Do Make Say Think
may 3rd 2002 - CAT, Bordeaux, Fr
by SEB WOOd and Barbara H

SEB WOOd : could you introduce yourselves ?

James : I'm James, I play drums

Ohad : I'm Ohad and I play guitar and sax

SW: Could you tell us how the things started for Do Make Say Think ?

James : We're just five friends from Toronto who like playing music and some of us go back to high school, like me and Justin, the other guitar player, we go back to high school, we grew up as teenagers and Ohad and Charles and Dave grew up together as teenagers playing in bands, I lived with Justin and Charles in an apartment and Charles introduced us to Ohad and Dave and we just started playing music together.

SW: you are seven on stage ?

James : yeah

SW : could you tell us what instruments...

James : yeah there's, we hired a saxophone player and a trumpet player from a local band in Toronto called the (?) to come on tour with us, so, that's what they do and Ohad plays saxophone and flute and guitar, bass sometimes, Charles plays bass, sometimes keyboards and trumpet and Justin plays guitar, and two drums.

SW : could you tell us what are you relationships with Constellation ?

James: well, they're our label

Barbara H : do you know other bands from Constellation ?

James: yeah, they're our friends. good people, they're all good people...

SW: how did you meet them ?

James : they met us. We put our first record out, "Do Make Say Think," we put it out by ourselves and we sold our first five hundred copies and we needed to get more pressed and they heard it from somebody and contacted us and asked if they could put the record out cause they liked it.

SW: we thought you were French-speaking Canadians...

James : no, we're from Toronto, we're from English Canada. We understand a little bit of French, we can speak a little bit...

SW: Why are you called "Do Make Say Think" ?

James: "Do Make Say Think" in English is the four essential verbs and Justin and Charles were part of a theater program in Toronto which toured around to local great schools, that's what the production did. They went into primary school, like, in kindergarden classroom and on the walls there were posters that said "Do," "Make," "Say" and "Think." That's what is being taught to the children, these are the four essential verbs. We thought it was funny and Charles took it and called the band "Do Make Say Think."

SW: Why did you change the artwork for your last album ?

James: That's Constellation's doing, we didn't really want a window, a cut-out window, on the third one because we had it on the first two records and constellation had a new approach to put it together, we provided them with the photographs and the artwork that we wanted to have on the cover but they put it together and compiled the whole thing.

BH: how do you compose songs ?

James: We all write songs together, it happens in the rehearsal space, sometimes during soundcheck or something where all of us just play together and see where it goes and whatever comes naturally, we just go with that, we take the best of what we like, we're really selective about what we choose to make songs with.

BH: For how long have you been touring now ?

James: this is our third week.

BH: have you come here before ?

James : yeah, this is our third tour of Europe. We have this week and then a month off and then we're gonna tour more of Europe in the middle of June to the middle of July.

BH: With whom have you been playing ?

James: First we played four shows with Godspeed You Black Emperor and we played the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival, there was a lot of great bands, we played with Hood in the UK and Programme tonight, I'm looking forward to that.

BH: Which bands did you like best at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival ?

James : The Lonesome Organist, I thought was great...

Ohad : who else was really good ? The Fall... who else was really good ? I didn't get to see as much as I hoped, we came a day later, it started on Friday we came on the Saturday and we played that day so we had to take care of a lot of things we didn't have the opportunity to see all the bands. The third day, the last day we were there we saw the Fall, they were really good, we missed Low, I wanted to see Low, so, Godspeed was really good, who else... Cheap Trick (laughs)

SW: What are you doing for a living ?

Ohad : I am, well I was, since we're touring we've all put our living things on hold. I was an audio engineer but I actually worked on sound for music for television.

James : I worked in a bar in Toronto but obviously I don't work anymore cause we're touring

**Justin arrives**

SW: you want to introduce yourself ?

Justin (after a few seconds of eerie silence) : oh, Hi ! I'm justin Small, I play the guitar.

SW: do you want to add something ?

Justin: I missed the questions I guess, so...

BH: who did you like at All Tomorrows Parties ?

Ohad : Cheap Trick! (laughs)

Justin: Cheap Trick... not as much as the Fall, The Fall was really cool but Zeni Geva were...

SW : did you have the chance to meet Mark E. Smith ?

Do Make Say Think : who ???

SW: Mark E. Smith

BH: from the Fall

Justin: oh, Mark E. Smith, no

SW: are Eric's Trip from Toronto ?

James : yeah

SW: Do you know them ?

Justin : they're first from Halifax and they sort of broke up and they're in Toronto now, they're called, the two of them...

James : Elevator

Justin : "Elevator to Hell" and then "Elevator"

James : And there's Julie Doiron from Eric's Trip she does her solo thing

Justin: they toured at some point in Canada, they got together and played again

James : and the USA, they did the USA too...

(later : "devil's chord" explanation)

Ohad : It was like, it was just like an interval, you know, the tritone and then the tritone into a chord and in the middle... in Europe, like in, Medieval times church outlawed that tritone, that interval because it sounded evil.