THE HIGHS AND THE LOWS WITH LOWEST OF THE LOW
AN IN-DEPTH CONVERSATION WITH RON HAWKINS: PART ONE
An anomaly, thatβs what Toronto-based band Lowest Of The Low is. They conducted their business in a fiercely independent manner for the first 27 years of their existence, only to recently join forces with Warner Music Canada.
The first release under Warner Music Canada in November of 2018 was the career spanning, vinyl crown jewel, Shakespeareβ¦ My Box!!, which consists of 72 songs on seven pieces of vinyl, a 24-page colour lyric and photo compendium booklet, stickers, a poster, and pages of handwritten lyrics. Included with the vinyl in this box set are all four studio albums, including 1994βs Hallucigenia (double-gate-fold double vinyl) and 2004βs Sordid Fiction, both on vinyl for the first time, ever, everything a fan of Lowest Of The Low could possibly want to celebrate their existence.
May 31, 2019, is the release date for their sixth full-length album, the first with Warner Music Canada. Agitpop will be released on double-gate-fold, double-vinyl, CD format, and on music streaming services. The lineup consists of Ron Hawkins and David Alexander, with Lawrence Nichols (full-time member since 2004, involved since 1991), Michael McKenzie (formerly of Universal Honey) and Greg Smith (of The Weakerthans). The album was produced by three-time Grammy award-winning producer Dave Bottrill (Peter Gabriel, Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Muse, Silverchair).
Stoked about the release of Shakespeareβ¦ My Box, the Lowest Of The Lowβs new epic box set, Ron Hawkins was eager to offer some background on the project. βWe also understand that you thought about buying the box set or you thought about maybe paying your mortgage on your house because, you know, box sets are fucking expensive. I do get that that version is for the total completist superfan, but weβre going to break them out. We decided we would set a period of time that the box set would be the box set and after that we would break them out into separately available pieces so that people could either complete a collection or just not spend a fortune (laughs) all at once.β
Nothing Short Of A Bullet is not available in the box set. βI think it was one of these things where we considered it a momentous occasion and a mountain of work, and already as I said, a very big ask for our fans and then adding another piece of vinyl that wasnβt a studio record just felt to us like maybe we donβt need to do that. But we will definitely consider it (becoming vinyl in the future) because weβre delighted, that we, as I say, all of the studio albums are out now on vinyl as well, so I think weβd love to sort of complete that.β
Hawkins has a large back catalogue, including new music released after the solid foundation that was Shakespeare My Butt. βFor me, personally, I think this will be my 17th record. Itβs not right up front for me to prove to you that I can break out or break away from the Lowest Of The Low, I donβt have to prove anything. Iβm releasing records and making records because I love doing it and I think I have something to say. Iβm trying to improve every record. So I donβt have the same kind of thing I would have had when The Rusty Nails started after the Lowest Of The Low, it was really irritating and I got prickly about people yelling out for Low songs. But then the funny thing is we had a Low reunion in 2000 and there were a few people in the crowd yelling out for Rusty Nails songs. I was like, touchΓ©. At this point we just want to put on the best show that we can. For this Agitpop release we will probably try to put in, itβs a 14-song record, weβll try to slip in eight songs if we can, into the set, which will be about a 20-song set. Weβll still put in lots of stuff from Shakespeare. Weβll put in lots of stuff people consider classic Shakespeare stuff, like “Rosy” (“Rosy and Grey”) and “Salesmen” (“Salesmen, Cheats and Liars”). We also try to slip in “Letter from Bilbao” or “Kinda the Lonely One”, even some deeper cuts from those records. Maybe there will be three from Sordid Fiction, three or four from Hallucigenia, just try to keep everybody happy. I understand that totally, of course you want them to hear your new stuff but if they donβt know any of it, and your set is 15 songs out of 20 are brand new and nobodyβs ever heard them, then of course, how can they possibly get super-jazzed. They might when they learn to love these songs but they don’t love them right off the bat. You have to make a setlist like a fan. You have to think of yourself as a fan and not an artist, because thatβs whoβs paying to see you. I can see me anytime.β
Lowest of the Low have graced many stages over the years, most notably the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern and disappearing old haunts in Toronto and Vancouver.
