Born Ruffians of Toronto, medicine Canada are an enthusiastic bunch, cialis producing exuberant indie-pop jams since 2004. Now, Born Ruffians are about to drop their new album, Birthmarks (trust us, it’s a doozie), and head out on a sweeping tour of the US of A for the first time in three years. We chatted awhile last week with explosively energetic front man Luke Lalonde about travel, music, and Ray Charles. Read on for details, and go see Born Ruffians bring the house down on April 15th at the Great Scott in Allston!
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Sharon Weissburg: You’re about to kick off your tour of the United States! How does it feel to be coming stateside again?
LL: Good! We’re excited to come back and play. It’s been a few years since we’ve been down there. We’re doing a lot of new cities as well, I don’t think we’ve ever played in Hoboken. We’ve played in Allston before I think once, but there’s lots of new places that we’re doing shows.
Yeah! It’s super exciting, Born Ruffians fans have been itching for you to come down forever.
LL: Cool!
Let’s talk a little bit about Birthmarks. It’s so good! What did you want to do differently with Birthmarks, and how did you want to stay true to your roots?
LL: Mostly it was the way we approached recording and production that we wanted to do differently on this record. I think it has a lot to do with making the record that we always wanted to make but weren’t really capable or ready to make before. The first two records we kind of needed a producer, so we worked with Rusty, and I think we made some really great stuff. And I never begrudge Rusty for anything, he’s great! But this record, I think I was ready to try producing on my own and knowing where I wanted to go with it. We worked with a producer Roger Lemmon, but it was much more collaborative between me and him, and I felt like I also produced a lot of the songs. So it’s basically just a process of spending a lot more time in the studio. You know, instead of doing a record in a week, we did a record in ten months. So that was the biggest difference. But as far as writing the songs, I think that all we can do is write the way that we write. I write a bunch of songs, I take them to the band, we work on them, we jam a bit and work on new ideas together, and that’s usually basically how we do it, and that’s how we did it this time. The changes come naturally. Personality changes, what we want to do differently, those are all natural changes that you can’t really try to predict or pin them down.
How do you feel like you’ve changed?
LL: I don’t know. I think I’ve changed the way most people do. I think we’ve all changed. Between the ages of 20 and 26, there’s a lot of things that happen in that time. Maturity. Still not at any point, well, at least me—I still don’t think I’ve reached any kind of end point. I still feel like there’s a lot ahead of me.
Were you coming from any kind of particular emotional place when you were writing the songs on Birthmarks?
LL: Yeah. A bit of isolation, I guess, but in a good way. I don’t think I was very happy with the way the second record was received or even with the way it came out. I was kind of upset with that record.
Really? I love that record!
LL: Cool! Yeah, I think a lot of people liked it. I think a lot of people didn’t like it as well. Not just reviews, I mean, maybe not obviously, but to me the reviews weren’t very good for that record. But also just reading fan comments and being aware of the fact that fans were just not liking the record as much as the first one. I didn’t really either, I mean, I liked the songs but I just felt like as soon as we were done I just wanted to go and re-do it. And I said that, I said “I wanna re-do it.” We were just coming from a place that we really just wanted to do it again, like, ‘Let’s do another record, but let’s do it right.’ And I wasn’t bitter or anything, I think we were all pretty happy to get back to writing. We were all in a good place emotionally. And I spent like a year on my own, just writing and then we got back together and jammed for another year or so until we actually started recording, so it was like two years of writing and recording.
You had a great solo record. How do you feel about your solo career?
LL: I don’t know. For me, I just want to put out as much music as I can. I never intended to take away anything from the band or to imply that I was stepping aside. I mean, the only reason I put it out under my own name was just because I couldn’t think of a good band name. I didn’t tour it or anything, I didn’t try to make much of a career out of that record. I knew the timing wasn’t quite right to tour it. The Ruffians record, the work that we had to put into that record right around that time just made it impossible, really, to do anything other than just release it. I put it out, I’m proud of it, I still like it. It’s coming out in different parts of the world through the summer, I think, so that’s exciting. Right now I’m focused on the band stuff. But yeah, that came out of that time. I was writing a lot of songs and a lot of them didn’t feel like they would fit with the band, so it started to go towards another project which ended up being that record.
Are there any songs on Birthmarks that you’re really jazzed out of your mind about?
