ENT Blog

Have you ever seen that t-shirt? It says something like “I was listening to your favourite band 5 years ago”. You all have a friend (maybe more than one) who seethes with (un)justified anger when a band that they ‘discovered when the first album came out’ becomes popular on their 3^rd album. Generally popularity of a band means change to the music that was perfectly fine in the first place. I don’t have that shirt, but I do get a little testy when a beloved treasure starts to change shape.
That’s because most of the time they turn to shit.

Needless to say when one of my favourite Toronto bands, The Diableros, released an album with 3/5 members of the line-up replaced I was nervous that they might have lost that ‘I don’t know what’ that initially drew me to them. Most of that anxiety wore off when I had the chance to see them play together live and completely vanished upon hearing their new EP, Old Story, Fresh Road.

Adopting their new members from the ruins of The Postage Stamps, the new-line up already had the chemistry of a complete band. When added to singer-songwriter Pete Carmichael’s dark lyrics and emotional delivery, it is clear that with this EP, the ‘new’ Diableros are still familiar but also at the beginning of something bigger and better. The good news, for me at least, is that despite losing some of the sloppiness of the first album (You Can’t Break the Strings On Our Olympic Hearts), Old Story, Fresh Road has more of the original charm than their sophomore release… just expanded on technically. Better drumming, better bass, better mixing. Better.
I had the chance to speak with Pete about the changes of the band, the new album and get some insight on being a working man in a hard working band.
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How’s it going? Pretty good, I’m tired. I’ve done a lot of driving for The International Festival of Authors (IFOA).

Are you an avid reader? Not really. But I think I might change that. I met all these interesting authors and now I’m interested in their books. It sort of sparked my interest in reading again.

How do you like the new line-up? It’s ideal really. I’ve always admired the members of the new line up as musicians in the past.

What did the line-up change do for your songwriting? It’s different now in that all 3 of them make their own music. I used to basically write the songs and bring them to practice. I would have an idea for the beat or something and I would express that to the others. Now, I can just bring a small piece of a song and present it and the guys are all able to add to it. It feels more like a group than the last line up.

What were the conversations like that led to your selection of vinyl and digital over CD format? It’s something that I had asked my friends over the past few years. I like the bigger artwork; they last forever if you take care of them. Personally, I won’t buy a CD unless there is no other option. And, this is going to sound really geeky, but we took the masters and put them on vinyl where they are able to be heard at 96kHz compared to a CD which is only able to support 44.1kHz. It feels good to know that we have the highest possible sound quality, even if not many people would be able to hear the difference.



After 2 full length albums, why did you release a 5-song EP? After the line-up change we wanted to have something to release and to tour. We were working on more songs, but these all just seemed to fit together. On the last album we put out all the songs I was working on, but this time we wanted to set parameters.

What sort of parameters? That’s a tough question to put into words, which is I guess what makes music such an interesting thing. The parameters are mostly what feels good to play, but isn’t too much like playing just ‘whatever’. We wanted to write music within a certain feeling.

At a recent show, before playing Push it to Monday, you gave a shout out to everyone who takes Fridays off. What does that mean to you? The song is actually about someone not being able to get to work one day because of car troubles. But really, the idea that people work for the weekends, everyone knows that cliché… that song, but it’s true. There must be more that can be done with a little more time to yourself, whether that is reading or working on music… there are so many things that we could all do with a little more time to ourselves.

What is like having the job of a professional musician AND having a day job? I wouldn’t exactly say we are professional musicians. Like, yah, we all have day jobs that we have to keep. But, you know, I’m always amazed when I meet musicians who I would have expected to live off their music, and they have a day job! It’s like, ‘no way’! We are still financing the albums out of our own pocket.

How has having a record label changed the game? Well, it changed the game in that having a record label frees up a lot of time for me. Not having to do the paperwork and the administration things like putting your album online really gives us the time to focus on the music. It’s different having someone else who is able to get the music out to people who will hear it. We still do some of the paperwork, like, we got a grant for the last album. We worked on the grant proposal ourselves.

What has your favourite touring experience been? Last fall we traveled out East to the Halifax Pop Explosion. The show itself wasn’t all that good. Afterward we ended up playing a show at this half-pizza joint, half bar called Maxwell’s. No one in the audience had ever heard of us, most of the time when we play the audience has some idea about the music. But in this bar, no one knew who we were but during the set this couple got up and started dancing in the crowd. It felt really good to get that kind of response from people who had never heard the music before.

After that we went out and had a really good seafood dinner.

The whole night was great.
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So, if you like good old rock and roll with rich tones, tragic lyrics, beautiful guitars and high-quality audio recording I recommend you go get yourself the totally rad, totally see-through, new EP. If you don’t have a record player, check out the album online at http://thediableros.com/

Interview by Meaghan Bent | Photos from myspace