βThatβs a very storied, legendary place in Toronto. I couldnβt possibly tell you what the count is (number of times played there) but I can put it to you this way, which would tell the story, I think weβve played the 50th, the 60th and the 70th anniversaries, so thatβs how long weβve been playing there. I would hazard to say hundreds or so, I donβt know, maybe thatβs overstepping it, but an awful lot of shows. What I love about it too is that it really doesnβt look different than it did in 1983. I wouldnβt want to say itβs a shithole, because itβs not a shithole, but itβs not fancy in any way. I tend to love those kind of bars where itβs like theyβre not putting on airs, itβs a functioning historic music venue.β
βAll of this wraps into a lot of the themes on the record, which is that we pay the price, the penalty, for living in a society or structuring as a society that really puts ninety percent of its priorities behind money and behind making money and very seldom does it make choices based on the soul of the country, the soul of the people that live in the country and the morality of it. I look at Vancouver, back to the Smilinβ Buddha (Cabaret) and stuff like that, you couldnβt talk anybody into making a Smilinβ Buddha or The Town Pump a world heritage site but, I mean, you know, you need to fuckinβ keep these places around, theyβre a part of the soul of the city.β
Torontoβs recently renovated El Mocambo is not on that list of venues he has played, but Hawkins has memories of the way it was.βI havenβt been there yet, no. But itβs quite the complex. They got a new sign, they didnβt refurbish the old sign, apparently it was going to be more expensive to refurbish the old sign than to completely make a brand new one from scratch. But itβs identical to the other one, and thereβs a recording studio on the roof I think, on the top floor so they can record all the shows live if they want. Itβs quite an undertaking. It comes around once in a while, someone whoβs putting their money where it should go maybe or behind their heart instead of just their pocket book. They say heβs (owner Michael Wekerle) not planning to change it, he wants to kind of maintain, I mean, you know, replace the carpets and stuff because, holy shit, when I was in there youβd stick to the carpet so bad and Iβve played shows in there where there were buckets on the floor because there was stuff coming through the roof. That would be nice to get that all fixed up.β
AGITPOP ALBUM DETAILS
Lowest Of The Low received great support from radio stations in their hometown back in the early to mid-1990s. Modern day radio is a perplexing challenge, to say the least. βThe Edge for us, Iβve joked about this with Dave Bookman and Alan Cross, both guys who were there, about how it seemed like 10 minutes before 1991 we couldnβt get arrested.Β Bands couldnβt get arrested on The Edge and it seemed like 10 minutes after 1995 you couldnβt either. Itβs like there was a little window that opened and we just happened to be around at the time it opened. You know, us and The Barenaked Ladies, The Headstones, and all of these bands from here that got played and then certainly by the end of the ’90s but even into the mid-’90s it was sort of like that window closed and they started to become like all radio stations now which is programmed from somewhere else. Nobody has the kind of authority like Dave Bookman to just go βHey, this band is awesome and they are from here, Iβm going to play them on the radio and introduce them to you.β, thatβs not a thing, at all, anymore. We have Indie 88 which when it first started we were all excited like βfuck, finally, thereβs another 102.1β theyβre talking about how βwe are the alternative, we are independentβ,Β no theyβre not. Theyβre almost the same playlist as Virgin FM which is full-on pop radio. Everyone is putting on the punk clothes and talking about alternative but none of the radio stations are like The Edge was. We are as much a victim of it as anyone else and we donβt get played, none of our new stuff. There might be the odd chance if theyβre feeling nostalgic or somebody is talking about Toronto, they might play “Salesmen, Cheats and Liars” or “Rosy and Grey”, but they arenβt going to play anything off a record weβve made in the last 25 years. Itβs a part of a bigger math equation where corporations own everything including something thatβs expensive to run as a radio station and of course you could be an altruist pirate and decide βfuck it, Iβm going to do it my wayβ and more than likely youβre going to be bankrupt in a year because sponsors and all the stuff it takes to run a radio station. Itβs not necessarily because theyβre making a bad choice, itβs probably just because there isnβt a business model that works, you know, itβs frustrating.β
