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The Rural Alberta Advantage Interview: The Ultimate Arbiters

Photo by Leroy Schultz

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Like all bands still dealing with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Rural Alberta Advantage had to adapt. Due to the worldwide pause on live music, they were unable to follow 2017′s excellent The Wild the way they knew best: writing, workshopping, playing live, then finalizing. Fast-forward, and they surprise released an EP, The Rise (Saddle Creek), last spring, announcing the return of founding keyboardist Amy Cole, their first music in five years because they could simply no longer wait. They survived by remotely sharing demos, ignoring the typical album release cycle, releasing this batch of songs soon after they were finalized. Ready to tour and then play some more unreleased material, the band launched on a U.S. tour, their first since the pandemic, in May 2022. By the third show, lead vocalist and guitarist Nils Edenloff, followed by the rest of the band, tested positive for COVID. As many bands two years in had the pandemic in their rearview mirror, The Rural Alberta Advantage were left wondering when it would seem a bit more normal.

Thankfully, the band was able to play a handful of shows in Canada during the latter half of 2022, finally bringing The Rise to the stage and even--yes--debuting an unreleased song. That tune, “Plague Dogs”, was released as a standalone single last month with the announcement of what will (hopefully) be their first full U.S. tour post-COVID. (No, “Plague Dogs” is not a pandemic reference; it was inspired by the Richard Adams novel of the same name.) Though The Rural Alberta Advantage are planning to release a full-length later this year, “a culmination of everything we’ve been working on this whole time,” as Cole told me over Zoom earlier this month, they aren’t taking their time for granted. Instead, they want to put as many songs out into the world as they can and play for as many people as possible. Their tour starts tomorrow night at Lincoln Hall in Chicago.

Read my interview with Cole below, edited for length and clarity, about “Plague Dogs”, The Rise, and the history of the band.

Since I Left You: It seemed fitting to me that the debut of “Plague Dogs” coincided with the announcement of these tour dates, because the video shows live footage and the song has such a live sound. Was that something the you purposefully did?

Amy Cole: Yeah, it was. It sort of always is. It wasn’t because of the live video that we wanted to make the song sound more live. We’re always trying to capture what we sound like live. We’ve had varying degrees of success over the years [doing it], but it’s always our goal, because we consider ourselves a live band. I’m going to rehearsals right after this, and it’s when the three of us are in a room together that we feel the best. With Gavin Gardiner, who has been a friend for many years and has been the one recording and producing these last few songs with us, we’re able to get that [live feel.]

SILY: It definitely has a loud-quiet-loud dynamic going on. Was that also something the band went into recording trying to do?

AC: A lot of our songs do that. [laughs] We weren’t trying to rip ourselves off, but we love playing with dynamics in our songs. Whenever we can try to do it in an inventive way we don’t feel like we’ve done before, we do. This time, there are all these ups and downs and dropouts, and we really leaned into that aspect of the song. We go by feel: we work songs to death until we all feel really great about them. We’re really happy with how “Plague Dogs” turned out.

SILY: I’ve never seen you live before. Do your songs tend to take on new life live, arrangement-wise or in any other way?

AC: Yes, 1000 percent. That’s what was so challenging about The Rise. It was the first time we weren’t able to do what we normally do, which is start a song, get it to a place where we feel like we can try it out live, and then go on tour and road test that song, see what’s working and what isn’t, so by the time we get into the studio, we’ve played it live for a bunch of people and feel like we’ve got it to a really good place [to record]. Because of the pandemic, we weren’t able to do that with the songs on The Rise. That was really challenging for us. We were going in a lot more blind than normally. “Plague Dogs” we were able to play live quite a few times for people during the shows we did back in the fall. When we were recording, we felt really good about where we were at with it; we were feeling really encouraged by its response at our shows. When we went in to record it with Gavin, we knew what parts needed to be bigger, what parts needed to be smaller. That bridge in the middle didn’t come up until our last mixing session, where we thought, “Let’s amp the bass up four times as much as it is compared to the rest of the song, and let’s lean into the organ.”

