ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON SEPT. 22, 2005
By Steve Newton
When C’mon guitarist-vocalist Ian Blurton calls me from a tour stop in Charlottetown, P.E.I., his band is psyching itself up to kick some serious Maritime butt. But the Toronto-based rocker also has Louisiana on his mind, because his girlfriend, C’mon bassist Katie Lynn Campbell, lives in New Orleans. The last they heard, Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters had stopped about five blocks from her home.
“In a weird twist of fate her house is safe, as far as we know,” explains Blurton. “I mean, no one’s been in the neighbourhood ’cause it’s impossible to get there, so who knows, with looting and stuff like that. But it’s boarded up, and the water didn’t wreck it.”
Campbell won’t be returning to her disaster-area digs until after the Canadian tour that brings the band to the Red Room on Saturday (September 24), on a coheadlining bill with Montreal’s Tricky Woo. Along with drummer Randy Curnew, the trio will be performing tunes from its second CD, In the Heat of the Moment, the follow-up to its self-produced 2003 debut, Midnight Is the Answer.
Both discs were recorded in seven days-in distortion-friendly analog-but for the new one the group recruited producers Al P (Death From Above 1979, the Bloody Mannequins) and Daryl Smith (Sloan, Godspeed You! Black Emperor).
“The first record was really dirty and nasty-sounding,” says Blurton, whose own producer credits include Tricky Woo and the Weakerthans. “We wanted some of that on the second one too, but we wanted more high-fidelity, I guess, and just to have a new perspective.”
In recent press clippings, Blurton has revealed that C’mon takes its power-trio heritage from such threesomes as ZZ Top, Nirvana, and Budgie. All rock fans are familiar with the first two, but Blurton raves most about the last one.
“Oh my God, go buy the Budgie records,” he presses. “They’re fucking great! One of my most memorable musical experiences was walking into Records on Wheels in Winnipeg, and they were playing all these Budgie bootlegs that were just so raw and heavy, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, who is this?’?”
During their quest to take C’mon’s ’70s-inspired rock noise across the country, the band members have shared some strange experiences. On a previous trip to the Maritimes, they spotted a couple of “UFOs” near a military base outside Fredericton.
“They could have been some kind of military flying things,” notes Blurton, “but we were not alone. It was in the middle of the night, none of us were hammered, none of us were on drugs, and these glowing balls appeared. One of them flew along with us in the woods, and then the next time we came over a hill it was like a good 500 miles away or something.
“We went into a gas station about an hour later and ran into a guy who said that he saw the same thing. Apparently he saw some kind of transfer of power between the two glowing balls.”
Speaking of circular objects, C’mon once paid tribute to the ’70s LP era by issuing its debut album on gold vinyl. Blurton remembers when Grand Funk Railroad did the same thing in 1973 with We’re an American Band, one of the first records he ever bought.
“We also put a free CD in with the vinyl,” he says, “which is an idea we stole from Nardwuar [the Human Serviette]. Thanks very much, Nardwuar!”
No word yet from the Nard on whether he was inspired by Grand Funk too.
To hear the full audio of my interview with Ian Blurton from 2005–and my conversation with him from 1992 as well–subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 600 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with musicians since 1982.
Discover more from earofnewt.com
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.