An interview with Jay & Chris from Sloan
As they reissue their first two releases, 'Peppermint' and 'Smeared', we discuss Sloan's humble beginnings, the influence of Nirvana and My Bloody Valentine, and accidentally impersonating Morrissey.
The first artist from Canada I can remember listening to as a teen was Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Sloan. For me, Canadian music started with the release of their 1992 debut album, Smeared. I doubt I knew Sloan - Jay Ferguson, Chris Murphy, Patrick Pentland and Andrew Scott - were Canadian when I first heard their single “Underwhelmed” on CFNY-FM or saw the video for it on MuchMusic, because Canadian music didn’t have much of an identity. To my ears they sounded similar to the other bands I was listening to, like Sonic Youth and Nirvana, who were also on Geffen Records (aka DGC). But until I discovered the Sonic Unyon-led music scene of my hometown the following year (I’ll save those memories for another occasion), Sloan were basically the only homegrown band I listened to.
(One of my first memories of Smeared wasn’t actually buying it, but naïvely trying to arrange a straight swap for the CD in exchange for an unwanted metal album at Record World in Hamilton. The insolent dude who worked there scoffed at me for not knowing how trades worked. Needless to say, I didn’t end up buying Smeared that night, but that moment has always stuck with me. I later bought the tape… from a different store.)
I hold Smeared in the same regard many people hold Nirvana’s Nevermind. (And yeah, I’d say “Underwhelmed” is their “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”) Even though it arrived one year later and members of Sloan have admitted to calling Nevermind an influence, to people of a certain age Smeared single-handedly put Canadian music on the map, thanks to an international record deal with Geffen Records. I wouldn’t hesitate to argue that Sloan paved the way for every great Canadian band that came after them, the same way Nirvana helped bring underground music to the mainstream.
As much as I love Smeared - it is and has always been my favourite Sloan album - it’s quite easy for me to forget that it’s by the same band that would go on to release Twice Removed, One Chord To Another, Navy Blues and Between The Bridges all within the same decade. Aside from the songwriting and vocals, Smeared shares so little in common with its successors that it often feels more like a great stand-alone album by a band that was leaving their mark on (what I feel was) one of music’s most exciting periods. Nodding to UK’s shoegaze scene and America’s game-changing grunge movement that started a revolution, Smeared represented the best of both worlds, albeit with far more personality and wit than most of its competition.
Smeared would not prove to be Sloan’s breakout album - one could argue that any of the three that followed did more to increase the band’s profile - but without it the East Coast music scene wouldn’t have exploded and opened the door for great bands like Eric’s Trip, Jale, the Super Friendz, Thrush Hermit and the Hardship Post. All of those bands put out records on Sloan’s independent label, murderecords, which became a blueprint for so many indie labels that came afterwards. If I’m padding their résumé, I should also add that were it not for Sloan laying the foundation, the rest of Canadian independent music at the time, the CanRock boom that followed in the 1990s, and even the indie rock renaissance of the 2000s may never have succeeded the way they did.
Now after reissuing albums two through four as limited and painstakingly comprehensive vinyl box sets, Sloan and murderecords have assembled one for Smeared, which has been out of print on vinyl for 26 years. Along with the album, the band have included their usual compilation of demos and outtakes from the album’s recording sessions, and a live album recorded at a gig played at McGill University in Montreal, QC on June 17, 1993 that finds the band introducing future favourites like “Penpals” and “Coax Me.” There is also a bonus 7” with two more live rarities, a reprint of a gig poster designed by Eric’s Trip’s Rick White, and the standard thick booklet featuring a fascinating and rather amusing oral history of the album by the band, which in my opinion, is the best reason to buy the box set.
In addition to that, the band have also given Peppermint, a much-needed first release on vinyl and remastering… or maybe this is the initial mastering? Ferguson and Murphy aren’t even sure. This pre-Smeared, debut EP essentially forced them to establish murderecords. It features one of my favourite Sloan songs, a sugary slice of noise pop from Ferguson called “Pretty Voice” that sounds more relevant in 2024 than it likely did in 1992. If you’re lucky, you can even grab a copy on a gorgeous green and white pinwheel swirl variant through the band’s online shop.
