Canadian Musician - May/June 2018 | Page 36

Matt ’ s joining of the band was actually a reunion of sorts . Six years Brad ’ s junior , he was often hanging around during the early days of Three Days Grace . “ Yeah , like Barry [ Stock , lead guitarist ] gave me a guitar when I needed it and Neil recorded my first riff on a four-track cassette player ,” he says .
“ I never saw one dime for that recording !” Sanderson responds .
“ I don ’ t think it ever made it off that cassette player . And Brad has always helped me out with my career ,” Matt adds .
“ What a lot of people don ’ t know is that when we were making our first Three Days Grace album in 2001 or 2002 , it was all brand new for us and Matt was rocking , too . He actually has some co-writing on that album . You were pretty young then ,” Sanderson says , turning back to the singer . “ Yeah , 19 ,” he confirms . “ Two songs actually ,” Sanderson continues . “‘ Scared ’ and ‘ Let You Down ,’ Matt is listed as a co-writer on there . A lot of people don ’ t know that but are rediscovering it now that he ’ s joined the band .”
Outsider was recorded primarily at Jukasa Studios on the Six Nations reserve outside of Hamilton , ON , but really , it began at Brad Walst ’ s house in the country during the “ Canadian guy stuff ” hang-out phase . Sanderson has what he calls a “ mobile studio in a bag ” that the band uses to capture ideas while they ’ re writing . It ’ s a simple set up , consisting of a Shure SM7B vocal mic into a Neve 1073 preamp and then into an Empirical Labs EL8X distressor and Logic X on a MacBook Pro .
“ We ’ d do a lot of demos and stuff and actually a lot of the stuff that we put down on keyboards or guitars and even , probably , a couple lead vocal moments on the microphone end up on the record ,” Sanderson says .
Matt , meanwhile , is especially fond of the VoiceTones CI HardTune and correction pedal from TC-Helicon while getting down ideas . “ You just punch in the key that we ’ re in and you can almost just hum in the thing and it ’ ll pitch you on key . So it ’ s really cool to just hum some melodies in and it ’ ll sort of just pitch you there ,” he explains , referring to the device as “ the melody maker .” Sanderson adds on , “ You can just experiment and come up with things that the mind would never otherwise [ think of ] and start with that little hook and write around that . We experiment in a million different ways and that ’ s the fun of creating music .”
The first song written for Outsider ended up being its lead single , “ The Mountain ,” though the many iterations it went through was indicative of the whole writing process . It ’ s a hard-charging , riff-heavy tune with a melodic hook that sticks in your head based around the refrain , “ Every day I ’ m just surviving , keep climbing the mountain / even when I feel like dying , keep climbing the mountain .”
“ We joked about it by the end because every day we ’ d keep rewriting and rewriting ‘ The Mountain ,’” recalls Matt . “ We changed the chorus and we changed the verse to pre-chorus , I think , four or five times and we changed the lyrics and changed the melody .”
“ One of the things I like is nobody is precious with a specific idea because we all are collaborative and trust each other , as far as songwriters ,” adds Sanderson . “ We ’ ve gotten to the point where we know that just because I don ’ t like your idea today doesn ’ t mean I don ’ t like you , right ? There ’ s a big difference . It ’ s funny but a lot of people get that wrong and take offence and part of collaborative songwriting and not strangling each other is checking egos at the door . So like Matt said , we ’ re not precious enough to ever not consider something rewritable if we think it could be better or more concise . We know the idea we ’ re trying to say , but are we really saying it in a way that people are going to understand what the fuck we ’ re talking about here ?”
Matt picks up the thought : “ We don ’ t settle for the first thing . We try to elaborate on that first idea and sometimes we do , and then sometimes we revert back to the original idea .”
Between the writing of “ The Mountain ” in summer 2016 and when they entered the studio to record Outsider in August 2017 , the band says they never thought of the batch of songs they had written as a concept album , but concede that there is definitely a consistent theme throughout the 12 tracks . And since that theme is , generally , “ being an outsider ,” they didn ’ t exactly try to hide it . It ’ s there in the album title , obviously , and in the first words you hear Matt sing on opening track “ Right Left Wrong ”: “ Sometimes I just want to run away , run away / I only want to disappear , far from here , away from everyone / Before I come undone , the time has come .”
“ I ’ ve always felt like I was an outsider ,” says Matt . “ I never tried to fit in to what was cool . I always listened to different music than the kids in school and I dressed different and I like being an outsider . I don ’ t need to fit in .” Again , Brad picks up his brother ’ s thought : “ I feel like we ’ ve made a path of our own and I think we continue to do that . I think we just keep going forward and try to be anything . We just do what we want , you know ?”
The band eagerly credits engineer Mike Plotnikoff with the thick , warm sonic tone that anchors the album . A B . C . native who began his career at the famous Little Mountain Sound studio in Vancouver , he has worked
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