had to do to save you from feeling like a failure and you'll take all the extra shoes and throw them off the bridge into the saint lawrence river all the while screaming "damn you recession!!!!".
you're sweet.
The shoes are available worldwide at the following websites and store locations, with more to come!