For the third year in a row, members of Sloan hosted a murderecords garage sale in Toronto where they surprise-released the two reissues, making them available to the public for the first time. A few days after they recovered from selling merch to the hundreds of fans who lined up in the rain for hours (90 minutes for me), Jay Ferguson and Chris Murphy were nice enough to sit down with me inside the unofficial Sloan HQ (aka Murphy’s garage) to talk all about the Peppermint and Smeared years.
How does it feel listening to the Peppermint EP at this point in your lives?
Chris Murphy: I listened to the mixes as they came down. I have all of our records, but I don't play them. I don't really even have a record player. I must say that in terms of the scrutinizing, I leave it to Jay. He's always like, “There's a clip on side G” or whatever. He has so much bullshit to listen to and I'm kind of in charge of the text. I must say that I would never put on Peppermint for pleasure.
Jay Ferguson: Listening to the CD I kind of thought, “Was this originally mastered?” Because it sounds so scrappy. That's why I think the work that João [Carvalho] did on it makes it sound better than the CD itself.
Murphy: Jay was A/B-ing it and said, “This sounds noticeably better.” He was excited for the sound of it. We definitely didn't know what mastering was when we made Peppermint. We had never mastered anything before and I still kind of shrug my shoulders at the procedure, but we definitely didn't know at the time.
Ferguson: “Underwhelmed” is so long on the Peppermint EP. Like it's outrageous how long it is. The ending just keeps going and going and I forgot how unedited it was. But it was edited for the spin the bottle video. I kind of forgot how long it was as I was listening back to it.
Jay said in the box set’s booklet that releasing an EP first was about building cred. Was that important to you guys as you were starting out?
Ferguson: I think it was more about not jumping to Geffen right away. I feel like we had been in bands for so long, doing so much on our own already, making cassettes of our previous bands that we’d sell to the store.
Murphy: But invisible to the world. Like what we did had no bearing on the culture.
Ferguson: I just mean that we had been doing so much stuff on our own that we didn’t want the first thing that people learn about Sloan was from this major label. It was almost a continuation of what we were doing before. We wanted to make sure people knew that Sloan was still kind of a do-it-yourself band. I didn’t want people from other cities thinking, “Oh this is just some major label band.” It was more just about proving that we could do stuff on our own and that's why we kind of wanted to do Peppermint ourselves.
Murphy: Also we wanted something out that summer and with Geffen, everything seemed so glacial at the time because it took months for them to make decisions. We definitely were aware of the order of events with being a cool band. By the time we got to England we were a signed band. So for rock journalists, if they can't discover you then you’re shit. Because all they can do to help you is discover you. We went over already signed to Geffen so they couldn't help us in any way. All they could do was tear us down hilariously. Like “singer shaking his sexless arse” or whatever. That'd be me.
Ferguson: Yeah, like “this band is from Canada so they’re terrible.” Those types of reviews.
Well, those were dark times for Canadian music. Did Canada even have a reputation?
Murphy: We talked a lot about that at the time, like Bryan Adams and Loverboy, stuff that have more affection for now. But at the time I was embarrassed that’s how they saw us.
Ferguson: We just wanted to prove or just let people know how much cool music there was in the Maritimes. Whether it was Eric's Trip or Jale or Hardship Post, we wanted that to be the representation of the scene where we came from, as opposed to Bryan Adams or David Foster.
Murphy: And the idea of being Canadian or a national band - this was before we met any of the Sonic Unyon or Mint people - but we knew a lot of the people in the Maritimes and people who are making music and playing shows and stuff. We were trying to be specifically like, “We're Canadian, but specifically we're from here, the Maritimes. And these are the people we know.” But we didn't even know those people.
Was Geffen willing to release Peppermint?
