Carpenter - Dan Sioui
Posted on June 26, 2008 at 11:37 am by admin
Dan Sioui: In Vancouver it never goes above 20 degrees, and I’m from
Way Too Loud!: First thing’s first, how much do you love John Cougar Mellancamp?
Dan: I love John Cougar more then anything in the entire world, more than water and oxygen! He is huge! He is such an influence on us, and we’ve been lucky enough to have met him and hung out with him. That was amazing! It’s crazy how much I’ve seen how our scene has changed. Their idea of what John Cougar is when we started, I was telling people about all of our new songs are all about John Cougar, influenced by John Cougar and people would be angry, or like mystified like “You can’t be serious, this can’t be a real influence!” and now we literally play John Cougar before we play out hometown shows and people are clapping and singing and dancing and everyone is so into it, and now people are buying the records and telling me “I just bought ‘American Fool’” and saying “Thank you so much for turning me on to him!” I’m doing my best to spread the word, we say “join the
WTL: Well that pretty much negates my second question about how you got started in music and your influences.
Dan: Well we all come from a background in punk and hardcore, like in previous bands, but I think we were sort of tired of the politics and the scene of that sort of small niche market and wanted to try and do something different. Just trying to write songs that were more classic in terms to their structure; more sing-along with verse-chorus-verse-chorus, a lot of repeated parts and just something that. I mean for me the big thing is will people walk out of the show and be humming one of our songs or whistling one of our songs? And if they do, to me that’s the biggest success.
If you put “Jack and Diane” or “Hurt So Good” on at a party, it doesn’t matter who’s there, people will be singing along. It has that timeless quality, if you put it on ten years ago or ten years from now people will still know it and sing along, and we can only wish to do that with some of our songs. We’ll see what happens. I feel like we’ve done what we set out to do. If seems like people are saying that they’re finding the album really catchy and the songs really memorable, then that was the whole point. So for us it’s “Yes! We did it! Success!”
WTL: Does Carpenter seem like it’s heading into a full-time band considering it was only supposed to be a just for fun, one, maybe two, EP?
Dan: Yeah definitely! It started off just me writing songs in my bedroom then it sort of turned into, okay I need other people to play, almost as if I needed session guys. Then they came out and were really into the songs and we recorded one EP. Then from that EP we started getting a lot of show offers, then we recorded another EP. Then people wanted us to tour and were saying “I really like the music!” We’ve been doing everything in our power to not make it a full-time band and shy away from trying to be full time musicians, but it’s like the mafia, we just keep getting pulled back in to doing it and touring. So far we’ve had a blast. With my last band [All State Champion], it wasn’t all positive experiences touring, it was pretty painful a lot of the time. With this band we’re all buddies and we all believe in the music so much, it’s so important to us that it’s worth sleeping on hardwood floors. It’s definitely something we never planned on but it seems like it’s becoming more serious and as long as people want to hear it, we want to play and spread the word and get the songs out there.
WTL: So you get along well with the other guys then?
Dan: Yes, even when I was assembling the guys I made a point from the get go of “Can I be in a small confined space [with them]?” and the answer was yes to all of them. I thought this was a better start then my last band because none of us got along; it was a totally different experience. Seeing them play in other bands in
WTL: Where did you find these guys?
Dan: They just played in other bands, Kelly played in By A Thread, one of my favourite
WTL: What do you like to do to keep yourselves entertained on the road?
Dan: Play ridiculous games, like one person will pick a band then everyone else in the van has 20 questions total to figure out the band. Sort of like one of those little kid games, but we’re constantly trying to out stump each other. We’re picking bands like Sick Of It All or Meshuggah, pretty obscure bands. We’ve gotten pretty damn good at it. We do movies to, but movies are harder because there’s such a wider scope and you end up using 5 or 6 questions just trying to find the genre or the decade it was done.
We also have a laptop so I think we’ve watched “The Big Labowski” about 3 times so far, and “Big Trouble in Little
WTL: Have you been reading anything lately?
Dan: I’m reading a book called Omnivores Dilemma. It’s a book about food production in the US and how it’s messed up and only getting worse in terms of farmers who aren’t growing enough of the proper crops for people to eat because they’re growing so much corn to get money from the government because of the ethanol, for fuel. But now there’s a total grain shortage of wheat and rye and stock grains because farmers don’t make enough or they don’t choose not to grow it because they don’t get the tax breaks. That’s what I’ve been reading. There’s another book going around the van called Joey Kills, some strange mafia book written by a mobster that just kills people. It’s seems to be quite entertaining ‘cuz two of the guys have read it and I’m next on the list!
WTL: That first book brings me to my next question, which I have to ask. What do you think of the term Farmcore?
Dan: (Laughs) I’m almost ambivalent about it! The thing I like about it most is the discussion it generates. The intense hatred and love it gets from various people. For that reason alone I’m totally into exploiting it just to see how people react. People started calling us that in
WTL: So what’s it like sharing the same stage as Strike Anywhere, This Is a Standoff, the Flatliners?
Dan: It’s amazing! Like I said originally in our minds we never meant to go on tour or do something like this but when we got the opportunity. Atticus had approached us and Underground Operations, we we’re just so excited. We’re all huge fans of Strike Anywhere, both the music and the message so for us it was “Hell yes we wanna do that!” There was no hesitation. This Is a Standoff are such rad dudes and everyone is so supportive of us and obviously we’re quite a bit different from both of those bands, they’re a lot faster and more punk, but they’re totally into what we’re doing. So for us it’s like “We’re playing every night with Strike Anywhere and they’re digging our tunes!” It’s just amazing! We’re stoked!
WTL: Is there anyone you would like to tour with who is feasible and not obvious?
Dan: I know Ryan, our guitar player, really wants to tour with Against Me!, he’s been a big fan of theirs for a long while and they’ve gotten pretty big in the last little while, so the shows I’m sure would be pretty big as well. Two other bands that I would like to tour with, and I think everyone else in the van would, a band called the Gaslight Anthem from
WTL: Is there anywhere in the entire world you would really like to tour?
Dan: Wow, well I would really like to tour
WTL: Let’s talk about your band name, Carpenter.
Dan: I think the big thing with the band name, at the time when I came up with it, it was only supposed to be for one EP for songs I wrote in my bedroom, so there really wasn’t a lot of forethought in it. I knew I wanted it to be one word, I knew I wanted it to be a bit blue collar, just unpretentious. In retrospect, I don’t think I would have used it if I knew I would be touring and putting out records and posters. I don’t know how many times people are like “Are you guys The Carpenters?” you know, expecting me to sing Karen Carpenter songs. Sometimes I think “Why did I choose this name?” but I got stuck with it, I made my bed and I gotta lie in it. But a lot of people seem to like it.
WTL: It’s very unique.
Dan: Definitely, like I said, there is a lot of confusion but we’re a punk rock band, I don’t know how anyone would think four guys are The Carpenters, considering one of them is dead. Or maybe both, I don’t even know! Apologies if you are or aren’t dead! I think there’s not a lot of room for confusion but it does happen for sure!
Interview by Luke
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