NQ Arbuckle's OK with living life for the little experiences
Band set to release new CD, June 10 during NXNE
Neville Quinlan said he doesn't know the mechanics of the release of NQ Arbuckle's latest album nor does he necessarily care - it's more in the doing, he said, and the great moments that are born out of not much more than a dance.
"We'll never be famous, but we couldn't care less about that," Quinlan said. "It's more about the experiences."
Playing a beautiful town hall in Brampton, or a lunchtime show in a cafeteria in London - Quinlan is more interested in a random trip to the tiny village of Wayne, Alberta or getting a call out of the blue from Italy with the offer of a show there.
Quinlan, frontman of alt-country project NQ Arbuckle, is a self professed "lazy" musician.
"We care deeply about what we do, but outside of that it doesn't really matter," he said leaning back in his chair on the patio of the Cadillac Lounge. "We aren't speaking to any great cultural movements or adding to it."
Quinlan and the members of his band all have day jobs and aren't really careerists. Aspirations of grandeur or not, NQ Arbuckle can pack a room without effort and entrap an audience.
"For a band that is kind of lazy and doesn't really have a lot of career aspirations we do a lot of touring," Quinlan admitted. "We have played the craziest places, every musician has done that, but normally they look at those as the bad shows. But some of those are the funniest shows we have ever played."
Any show can literally come secondary to the act of hanging out in a pub in Hamilton with locals.
"We have this fantastic, very strange frat boy contingent that now comes out to shows," he said with a chuckle. "The last show we played there was this bar fight while we played.
"We played in Port Hope one night when two neighbours came in and started dismantling the stage while we were still playing. They were so angry at us, it was hilarious."
These are the makings of really great experiences.
NQ Arbuckle's album, X O K, comes out on June 10 through Six Shooter Records. Quinlan is accompanied by band mates John Dinsmore on bass, Mark Kesper on drums and Peter Kesper on guitar.
X O K was produced Luke Doucet. It features guest appearances from Carolyn Mark, Justin Rutledge, Melissa McClelland, Jason Sniderman, Ford Pier, Chris Church and Miranda Mulholland.
The main difference between this album and the previous two, Quinlan said, is that they actually took time recording it.
Hanging The Battle-Scarred Pinata, the group's debut, came out in 2002 and was followed by 2005's The Last Supper In A Cheap Town.
"The first one was recorded over four days in Vancouver in my friends basement," he said. "So basically I was in my pyjamas for four days. It was the most luxurious time, drinking beer at 10 in the morning trying to be arty."
NQ spent six months working on X O K. The 11 songs on the album, as with the others, relies heavily on his experiences in Parkdale and elsewhere.
"I can't make anything up. So most of the time it is experiences like me bicycling home and going into The Great Hall and crashing a wedding," he said. "Every single song has some sort of reference to the neighbourhood or someplace we have travelled."
NQ Arbuckle is scheduled to play The Dakota Tavern June 11 and 12 for their CD release and an NXNE gig before heading off to St. Catharines, Waterloo, the Ottawa Bluesfest, then out West.
"We love playing, so (NXNE) is a fun thing to do," Quinlan said. "There are a bunch of musicians we are going to grab from around town and parts unknown to go and come up and play with us."
