Catching Up With... Luke Doucet

Winnipeg native Luke Doucet has been on the road long and often enough to admit that he's lost some of that "youthful wanderlust" he had some years back, when he was still touring as backing guitarist for Sarah McLachlan or playing with his proggy surf-rock trio Veal. But he and his White Falcon still have a thing or five to say. Among them is Blood's Too Rich, the aching, folk-rooted odyssey through looping soundscapes that Doucet mostly wrote while braving homesickness and a winter of warm weather in Nashville last year.

Paste caught the virtuosic Canadian walking out of a music shop in his much-beloved Toronto and paid heed to a short reverie on turning the clock back (and forward) to rockier sounds than his recent roots-based efforts, how working as a producer does (and doesn't) change the way he constructs songs, and what it means to write autobiographically (but still take some liberties as an outside observer). It was a conversation full of splintering paths, all winding and overlapping—not unlike Doucet's music, really. We invite you to follow along.       

Paste: I heard that you were going back in the studio and were in rehearsals recently. What are you working on these days?
Luke Doucet: Today, I'm just rehearsing with Oh Susanna. She's a friend of mine, so we're going to do a gig. It's just a one-off. But I'm starting to write new songs. I think what happened is somebody asked me why I'm not writing rock and roll songs anymore, and I suppose compared to my previous solo records, Blood's Too Rich is a rock and roll record for sure by comparison. But back in the days when I was playing with Veal, we were a rock and roll band. So I just couldn't find myself an answer to the question 'Why don't you do that' other than, I don't know, I'm in my thirties, aren't I supposed to play roots music now? So whatever. I got this little burst of inspiration to write three rock songs. I think I saw Shine A Light, that Scorsese-Stones movie. And I thought it would be terrible because everyone was like "Oh, those guys are so old and they can't play anymore." But they were great. Maybe I'm alone on that one, but I thought they were fantastic. I mean, dysfunctional and maybe they were drunk and stoned, I'm not sure, but Keith and Ronnie still really inspire me. So I don't have a record—I'm not really specifically working toward an album, although at some point I'm sure it will become that. I just have some songs.

Paste: That song "Motorbike" [on Blood's Too Rich] seems to anticipate an "early mid-life crisis," as you say in the song. Was it a bit of wondering what's next for you?
Doucet: I suppose so, yeah. At the same time, I've learned not to write from a first person perspective all the time. You know, being a musician, a touring songwriter, we avoid some of the more mundane pitfalls of middle age that seem to grab onto a lot of people who are in day jobs for a certain period of time. I would imagine that there's a certain tedium that sets in. For us, because our lives are so transient, and because the art form is so juvenile—if not entirely juvenile delinquent—sometimes it enables us to at least feign a youthfulness at least a bit longer. So, as observers, and I think you have to be an observer if you're a songwriter, you're watching people. And I'm looking at people who are like me, you know, people who I went to high school with, seeing what they're doing, and how they're living, and I wonder what that's like, you know. And sometimes I write from their perspective because that's kind of the alternate reality, the one I would otherwise be living. So I find that fascinating and I find it compelling, like watching a car crash. Kind of scary.

Paste: That makes sense. There are probably a number of  things that are not quite autobiographical on your albums.
Doucet: I've erred on the side of autobiographical, more often than not—more than I would like to, really. I don't have the gift of empathy. I mean, I think of myself as an empathetic person, but when it comes to writing music, I find it very difficult to do the classic storyteller songwriter thing. There are probably a few occasions when I have plucked a story from current events and made it personal in the way Dylan has done in his entire career, and the way so many writers that I respect have done. My default position is candor. This is what you see, this is what's happening. And often I don't have to look beyond my own family to find stories absolutely worthy of recounting, or slightly embellishing, the cliché being that truth is stranger than fiction. There are some things that have happened, things that have come to pass, whether that's in the media or just in my personal life, in my family, in my brothers, in my sisters, in my friends' lives, and I'm like, "That's enough," you know, "I'm good for a couple of years now."

Paste: One thing I did notice on that last album is that you're not just mining your history for pop or folk songs, but you're orchestrating fairly long compositions.
Doucet: When you're in the studio, and I've been producing records, you're constantly telling people to be more succinct. You're constantly recommending that people use fewer words, and keep the songs shorter and play fewer guitar licks, and add fewer overdubs. Those are the kind of broken record recommendations that you find yourself making again and again, is that less is more, but I think at some point you can kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater if you deny yourself the opportunity to spread your wings and breathe a bit. A three minute pop song has it's place. [With regards to] The Weakerthans, well, Ian Blurton produces those records, and they're 40 minutes long, and the songs are three minutes long. So by the time it's over, you're often compelled to put it on again. You know, like with Left and Leaving, I often put it on and let it play again. I'll play the first two songs and play it again. I don't imagine that happens very much with my record because it's longer, but I want people to be able to get lost in a piece of music and as opposed to, "Oh, that's the last chorus and then the next song is going to come." This is a soundscape, and maybe it's long enough that it gives people the perception that it's endless. Even though they're not 20-minute songs; they're five or six of seven minutes on rare occasions. But I think it gives a chance for the band to sound like an organic unit as opposed to everybody marking time and marking the changes that are the framework of a song. It's more like the sound of people playing off each other. It's really not even about the guitar particularly. I mean, that's my instrument and that's the one I can improvise on, but really, when I think of some of those elongated sections of songs, like a long guitar solo, I don't think of it like a guitar solo, I think of it like everybody's playing off each other together, you know?

Paste: Do you think producing albums has changed the way you think about songwriting, or about the final products of the songs rather than the bare structures?
Doucet: With the kind of producing I do, I'm trying desperately not to think about the product. I think people often think about producers as part of the music industry, whereas I definitely think of producers as part of the music. They're artists, and I hope that that's understood. I mean, obviously if I get it in my head that I want to get a song on the radio, then it can't be seven minutes long, and that influences my production choices, and I'll keep the song to three minutes. And it's going to have to be in English, and it's going to have to have a chorus. Great, so there are the parameters right there. But beyond that, I try not to be influenced by that too much. But I think it's really difficult to know whether the production ears alter my song in the songwriting. I guess you don't really get to choose what you're influenced by. Your musical experiences and your life experiences will just dictate who you are and what you become, and I don't necessarily think you get to choose.