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