The Reason’s Adam White is noticeably worried when informed that a severe snow warning is in effect for Calgary and Saskatchewan - including their next stop on the tour, Saskatoon. Sitting outside the Republik nightclub prior to opening for Hollerado, he took a moment to ponder why he and band mates James Nelan, Mike Caputo, Ronson Armstrong and Steve Kiely were driving across Canada in a van in the middle of winter. It’s a typically Canadian thing to do.

"You guys get snow here sometimes in May, so, I don’t know, you just take what you can get. I mean we try not to tour in January, February or March because it’s really bad. But you do what you can. You take what you can get. You’re offered a tour then it works for us! I’d rather do this than stay home and deal with being cold. It was nice in Vancouver, and Edmonton was pretty mild yesterday. We’ve been kind of getting lucky in terms of weather so, hopefully it’s not too bad tonight."

The Reason was opening for Hollerado while touring behind their current album, Fools.

"We looked at 3 different producers and ended up going with Steve Haigler, an older gentleman from North Carolina. He worked on Pixies stuff in the 80’s and 90’s. He did a record for this band called Brand New that we, growing up, really enjoyed the way it sounded compared to the other music at the time. It was really raw, live, and organic. The way recordings have gone, the way we did our last record, with like, so many samples and auto tune and lining up everything to a grid - it just sounds like computers are playing music through bands. We just wanted to record a real album that sounded like we sound live. We were tired of people saying, I liked your CD but I like you better live. We wanted them to be equal." he said.

So it was off to Ashville, North Carolina for a month to live and record Fools.

"I wouldn’t change anything about the experience. We got up every day, went and recorded until about 8 or 9 every night and then hung out, met a lot of great people, then came home. The album was done and waited a year, a year and a half for it to get released. It was delayed by boring music business stuff like we switched labels (to Warner Music) and got new management. If you’re going to do something with a major label they want to make sure you’re not going to get screwed over like 6 months after your album comes out because you didn’t have everything set up properly. For us it was just torture, just waiting and waiting. We ended up changing the album artwork 3 or 4 times during that process. For a while it felt like it might not even come out!"

"We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We can’t tour and it’s been 3 years since our last album. Nobody’s putting us on tours because we hadn’t done anything. A lot of this experience is that we learned from the mistakes that we made on our last album I think. You know, that was why we called our album Fools"

"We listened to a lot of people - we were green a bit. We’d done everything ourselves and then all of a sudden we have a label, we have a producer, we’re doing videos. We’d never done anything like that before so, we’re like, maybe we should listen to what the guy says ... he’s won awards and stuff. And then at the end of the day, it was like we weren’t happy. And, you don’t want to have regrets when you’re creating art, when it’s supposed to be an extension of yourself. So for this album, we were like, It might take a fucking long time, but we’re going to be happy with it at the end of the day and, we’re going to take suggestions and criticisms from people, but we’re not going to work with anyone who doesn’t get what we are. We’re not going to listen to someone because some other band did. We’re just going to do what we do, and record it and be honest and true to ourselves. It was a fun time, and I love the songs, I can still listen to the album and it’s been almost two years since it’s been recorded. I still pop it in once or twice a week. There’s nothing I’d change about it and I’ve never been able to say that before."

The band is based in Hamilton. The Niagara region is a hotbed for sprouting artists, to the point where there is now a Hamilton Music Awards.

"They haven’t been around that long but have gotten bigger and better every year. They nominate people from Hamilton too, that might live in Toronto but they’re originally from Hamilton, and those people come down to the awards and it’s a pretty big deal. I think a lot of the music has to do with the fact that there’s been a lot of crap lately. You know, people are probably in that frame of mind where’s they’re just searching for real honest music now a days. If you look at bands like the Arkells, people coming out of Hamilton just seem like there’s no real gimmicks just people playing songs that they believe in. Music used to always be about that kind of stuff. It’s good to be associated with bands like that."

"This little town and everyone is strong as a community, and everyone appreciates stuff there. I’m originally from Windsor, Ontario and it was hard going to Windsor because the old band I was in, we used to come up, do a bunch of shows, like do a weekend’s worth of shows and drive back to Windsor. There wasn’t much going on in Windsor, we were like, if we move to Hamilton ... there was already one guy in the band who was from there, he’d commute but we realized if we moved we could play so much more often and in so many different cities. When we get home from this tour we are doing two weeks with the Arkells and over the 8 or 9 days the drive is 2 to 2.5 hours. Western Canada is Vancouver to Edmonton, Saskatoon to Winnipeg - big stretches where there’s nothing much close by. It’s good, and every town has its own community of bands and venues. You make friends and it’s not too far, you know. Bands are really incestuous too, like you can be in a band from Toronto but live in Kitchener; you can be in a band from Hamilton but live in London... There are people I know who do it because it’s just an hour and a half drive. If it’s what you want to do, you sacrifice."

Being in Ontario has lead to opportunities to play festivals like Edgefest and Virgin Festival. This lead to an interesting evening with V-Fest headliner Bjork.

 

"She puts on an awesome show. It was very, very epic. At the end of the night we didn’t know about ferry calls so we missed all of our ferry opportunities off the island. We got to ride a ferry, the last one - the Bjork ferry - we got to ride with her and the whole crew. It was like this big dance party. They had 25 people on the stage at a time plus her crew and like, the five of us partied. ... Getting to see bands is really inspiring."

       The Reason takes advantage of the internet through tools like MySpace to keep fans in touch.

"Oh, you have to be on top of so much stuff. ...Fans want to be close and feel like they’re your friend. It’s cool when I’m on Facebook and I get an update from Bruce Springsteen saying what he’s doing that day. Labels need to realize that way less people are buying music nowadays. You could record an awesome album and, if you have the right tools you could do everything yourself and become the most famous band in the world. People don’t need labels anymore. I think they fought it for so long that now it’s at a point where instead of fighting it, for 7 or 8 years they should have adapted. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years, especially in the big scheme of things. We’re super happy with Warner, they’re doing great stuff - we’ve never been on the radio before. When we played Toronto they sent people out, and I think they have been talking to those guys, doing new things, really getting into the internet stuff which is what you need to do. I didn’t even know what Twitter was until 6 months ago, I figured it out but it was like learning a new language. If you don’t figure that out then you’re not doing it and then if you don’t have a Twitter page then... We don’t want to be ancient."

By this point you can tell that the winter storm is brewing, and we are both freezing. So as a final question to Asam, I asked about his experiences being a "Canadian" band.

"...The government enforces that you have to play 35% Canadian content on the radio. That’s great otherwise we just get swallowed up by things by the American Music industry which has a lot more money, you know? If we want to create videos you can apply for money. If the grant committee thinks that’s a great idea for a video then they’ll give you money to go do your video. When we tour, we realize that we’re an opening band. You don’t want to know what we’re getting paid for this tour. We accept it, I know how a show’s run, I know what an opening band is getting paid - we want to be on this show because it’s good. We don’t make that much money, we’re not even making enough tonight to get us to Saskatoon but, if you’re on top of your stuff and you save all your receipts, and you do maybe 2 or 3 days of work to put in a grant application, you might get a grant to cover all of your losses for the tour. We try and stay on people’s floors, save money here and there, don’t go out for expensive meals and stuff... at the end of the day it’s great..."

"The only thing I don’t like is the long drives and expensive liquor prices. It gets way expensive! Ontario is bad, but BC is like...really?"