Sara of Tegan and Sara: ‘We Have Always Followed Our Own Instincts’
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by Bambi Weavil
[photo credit: Autumn de Wilde]
We recently sat down with the lovely and very funny Sara Quin from Tegan and Sara, to chat about her upcoming Fall tour in the US and Australia, their new music video, the importance of being visible and the non-profits she supports and more.
Bambi Weavil: Congrats on your new video “Call It Off” - I like the simplicity of it –what’s the concept behind the video in your eyes?
Sara: We wanted to do something in one-shot, something really easy and maybe not even narrative. I personally struggle with the narrative videos unless you’re like Justin Timberlake and you have a million bucks….it’s hard to be narrative with $20,000 (laughs). The song is a really simple concept, Tegan was tangled up in a relationship, waiting for someone to call you, waiting for someone to be available for you. We initially talked about different things to wrap around her, but I just though esthetically it would be really cool to use phone cords, especially because no one really uses those type of phones anymore (laughs) so I thought it may be a throwback, which is terrifying.
BW: How are fans embracing the video? Have you gotten any feedback?
S: It’s been great actually, you never know with videos. We always like them but you just never really know what other people are going to like. I actually feel our last two videos I loved but they were more complicated and cost more money. I think the response have been really easy and great, it’s been getting a lot of play on the Internet. In Canada it was added into heavy rotation on one of the music stations which had never happened to us in 10 years. I don’t even know if people buy records anymore, I’m not totally always sure what any impact means overall other than increased visibility of the band. Certainly from a viewership and the response of the fans, it’s been really positive, which was great because it was a super cheap video and very easy to make, and it proves that sometimes simplicity is the best thing.
BW: How do you feel The Con is different from your previous albums?
S: It’s hard when you are yourself, when you’re trying to see your own growth. I can’t listen to the music that we made from our first couple of albums, it’s virtually impossible for me not to recoil and cringe when I hear them. I feel like we’ve gotten better. I can listen to them and not want to die (laughs), it feels like we’ve gotten better, at least for me.
BW: A lot of the buzz has been confidence, do you feel that’s a true statement? Have you picked up confidence as you’ve gone along?
S: Oh yeah, I think about being 18 and making our first record, and I’m shocked. In everything, we have such a different handle on the industry, now we’re friends with label people, and we socialize in this industry and we’re friends with other bands and we’re substantial enough of a act, that we’re familiar to a lot of people, and that helps our confidence. You feel you belong, you’ve graduated from student, maybe not a teacher, but to a weird student-teacher, you’re not just in class anymore, it feels like we’re operating in our own world a little bit. We’re obviously still trying to make in roads into different communities, or sell more records, sell more concert tickets, but I definitely feel like we’re in own little universe now. We don’t rely on sort-of begging and borrowing, you know?
BW: What advice would you give to indy artists who are looking toward your level of success because I feel you have not compromised your music, which I think is a good thing…what advice would you give to them?
S: We always have just done what we wanted. We have always followed our own instincts, and I know a lot of times that wasn’t necessary about a career. We knew early on that we were not cool, and I don’t say that to be self-deprecating, but anytime, when we first came out there was a style of music that was really popular, and we were like, ‘okay we are not that…we’re not necessarily indy darlings, we’re not getting critical praise from everyone, but we feel so good about this, and we can see it is connecting to someone. We always just kept our heads down and thoughts of ourselves as a independent unit, cruising through the industry. We don’t really rely on what’s the buzz and what’s cool. If we don’t get the things that we want, i.e. press, radio, this or that, we just rely on ourselves. We know we’re funny, we know that we’re entertaining, we know the music connects to somebody. We’ve always believed in ourselves and gone with our instincts.
BW: Over the summer you both were apart of the True Colors Tour which we proudly supported. What was it like for you this year?
S: I was really impressed by the last year we were on, if we get a opportunity or we get asked, I would love to do it. Cyndi Lauper is a massive influence for us, we were born in 1980, so She’s So Unusual is a soundtrack for me. Just even for that, just to do it for that experience, to get to meet her and perform with her, we jumped at that opportunity and obviously having it be for a incredible cause, we’re both gay, and at this time in the United States, when there is a election coming up, it just seems so insane that basic human rights would be ignored, or thought of as a trend. People who are gay, are choosing to be visibly out in their community, when having the same rights as heterosexuals is viewed as profoundly stupid and it’s so depressing that this viewpoint is still happening. We obviously wanted to be apart of it, it’s a call to the gay community because it’s so easy to be mistaken as heterosexual when you’re gay. I was just asked by a reporter the other day in a interview what my boyfriend thought of us being on tour, and I thought it was so cute.