LL: Yeah, I still like listening to the whole thing! I guess I have my favorites. I like… it’s hard to say, they change all the time. I like “Too Soaked to Break” a lot, which is like, maybe the third to last song on the record. I like that first song a lot, “Needle.” I like a lot of them, though, it’s hard to say. I’m excited to play as many of them on the tour as we can. I’m excited to see which ones our fans kind of latch onto, and which ones people are yelling for further down the line. That’s not gonna happen for a bit, I know it takes time. Even on Say It, we have people yelling for songs off that record that when we put it out, we never thought… You just don’t expect anyone to listen or catch on or care. You just kind of think, ‘maybe they’ll only care about the last thing we did.’
What songs on Say It are people yelling out?
LL: “What to Say” and “Retard Canard.” Stuff like that.
Let’s go deeper. What’s your earliest music memory? Do you remember when you started to want to make music?
LL: Yeah, I think one of my first memories in general is maybe the root of everything that I do now. I was like four or five years old, I don’t know how old you are in kindergarten…I don’t really have very many memories before then. Most of my memories start around then, and even then they’re vague, but one of my first memories was when I was four or five and my parents had entered into some kind of lip-synching competition. My mom and dad and Mitch’s mom and dad—Mitch plays bass in Born Ruffians, like, he’s my cousin and we grew up together, but that’s not really part of the story—but it was his mom and dad and my mom and dad, and they were each blind men. So it was like a medley of, like, one was Roy Orbison, one was Ray Charles, one was Stevie Wonder, and one was Jose Feliciano, and they did a song. So they taught it to us, that we could do it, me and Mitch and my older sister Tiff. Tiff did Stevie Wonder, I did Ray Charles, and Mitch did Roy Orbison and we did it in front of our school. But one of my first memories, though, is rehearsing it, and I remember very vividly my dad was Ray Charles, and he was showing me how to do a Ray Charles impression. And he just kind of threw his head back and he smiled, with his posture, and the way he moved his hands and stuff, and the way he kind of rolled around on the piano bench, and then I just remember sitting down and doing it and copying him. It was probably only my mom and dad and probably my Aunt Tina and Uncle Mike who were in the room, but they just… I just remember the reaction, the feeling of them laughing and applauding and being like, “wow, that was amazing!” I just felt like, ‘man, I nailed it! I can do this!’ and then we did it in front of the school and all that stuff. But just that feeling of pleasing people immediately, through performance, that’s kind of where a lot of this comes from. And maybe that little seminal moment is why I never had any issues with stage fright. I could always get up on stage when I was a kid and sing or do a play or whatever, and why I liked it. I guess that would be it.
What an amazing story. You’ve known Mitch for that long?
LL: Yeah, I know Mitch since we were born. Literally, well, since he was born. He was born a few months after me. We were born in the same year.
How’d you meet the rest of the guys? How did Born Ruffians happen?
LL: Well, Steve was from the same town as us, we went to the same high school. We met him in Grade 9. I’d see him at dances and stuff in Grade 8, but you know, high school. He bought a drum kit for some reason, I don’t remember why, and we started playing together. Sort of jamming with another friend. And then it just progressed from there, playing covers, then playing our own songs.
What were your names before Born Ruffians?
LL: We have a few names. We changed our name to Born Ruffians when we moved to Toronto after high school. We went through a bunch of names while we were in high school making little EPs and little records. Making songs, playing the YMCA and stuff like that.
Do you have a favorite old name?
LL: Well, Mornington Drive. It’s hard to find stuff, but there are fans who try to find it. Mornington Drive… that was the name of my dad’s band when he was in a band in the 70’s. One of them, at least.
Born Ruffians is such big happy music, how do you psych up before a performance?
LL: Sometimes I jump around. Sometimes I try to run up and down stairs or something. Literally do anything I can do to get my heart rate up. If I’m feeling a bit tired or I’m feeling a bit out of it, I really try and get my heart rate up and get back into the energy. Mostly I just spend time alone, walking around and pacing and being nervous and warming up my voice. Doing runs and making noises. Just trying not to let nerves eat me alive. Walking around, getting ready.
Once you’re on stage, though, how do you feel?