βI think people get used to things and they take for granted the CBC or they took for granted those years when The Edge was giving you the band from two neighbourhoods away. I guess itβs human nature to get used to it and expect that it happens. Iβll talk to my friend John Samson from The Weakerthans, lives in Winnipeg, Iβll talk to him even about an independent movie, and Iβll go βAre you going to see blah blah blah?β and he goes βItβs not going to come here.β Itβs not going to show in Winnipeg? At all? Thereβs not a movie theatre in Winnipeg thatβll show it? And heβs like βNo.β Or shows that wonβt go there. And Winnipeg is a big city. Itβs not like a small rural Ontario town. Growing up in Toronto Iβm used to the availability of things.β
Streaming services are the ultra convenience amongst music lovers, at a relatively low cost. How does this affect the artist and the low pay-per-play award they receive? The choice was never ours. βI was really dragging my feet, then I got a Spotify trial and I just used it for, you know, pumping kickass women rock stars, and then thereβs three-hundred people Iβve never heard of. Itβs great for research and for finding people. I think Iβm like everybody, I have a completely complex contradictory attitude about it because, for sure it sucks, if youβre looking at it in an old-school manner like you sell a song you get this much money, obviously it sucks. There are so many stories of like 70 million streams and somebody getting $1,200 bucks, it just doesnβt make any sense, if that was your living, youβre screwed. But to look at it the way millennials look at it or people who didnβt live through the other version of it are just like thatβs not what it is, what it is is spreading the word in a way you could never ever have, you would have to hire the greatest publicist in the world to spread the word like this will do. If you look at it that way then itβs not really about selling music, itβs about getting people to know your music to either come to your shows, buy stuff from you live or just come to your shows. Live is the way youβre going to make a living nowadays and if youβre not geared that way or that isnβt your favourite part or you donβt have that part of your shit together and youβre not a great live act then maybe it sucks to be you, at that point. For a band like us whoβve been doing it for a long time and we love that communion with our audience and think we still, I mean, Iβm in my almost mid-50s now and I still feel like we, Iβve told the boys the minute we donβt feel like weβre delivering live is the minute we should just pull the plug on it. But, so far, so good, you know. We still get rooms full of people singing all the words.β
βI think streaming services arenβt just one thing, they are a bunch of things and I think in some ways theyβre the worst girlfriend you could ever have and then in some ways theyβre the best girlfriend you could ever have. It depends on what part of it youβre, what youβre expecting from what part of it, you know.β
βWe donβt have to worry about you or me, we donβt have to worry about people like us (music lovers), because there are millions of people out there who no matter what format itβs on, if they get a chance to help the artist survive they will because they know that we need music in our lives, we need artists to make it and if artists are going to starve to death, for sure, then people are going to stop doing it. We know that they have to do it so we support the whole culture of making music, right, and anybody nowadays who isnβt going to pay for it, just because they donβt have to, wouldβve been a person who is going to shoplift your record anyway, back in the day. Either you understand the equation of making music and how artists live or you donβt. If you do then youβre going to support it probably because it feels right in your heart. I donβt think we ever have to worry about it. Is it getting harder, probably, I think if I was 22 years old Iβd have a different story than I do now because my retrorockets are still riding something I did when it was a different model, so maybe Iβm spoiled and I donβt know it but, yeah, if I was 22, I know lots of amazing bands in Toronto that, in my mind, had everything together and couldnβt even get arrested and couldnβt get an agent and I was like βfuck, am I on crazy pills?β, like Rival Boys, theyβre amazing, and they end up breaking up after a couple of records because the pressure is too big or they canβt do it, I get that itβs gotten harder in a lot of ways.β
