Born Gold is in the house — literally.
The songwriting project of noise-pop experimentalist Cecil Frena, the Edmonton outfit Born Gold, is just about to release a new album, I Am An Exit, and is on a tour of North America that includes high-profile stops at Pop Montreal and CMJ.
But when Born Gold isn't playing big fests, the project's performing in a very different type of venue: people’s homes.
They've played everywhere from Florida mansions to Toronto lofts to horror movie-worthy suburban basements, and along the way have encountered police, expensive chandeliers and legions of happy fans.
So CBC Music caught up with Frena to find out how he landed the gigs, what it’s been like so far and, of course, why homes? First, here's an exclusive new Born Gold track, "Gasoline Bath."
You just played a gig in Toronto. Where?
We played in a guy’s loft. It was in an apartment complex, which is usually not the best idea for shows, but it ended up being really great.
How did you get away with that?
He just has really cool neighbours. On this tour we’ve tried pretty aggressively to petition for houses over apartments, but obviously in some cities like Toronto the urban density is a lot higher, so it gets challenging. We haven’t had a lot of luck with apartment shows, but this one went off without a hitch.
Of course the big question is, “Why houses?”
The biggest reason is because I wanted to — and I know that sounds kind of ridiculous, but they’re my favourite shows for a number of reasons. There’s no audience-performer divide, there’s no stage, there’s no weird social positioning that goes along with being in a club. The shows are just consistently good and fun. So there’s just a pleasure principle at work in a lot of ways. It’s not necessarily an ideological crusade — although I think there are still some interesting lessons to be learned when you take a show out of the normal institutional context. Houses just have a transparency and a comfort. People are going to be hanging out and socializing and some of the more awkward aspects of social conditioning that often accompany musical performance just aren’t present.
You say that, many years ago, there was a house that changed your life — and you even have video of it.
Yeah, that’s a house in Edmonton. I grew up as a punk kid and played in hardcore bands for years and years, and some of the guys in the hardcore scene had this house. We would have big indie-rock shows in the basement, and they were just completely amazing. I’ve seen so many punk bands that I love, and indie-rock bands that I love, and just had so many totally transfigurative, cathartic experiences with people that I care about in that basement. And that video captured that pretty well. The idea of this tour was to hopefully bring that sentiment and experience to other people.
How did you go about finding the houses?
We’ve played probably 400 shows across North America over the past few years, so I’ve made friends in a lot of places, and I just reached out to the network of friends and tried to find houses. And in many cases that worked out well, and in other cases, it was a real struggle. It’s interesting because it seems that in bigger cities where there are more houses it’s actually harder to get a house, and there were six or seven cities where we were really coming up dry. So I just went public and made a post on my Tumblr and cold-called for houses in those places. And that more or less worked. So that was an interesting kind of experiment in crowd-sourcing.
What are some of the spaces you’ve played?
We’ve played everything from the terrifying musty dungeon basement-type situations where everyone emerges from the cave covered in a thin layer of red dust to a loft on Bloor [in Toronto] with the window facing the street. We’ve played some really unconventional living spaces too. In San Francisco we played this place called The Convent, which is literally a former convent that was converted into a living space for artists, and we played in the sanctuary. That was really fun. We also played in Paramour’s former mansion in Nashville, too. That was probably the biggest house we’ve played, with very high vaulted ceilings. That was really cool.
How does playing in houses change the way you perform?
It’s very different. I sent stage plots to all the houses where we’re performing, and we have a very elaborate setup that’s 10 feet by 12 feet, so it takes up a lot of space. We have a percussionist and a synth-sampler guy and then myself, so in a club context there’s usually plenty of space to negotiate what we do, but we’ve definitely been operating in some environments that are pretty narrowly confined. So from night to night, it’s kind of an adventure trying to negotiate the spaces that we’re presented with. But it’s been a lot of fun.
Any particular shows that stand out?
The thing about doing a tour like this is it kind of punches over its weight. Doing shows this way just ensured that 95 per cent of them are really, really fun. I mean, you can also get into some very unusual circumstances. So it’s variable. But we had an amazing show in Tallahassee, because the noise ordinance was temporarily suspended. That’s specifically one of the things I say when I’m helping people organize the show: “Look into the noise ordinance in your city, figure out when it is, and warn all of your neighbours the show will be over by time X.” But in Tallahassee, we got there and asked when we needed to start and they’re like, “Whenever. There’s no noise ordinance so we can go as late as we want.” So I think there were 150 people in this tiny house in Florida, and the noise continued well past 3 a.m.
Are there any unusual hazards that come with playing houses?
One of the things I had to be careful for is chandeliers, because I tend to be a pretty violent performer. And when I get flailing, I’m not super cognizant of what’s around me. Oftentimes we’ve been playing in people’s beautiful living rooms with these really stunning chandeliers, so I’ve had a few extremely close calls. Fortunately we haven’t broken anything. I’d like to think we’re doing more net benefit to people than harm.
Have you been shut down a lot?
Well, you learn a lot of things quickly — one of which is don’t throw shows in apartments. Doesn’t work. We played in a really cool artists’ living complex in Austin. It’s all painted crazy colours and everyone living there rehearses with their band, and the fellow who put on the show, who is a good friend, warned all of his neighbours; but the reality is, he has 16 neighbours. So that show ended somewhat unceremoniously. In Tampa we had the police roll up and shut it down, which was unfortunate. But I find that the police are usually extremely reasonable and it’s really just about being compliant and making sure they know nothing bad is going on. And sometimes there have been shows where the police have come and they’ve been like, “Oh, this is awesome. Yeah, go ahead and finish” — and then they stick around and dance. So it’s really variable.
I hear you just had quite the experience with an angry neighbour in Ottawa. What did you learn there?
Backyard shows are almost without exception a bad idea. Sub-bass, when there are no house frames to absorb it, tends to travel bizarrely far. But our friend had notified all of his neighbors and we were starting the show very early, at 8:45, so we decided to take a risk. No police got involved, because our set is only 35 minutes and was before the noise ordinance, but one particularly unenthusiastic neighbor walked through the crowd and manually unplugged the PA!
When we were given the OK to turn back on — he was not an authority, just a random passerby who was technically trespassing — he came back screaming with a set of boxcutters, presumably to cut the PA cords. The showgoers and organizers collectively prevented him from gaining access, and we were able to finish our set. Still, this ended up being one of the more unnerving and weird situations we encountered. Thanks to all the cool people at the show in Ottawa, it turned out OK. Probably not going to play anymore backyards though.
I see that people are giving names to their “venues,” like Zach’s Boudoir and the Pavlovic Palace.
Yeah, when I was booking this tour I started seeing it as its own little art project, because people are generously letting us into their living spaces and allowing us to share our art with them in that personal intimate context. So as people came up with cool names, I was like, “I should just get everyone to like make a cool name for their place.” So now when I look at the tour itinerary I think of it as a little piece of crowdsourced art.
Is it strange to not know what you’re walking into?
Totally. I think you have to adopt this very Zen disposition — which is just part of being good at touring in the first place, but especially in this context, where a lot of the shows are literally being thrown by people who have never thrown a show before. There’s a lot of variance. But because we’ve made such an aggressive effort to let people know what they’re in for, it’s been really, really great.
And it must be a leap of faith for you, too.
Sometimes when both people dive and they land in the water, it ends up being beautiful. And that’s more or less what we’re doing every day. It’s just another blind dive into the void.
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