Murphy: Peppermint and Smeared are all from the same recording sessions. We won a songwriting contest to win studio time. Well, we didn't win it, but we were given studio time and we recorded it in September 1991, just as Nirvana was changing our aspirations. Jay the whole time was thinking, ‘This band is great,” but I was like, “It’s great but one doesn't make money doing this.” And then Nevermind came out in September, and then Loveless came out in November, and we're like, “Let's just record all our songs.” So we recorded them all in December, nine songs or something, and that was everything we had. We recorded a couple more later, so we ended up with about 15 songs. That's why Peppermint and Smeared aren't mutually exclusive. There are some songs that repeat but it's just all the same sessions. If you want to do a one-to-one comparison, “Marcus Said” and “Sugartune” are on both records and you can hear what $1,200 buys you versus $30,000 in remixing. They're the same recordings just mixed differently. Sorry, two songs are on both, three songs are only on Peppermint, and “Underwhelmed” was re-recorded.
Was the initial plan with murderecords to just release the EP or were you looking to help release records from other bands?
Ferguson: I don't think there was a lot of forethought. I think it was that we wanted to have something out sooner than later because originally Smeared was gonna come out after Christmas in early 1993. But then in Canada they let us put it out or they sort of rushed things along and it came out in October [1992]. I think it was so we could do some touring in Canada. But still, early ’93 seemed so far away at so we wanted to have something out sooner.
I think murderecords originally was just a name that Andrew made up with random ideas. I don't think at that point there was any consideration of putting out other bands. Peter Rowan, who was working with us, he was already friends with Eric’s Trip from New Brunswick. I think maybe he had the eye of wanting to manage them and when it came time for them to put out something it was sort of natural with that connection. We became friends with Eric’s Trip and put out their EP [Peter]. And then Hardship Post became managed by Peter and Chip [Sutherland] as well. And so it just sort of evolved naturally. It wasn't like we were out seeking bands. It's just that these other bands that we knew were also getting attention. “Let's help them put out a CD right away while they're working out their deals.”
Murphy: So I think the second release on murderecords didn't come out until I guess ’93. We had been involved in the music scene there for years and we wanted to remain active. Once we signed to Geffen we weren't playing in Halifax every week or anymore. We got to go to Europe and all these other places, so we kind of were no longer a local band. [murderecords] was a way to stay active in the community. We also thought of it as somewhat of an insurance policy against the fickleness of the industry. Like, “If we figure out how to do it and if and when Geffen lose interest in us, we will have the infrastructure to just do it on our own.”
You had that foresight?
Murphy: Yeah, I think so. I mean we talk about it now. I don't mean to talk like we're so smart or like we’re in a business meeting or something.
Ferguson: Chip Sutherland, who is our lawyer and became our manager for quite a long period of time, I think that's the way he often thought of it as well because those murderecords EPs were originally by Cargo, and then distributed by MCA, which became Universal. Geffen was also with Universal in Canada. So we almost had two paths with Universal. The infrastructure was already set up with them, which would be an easy transition if something happened with Geffen, which it did. We ended up working with the same people again [after we left Geffen] when we did One Chord To Another.
In the booklet it sounds like you were lamenting not signing with Sub Pop, like some of your peers had. Did you ever get approached by them?
Murphy: If Sub Pop had come in and it had been any other label than Geffen, I probably would have been so excited to be on Sub Pop, for sure, because we obviously met them through touring and even the Geffen rep who lived in Seattle, Susie Tennant, through her we befriended all those Sub Pop people, like Nils Bernstein. We loved all those people, but Geffen was the centre of the world. Do I need to list all of the bands they had?
Ferguson: We were even getting the sellout tag by the end of ’92, but how could you have said no to an offer from DGC or Geffen at that time?
Did the deal with Geffen come before or after Nevermind was released?
Murphy: Everything happened after Nevermind. Everything we had recorded by December of 1991 was just a collection of the songs we’d had since February 1991. Nevermind came out that September and “Underwhelmed” is all we had recorded to that point. But it’s like not like we wouldn’t have recorded those songs without those world-changing events. I might have been sheepish about spending the money then, but then we were like, “Let's just blow all our money on doing this.”
Sloan gave Smeared’s producer Terry Pulliam a lot of business after working with him. So many bands hired him after you. Was he the obvious go-to guy to work with at the time?
