Interview: Valleys
Meet You At The Show: So how did Valleys starts and how has the band evolved over time?
Marc St Louis: Well first we were two, and then we had a drummer once in a while and then we were 6 and then 7 and then we were two again, and we’ve been three for a while now, so on friday we’re gonna be three.
Matilda Perks: It’s always been Marc and I writing the songs and it’s just a matter of finding people to play with us and for the last two years we’ve been playing with the same guy, Pascal (Oliver).
Marc: Yeah, we met through a mutual friend who was roommates with Tillie, and we met and we started getting drunk together and we started making music…
MYATS: How do you construct your songs, is it a mutual or more individual process?
Marc: Usually we all bring our own little thing, and we work it out together. Sometimes we work it out with Pascal too.
Matilda: We’ve just been recording new songs that we’re gonna play out just digitally and those are the first songs that he wrote for us as well. Usually what happens is someone will come up with a basic idea like this is the melody and everybody else just plays along.. And sometimes, we’re recording and this is the song but you feel you really want to hear a guitar sound and Marc will play it and you have to go back and re-learn it afterward and I’m like: “this is great, what did you play?” and he’ll be like: “ I don’t know..”
Marc: Yeah… it happens a lot…
Matilda: Yes, so it’s sort of spontaneous.
MYATS: Why did you choose the title Sometimes Water Kills People for your album?
Marc: Well… it was an interview we were doing online and they asked us what the album was going to be called and I don’t want to say it was a joke but it was the first thing that went through our minds and then when we were looking for the actual title we found it in this e-mail…
Matilda: Yeah and at that time Marc and I were like “ha! ha!” it’s pretty funny and then at the same time, we were listening to the radio and the radio station was giving away some tickets to Britney Spears or something but you had to drink the most water without peeing and the woman who won, she was actually doing it for a kid, she died. So it was when we were looking for the title so we just decided to call it Sometimes Water Kills People, you know it’s like a public service announcement… like it actually happens!
MYATS: Tell me about the cover art for the album?
Matilda: Yeah, I think it’s my father… I went home and we were looking for artwork and my parents have all these pictures from the 70’s and I think it’s my dad or something because we can’t really see the face And the back cover as well. It’s all from my parents so it’s somewhere probably in the States because they’re Americans.
MYATS: You’re both multi-instrumentalists, so how do you decide who plays what?
Matilda: Yeah, Marc is a really good guitar player though, I’m always surprised actually! It’s weird because we play what the song calls for, like I’ll be: “You can play that guitar part and I’ll play this part” you know what I mean? Actually Marc is the most versatile and Pascal is the most trained..
MYATS: What’s are your main influences, musically or otherwise?
Marc: Well, I listen to a lot of music so it’s not specific in that way…
Matilda: Yeah, we didn’t get together because we all loved one band, actually I feel like our influences are more like film (related). I feel like whenever we write a song it’s more visually based…I mean Pascal is like a big film guy and so is Marc…
Marc: Yeah, I suppose that’s true..
MYATS: What about you name, you were called There Were Valleys before and you changed to Valleys. Where does the name come from?
Marc: It’s like you try to come up with a name, and you come up with so many bad names that are worse than the name you picked, and you choose this one just because it’s better than the really bad ones.
Matilda: I think it’s cool that we ended up with Valleys tough because we feel like we’re a…feminine band.
Marc: Feminine?
Matilda: We’re all feminine I think even if our personalities are not really feminine… If we were more masculine, we could be called like a phallic symbol or something!
MYATS: How do you feel about your overall exposure in the Montreal music scene, because we don’t see you playing a lot compared to some other emerging bands.
Marc: There was a time when we didn’t play that much, but I don’t think it was a conscious decision…
Matilda: I don’t know, at one point I think it was kind of conscious, a couple of years ago we were like, okay, we’re not gonna play every show that comes along because we couldn’t… When you come back from tour, you work as hard as it is humanly possible to balance out, you know, poverty… so that’s a reason why we didn’t play so much in the last couple of years. And I guess we prefer playing with other bands that are our friends, so we decided to wait for that.
Marc: But we played out of town a lot. We’ve mostly booked our own tour in the U.S. and a lot of the DIY shows went really well and the usual bad moments when you book your own tour also happened, like no one showing up… but it didn’t happen a lot.
Matilda: Yeah, for the most part I think that the touring has been the most fun, because everything is like a discovery, but like things will happen. Like in Boston, we we’re suppose to play there after Philadelphia and one of the local bands canceled and the guy who ran the venue decided to cancel the show, and we we’re like: “This is totally crazy”, and we didn’t find out until one hour before the show and we had been driving six hours and were like “you can’t do that to us!”, but what happened is that the guy who was promoting the show was like: “Oh, just come to my house, we’ll do the show there!” When you’re on the road, you rely so much on people’s generosity and kindness and people are really amazing.
MYATS: What’s your worst or most absurd concert experience?
Matilda: A couple of years ago we we’re going to play a show in Burlington and our drummer was suppose to come down but he didn’t have a visa so we just decided to bring him with us on the bus and hopefully the opening band would have a drum kit or something, but once we arrived there, the venue didn’t have a drum kit… But we see this kid walking on the road and we recognize him from the bus so we ask him if he needs a ride, so we gave him a ride home and he was like 15 or something and we ask him if he know where we can find a drum kit and he says: “ I have one!” but it was like in his tree house, so we like met his parents, and we went to the tree house to get the drums!
MYATS: Oh, and we played in this barn in Indiana.
Marc: Yeah, and we were covered in dirt.
MYATS: You guys seem really calm when you are on stage playing. Do you ever get nervous before a show?
Marc: I get really nervous when we play in Montreal, because there is people I know, but anywhere else, not really.
Matilda: I don’t really get nervous anymore.
Marc: But we got really nervous before that Woods show because we hadn’t play in like six months and we were nervous that we’re gonna forget our parts or something.
Matilda: But then when we start playing, we don’t really think about messing up. And people talk to us about the calmness, and sometimes people are like: “yeah you look like you’re in a bad mood…” We’re not in a bad mood, we just like…
Marc: We’re thinking really hard.
Matilda: We’re creating magic! But actually, I think that some people are just natural showman and that is not us… Like we’re a little bit introverted, and in some ways it’s just the way that we are and in some way it works.
MYATS: Are you nervous about people’s reaction since you play mostly in small venues, you can clearly see it?
Matilda: I feel like we are in a bubble when we play…
Marc: Yeah, I really like playing in small venues, especially when there is no stage and the people are just around you, I would have thought that it would be kind of terrifying but it’s actually better..
Matilda: Because you’ve got to create a mood and you feel like people do respond to it.
**Interview Conducted by Camille Gervais**
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We would like to extend a big thank you to Marc St Louis and Matilda Perks of Valleys for taking the time to chat with us and wish them the best of luck in all their future endeavours. You can catch the band live tonight at Club Lambi where they will be kicking off this year’s Pop Off Tour with Jane Vain.
