Canadian Musician - January / February 2020 | Page 36

there is inter-band romance in Stars: Millan and Cranley are married and have two children. During our phone interview, they also seem much more able to toler- ate each other than Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks ever were.) McGee compares the play to a proj- ect from a considerably more aggressive band. “Have you seen [Metallica’s] Some Kind of Monster? I’ve seen it multiple times. I think it’s very similar. Metallica had this sort of aura. Kirk Hammett was terrifying on the cover of guitar maga- zines in the ‘80s and ‘90s and then they come out and they’re these sort of mil- lionaire dudes and it’s so embarrassing to watch but it was so amazing for them to do that.” There’s one big difference between Metallica and Stars: when you listen to early Metallica, there’s a sense that these overly intoxicated young men could actu- ally hate each other – and everyone else, for that matter. “There is a darkness that exists with- in Stars, for sure,” McGee acknowledges. “There’s unsettling things in the lyrics. The music tends to be less aggressive than Metallica, but it’s been somewhat cathartic doing this. I don’t think Torq [Campbell, singer] and I will ever fight again after you fight every night for three weeks in a row. It’s like, ‘Gosh, I don’t think we’ll ever need to do this again.’ It’s the same discussion, same argument, same issues we’ve been having for 20 years and it just gets so boring after a while. There’s a certain amount of accep- tance that comes in.” Stars: Together is aimed at giving the band’s fans and curious theatregoers totally unaware of their material and history a look at how they’ve gotten to where they are and the struggles they still face. “I think it’s unique to bands that have lasted over 20 years and gone into mid- dle age and have middle age problems,” 36 C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N says Cranley. “(We have) aging parents and very young children and are in an industry that is honestly slowly crumbling. I don’t know if bands 40 years ago had these types of problems. I think you were able to sell your music and people would buy it. I think it’s a very kind of specific era being in a band right now with all these things happening to you. I think it’s a picture of us now.” What they are now is an older and wiser version of the band that burst onto the Canadian music scene with their 2001 debut Nightsongs. The lineup hasn’t changed but the mentality has. This is a band that has seen a lot: the rise and fall of entire business mod- els, the hype that had Montreal being compared to late-‘80s Seattle but that fizzled out shortly thereafter… While their music can be soft and dreamy, Stars are anything but wishy-washy when it comes to their opinions on the music industry. Intense touring and album release cycles have earned them a hard-won international fanbase – in- cluding Stars: Together co-creator Chris Abraham, who is the artistic director at Crow’s Theatre – but that hasn’t made existing in today’s bombed-out husk of the music industry any easier.  “I think it’s very difficult to be a middle- class band because of the streaming services,” says Millan. “If you aren’t getting paid for the records you’re selling, the music people are listening to, then it’s going to be nearly impossible for you to make a living and that’s just a fact. That’s what’s hurting the industry right now is the fact that profit-sharing is not equal; it is not fair and people are not going to be able to do this with the way it’s set up right now with Apple Music and Spotify. You have to be a rock star to get by. You can’t be a band of six people and get nine million plays and then only make $36,000 a year from that. It’s just not sustainable.” The difficulty and stress of keeping their career going is part of the story of how Stars: Together came about. As Millan explains, the band’s manager had just quit, leaving its members uncertain about their future. They were approached by Abraham, who had previously worked with Campbell on a play called True Crime, about turning that friction into a stage production. Writer/director Zack Russell was soon brought onboard and the two began interviewing the members of Stars before crafting their stories into a cohesive narrative. The end result left the band rejuvenated. “I think that was the gift Chris Abra- ham gave to us,” says Millan. “Instead of, at this juncture, going into our studio and writing another record coming on our 20 th anniversary, we were really able to celebrate in a way that was terrifying and had the opportunity to do something we had never done before, which is rare for a group of people our age having created a career in music. Given this opportunity to go into completely new territory and real- ly push the limits of what we felt safe in, it makes you feel like a kid again. Being able to do that with one another like we did when started the band 20 years ago, it’s been an incredible gift.” LaGuardia Microsite Check out Stars’ companion website for LaGuardia that maps out the stories behind some of the most essential Stars songs included on the collection. Conveyed in a context that models the gate infrastructure of LaGuardia Air- port in NYC, there are career-spanning, behind-the-scenes photos and intimate creative details of this new compilation. www.starslaguardia.com Much has changed since the band first coalesced. The Montreal scene that garnered international coverage and Spin magazine covers never quite became the new Seattle, as the music industry disinte- grated and musical fandom fractured. In a way, the end of the hype machine gave the surviving bands a type of freedom. “That died down but we kept on con- sistently making music,” says Cranley. “I think in an industry where artists thrive on having a sense of anonymity and mystery, a lot of bands and singer-song- writers like that kind of mystique. But we thought it would be braver to have no mystery anymore, to show everything. That’s the kind of band we want to be. No