the AU interview: Rich Aucoin (Halifax) talks big, sweaty, confetti parachute parties and Australia at the Indies in Toronto!

the AU review caught up with Rich Aucoin at the Indies during Canadian Music Week last month to chat about getting older with more energy, enjoying the big, sweaty, confetti parachute party that is his live show and eventually getting down to Australia.

Rich Aucoin has come a long way from playing scoring his own music to films to lining the roof of a club with a thousand balloons. His recorded music, although limited at the moment, increasingly reflects this change and a Folk/DIY Hardcore communal concept pushed through a Motown produced by James Murphy lens. Larry Heath found out more:

I had never heard of you when I first saw you live, which I think is a good thing. You were a live machine. It was a show. Has your show really developed over the years?

Well it started as a very introspective show. I performed on the side of the stage like a silent film era organist or pianist would do a film. People would just watch the films that I wrote the music to sync up to. Then I think I played with every different type of band... like even more energetic acts would have me open because it was just a novel kind of thing to have. But then one time I was booked before a dance band and they were like ‘we want you to go on right before us so it has to be a little more energetic’. I was writing dance songs but I wasn’t performing them like dance songs, so I started performing with the audience and really liked it. So I started writing songs that really reflected making that sort of communal experience.

And for music that’s supposed to be fun and communal like that, very few artists really manage to get the crowd into it in every aspect. Is that a really conscious decision to really get everyone involved?

I try my best to think about not only each performance as my last performance, but it could also be my last performance with each person that’s seeing me. So I want to make it as good of an experience as possible so they can at least take the one moment we had together away and have good memories of it.

If only more artists were like you! [Laughs] But I love the idea of what you were doing originally, I saw Phillip Glass and the Kronos Quartet doing a live score to Dracula (the 1930 version) and it was unbelievable. I mean it’s a different kind of show.

I’m into that too, as I get older and can’t jump around in moshpits with kids anymore I think I’ll eventually move back to a more introspective show. But for now it’s super fun to be in the middle of a big, sweaty, confetti, parachute party [Laughs]. Tonight we’ve got like 1000 balloons lining the whole ceiling of the club.

What a cool venue too, such an old building... that’ll be amazing. You released an album as well last year, tell us about that? One thing I’m curious about is the big gap between your records, how much did what you were doing in your live sets influence what you wanted to do on the record?

Yeah the funny thing is there’s been a 4 year gap between these two records and a 3 year process of making the first one. I mean better start making records faster or else I’m not gonna have very many records. But what happened was, while making the first record, it got livelier and got 500 people on it so it kind of ballooned and then it still was very all over the place in terms of style. So the next record everyone was like you should make a record that reflects your live show more so that what ephemeral is and it's like 30 minutes of super high energy, gang vocals, 3 minute songs and songs people have heard over the past few years too.

There’s almost a Punk aesthetic to it.

Yeah definitely that’s what I wanted people to take away. It’s like kind of a mix of folk, not in the sound, but in a conceptual and community way its as much in folk as it is the DIY Hardcore scene and then it sounds like Motown produced by James Murphy.

[Laughs] I love all those things. Well I guess the only question that remains is are we going to get to see the show in Australia?

I’ve been so close to playing Australia so many times and I really hope someone hears this. It’s not that hard to convince me to come down. I've spent a lot of my life in Australia, but just never got to perform. I was really close to opening for Neon Indian but their dates changed last minute and I was already locked into my schedule so they ended up getting someone else (for the new dates) and I got to vacation in Australia, which was nice too.

It’s one of those things you’ve got be seen live to "get it". I guess there’s a lot of bands like Dan Deacon...

Yeah! Dan Deacon and Girl Talk and Flaming Lips are all people that I play with and respect and ask how to get to the next level of things.

If Wayne Coyne can still get out in a bubble at whatever age he is, I think it’ll be a while before you get too introspective [Laughs]. Well thanks for your time and I’ll catch you later tonight.

Cheers, thanks!

Listen to the full interview below: