LUCIDMEDIA

Accidentally N.Q. Arbuckle

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Tuesday, 02 December 2008 09:53

I first saw the band at Six Shooter Records’ annual North by Northeast barbecue. It was shortly after the release of their third album XOK, and they have since gone on to a steady schedule of touring, recently with Elliott Brood and upcoming with Corb Lund. They’ve also opened for big names like Blue Rodeo, but as Quinlan tells me, the band’s more interested in simple gigs in front of small crowds, than it is in opening stadium-sized crowds.

“I prefer just playing for three hours and having a sense of the evening,” he explains. “I am constantly blown away by bands that go out and tour with headlining acts and do three months of playing a half-hour set in a huge amphitheatre. I would be at the end of a noose if I had to do that. Your entire day is geared towards this 30 minute set that is over before you know it, and what do you do for the rest of the time?”



From the sounds of things, it’s like they never want to bigger than they are right now, the band is at the size they want to be in. “Well, we can handle making more money,” Quinlan jokes. “But I don’t worry about stuff like that, we were asked if we were hoping to be successful and I always say that we already consider ourselves successful.”

So what’s the N.Q. Arbuckle story? “It’s very boring,” begins Quinlan before explaining that his journey to musical success was purely accidental. Originally from Montreal, Quinlan played for years at parties and lofts or opening for local bands. He moved to Toronto “because of a girl” and in the process ended up meeting future Six Shooter label-mate Luke Doucet. They did some shows together before Doucet invited Quinlan to join him in Vancouver to play back-up on a record.

Then with Doucet’s help, Quinlan put together his own album, 2002’s Hanging the Battle-Scarred Piñata.He recorded 60 songs and he chose the first 10 the day before the record was due, at least that’s his story. “I’ve never really thought about how recordings work,” he explains. “I was thinking, well I do this song the way I do it live, and that should be the recording. But they’re two different beasts, and you want to have something that works in that realm. But I don’t know if we achieved any of that.”

His first album was solo, but through a twist of fate Quinlan soon picked up some bandmates. “My favourite band in Toronto was a band called Growl and their lead singer left so I ended up being able to work with Mark [Kesper], Peter [Kesper] and John [Dinsmore], just grabbing them like that.”



Last Supper in a Cheap Town in 2005 was the band’s first album as a group, and like Battle-Scarred Piñata it was recorded quickly in what Quinlan says was a “bowling club” style, not knowing what songs they were going to do, which made it a lot more fun. On XOK, the band had time on their side since a band member was a co-owner of a recording studio. “The thing about big studio time is that you don’t re-record songs a lot,” says Quinlan, adding that with time they were able to do things, try different songs, ditch a bunch, try some new stuff, tweak them and make, as Quinlan says, “some really good recordings.”

But recording is one thing, and Quinlan says it’s those smaller, live shows that continue to drive him. “You go and record a record for what feels like forever, but really it’s not that long,” he explains. “You go and work in an intense way to try and at the end of the day you perform it about ten times and try and figure out ways of adding to that song, or just leaving it. […] The actual recording part is so small that if you don’t thrive on the live side, it’s kind of depressing.”

His own personal, musical development started early, and not just by listening to a wide pallet of musical tastes like Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. “I think that every musician has someone in their family, or is a close associate of their family, that teaches them how to play guitar or how to play piano,” Quinlan says. “But being able to play an instrument, you instantly develop better musical taste than the people that never do.” In his spare time, Quinlan says he paints windows doing a faux stain glass kind of thing or otherwise making what he calls, “funny little sculptures.” Says Quinlan, “I like all the arts and crafty stuff. And I think its kind of the same thing where if I can’t sit down and write a song, but you do have that energy to go and sit for hours and think about things, sometimes painting a window is just as good as writing a song.” He adds though that “Music is my life though, I love it. Hopefully, I’m a lifer.” So far, so good it seems. With three records under his belt and a popular live show that’s making new fans all the time, Quinlan proudly says that he’s never used a lawyer to do anything in the music business and whether or not the band becomes anymore successful than it is now, doesn’t keep him up nights. “It’s like in our own little tourist way we’ve managed to avoid all the negative parts.”