It’s a balmy summer evening, around nine ‘o’ clock, and the Scottish lads that make up Grace Emilys can’t believe how dark it is this early. They were in Toronto for North By Northeast, and as we left Neutral on College the many band mates were itchin’ for a smoke. We sit down at the patio of Rice Bar across the street from the club, and we probably weren’t five minutes into the interview before I realized that I may as well throw out my prepared questions and just role with the conversation.
 | The band is made up of Neal Monaghan, Euan Wright and the brothers Sean and Andrew Kennedy, and their story begins, as Neal says, in a greasy café. “It’s quite a humble beginning, a real story of poverty,” he says jokingly. Neal and Shaun worked together and bonded over their shared love of a particular football (meaning: soccer) team. “And me and Andrew have know each other since he was born,” chimes in Shaun. Andrew, the quiet one, laughs at his older brother’s ribbing.
The final piece of the puzzle was Euan, who Shaun met while he was in Australia as they were both on break from college. Shaun told Euan about Neal and their love for music and suggested that when they got back home the four of them should get together and start jamming as a band. Euan ended up abandoning his degree, which included a study of the correlation between music and architecture, to play the band full-time. He also asked me to mention that he was from Perth (“The heart of Scotland,” according to Neal and Shaun). |
And just like that, the Grace Emilys were off to the races. Andrew replaced their original bassist, whose musical direction didn’t jive with the rest of the group. “He was a kind of heavy metal and goth guy,” Euan begins to explain. “[His] style of music wasn’t really what we were into,” interrupts Neal.
The lads put the spotlight on Andrew again. “He’s into Celine Dion and soft furnishings,” says Shaun leading in the razzing of his brother. Neal starts taunting him with a badly hummed melody of “Lady in Red” by Chris de Burgh before the story continues. “We thought he was kind of funny and he had a good sense of humour,” adds Neal, “and he writes good lyrics.”
“This line-up has only been together for the last year,” explains Shaun. “And in the last year, particularly in the last five months, things have really taken off for us.” They did their first national tour of Scotland in February, which generated a lot of positive buzz for them in their homeland’s media. “It’s great, we feel like we’re really going places,” Neal adds.
Grace Emilys was the only Scottish band at NxNE, although there were other Scottish acts at the festival. They were brought to Toronto on the basis of their music, being so far away without any North America press to promote them before hand. “A lot of people have come out to see us on good faith and saying that they’ve enjoyed us more than any other act they’ve seen at the festival,” says Neal without a hint of self-involvement.
“And they’ve backed that up with their dollars,” adds Shaun, talking about the selling of their CDs at the venues and the indie music market in Yonge-Dundas Square. “That’ll be enough to eat for the next couple of days,” jokes Neal, “because there was a worry.”
From the sounds of things, this group really doesn’t have much to worry about, not in Canada anyway. The band says that they genuinely appreciative of the openness of their Canadian audience here, who are far different from the crowds in London they’ve played for, where the name of the game is making an impression, not rocking out. The band’s manager, Jen Anderson echoes that sentiment saying that getting attention in the Canadian press has been easier than back home.
But a lot of that buzz has been created on street level, meeting the people and capitalizing on their good word of mouth. They were profiled in Now Magazine’s NxNE supplement that same week. “We’ve kind of met a lot of people as we’ve been handing out CDs in the last week,” says Euan, “it was good to see some familiar faces coming out to the gig and that last week we’ve been just chilling out and meeting the Canadians.”
“Being over here gives us the edge,” says Shaun who explains that being a Scottish band in Canada gives them an automatic novelty factor. “People are already intrigued because of our nationality.”
“It was nice for us to come over and have an entirely new market to try and attack,” adds Euan, who says that it’s still important for them to break their home ground before conquering the world. “It almost seems that coming over here and trying to make it in this environment would be a hell of a lot easier and we’d have more success than back home.”
“I just love that when you come over here, you’re a blank slate and people judge you by your music,” says Shaun. “You come over and the only way they can engage you is live music and not by ‘you’re part of this city’ and ‘you’re part of this scene.’”
But sitting here in Kensington Market offers unique, and utterly serendipitous, opportunities. Every one in the band starts talking about a bag piper that lives in an apartment over the Rice Bar, whom they invited to open their show and usher them into their first single playing the bag pipe solo. On their record, the bag pipes were played by the band’s friend Bobby, who obviously wasn’t travelling with the guys.
“Kensington is our part of town,” says Shaun enthusiastically. “We were big in Chinatown too,” adds Andrew. They did their time in the indie market, but the guys say they by far preferred to hang around the Market and hand out their CDs in the no-pressure environment. “I think we prefer to be outsiders doing our own thing, than being part of this corporate bull***t.”
With the conversation winding down, it seems that our interview is coming to an end. It’s now truly dark on Augusta Avenue, not even a trace of sun in the sky. “Can we ask you a question?” says Shaun. Sure, I reply. “You’ve heard of the WWF? The Mountie, is he actually a Canadian?”
Unfortunately, I had to respond that I wasn’t sure if the Mountie was a Canadian or not, although I was aware that Bret “The Hitman” Hart was a Canadian and once a Pizza Pizza spokesperson. Although disappointed, Shaun and the others depart in good cheer. And as I head down Bathurst to another NxNE venue, I can’t help but smile as I imaged where their Scottish charm will take them as the night rolls on.
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