Morning Noon Night

With Attack in Black no longer a going con­cern, the four mem­bers have been keep­ing busy with indi­vid­ual projects. Daniel Romano has put out two excel­lent coun­try records, Spencer Bur­ton released a record as Grey Kingston, Ian Romano has been engineering/producing as Tapes and Plates, and now Ian Kehoe has just dropped his first album as Marine Dreams. He played his first Toronto show at Parts & Labour, with a band con­sist­ing of Ross Miller (Hunters & Anglers) on bass and Ian Romano on drums.

I had a chance to chat with Ian before the gig, where I asked him about Marine Dreams’ hum­ble beginnings.

Marine Dreams is your first album, although you’ve made many albums over the years with other bands. Does the say­ing about hav­ing “your whole life to make your first record” feel true in this instance?

It doesn’t feel like I had my whole my whole life to make it, no, not in that way, but it feels like the first one that is, I shouldn’t say all mine, but under my own direc­tion. It’s just kind of a chunk of songs, of many oth­ers, that I have.

How did the band and album come to be?

I had an idea to write a song called “Marine Dreams,” which I did, and I just con­tin­ued writ­ing songs and even­tu­ally decided to record them with Ian Romano, with­out really know­ing what I wanted to do with them or any­thing. It was just some­thing I wanted to do, or needed to do. I still didn’t have a name for it or any­thing like that, but when I was on tour with Baby Eagle, Steve would intro­duce me as Marine Dreams. So that’s what I decided to call the record and the band, which was still non-existent and that point. Well, I shouldn’t say non-existent, but we’d never played live before. We’d just formed to make the record, which Ross Miller is on too. So that’s where the birth of this tan­gi­ble thing came from.

As a first-time front­man, how are you find­ing the extra atten­tion, espe­cially in terms of press and such?

That part I don’t really like very much. Well, it’s not that I don’t like it, but it’s noth­ing that I seek out. It’s just a sec­ondary con­di­tion that writ­ing songs and want­ing to sing them sort of entails or is expected of you. But I do love talk­ing to peo­ple, it’s not that or any­thing. I like to talk about this kind of thing, but I don’t really seek attention.

You’ve got a lot of peo­ple play­ing on this record. Why did you choose to have so many guests?

Just like, out of fun. I like to play music with other peo­ple and I like to be in bands, so I just wanted to be a band and not just some­thing that I did alone.

How are the songs you’re writ­ing now dif­fer­ent than the songs you were writ­ing in Attack in Black?

They’re not really, at least they don’t feel any dif­fer­ent for me, and I really don’t think they sound very dif­fer­ent either. I think that’s just from hav­ing lim­ited tal­ents, I mean, I can only do what I can do, so it always just comes out that way.

The sound you’ve devel­oped with this record seems like a log­i­cal exten­sion of the where you were head­ing with your songs on the last Attack in Black record…

Yeah, for sure.

…while the other guys have gone down their own paths, with Dan going full-on coun­try and Spencer more stripped down and melan­choly. Do you feel like you each brought a dif­fer­ent aspect to that band?

We all did, def­i­nitely… at a cer­tain point, all we did was write rock music, but even our rock songs dif­fered from one another. On the other side of the token, we did influ­ence each other pretty strongly. I think it’s def­i­nitely true that we’re pur­su­ing our most beloved… what­ever. I can really only speak to myself, and I just know what’s the most myself, or how to express myself as just myself.

You’ve done a lot of tour­ing with Baby Eagle and Shot­gun Jim­mie this year. What do you like about play­ing with other people?

I just love to play music for one thing. I guess that’s the main thing. As far as play­ing with Jim and Steve, it just comes down to believ­ing in their music and offer­ing to help present it in a good way. I’m just try­ing my best, I guess.

Can you tell me about how your label You’ve Changed Records started and what your roll is in its operation?

I have no real involve­ment in the label’s oper­a­tions. Dan does a lot of the artis­tic things for the label, and Steve is the main per­son that does the day-to-day stuff. The label started on an east-coast tour that Attack in Black was doing around Sap­pyFest with Baby Eagle.  We talked about start­ing it, but for a while, I was only ever in con­ver­sa­tion a part of the label, but it wasn’t some­thing that I found easy to find my place within. I’m just for­tu­nate enough to have a record out on the label and hope­fully can con­tribute to fur­ther­ing the label’s expo­sure and peo­ple know­ing about them. Adding diver­sity to the label is also some­thing that I hope I’m doing.

Attack in Black was con­stantly evolv­ing. Was that at all a reac­tion to the suc­cess of your first album, Mar­riage, or was it just natural?

For me, it was nat­ural. I can only really speak for myself, but I am very cer­tain. It was never some­thing we ever dis­cussed, and I remain to this day obliv­i­ous to any­thing other than mak­ing songs and try­ing to be a good band. It was just thought­less, we were just excited to be mak­ing music, so we would make lots of it really quick and it would wind up sound­ing dif­fer­ent. We’ve made tons of music that has never… I mean, there’s a whole record that’s done that has never come out, but aside from that just tons of other lit­tle record­ings that we were always doing. The things that came out were just kinda the things that came out, I guess.

After Mar­riage, you guys built a stu­dio and started record­ing every­thing your­selves. Was that a way to regain con­trol of the music?

In some ways, yes, because we had a strange expe­ri­ence record­ing out first record. Being very young, we were encour­aged to do it in a stu­dio, which we did, and the expe­ri­ence was fine. And then, of course, we redid the record, so we recorded it twice, which cost a ridicu­lous and unnec­es­sary amount of money, and it was just obvi­ous that we would never do that again. It just seemed too inef­fi­cient and waste­ful and not worth it in any sense, in our eyes any­ways. But on the other side of the coin, Dan and Ian before that were always inter­ested in record­ing their own music, and Attack in Black records — even before I was in the band — were self-recorded for the most part, and always mak­ing demos… Def­i­nitely the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing the record was an encour­age­ment to do it our­selves, but it was already hap­pen­ing anyway.

How impor­tant are the words in rela­tion to the music? Some of your lyrics, “Yet To See the Sun” for exam­ple, could be read poems.

Very impor­tant, but I have no real thought process or delib­er­a­tion, just kind of know when some­thing feels right to sing. But a lot of it is kind of thought­less and I just think of it as silly pop song­writ­ing lyrics. I guess I just get lucky some­times and they wind up sound­ing like poems, but that isn’t always the inten­tion. Some­times it is, but some­times not.

Finally, what are some of your goals with Marine Dreams?

Since I fin­ished mak­ing the record, I’ve just been think­ing about mak­ing another one. Just con­tin­u­ously writ­ing songs. I prob­a­bly could have made a cou­ple by now since record­ing the last one, but my only real goal when I made this first record was to make some­thing that afforded me the oppor­tu­nity to make another. And when I play live, just to play good. (the end)

Marine Dreams is avail­able on CD/LP through You’ve Changed Records.

This entry was posted in Concert, Interview and tagged Marine Dreams, Parts & Labour. Bookmark the permalink.