Catching Up With... Great Lake Swimmers' Tony Dekker

Toronto folk musician Tony Dekker has been making stripped-down music teeming with natural imagery with his project Great Lake Swimmers for the better part of the past decade. The band's new album, Lost Channels, is out March 31 via Nettwerk Records.

Paste caught up over the phone with Dekker, who was at the House of Miracles in London, Ontario, recording tracks for forthcoming compilations before embarking on a three-month tour in support of the new album.

Paste: From what I understand, you didn’t go through the typical routine that many bands have of holing up in the studio while making the new album. What was the process like for recording Lost Channels?
Dekker: Overall, for our records, I’ve had a desire to record outside a studio because I kind of find a regular recording studio to be a bit of a stifling process—like you said, holing up in a studio is not really my idea of a really creative way to go about making a record. For this new record, we sort of pulled together a lot of tracks, recording from a lot of different places.

For the location, recording part of it, we were in touch with a local photographer and historian from the Thousand Islands region of Ontario and upstate New York. It’s basically the part of the St. Lawrence River where Lake Ontario empties into the river, and it has literally thousands of small islands scattered throughout it. And in this area, our friend, Ian Coristine—the photographer and historian—had gotten in touch with us earlier in the year and invited us to come down. He was able to point us in the right direction toward some really unusual and unique acoustic spaces in the Thousand Islands region, and we were able to record in a number of different locations in the region and also in a few studios in Toronto and in London, Ontario, and sort of tie it all together.

Some of the places of note that we recorded in were the Brockville Arts Centre, which was a turn-of-the-century theatre that had been maintained by this community for the last hundred years or so. A lot of it was in its original state still—a really beautiful little theatre on the St. Lawrence. And also in a church in Rockport, Ontario, called St. Brenden the Navigator Church, which was on a small cliff overlooking the river, a little further down the line. The last place was a castle called Singer Castle, just over on the United States side. It was on an island called Dark Island, and we were able to do some recording in there as well, and out of all these places, pull all the strands together and sort of make it into a cohesive whole. I’ve found that it really helps the creative process for me when we’re in spaces like that.

Paste: What sort of interesting people did you meet or what kind of remarkable experiences did you have while recording? It sounds like recording in a castle is a lot more conducive to running across out-of-the-ordinary experiences than recording in a regular studio.
Dekker: Yeah, totally. I mean, it’s actually a lot of extra work to do it that way—to come to a place and turn it into a recording studio rather than going into a recording studio that’s already set up. Especially Singer Castle—actually, it’s really a fully functioning old giant stone castle with secret passageways and a giant bell tower. It was really something. And all the people that we met there were really interesting. And we had to hire a boat captain to get us there with all our gear and leave really early in the morning from the shore, and it was a bit of an adventure.

Paste: Yeah, sounds like something out of a story book.
Dekker: It’s like the kind of thing that sounds like fiction, but I couldn’t make it up if I tried. It was sort of a chance encounter, too, and it sort of came together very quickly, and we worked very hard to make it happen.

Paste: What’s the significance of the album’s title, Lost Channels?
Dekker: While we were in the Thousand Islands, we were told a lot of stories about the history of the region, and one of them was about a passageway of water between some of the islands that became known as the Lost Channel because of some mysterious disappearances that happened in the late 1700s. I can’t really do justice to the story by retelling it here, but it left a pretty good impression on all of us that were there. And so when it came time to name the album, it seemed appropriate to tie into the sort of geographical reference to the area, and also on another level, it sort of refers to a lost art or a lost way of doing things. The title implies that somewhat, too, so it makes sense.

Paste: Over time, the musicians who make up Great Lake Swimmers along with you have rotated and changed. Has that impacted the music you’ve made over the years?
Dekker: Well, definitely, it’s gone from being more or less a solo project to a little bit more of a collaborative band project, although I’m still the one writing the songs and steering the ship, so to speak. The line-up has always been really fluid. For a while, when I first started out, it changed almost every show. But now we have a regular group of people, and there’s a real chemistry between all of us, and I think that came from touring quite a bit and playing together a lot. It’s the type of band where people drift in and out, and that’s just the way that it’s always worked. I’m liking how when someone new comes in, their creative mark is left on the band in a way, and especially lately, I’ve been more open to giving up a little bit more of that control as a songwriter and as a producer of the record and to invite those people to add their spin on the songs and help with making it into a cohesive whole. I think it’s worked out well so far, and it also adds new life into some of the older songs and just new life into the project as a whole. I feel pretty good that we’re in a good place right now. The band that we have, that we’re going to be touring with, is really sharp and really great, so I’m pretty happy about that.

Paste: One song that particularly stood out to me upon first listening to the album was “Still,” where there’s a definite sense of searching, seeking and waiting. What were you searching and waiting for while putting this album together?
Dekker: That’s a good question, actually. [pause] I’m not sure. [pause] From a creative standpoint, it’s always about getting over the next hill or climbing further up the mountain, so I think there’s a little bit of that aspect to that song.

Paste: In your music, you make a lot of references to nature. How often do you get a chance to experience the outdoors, and what do you like to do outside?
Dekker: When we’re not touring, I love getting out into the woods or in more of a natural setting. There’s some really great spots in northern Ontario that are really amazing to get into. In my downtime, that’s really what I like to do is get out into the woods and get into a pretty quiet space, and lately it’s been striking a pretty good balance with the hectic, busy nature of traveling. That is really my idea of paradise is being out in the middle of nowhere. [laughs]

Paste: Over time, you’ve collaborated a lot with filmmaker Scott Cudmore, including work on music videos, "The Nosebleed Project" and Camera Music. How did that partnership begin?
Dekker: Actually, Scott contacted me. I first met Scott through "The Nosebleed Project." One of the first things he did was have me sit for a portrait for that series. I was a fan of his work, and he was also a fan of what I was doing, so a collaboration was definitely inevitable in the video world. We shot a video in an afternoon for our second record, and then we did a couple videos for the last record—on Ongiara—and he just recorded a live session for us and is going to be doing a video for “Still,” actually, for the new record. He’s just a talented, talented Toronto filmmaker, and it’s a good example of the stuff that is going on in Toronto in all of the arts, but particularly in music, and the mentality is everyone pitch in and help out, and there’s a real camaraderie between artists I think. Scott’s definitely one of the few people I trust behind the lenses of the camera, for sure.

Paste: How did you first get involved with writing the music for Song Sung Blue? Was it your first foray into doing music for a film?
Dekker: Yeah, totally. [laughs] It’s not exactly my regular gig. I was contacted in 2007 by the director of the film, his name is Greg Kohs, and he came to our show in Philadelphia. He came up to me after the show and said, "Hey, I’ve been working on this documentary for the last eight or nine years, and it’s my first feature-length film. Would you have any interest in having a look at it and seeing if you might like to do some music for it?" And we sort of kept in touch over the year, and finally I got back from tour, and he got in touch again and sent a rough cut of the film, and I had a small window of time in December and January around that time to do some work on the soundtrack, and once I saw the film, I realized how special of a project it was, and I was pretty blown away by the film. Although soundtrack music and music for films is not something I normally do, it ended up being a really great process and, creatively, a pretty gratifying experience. It was a lot of fun. It turned out OK for a first stab at it, I guess. [laughs] And it’s a great film, too. It was a pleasure to work on it.