Craig Schram and Nathan Burge from Canadian indie band The Provincial Archive sat down with me for a quick chat on MIDEM’s last day. We talked about their music, the origin of their band’s name and the potential release of a new album.
So, last day here at MIDEM, how has it been for you?
Craig: It’s been a really good trip for us. I think as much as we were expecting the conference to be the size that it was, it certainly still caught me a bit off-guard. It took about half a day to wrap our heads around it, but definitely beneficial and it’s great to be here.
Is it your first MIDEM?
Craig: Yeah, this is our first MIDEM, and first time in France as a band.
Whereabouts are you guys from in Canada?
Craig: We are based in Edmonton, Alberta. It’s in western Canada, the second province in from the west coast, and it’s the capital city of Alberta.
There are four of you in the band, how did you all meet and start playing music?
Craig: The bass player and I both grew up in the same city; we lived in a small city north of Edmonton. We sort of had got to know each other through music over the years in that city.
As well, Nathan is from Edmonton and he was playing rock ‘roll in and around Edmonton, so it was more basically the scene that connected the three of us.
I met our drummer several years before he actually joined the band. He was living in Edmonton, studying jazz at our college in town, and some good friends of mine were also in that jazz program so we kind of knew each other through that.
Nathan: I think at the time, we were all sort of like playing and making music with other people. I don’t mean like other bands, but we were just all sort of floating around, like writing and doing things and we sort of ended up doing it after few days.
Craig: Yeah, it sort of came together as a bit of a very convenient creative outland in our project for us to collaborate on.
I actually contacted our drummer, like I said years after I met him and he wasn’t living in Edmonton at the time. So, I invited him to come back, play in the band and collaborate with us. And, he did, we finished our record and here we are.
When did you actually start to play as a band?
Craig: We started playing as a band probably about two years ago.
We released some tunes locally in Edmonton, but our first real album “Maybe We Could Be Holy” was released in July 2010.
Why The Provincial Archive?
Craig: Well, obviously Canada is made of provinces, and a provincial archive is not a museum, but it’s like a provincial institution that gathers documents, historical records, photos, videos and that sort of things to document the history of the province where they operate.
So, when I started to write tunes and we started as a band, I was writing a lot of songs about my family history, my grandparents moving to Canada, starting a farm…
It was a very Canadian story, and I felt like The Provincial Archive was a fitting name.
As well, I always like to think that song writing is a bit like archiving and you’re documenting something and filling the place or whatever in song.
Now that MIDEM is over, what’s next for the band in 2012?
Craig: Well, we are going back to Canada. This is a bit of a break in our schedule because we toured after the album was released in Canada and we put about 70 dates behind it.
When we came home, we started writing with the intent to record another album.
So we are in fact in the studio pretty regularly tracking tunes and ideas; for potentially another release.
Another release, for this year?
Craig: I don’t know, no end date.
Nathan: We don’t have a specific deadline for recording, because we just put in a lot of time. If we have a deadline it might invert our creative process.
Craig: It’s a very organic process, like I said we focus on using interesting ideas.
There’s a lot of back and forth on ideas as we record. We might record something and say well this part I know we wrote it; but it’s just not right. There’s something not right about it anymore, so we’d kick it out and re-imagine things as we’re going.
You performed at Morrison’s Irish Pub as part of the Canadian Blast showcase the other night, how did you go?
Craig: Great! I don’t think we could ask for more out of our first performance in France and performance like MIDEM. It went really well.
I don’t know if you went to the other Canadian Blast showcases, but all of them were awesome.
You’ve mentioned earlier over 70 dates in Canada for your last tour. Any plans to go outside of Canada, Australia perhaps?
Craig: Yeah, I think that’s our intention moving forward.
But, I guess that’s really all I can say about it…
If you want to know more about The Provincial Archive, please go to: http://www.theprovincialarchive.com
