The Rural Alberta Advantage

Dodging Traffic and Tornadoes with The Rural Alberta Advantage

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

The Rural Alberta Advantage’s keyboard player, Amy Cole, had every reason for sounding distracted.

You try riding through road-rage fueled traffic on Interstate 5 in Los Angeles in a van pulling a trailer while the rest of your band is shouting directions in the background — the same silver 2003 Dodge Caravan, incidentally, which carried The Rural Alberta Advantage to Omaha for the first time two years ago.

Now just two years later, the band was headed to Coachella to kick off the festival’s outdoor stage. “It’s really important to us,” Cole said of Coachella. “We’re excited to be on the bill with all these other artists. It’s crazy to us that we’re allowed to be part of it.”

Amy Cole

Her modesty is somewhat out of place, especially when you consider that the band’s first album, Hometowns, was lauded with an 8.0 by indie tastemaker Pitchfork, who called them “the best unsigned band in Canada before Saddle Creek snapped them up.” The trio’s sophomore effort, Departing, released just last month on Saddle Creek, is even more thoughtful, more tuneful, more refined than its predecessor.

Something tells me the hip Coachella crowd is going to drink up their whirling-dervish-on-the-verge-of-spinning-out-of-control stage vibe. Cole said she hadn’t thought much about Coachella. “We’ve been on tour,” she said. “We’ll probably talk about the set list tonight.”

Just the night before the band finished the second of two sold-out nights at the 350-capacity Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, one of the bay area’s most famous clubs. If there’s a difference between ’09 and now, it’s the number of shows The RAA now plays and the number of people turning out for them. “Everything is increasing, but it doesn’t feel different,” Cole said. “The energy feels the same.”

Just then a muffled shout of “He’s standing right there” came from someone else in the van, maybe RAA frontman Nils Edenloff or drummer Paul Banwatt. Cole broke off the interview for a moment, explaining that they we’re trying to pick up her boyfriend from in front of a hotel. Confused noise ensued. Doors opened and shut. And then, muted laughter.

“OK I’m back, what did you ask me?” I got the feeling I was getting in the way of a long-awaited reunion, loving hugs and much-needed catching up. Instead, here was Cole having to “deal with” some music writer in Omaha. I probably would have just hung up on me.

Instead, she talked about how life on the road is the worst part of being in a band. There’s no question that you’re going to miss a lot when you play a couple hundred shows over the course of two years.

“Being away from your friends and family is hard,” she said. “You’re missing out on the stuff that other people get to do, but at the same time, not everyone gets to do this. It’s never 100 percent fun all the time, but we still enjoy what we’re doing, playing songs for people.”

The Rural Alberta Advantage, Departing (Saddle Creek, 2011)

We abruptly switched gears. Cole told me that making the new album was in some ways similar to making their debut. Producer Roger Leavens again was along for the ride. But unlike that first album, where they had four months to record it with no set deadline and no label breathing down their necks, Cole said they had to consider getting something to Saddle Creek.

“This time we did a lot more writing and recording simultaneously,” she said. “Whereas Hometowns had already been written, and we’d been performing the songs for years (before entering the studio). This time people are hearing the songs for the first time.”

One exception is “Tornado ’87.”

“That one we’ve been playing live a long time,” Cole said. “It was a keyboard-driven song that we tried to record before, but it never sounded right. Then one day we tried it on guitar…”

The song was inspired by a freak F5 tornado that struck Edmonton on July 31, 1987, killing 27 people and laying waste to 300 houses. Over simple acoustic guitar, Edenloff croons, “Oh Lord I lost you I held you tight / Oh I will hold onto your love in the night / And the black sky will come before our eyes / Oh I let’s lay down in the basement tonight.” And then Banwatt cracks out rifle-shot drums, as Cole lays on keyboards and her own wind-swept vocals.  The song has RAA’s trademark dust-devil sound that’s garnered comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel and Deer Tick, among others.

Cole said the once dreaded song has become a favorite of hers, and is especially meaningful in places like Nebraska, which are susceptible to just such meteorological occurrences. Unlike RAA’s home of Toronto.

There certainly was no chance of any tornadoes striking Indio, California. “We rented a house and plan on spending the whole weekend at the festival,” Cole said, “at least when we’re not lounging around the pool. It’ll be nice to stay in one place for awhile.”

The Rural Alberta Advantage plays with Lord Huron and Gus & Call Thursday, April 21, at Slowdown Jr. Tickets are $10. Show starts at 9 p.m.

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The New Pornographers and The Rural Alberta Advantage — two highly acclaimed Canadian bands — are playing separate shows tonight in Omaha’s two primary indie rock performance establishments. Surely there was a good reason why these two shows weren’t joined together as one gigantic Canadian Invasion Rock Show. Instead, Omaha’s small and rather exclusive indie music audience will be split between the two shows, with The New Pornos getting the lion’s share of the crowd — that show, which is being held at The Waiting Room, has been sold out for awhile now. Meanwhile, tickets are still available for The RAA show at Slowdown Jr. Combining the shows would have given some much-needed exposure to The RAA, but like I said, I’m sure the organizers had their reasons. Each band knows that the other is playing somewhere else in the city (thanks, in part, to me), though Cole thought that the Pornos show was being held at Slowdown in a different room!

Anyway, the details are these:

The New Pornographers play tonight at The Waiting Room with The So-So Sailors at 9 p.m. The show is sold out.

The Rural Alberta Advantage plays tonight at Slowdown Jr. with Lord Huron and Gus & Call. Tickets at $10 and the show starts at 9 p.m.
I intend to be at both shows at the same time. I still haven’t figured out how to do it, but there must be some technology that can make it happen.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.