The Journeyman

1   |   2   |   3   |   Home

In January 2005, Sam Roberts travelled back to Africa again to visit family and found himself in the Kalahari Desert. The trip was, as he puts it, “a retreat – and a spark.” One afternoon, Roberts met a Bushman in the Kalahari. He was seeking “something so far outside of my daily life that it would give me the creative rush I needed.” Thoughts of stardom were far away. Under a thundercloud sky, he bought a set of bow and arrows from the Bushman, spent the day firing them into trees. He felt the spirit move. The songs came “in a rush.” And he was ready – to head to the other side of the world again.

We are now in Roberts’ apartment, tastefully decorated (by Jen), labyrinth-large and on the weirdest street in Montreal – a truncated block of upper-boho buildings halfway up a hill, crouching under the shadow of a rumbling highway overpass. Roberts cracks the first two beers of a sixpack, offers one and explains how he recorded his new album, Chemical City, on the far eastern coast of Australia. “From my perspective, the work was in escaping, hiding, away from prying eyes. And then digging in our heels when the record was done.”

So this was an album made on the lam. “Nobody really wants you to be doing that. Everybody wants you to be in an expensive recording studio making a slick-sounding record.” Byron Bay is a former hippie-surfer refuge. He and the band – Dave Nugent, James Hall, Eric Fares and Josh Trager – and their significant others found an old Presbyterian church (naturally, called the Old Church) and set up camp. They ate at a communal table and hit the waves in the morning before the boys picked up their tools at 11 a.m.

Roberts cracks another two beers and cues up the possible first single. “The Gate” is a power chorder somewhere between the Beatles and late-period U2. Power pop with balls, it has the momentous full-bodied weight of a rock ’n’ roll statement. The songs roll with an indie McCartney feel. There is melody and scope, a lovely acoustic ballad Oasis wish they’d written and a little pop daring. In “Oh Maria,” Roberts was “rewriting ‘Ave Maria’ with a bad-ass chick in the Holy Mother’s place.” The album is “kind of about something,” Roberts says, stickhandling around the dread “concept album” term. If anything, it is thematic: an organic past-meets-future fusion. It sounds like a musical quest.

I’m reminded of another story Roberts told about the Kalahari, about an annual Bushman ritual. “Every year, their best hunter, their fastest, runs down an animal – an antelope or a gemsbok that runs much faster than he does.”

The Bushman tracks the creature over the volcanic red sand. “Over a few days – always the hottest of the year, 50 degrees – he tires it out, tires it out. Until it gets to a point where the animal is completely épuisé, you know? Staring at him, probably about 10 feet away, and it’s just saying, ‘Okay, you caught me.’ And he literally walks up to this animal – walks – and kills it with a spear.”

Roberts’ blue eyes are wide, intent. And the metaphor could go either way, really. Is it the lone artist stalking his destiny in the wilderness? Or is it fame stalking him? Right now, Sam Roberts has the home-field advantage. 

Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net

1   |   2   |   3   |   Home