The Tea Party – Interview

Tripping with the tea party

In their short career, The Tea Party has been one of those bands you either love or hate. And either way, you have to respect their talents and attitude. This band doesn’t care about dominating all musical fronts; they just want to make albums that are serious artistic statements about music.

The band has heard themselves compared to Led Zeppelin a thousand times because of their passionate live shows and untouchable east/west style. Furthermore, these guys have shared the stage with the likes of Page and Plant, Pearl Jam, Creed, and have played the largest festivals across the world only to blow the competition and crowd away with their pumped up hard rocking sound, and somehow they still remain underground. From Splendor Solis to TRIPtych, the band keeps their east-meets-west motif, but with each record they push in different directions with various and multiple arrangements in instrumentation.

The trio, consisting of Jeff Burrows (drums and percussion), Jeff Martin (guitar and vocal), and Stuart Chatwood (organ, synthesizers, and bass), recently made a long awaited stop in Buffalo, New York for a sold-out evening. As the crowd began to gather outside the building to witness one of the best rock shows I’ve seen in the past five years, hip online sat down with the multi-talented Stuart Chatwood to chat about what’s brewing.

Since TRIPtych came out, the band has been spending much of its time overseas and other parts of the world, and it seems that the band is getting some real positive results. What have you noticed about European audiences with each tour of duty?

Our main market is Germany. They are more listeners over there and are pretty intelligent. They don’t go crazy during the song, but it seems they go crazy more so after the song is over. They are there and they want their money’s worth. They want to soak in as much music as possible. They show their appreciation after the song and that’s a good thing with our style of music, it’s complicated and demands that of the listener.

The live interpretation of some of the material builds

Yeah, there is a lot of dynamic involved, not your typical progression. There’s different instrumentation involved with many of our songs live.

I was reading an article on the band about touring Germany, and was surprised about the popularity in Germany. You guys were selling out multi-consecutive nights. Were the shows club dates or festivals?

We did six nights of clubs and festivals. The festivals we were playing were as big as seventy-five thousand people, so doing Edgefest (in Toronto) was actually like doing a small festival. We have a new agent over in Germany and he got us onto the main stage. The line up on the main stage was six bands that included Counting Crows, Bush, Live, Oasis, Pearl Jam, and us.

That’s quite a lineup to headline with.

Yeah, I think we were the only band there who has not sold a couple million records.

Knowing The Tea Party, you guys probably blew some people away and gained some new fans.

We were definitely up to the challenge. We were joking around that we had a more effective conversion program than the Catholic Church.

Speaking of Pearl Jam, recently Roskilde Festival was this past weekend and I’m sure you’re aware of the tragedy over there. Any thoughts?

We were supposed to be on that festival, if we did not do Edgefest or the Montreal Symphony show. We were definitely booked and our agent is Pearl Jam’s agent. We pretty much did every festival that they did. What do I think of the incident? It’s tragic and it could happen anywhere. It could have happened at Edgefest yesterday. Anytime you get a large number of people together that can happen. I think in Europe the alcohol is a little bigger on the scene over there because many of their festivals are multi-day festivals, so people wake up stoned or drunk and keep going. Come midnight when Pearl Jam is taking the stage, people are to the point that they really don’t care, they’re fed up, hungry, and have not bathed in a couple of days.

I have been to a few of the yearly Edgefest concerts and I think the crowd is happily drunk because of Canada Day, but I think each year the music shines through and the lineup reflects how diverse and strong the Canadian music scene is getting. Any comments about the scene?

Our band has always been one not to classify things exactly, even though you could make that case. I would not want to stereotype us as a Canadian band. We’re based in Canadian but our outlook is very global. We spend more time in Australia than in Canada. We could get into a very long discussion about Canadian music but I don’t want to bother you. (laughing through the sentence) Not to go negative on Canada, but some of them bands are just looking at what’s going on and trying to create a popular imitation of others. I think the thing is you only hear the good Canadian bands, and if you live in Canada, you hear the bad Canadian bands too.

Any plans to go back and conquer the rest of Australia?

We are scheduled for half of the Olympics this year, but no real word yet. We are supposed to play at the Canadian Pavilion were the Canadian athletes will be staying. It should be interesting. In Australia, we’re big, but not as big per capita in Canada because down there it’s thirty-two dollars a cd.

How did the Montreal Symphony event turn out? The band really has been bouncing back and forth between continents. How did you find time to rehearse as a collective unit?

We had a couple few weeks off before we headed out on the European tour in June, and I had the arranger of the symphony come over to my house and work together for about six hours. Luckily, we were working on only five songs, and two of them we have scored already. We were nervous as well because we had only one rehearsal, but the show was absolutely flawless.

What songs did you play?

We played “Temptation”, “Messenger”, “Gone”, “Save Me”, and the other ones escape me right now. Sorry.