LL: Depends on the night, I guess. Some nights I feel really good and some nights I feel like….some nights are great, some nights are not so great. They all have ebbs and flows within them. Certain songs will feel a bit down, but then it’ll come back up. It has a lot to do with the crowd, I guess, but it also has a lot to do with what you give the crowd. Sometimes you come out and the energy just feels right, it just feels really good and you feel good vibes from the audience and you just start the show off right, right away. Other nights it’s just weird. You just had something bizarre in the crowd with the opening band, and then you get out there and it doesn’t change, and you’re just like, “euugh, it’s gonna be one of those shows.” No one ever seems to notice. Afterwards it’s like “I don’t know how I did at that show,” people are always like “I had no idea,” or they say “yeah, looked good, sounded good to me.” It really depends on the night.
Do you have any battle stories from the stage? Anything crazy ever happen?
LL: It mostly revolves around people jumping onstage and doing stupid stuff. Sometimes it’s okay, sometimes people jump onstage and it’s fun, and it doesn’t happen so much anymore. One time a girl grabbed the microphone from me while I was singing and sang into it and that made me mad, and another time a girl tried to play my guitar while I was playing. It only bothers me when it’s someone onstage who doesn’t really give a shit, when they don’t seem to realize that you’re up there doing your job, and you’re doing something you worked really hard on, and they’re compromising that by trying to show off to their friends and trying to make the show about themselves. They don’t have any respect for what you’re doing. When they do something like that, I can’t imagine doing that to a band that I like, basically. I’m like, ‘man, I can’t imagine getting onstage and grabbing Albert Hammond Jr.’s guitar while he’s playing! I would deserve to get my ass kicked for doing that!’ That’s when it becomes like, ‘man, this is a shitty fan,’ or ‘are you even a fan?’ Sometimes, though, when people get up onstage it’s really fun! It’s like, oh, this is cool, this is what it’s intended to be. People are enjoying the music and they just want to be a part of it, and I get that.
You’re touring all around. Have you seen anything really beautiful or crazy on the road? Favorite pit stop?
LL: I always really like driving through the Southwest and through the desert. Arizona, Utah. And then, continuing on through the west coast, driving up the west coast highway, the one, through the redwoods and stuff. The country changes so fast. And also in Canada, too, as soon as you get to Alberta and BC, it’s like, wow, this is some beautiful country. Just the changes in landscape, because that’s really the only perspective you can get when you’re on tour, is viewing everything through the car window. It’s hard to see stuff. Every once in a while you get a day off, and you mostly just spend those days resting because you’re so tired, you just want to sleep and sit in the hotel and watch TV. The odd time when you get a day off and you want to do something, though, it’s very rare. So you mostly experience stuff through the car. Yeah, I have my favorite spots, I really do. Looking out the window and stopping where we can.
What do you like to listen to when you’re on the road and seeing all this beautiful country?
LL: Lately, if I’m gonna listen to music, I like Penguin Café Orchestra. It’s just instrumental stuff from the 70s and 80s mostly. Classical type music, but it’s more contemporary. I forget the guy’s name who started it, but I think he’s passed away. Basically, he summarized it like, ‘I want to make music that inspires the average man.’ That was all he wanted to do.
What about in Toronto? What kind of music scene did you discover in Toronto when you moved there and started making music?
LL: Well, I think one thing we were really excited about was being able to go see shows. Toronto is a big city, everybody tours through Toronto, I think it’s the fourth largest city in North America. So we get a lot of bands that we love, and we didn’t have to drive to the city to see them anymore, and we were old enough to go to the bars and watch them. I remember seeing Akron Family, and that was a pretty big influence on us. Going to see Animal Collective and the Constantines, who are actually from Toronto. I remember the Constantines being really big for us at the time, just their live performance and everything about them. As far as the scene it’s hard to say, it’s a really big city with a lot going on, it’s kind of all happening at once. Anything you want to listen to, it’s here. It’s sort of like New York. Not as crazy as New York, there aren’t as many bands. But there’s a lot of different things happening. Look at all the bands coming out of Toronto, I mean, Crystal Castles versus Broken Social Scene versus Diana… It’s hard to draw one thing. We wanted to kind of do our own thing. We did make friends, I think most of my friends are in bands. Everyone is one degree away from each other in Toronto. In the six or seven years I’ve been here, almost every band in the city in some way. Or at least know somebody one degree away from someone. But mostly when we moved to the city it was about that—it was just being in a city where we could see anything and do anything. We would go to a lot of shows. It was great.
Alright, some fun stuff now. I have a bunch of words here. I’d like you to respond with the first word that comes to your head…Nighttime!
LL: All the time.
Mosquito!
LL: Bite.
Breakfast!
LL: Mmm.
Sexy!
LL: Back.
Birthmark!
LL: Back.
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