Murphy: There was only one professional studio in town where maybe the Rankins would go, but nobody I knew went there. I was in another band called Black Pool and we recorded at that studio called Solar. In fact, I was doing double duty with Sloan and Black Pool. Black Pool were also signed, to a Canadian subsidiary of MCA called Justin Entertainment. We recorded with a guy named Terry Brown, who recorded all the Rush records, but he also recorded the first Blue Rodeo record. [Black Pool] was more like roots rock and to me, even though it wasn't really my thing I enjoyed playing with them. But it wasn't my music. I would say it was certainly the most commercial music I had ever been involved in. Like these guys could command $400 a show, or whatever it was.
You guys have admitted Nevermind really inspired you at the time. Patrick also called Smeared “our version of Loveless.” Was that more about loving those records or did it you want to try and sound like them at the time?
Ferguson: I mean, I think we loved those records for sure. I don't think it was like, “This is what's popular so let's make this kind of music.” I don't want to speak for everybody, but I think everybody had loved Isn’t Anything.
Murphy: [Jay] knew about new music and read the British papers and stuff. Like I didn't even go through a Jesus & Mary Chain period or anything like that. I was at work and I heard “You Made Me Realise” on Jay's radio show, and I was like, “What the fuck is this?” So there was “You Made Me Realise” and “Feed Me With Your Kiss” and Isn’t Anything, I was just in love with them so much. All of the songs on Smeared that I wrote are basically just copying those. And then that November, Loveless came out, which was less hard, so I think we implemented all of that kind of stuff. Patrick loved it too. We were all kind of on the same page with [My Bloody Valentine]. When I think back I think I played some bass on Smeared and Patrick definitely played some. Patrick and I switched and I was the guitar player for the first year, then Patrick switched. There is video of us playing in October ’91 and he's playing bass, and then January ’92 I'm playing bass. I don't even know what I played on the record. I don't think I played anything on Smeared. Patrick played a lot of bass on it though, too, but he was so into that guitar fuzzery. He was never happier. Basically he’s been unhappy ever since!
Ferguson: Yeah, he would have been into that sound. Patrick's a big Jesus & Mary Chain fan so he would have been into that since ’85 or whatever, since Psychocandy came out,
Murphy: I think that Smeared, more than any record that I know of, is a great example of transatlantic music from that era. It has aspects of shoegaze and grunge, or American underground rock, more so than any other band.
I’m grateful that in the booklet you discuss the album cover because I've always wondered what exactly I was looking at. I always thought it was a painting and the person in front was Chris.
Murphy: With the glasses? You can kind of see that, especially those glasses I have right now. But it’s not us. I just had Polaroids from a party on December 25, 1990. Dave Marsh, who plays with [Joel] Plaskett, that’s him on the on the left. He taught us how to do it. You hold a Polaroid over the stove and then you draw on it with a blunt object like a key so get that kind of effect.
Obviously Chris was the main songwriter on the album. At what point did everyone else decide they wanted to start bringing songs to the table?
Murphy: I think right away. I just had a cache of songs that we played. We played for about a year without much momentum.
Ferguson: I think we played maybe less than a dozen times before we left. Chris and I played in Kearney Lake Rd. before that, which was a trio where everybody wrote songs and sang. So there was a little bit of a template for Sloan. And Patrick was in a band called Happy Co. and he was the main songwriter.
Murphy: Even in Black Pool, the roots rock band, I don’t mean to mock it, but everyone else was older than me, like 26. I was 21, the young guy, and they were encouraging me to write for them too. They would have split everything evenly too. I learned a lot in that band… like the idea of the bass drum and the bass playing at the same time! I was just like, “What?”
I thought all five singles from Smeared were strong choices. Was there a lot of discussion about what would follow “Underwhelmed”?
Murphy: It definitely seemed like a hodgepodge.
Ferguson: I think it was just that the different territories would decide. I mean another thing about Sloan sharing is that even if a song is written primarily by one or two people everybody shares. Like it’s “written by Sloan.” So I don't think there was specifically infighting over who sang what songs. Everybody benefitted from it. So we often would let a territory choose the single, so it was a little all over the place though. Like the U.S. wanted “Take It In” and up here “Sugartune” was a single. It might have been guided by someone at The Edge [CFNY], who really liked “Sugartune.” And then in the UK they put out “Underwhelmed” and “I Am The Cancer.”
