There's this joke from the early 2000s: in Canada, you either play hockey or you join Broken Social Scene. If you don't get it, let me explain it to you (that'll definitely make the joke funny): Broken Social Scene was a big band. And I don't mean that in the sense that they were indie rock's most influential outfit and Toronto's musical touchstone a decade before Drake (though both things are true). The band was simply made up of a lot of people—27 different people over two decades—many of whom would break off to form some of the late aughts sharpest acts: Feist, Metric, Stars, just to name a few.
As those acts have grown from side projects to main projects, the makeup of Broken Social Scene has changed. But that just comes with the territory for this band. The configuration changes from album to album, from tour to tour, and even individual shows have more personnel changes than an NFL offense. Band members switch instruments often. The show this evening will sometimes feature as many as four horns, other times five guitars. At one point, a dozen people are on stage, all to produce the lush and layered rock sound of Broken Social Scene.
During the show at Brooklyn Steel, Kevin Drew declares, “We’re not a rock band. We’re a family!” So who better to tell us how to travel than a band that has, for the better part of two decades, toured the world as a big, complicated family? GQ sat down with band members Kevin Drew, Ariel Engle, and Brendan Canning.
GQ: As Broken Social Scene, coming up on two decades of touring, is it getting easier or harder?
Kevin Drew: It doesn’t get any easier. Since there’s so many, now people are even set in their ways. It all depends on the check in at the airport. Sometimes it can happen in 20 minutes and sometimes it can take 2 hours. Sometimes you’re rushing to the gate. Sometimes you have time to sit and enjoy a meal.
Ariel Engle: You think it sets the tone for the tour?
KD: It kinda does. We’ve lost more passports in this band than I’d care to mention.
Is there anything you never go on tour without?
Brendan Canning: Some face moisturizer. A budget for buying records.
KD: Brendan, since we started, has basically toured the world buying records and 45s.
How much do you usually bring back on a tour of this length?
BC: Record wise? A stack maybe… well I got a stack like that of seven inches. So maybe sixty 7”s, and eighteen to twenty albums.
That’s a lot.
BC: Oh, I brought a bike on the road for the first time.
How’s that going?
BC: It’s great. I put twenty miles on it in Chicago riding to this one record store, Dusty Groove. It’s in the same neighborhood as we made Forgiveness Rock Record, which is Wicker Park. The record-buying habit gives me a destination where I need to use my bike.
Exercise is important?
[Note: It’s worth pointing out that throughout this entire interview, Kevin Drew is doing curls with barbells he has brought on tour.]
KD: This time around we’ve been exercising more. We’ve been more, I guess…
BC: Our tour manager is encouraging it. Once you get a couple people who wanna exercise, then you get a few more…
AE: I watch them.
That’s like me with exercise. I just want to watch.
BC: She’s got her own intensive exercise regime having a kid.
AE: We’ve got our daughter.
[Another note: Ariel Engle and bandmate Andrew Whiteman have a daughter together.]
KD: A kid on board!
AE: That’s my essential packing list: bring my child.
How is that?
KD: I find it incredible, to be honest. She’s whip smart. She’s adorable. She’s an original. She’s three. You can’t be in a bad mood around the kid. You just can’t. You wake up. You come out and she’s talking about goblins coming after your feet.
Logistically, like when you guys get dinner, how do you plan a dinner for this many people?
AE: We don’t all eat together.
KD: We haven’t at all this tour. We did that in the past and it was hilarious and fun and crazy, but it becomes more work. It becomes like a show in itself. It’s such a huge crew. We’ve been doing six shows in a row with one day off in between, so when that day off appears everyone just scatters and does their own thing. So we haven’t really had any celebratory dinners on this tour.
So many people have their own side projects and maybe they're even main projects now. How have you navigated that in the past? Are you ever like, “I wish you were available for Broken Social Scene” or is it like, “You gotta do your own thing?”
BC: It’s just one of the inevitabilities of this band. You try not to stress about it too much.
KD: We never were that typical band. We did it at our own speed. We did it on our own time. We had great years coming out of the gates. If you’re not feeling it, you can’t force it. You can’t do it. It goes against the whole reason why we’re doing it in the first place. That’s why we stopped and took time off was to just say, “Hey here’s what life looks like without it.”
All the other projects that aren’t side projects, that are main projects of people’s lives, they’re there for the same reason of expression. It’s just something where you have more control and more say over it. But the unified feeling of being with this band and going out. It gets the people in front of you, and as we are coming back, we’re coming back fighting an uphill battle to say, “We’ve been here for a long time.” We want people to come out. We usually come out to this show. We’re trying to play for as many people as we can. We’re putting a lot of work and time and focus into it, because it’s what we want to do. And we’re honoring that we’re doing it now. It will stay this way until we stop doing it.
Will you ever stop doing it?
KD: We have before. It’s a question of… you have to be true. Even with our management and our label, it was all sort of family-oriented, and it started that way. We came up together. We learned together. We made mistakes together. We had intense relationships together.
It depends where you’re at. Right now, we just decided to really focus on this. Put all efforts and all guns blazing into getting to as many people as we can, because that’s the mission.
This interview has been edited and condensed.