βI think we need to support it, culturally in a different way that we do, but as I say, itβs not just a music or an art problem, I think itβs a world problem that corporations have gobbled everything up and turned people into algorithms anyway, so if we live in that type of a culture then of course they donβt care about poetry.β
People in Canadaβs western provinces at times refer to Toronto as the βCentre Of The Universeβ. There is an underlying love/hate relationship that isnβt lost on many artists who venture to the West. βI tell this story all the time, when I had my band The Rusty Nails, we opened for Spirit Of The West out at The Commodore. As the opener, people were really–Lowest Of The Low fans can be this way as well–kinda ignoring the opener and were waiting for their headliner band, the band theyβve actually paid to see play. I notice that people were not really paying attention, so my tactic is always, I developed this from when I used to busk, itβs better to get negative attention than to get no attention at all, I said βHey Vancouver, donβt hate us because weβre from Toronto and weβre beautiful.β. People started yelling βFuck you!β and throwing things at the band and I look at Lawrence and heβs like βWhat?β and Iβm like, theyβre listening now, they werenβt listening before.β
Canadian music is consistently top-notch, in all genres. Itβs worthwhile to keep an open ear to hear and support burgeoning artists of The Great White North. βSome that people do know about, The Arkells. I think their political focus is a little less directed than ours, theyβre generally talking about people doing the right thing. But I see it in them, this energy in them. Music is a powerful thing and we need to put it to using it as a tool to changing things for the better. Thatβs what drew me to The Weakerthans as well. We did a show one time at the Molson Amphitheatre. It was The Weakerthans and the Lowest Of The Low and Billy Bragg and I think the Globe & Mail had deemed it βCommu-night at the Amphitheatreβ. We were just drawn to people like that, that were singing about change and singing about things they wanted to see happen in the world. These days Iβm seeing a lot of amazing women artists, Iβm a huge fan of Sky Wallace, if you havenβt heard of her you will soon. Sheβs an amazing artist who is very young and sheβs a great songwriter and from what I know her last album she jumped on a train and did a tour of Canada, all over the place and as far up as Whitehorse. She wrote a song about a woman from every town that she was in. There was an amazing song called Swing Batter, it was about a woman from, I believe, North Bay or Sudbury, who in the β20s had been beaten by her husband, basically all through their marriage, and at some point she had enough and beat him to death with a bat. So itβs called “Swing Batter”. She was charged with murder but they found out that she was pregnant so they stayed the executionΒ long enough for her to have the baby and then execute her, but then apparently word got out and the burgeoning feminist movement in the world and local celebrities and everybody got involved and they had a stay of execution and she still spent, apparently, her life in prison. Thatβs a powerful, powerful song for anyone to ever write but a super powerful song for a woman as young as her to write, in my mind, and just the idea that she traveled around Canada with this incredible idea of Iβm going to write a song about a woman in all of these towns. Sheβs amazing.β
βThereβs a band called Ace Of Wands, whom Iβm a big fan of. Who are, I donβt even know what youβd call it, space punk? Really sort of trippy but, not angry so much as intense, real intense songs about emotional stability and thereβs a lot of, as you would imagine from Ace Of Wands, a lot of tarot sort of stuff and a lot of witchy sort of things going on, but theyβre amazing.β
βI try to keep my ear to the ground on some degree and itβs like, being a 54 year-old man now I have a lot of friends. Iβm at that age where I do get to hear a lot of grumpy old men going βThereβs no good music anymore, the best music was made in the β90s.β You know, whenΒ youβre in your twenties. I always say to them, look, any night you want, go on YouTube and pull up NPR Tiny Desk concerts, or any of the number of sites like this and youβll see two-hundred bands youβve never heard of that are all amazing. Thereβs always amazing music being made and there always will be. Itβs as close to as a click on your computer.β