Murphy: “I Am The Cancer” is the best one out of those. Just kidding.
That’s my favourite song on the album.
Murphy: Yeah, it’s the best one. Just one little detail, for the Canadian content regulations, we did two videos for “Underwhelmed,” the indie video that we shot in my parents’ basement, and then we redid it with a budget in New York. That one didn't satisfy Canadian content regulations, so I think MuchMusic more often played the indie one of us playing spin the bottle more. And then with “500 Up” we became more cognizant of those rules and we brought down Chip's wife at the time to be the director in the States so that we would have a Canadian director. Even though it's, I should say, without direction.
Okay, here is the “Underwhelmed” portion of the interview. Obviously that song was the star of the album. The booklet mentions how hearing My Bloody Valentine influenced the recording of the Smeared version of “Underwhelmed.” How much of that song is MBV adoration?
Murphy: Not as much. I would say that there are pre-Loveless versions of “Marcus Said” and with that we were like, “Let's do it like My Bloody Valentine.” I remember making that change and being so psyched in real time.
Ferguson: “I Am The Cancer” too, where the bass is really holding it down.
Murphy: “Underwhelmed” on the record owes more to hearing “Aneurysm” by Nirvana. That whole opening build and drum fill is exactly “Aneurysm.” That’s my theory.
Almost every line in that song is quotable. Which lyric from “Underwhelmed” is quoted most to you guys?
Murphy: I don't know, the LC line [“She told me to loosen up on her way to the L.C.”]. Or “her spelling’s atrocious.” I might as well have been holding flowers singing that one. To me it’s so Morrissey. It's so over the top. Is it obvious that I'm doing Morrissey?
Ferguson: That's funny because I've never heard that mentioned aside from you. But it seems like something Morrissey would sing.
Murphy: I don't think I’ve heard anyone else say it either but to me it's so obviously him. “Write such dreadful poetry.” But when I wrote that, unlike almost anything I've ever written, it was a poem or just like a stream of consciousness from a fucking journal. It's so embarrassing to think about now. Nothing rhymes in that song, like it's not even a song. And then the music, I probably said this in the book as well, is kind of comes “Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing” by Minutemen. It's just two chords. I remember Andrew and I were recording songs live into a boombox to play for Patrick. I don't know if I'm reading it or just remembering it and making it up on the spot and we never changed it.
Andrew also calls “Underwhelmed” the band’s “marquee player,” you know, if you were a sports team. I know it was your signature song until “Money City Maniacs.” Do you agree with that or do you think “Money City Maniacs” is has taken over because it’s more popular these days?
Murphy: In in the GTA “Underwhelmed” gets a big hoot and holler, but outside the GTA it's way down the list. Like it was before commercial alternative radio, like it didn't have a place to be. It was on CFNY in Toronto, CFOX in Vancouver, and maybe that's it. It wasn't on Q104 in Halifax. They didn't start playing us until “The Good In Everyone.” If you look at streaming, “Money City Maniacs” has more than everything else put together.
Patrick kinda goes off at the end of the booklet.
Murphy: Yeah. I was formatting it and I just had all of this Patrick stuff to use and I just left it all at the end. It was good, too. I didn't know how to put it in the context of the rest of the booklet. I think I shoehorned myself in here so it wasn't all Patrick. Sorry, what does he say?
He said nobody made a record anywhere near Smeared. And that no other band from the East Coast but Sloan “rose to the level.” Thoughts?
Murphy: I think I may have even taken some stuff out where he's basically like, “Everyone in our town sucked except for us.”
Ferguson: I thought it was nice what he said. I kind of agree with him. Like I think there was nobody else making music like us. Although when we met Eric's Trip I remember thinking, “Oh my god.” There's a bit of a kinship there. They liked My Bloody Valentine, and maybe more American stuff like Dinosaur Jr and stuff like that. Though I liked that, and so did Patrick. But I felt like that was the only other band on this train of new music that was a like melodic pop music with distorted guitars that was being made.