Was that recorded for any later use?

No, we did not record that because of the cost involved. It would have cost thirty thousand dollars to pay everyone and plus the recording rate, and that was just ridiculous.

With the album TRIPtych, the band has not toured the States that much as compared to past album tours. I read some quotes that the band feels it cannot fit into the pop culture machine of the US and would like to pursue other areas. Why is that? Are you going to follow the path of most international artists and just play the major cities like New York, LA, etc?

Our A&R guy left Atlantic and we followed him, figuring we could get a deal much easier than it was. With all the record merges going on, no one was really looking for our style of music. The labels were looking for boy bands and other styles, and until we have someone who believes in us in the States, we are not going invest the time and effort because for us it’s not worth it. We would rather travel to other countries where people believe in us.

So what label can people find your music on?

We are on EMI Worldwide and were on Atlantic in America before we left them.

TRIPtych almost did not happen due to an accident in Jeff’s house with the construction crew. How much of the original material were you able to salvage?

We could not do anything. Some of sandblasting involved, the micro particles are very fine and chromated the tapes. Even if we were to clean off the tapes, we could not get every micro particle, and if we played the tapes we would have damaged the recording machines. It was a multi-track digital machine. However, it was a good opportunity to fix some of the things that were cast in stone at the time and reinterpret some of the original ideas. Maybe it was a mixed blessing.

So that would be a disadvantage of having a home studio?

(laughing) No, that would be a disadvantage of having bad neighbors.

This album again is heavily layered and yet it has a stripped down sound. What are your thoughts recording the material?

I was in the studio, and theoretically it may sound stripped down, and sonically at times it may sound that way, but believe me, we used as much tape as we could. Some of the sounds have changed. There was not this necessity to going to capture The Edges Of Twilight and there was not that necessity of extreme over-layering like Transmission.

One dynamic aspect about your band that set apart everyone else is that from record to record the music and direction is widely different. I think you’re the only band where I’m totally hooked on each record. With anticipation of each record I can only ask myself, ‘What’s next?’

Yeah, I’m interested too! (laughing)

The reason I mentioned stripped down on this record is “Gone” is one of the first tunes I heard the band write in standard tuning.

It’s the second song ever that Jeff has written in standard tuning. The first is “The River”. That’s the first track on our first record ( Splendor Solis) and the last on the new record. Odd? Actually today he just got a Tran performance guitar.

How does that work?

Well, it tunes itself. You can set it to tune at a different tuning by the beat per minute. We are looking forward to writing a song on the new record with two tunings. In between a chorus or verse, the guitar is going to change.

The song “Underground” live, it’s sort of tribute in a tribute all in itself, it’s good to see your influences shine. I think it’s great that you work in underground artists like Jeff Buckley, Moby, and New Order.

Yeah, it’s sort of a tip of the hat to those artists we respect. We like to keep things fresh for ourselves. We believe a concert should be an experience all in itself.

I agree one hundred percent with that. One thing I have been dying to ask the band is, have you reworked “Show Me The Door”?

We covered it once forty years ago! (laughing) That song is so far behind us now.

About three years ago I saw a video for “Show Me The Door” on the Burly Bear Network. The Tea Party was featured band of the week and that was the video they showed! I thought it was cool because I really have not heard any off the indie record. But that’s the video they played.

How did they get that video?

This show is mainly broadcast on college campuses across North America. Why did the band decide to put “Messenger” on Triptych? You guys used to jam that tune in the middle of “Save Me”.

We were playing that song during of “Save Me” because a Daniel Lanois song called “Maker” inspired it. We sort of did a montage to Daniel Lanois, and we decided to change the name of the song from “Maker” to “The Messenger” to keep things interesting for us. People would hear that song live and go ‘Wow, what a great song. Why don’t you put it on your next record?’ We laid it down in the studio at about four o’clock, the time we finished it was at midnight and we listened to the song about thirty times. We were like, ‘Wow, it’s too good to be a b-side.’

I know we are running short on time but I just have a few miscellaneous questions left. I heard the band has a b-side flowing around for “Paint It Black”. Where is it? And how do I get one?

We were going to release it on our b-side record. We have a double album out in Germany right now. One side contains TRIPtych and the other has our b-sides from the record. It’s on Napster.

I heard the band is currently working on new material. Can you give us a little dirt?

All I’m going to say is Massive Attack meets Led Zeppelin.

If you could put one record of The Tea Party in a time capsule to have people listen to hundreds of years from now, what would it be?

I like The Edges Of Twilight, but I like Transmission too. The best for me is The Edges Of Twilight.

When can we expect to hear from the band?

We are going to do to some dates before we go in the studio. We have a cottage rented and we are going to set up as a band and actually jam as a band for the first time since The Edges Of Twilight.

Thanks for your time!

Thank you. Enjoy the show.

+larry sarzyniak