“I’m not living for the applause. I like to write songs and I like to sing ’em even more and that’s all I am — a singer of songs.” So declares musician Dallas Green, a.k.a. City and Colour, who releases his new album, If I Should Go Before You, on Oct. 9
And, Green has been doing a lot of singing lately, with City and Colour as well as a few shows with his Alexisonfire bandmates last month and a side project dubbed You+Me with Alecia Moore (a.k.a. Pink). Their debut album hit number four on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 Chart and brought Green more fans than he likely knows what to do with.
Never one to follow the well-trodden path and chase fame, Green hunkered down in Nashville, Tenn., and got to work on his first “band” project since he left Alexisonfire in 2011 to pursue a solo career and a decade after the 2005 release of his solo debut, Sometimes.
“To make the record this way, with the live band, arguably at the peak of my popularity, especially after the record with Alecia, I could have called in the super-producers and really go for it,” says Green.
“But I wanted to go the other way and do it like this. It just feels right and it makes me the happiest.”
This album, according to Green, is a more accurate representation of what you might hear at a City and Colour live show, with a full blistering band. And it comes as a direct result of his having such a solid lineup in the place that seems permanent.
“I think, in the middle of the album cycle for the last record I kind of realized that the guys I was playing with are phenomenal but also, sort of, in it, you know?” says Green. “They were taking good care of the songs, and it just started to feel like a band.”
City and Colour is still comprised of Green alone, but he’s particularly stoked about his current touring band which includes Matthew Kelly, Jack Lawrence, Doug MacGregor and Dante Schwebel, with resumés that include everything from Green’s favourite local band, the Constantines, to such heavyweights as the Dead Weather and Hacienda + Spanish Gold.
“They all come from different backgrounds and different musical tastes,” says Green.
“They are really the perfect guys. They can change gears at the drop of a hat. It’s really special.”
Green is no stranger to Music City.
He recorded his last album in Nashville’s Blackbird Studios, as well. And he enjoys the town so much that he and his wife, Leah Miller, have purchased a home and live there part-time.
“It’s a small town, it really is,” says Green. “It’s got a big city feel to it, but it’s very relaxed.”
What Nashville doesn’t have is a Major League Baseball team, and that might be enough to keep Green, an avid fan of both the Jays and the Raptors, close to Toronto for this month, at least, with the hometown Jays in the middle of a run that could see them play ball in October for the first time in over a decade.
Green and Miller have long lived in the North Toronto neighbourhood, close to where Miller grew up, enjoying the occasional trip to Burger’s Priest and the easy access to Highway 401 and the airport.
“I’ve always lived up here since I moved,” he says. “It’s more family oriented and quieter. It’s just the two of us and our dog.”
Green is originally from St. Catharines where he got his start strumming an acoustic guitar in the city’s cafés before joining Alexisonfire in 2001, which subsequently released four albums with Green playing rhythm guitar and sharing vocal duties with the screamer in the band, George Petit. The tattooed rocker and his screamo bandmates won a Juno Award for Best New Group of the Year in 2005.
And the hardcore sound of the band is what made Green’s solo effort as City and Colour so startling a decade ago when we first heard his haunting voice singing his now-characteristic melancholic songs.
Green’s debut solo effort, Sometimes, went platinum in Canada and led to his first Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year. His followup, Bring Me Your Love, had the same effect: more Juno Awards, another platinum record and, most famously, the crashing of an online website as a result of so many people trying to pre-order it.
The key to Green’s success might be in his long-standing habit of only writing songs when he’s feeling sad. He’s quite up front about working out his issues through his songs, and that honest approach, combined with a compelling, beautiful voice and serious songwriting chops, resonates with listeners.
“Musically, I have a lot of confidence in the songs and the band, but lyrically, when I’m feeling melancholy, that’s when I pick up the pen,” he explains.
With his third City and Colour album, Little Hell, Green plugged in the electric guitars, turned the amps up a few notches and started to move away from the acoustic, folky thing. And that trend continued through The Hurry and the Harm and now If I Should Go Before You.
If one issue stuck with Green, it’s self-confidence.
Over the years, he’s expressed in no uncertain terms his shaky confidence in his chosen path, his tendency to question whether or not he’s good enough. But this new album is the work of a confident and mature artist. Sure, the mopey songs are still there. But there is more at work. All one has to do is listen to the first epic song, “Woman,” which clocks in at a decidedly un-radio-friendly 9:16 minutes and is a serious musical statement if ever there was one.
He even confesses to writing a few songs that he wasn’t even emotionally attached to, just to prove to himself that he could do it.
“I’m just writing good, fun songs with my band … about my experiences and about my life, getting older and noticing the grey hairs and lines but being thankful for them in a way.”
After the album is released, City and Colour, the singer of songs, hits the road, heading first to America and then Europe before returning home to Canada in 2016.