Murphy: Meeting them was really exciting. Like we were on to something. Because most of the bands in our town… I mean Thrush Hermit were cool but we didn't really hang out with them. They were like they were little boys.
Yeah, I love Eric’s Trip too, but in all fairness, they didn’t have the commercial potential that Sloan did at the time.
Ferguson: I mean they were making records on a four-track. But they nurtured their own sound and identity, but it's like Syd Barrett and the Beatles. Not that I’m comparing us to the Beatles, but you know what I mean.
You’re comparing Sloan to the Beatles, got it.
Murphy: Exactly. We like to do it at least once an interview. I like to think of it as that Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre comparison. Well-adjusted university educated people meeting these weirdos with pots and pans on their heads and sex dungeons.
That’s Eric’s Trip?
Murphy: Well…
Was there excitement on your behalf to see the East Coast music scene grow? Did you feel like some bands were just kind of forming to try and capitalize a little bit?
Murphy: Even I felt like I was capitalizing on it. But we like to make it be known that we realize that there were bands before us and that we got the break. Jellyfishbabies is the band, and everyone else was whatever. I could name a bunch of hardcore bands but they didn’t have songs.
Ferguson: There was a band called Basic English who had a roots rock sound, almost like a suped-up Black Pool.
Murphy: And there was Black Pool, but that had nothing stylistically to do with this. Basic English were on the cool compilation that the Jellyfishbabies were on in 1986 that was put out by Flamingo. Basic English, I thought were wack, but I've come to meet them and I like them. To me they were like cowboy bootpunk, which is what I thought Toronto was. Like everybody had pompadours and cowboy boots.
Ferguson: I think there were definitely some bands that were a little bit resentful they weren't caught up in what was happening with murderecords or this other label called Cinnamon Toast. I think so many people ended up with higher aspirations and expectations as a result.
Murphy: Like “Where is my record deal? You were opening up for us and now.. what the?” But not so much that it taints the story. I think that everybody who we thought was good kind of got a shot. The only ones that I probably would have supported that I didn't was a Plumtree. But I just didn't want to hang out with girls that young. They got old enough later, but people were already in working with them. I thought they were cool though.
Ferguson: I feel like they were more in the Cinnamon Toast camp.
Murphy: They were and that's fine, but to me most of the things on Cinnamon Toast were shitty anyway. I would have been happy if Plumtree was on our label, but we didn't get there in time. I also didn't want to aggressively hang out with 17-year-old girls. I was like 26-year-old man. I love them and they went to my church, so I've known them since they were like six. But I knew them from a time when you just can't hang out with them. I still feel that way about them and they're women now.
Patrick said he believed Twice Removed could have been mixed to sound like Smeared. Do you agree with that?
Ferguson: I don't know if it could be mixed to sound like Smeared. I think it could have been recorded to sound more like Smeared, but at that point, from my perspective, there were just so many bands internationally jumping on the grunge bandwagon. Even though it came out at the time we were doing Twice Removed, something like Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain by Pavement was like, “Ah, this is so cool and it's not grungy, but it was still exciting and had a newer take on alternative rock.” And they were getting quite popular. For me touring again behind a totally noisy guitar record just seemed I just I kind of wanted to try something different. That's not me to lead the charge, I only had two songs on the record, but I think Chris might have felt the same a little bit.
Murphy: I think we thought that that the house of cards in the alternative music scene would have been coming down or deserved to come down. Like, “Who's fucking Collective Soul? Let's get out of here!” I was also terrified to listen to anything contemporary. I wouldn't listen to the latest Pavement record when we were making Twice Removed. I think [Jay was] probably listening to it and telling me, “This is great!” and I was like, “Aaah, I don’t want to listen!”
I love that Sloan were featured as a “cute band” in Sassy. It wasn’t easy, but I was able to dig up a clipping of that feature. Strangely enough I found it on TikTok.
Ferguson: Do you mean you took it off your wall? We have about five copies of that issue.
I loved how the writer didn’t refer to Halifax as “The Next Seattle” like everyone else did, and called it “Olympia of Canada.”
Murphy: But that almost is even more… not everybody would get that joke, but you might roll your eyes even more because it’s like, “I won't write Seattle!”