βWe need this stuff. Humans need other humans to communicate with them. Itβs great to see when that happens because people get cynical and go βI donβt know, manβ and stay home and watch Netflix, and I do that enough too, I get the seduction of that, but people are still doing it, going out and supporting.β
Then there is “Beer, Graffiti Walls” and the spoken word by Canadian punk legend Art Bergmann, which is a bombshell, near the end of the song, from the album Hallucigenia. Wait for it! βI became very good friends with Art. You know, itβs funny because we became friends because of the sort of story in that song is that we saw him on the side of the road for the Big, Bad & Groovy (tour), they finally got so sick of Art they kicked him off the bus, so he was hitchhiking from show to show and we kind of passed him on the highway and I was like βI think that was Art Bergmann.β. How could he be hitchhiking? That canβt be Art Bergmann. So I wrote that song and then our manager was from Vancouver, at the time, so he said βWell, you know, I can hook you up with Art.β and we were like, hey, maybe we can get Art to do this thing. So we met Art when he came in to do that with Hallucigenia and we just became friends. Weβre still close, he just lives outside of Calgary and we just donβt have a chance to see each other much.β
βThat song was partially about this place called Sneaky Deeβs (Toronto). Thatβs where the Lowest Of The Low used to hang out til all hours of the night, all the time, so I pulled most of the stuff thatβs in that spoken word off the graffiti in the bathroom there. We wanted to get him to just spew it out. I thought Artβs perfect for that, heβll give it a nasty turn.β
Not all songs are performed live anymore, including “Dogs Of February“, which was written by Stephen Stanley, who left the band in 2013 to focus on his solo career. βWe donβt with Steve not there, no, βcause that would feel sort of weird. A good turn on that is that Steve and I recently started patching that up and becoming friends again. Thereβs been a bit of a history of us, on and off, like that. Things are in a very good spot with us. We donβt really play Steveβs songs in the set. If I was singing, it meant that I wrote it and if Steve was singing, it meant that he wrote it. Now that heβs doing a solo thing, heβs writing all of the songs on his record. Low records usually had one or two.β
Stephen Pageβs (formerly of The Barenaked Ladies) father, Victor Page and his Page Publications had a hand in the production of the album. βThey distributed (Shakespeare My Buttβ¦). No label in town would take us. He said, βHey, weβll release your record.β As those usual capitalist situations go, I think we sold something like 7,000 CDs with him, and he was doing that out of his basement. It wasnβt like he had a shop or anything. Then of course, our phones were ringing off the hook from all of the same people who said go away we donβt want to deal with you. Thatβs how it always goes .β
The outlook for a Canada-wide, Lowest Of The Low tour is a positive one. βWeβre putting the finishing polishes (on tour plans). We had some great anchor dates for out west and then it just become a reality, I think for a lot of touring bands and especially us who used to cross the country six times a year. Live is a different beast than it used to be. We opened up for the 54-40 show (when last in Vancouver in 2017I l). I look out and everybody is singing all of our songs as well, so itβs like, you know, certainly we know that the fans are out there but itβs letting them know that we are coming, because we do it so seldom, itβs been a while since weβve been there. Weβre putting the finishing polishes to that and trying to add the secondary dates to make it all make sense to that we can put gas in the van and get around. So thatβs definitely going to happen, Iβm hoping for late summer or early fall.β
βWeβre super pumped about this record and want to get out and get across (Canada). Weβre working on all of it. Even with Warner weβre still pretty much a Mom and Pop Shop, we do most of the stuff in-house with the band. Getting all of that stuff organized, weβre still working on all of it. Weβll definitely get it all polished up and get the van on the road. Weβre planning to make it three (albums) in three (years), we are two thirds of the way there already.β
The new album, Agitpop drops on May 31, 2019. Keep your ear to the ground for singles.
ArtistΒ Links
SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: LOWEST OF THE LOW – AGITPOP