BW: (laughs)
S: (laughs) …You might be the only human alive that doesn’t know that we’re gay. But it was cute, and I was like, you know, it’s really easy to fly under the radar, and to not be visible, and it’s been years ago since someone said that to me. It’s so impotant that when you’re gay that you’re visible and it doesn’t necessarily mean wrapping yourself around a gay banner and protesting. It means being brave and not hiding all the time, and their are a lot of people don’t have that luxury to be open about who they are because it could really affect their life in a negative way. I feel like Tegan and I are so lucky because we’ve been able to have a career that is quite diverse and I don’t think we’ve been pigeon holed or limited because of being gay and being out as gay artists. I think it’s important for us to be role models and being out there, so doing the tour was such a easy decision.
BW: Do you think when you answered the reporter that you surprised them? I don’t know why reporters assume automatically that everyone’s heterosexual..
S: I think everyone assumes that we’re heterosexual, that just meets us casually. I think most people assume unless you’re really fucking gay looking that you’re straight, which is fine, maybe I do it too, I don’t even know. I thought it was cute because it’s been about eight years since someone asked me… ‘Oh my god, (laughs) what does my boyfriend think…let’s see….I don’t know I haven’t seen him in 11 years…’ (laughs) I don’t get offended anymore, it was really easy for me to twist it and make it funny. I’m single anyway.
I have personally always felt it is important to acknowledge your sexuality, but I have also felt annoyed in the past on why does our sexuality always have to be so much of the focus, in what I see being as almost heterosexual press. It’s one thing with gay press, I’m like ‘fuck yeah we’re going to talk about it,’ it seems like the right forum. Sometimes when were being reviewed in magazines where all the heterosexual bands are being reviewed, they don’t talk about their relationships or their sexuality, so how come we have to? It automatically scandalizes us in a way that isn’t our fault, it’s not in context.
BW: It’s to me, a double standard, more or less.
S: It’s true, I have friends who don’t want to talk about their sexuality, because their out, or in a band and they don’t want to talk about it, and I think they shouldn’t have to. But you shouldn’t have to been seen as a prude, or ashamed, or not out either. Like when people just want some goddamn privacy, and people are like, ‘you have to come out, and be proud of who you are.’ And I think, I know so many people who are in heterosexual relationships who don’t want to talk about their relationships. I don’t think you should have to.
But acknowledging your sexuality to me, I just couldn’t live with myself being not out…I just couldn’t. There are too many kids who need people like me to be out. They just need us to be. I needed the role model that I had when I was a teenager, I want to be that role model for kids. I don’t care if it hurts our career, it doesn’t matter to me.
BW: Very cool, I think visibility is important and it’s good to hear it from you. What non-profits do you support? How important do you view activism personally?
S: We really got into charitable stuff on our last album, all of a sudden when you are suddenly making a bit of money, you have that luxury…certainly from homegrown non-profits. I was involved in organizations in Montreal so, I was involved in organizations that I was really interested in, and the first one was of a youth group that I thought was really inspiring who work with kids in group homes trying to provide culturally appropriate things such as food for those who don’t live with their families. Right now, one of the groups I’ve sort of been involved in, in a extraneous way that my friends are involved in with it directly, is a group called Project 10. Project 10 is a youth queer, trans, bi, everybody welcomed, drop-in center but they also do a lot of really cool social networking stuff, counseling, they have a clothes drop…. They have a Summer camp where kids can go in the summer, it’s a really cool program and I know the people involved with it, I know it needs as much help as it can get. We’ve been doing some charitable and fundraising stuff for them.
Anything to do with kids usually or youth we’re interested in, we just did a huge fundraiser for a group out of D.C. that raises money for kids who gives them instruments and music lessons when they can’t do it themselves. It was created by the family of our lawyer who passed away, and started by his family, in memory of him. We try to keep involved with youth, we just see ourselves as being a band influencing kids, and we want to help them access this world as well. Not just music, but from a musician’s perspective, it’s really insane how little you see kids, especially young women, wanting to get involved in the technical aspect. There are so many people that we work with that don’t play drums or guitar, there is such a lack of women in sound engineering, lighting engineers, tour management…I could find 100 guys before I find one girl who is already usually booked up for the year. It’s like, ‘you’re a girl! yay! we want you forever!’
BW: What are your international fans like?
S: Everybody is really different, it’s really interesting. We’re going to do a tour in Australia, so they are a little bit more consistent to what we experience in North America. Our fan base’s common link is we really attract a excited, extremely passionate, devoted audience. They are never like ‘the casual Tegan and Sara fans,’ there always are those kind of people but the majority of them are quite ecstatic, and it makes the traveling, the money, and everything like that all worth it. Sometimes you can have these moments of ‘Oh my God, why are we doing this?’ and then the crowds are always incredible, and they make it well worth the pain sometimes. (laughs)
BW: Thank you Sara for your time today! We invite everyone to check out their latest album, The Con, if you haven’t already, and to check out Tegan and Sara on tour this Fall. For more information on specific dates and where they will be internationally, please visit their official site, http://www.teganandsara.com and their MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/teganandsara.
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