The box set includes a set you played at McGill University in 1993. What made you choose to include that performance?
Murphy: I think we had a multi-track version of it, as in it was the best thing we had from that time.
Ferguson: It's a little bit rough sounding. Like certain songs, certain microphones are on. I feel like the first track, “Median Strip,” it was hard to get it sound okay. Then the rest of it sort of falls into a place. It was recorded by Howard Bilerman, who used to be in Arcade Fire, and he's recorded a lot of our shows. We just didn't have a lot of good multi-tracked Smeared shows.
Murphy: We had no multi-tracked anything. We had a couple just tapes. There another tape from ’90 or ’91.
Ferguson: There are other shows from ’92, but I feel like by the time ’93 came around we were playing better like some of the shows. We were pretty amateurish for the first year. I have a show at Foufounes Électriques, I think the day Smeared came out and it's pretty unlistenable.
There was also the bootleg you released back in 2011, Is That All I Get? (1993 September Twentieth - Recorded Live On Patrick's Birthday).
Ferguson: That's pretty rough sounding too. I feel like the McGill that we put in the box set was the best foot forward with what we had for live material for the time. And I thought it was kind of interesting because it had “Penpals” played differently and “Coax Me” as well. And it was sort of a transition period for us. By the end of the Smeared touring we were already playing some songs that would end up on Twice Removed. I thought it made for an interesting transition.
How do you feel Smeared holds up in the band’s discography?
Murphy: I love Smeared, and I shit on it for years because I just thought that by the time we made those next couple of records it felt like it Smeared wasn’t representative of us anymore. I was like, “What band is that? This is a bunch of try-hards trying to get in on the cool shit happening in 1988, but it was 1993 when it came out.”
Ferguson: But it's not disingenuous. It's out of love and exciting as opposed to, “Hey, this is new cool.”
I think Patrick raises a good point when he claims that Smeared has been forgotten because of everything that came after it. I’d say it was definitely overshadowed by the next three albums.
Murphy: He’s probably right.
Ferguson: From from my perspective, I don't think my songs are that great, but I think most of it is pretty awesome. The songs are great, even though it's coloured by an era whereas, say Abbey Road is timeless. Here I am comparing ourselves to the Beatles again! I’m doing this for your benefit. But, for example, the first Beatles album, which I love, is you never hear that on the radio, but you'll hear “Come Together” and “Here Comes The Sun” all the time.
Why wasn't Smeared the first box set in the series?
Murphy: We just thought we had to start with our best foot forward because it was a new thing that we were asking people to pony up a hundred bucks for or whatever it was. And we just thought if we failed on Smeared we wouldn't do anymore, and people are so gaga for Twice Removed. I mean, maybe we should have started with One Chord if I thought that was the strongest. That was our commercial peak.
Ferguson: For Twice Removed we had so much great audio to make a good box set. In my mind better audio than what's on the Smeared box set.
Murphy: The demos on Twice Removed were done really well.
And that box set wasn’t tied in with its 20th anniversary, was it?
Ferguson: No, I remember I kind of wanted to do it in 2009 on the 15th anniversary of Twice Removed. But then we ended up doing Hit & Run and then a new record, but we also we did a little test drive of playing Twice Removed all the way through, like at Sappy Fest. We did it once in Halifax and we even did One Chord To Another at one of Fucked Up’s [Long Winter] nights at the Great Hall in Toronto. So that was before we had done a box set and the response to playing Twice Removed all the way through gave us the notion that this would be a great tour, which would be a good time to release a box set as well. Those are just elements I think that played into doing Twice Removed first as opposed to Smeared.
Murphy: But I think that because some of us had young kids and stuff, it bought us a tour without having to make a whole new record. So it's easier for Jay and I to make the box sets, because we don't have to get everybody together to do them. And so we just learn those songs again and then it buys us 60 shows. That makes us more money than selling these things themselves. But now that we're all out of the woods with kids, I don't want to tour this, I want to make records. I’m 55 now, so let's make three more records. If it means that we have to wait a whole touring cycle for that, which is 18 months, and then another 18 months, it's just such a drag to wait.