SILY: Was there a different way you went about getting the feedback you needed for The Rise?

AC: Not really. Each of us played demos for close, trusted friends and loved ones. Sometimes, you’ll get a good, honest response, but sometimes they’re gonna be nice. What’s lucky with the three of us is we really trust each other’s taste. Even if it was just one of us not feeling it, we’ll listen and keep going and hacking away until the three of us are good with it. The ultimate arbiter is the three of us, so we really had to rely on that because we didn’t have a live audience telling us something was good or okay or not great. Luckily, we feel like it worked out for The Rise, but we’re happy our new songs we’re recording, we’re playing live, listening for feedback and seeing what’s hitting.

SILY: “Plague Dogs”’ launching point was the Richard Adams novel of the same name. Do you find that films or books are often the origins for your songs?

AC: I’m speaking for Nils, but sometimes he gets the idea for songs from TV or films or art. A lot of Hometowns and our first couple records was inspired by real stories from Nils’ personal life, as tons of songwriters do. A lot of those songs were about people and places he was thinking about from back home. That’s where he drew a lot of inspiration in the early days. If he were the one answering, he’d say inspiration comes from a lot of places for him. Plague Dogs happened to be the inspiration for this song, which made a lot of people [incorrectly] think it was inspired by the pandemic. [laughs]

SILY: How do you think the band has grown over time, instrumentally, lyrically, or in general?

AC: We’ve grown in the ways that people do over the 15, close to 20 years we’ve been a band. We’ve definitely gotten a lot better musically. We’ve learned a lot about making music, writing songs. We all know each other a lot better. We’ve been through a lot together, and we know how to collaborate. We know how to listen to each other and present our ideas to each other. Anyone who has worked in a group would understand this, but people have really different styles of working and communicating, and it takes a long time to learn how to best work with another person. We’ve gotten to a place where we’re super comfortable with each other and get each other, and now we sound tighter.

SILY: What else are you specifically looking forward to on this tour besides road testing new material?

AC: I’m sure it’s the answer every band gives: getting to play in front of people after not being able to do so after a number of years. We never took it lightly, but we’ll never take it for granted again. To be on stage and get to be the ones performing is one of the best experiences you can have as a musician, playing your songs in front of people who want to hear them. The fact that we’re going to get to do that again is an incredible gift. We weren’t sure we’d ever get to do this again. There were long stretches where we didn’t know what the future held for us, but we’re so happy it’s this.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately you’ve enjoyed?

AC: I watched a bit of Wednesday. My friend edited the show, including the iconic dance sequence that went viral recently, so I was very excited for him. I watched Fleishman Is in Trouble. I love The Amber Ruffin Show, which I hope comes back. She’s a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers, which I also watch all the time. I just watched “Seth and Lizzo Go Daydrinking” last night. I loved it. It was so hilarious. Lizzo’s amazing. I was happy she won Record of the Year.

I was listening to Television just before we got on. I’ve been listening to them a lot the last couple days.

SILY: Mourning Tom Verlaine?

AC: Yeah. Listening to how much of the seeds of so many bands are in them.

02/23 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall

02/24 – Milwaukee, WI @ Shank Hall

02/25 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line Music Café

02/26 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown

02/28 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive

03/02 – Kansas City, MO @ recordBar

03/03 – St. Louis, MO @ Old Rock House

03/04 – Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi

03/22 – Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall

03/23 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom

03/24 – Woodstock, NY @ Levon Helm Studios

03/25 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s

03/27 – Washington DC @ Songbyrd

03/28 – Richmond, VA @ Richmond Music Hall

03/29 – Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall

03/31 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom

04/01 – Detroit, MI @ El Club

04/02 – London, ON @ Rum Runners

06/16 – Beaumont, AB @ Beaumont Blues & Roots

07/06 – Calgary, AB @ Wildhorse Saloon Stampede Party

07/07 – Orillia, ON @ Tudhope Park