clubbing it

DAVID USHER PLAYS CLUBS AT HOME AND ABROAD

Author: Elizabeth Chorney-Booth
Source: Chart Magazine
URL: http://www.chartattack.com/damn/2002/03/1904.cfm
Date: March 19, 2002

Complaining about how our national rock royalty gets zero respect outside of Canada has nearly become a national pastime - the phrase "The Hip (or alternately The Rheostatics or Matthew Good) just can’t seem to break into the States" is uttered in this country as often as "I’ll have a medium coffee, double double and a dozen timbits." We love to assume that our own artists (minus the obvious Nelly Furtados and Nickelbacks out there) couldn’t get arrested outside of Canada, but those myths aren’t always rooted in truth. For example, how many of you out there know that Canadian hero David Usher not only tours outside of Canada, but also has a Top 20 hit in Germany? Well, he does.

According to his official bio, Usher has also achieved gold status in Thailand. Thailand! While Usher himself is excited by the prospect of international success, he downplays reports of his supposed world-wide stardom.

"I’m always cautious about all these reports about how well things are doing here and there," Usher says on the phone from a tour stop in Quebec City. "You often hear that bands are doing well somewhere and then you get to the country and go ‘ever heard of this band?’ and they’ll go ‘uh, no.’ It happens all the time - believe me. What’s reported here and what really goes on - there’s a lot of discrepancy.

"I’m not selling all sorts of records in Germany, but the song is doing really well and the single is doing well," Usher continues. "So I’m going there to play shows. But at the same time, we’re in the Top 20, which is really hard to do."

Usher recently returned from a tour of Europe, next month he will set off to Asia and as of late he’s been busying himself by filling interview requests for publications in Russia and Poland. While Usher is quick to clarify that he’s hardly a star overseas, he is proud of the fact that at least some people seem to be interested in what he’s doing. But he’s also more than happy to keep the fires burning here at home - he’s currently on the tail end of a Canadian tour that will wrap up on March 29 in Montreal after hitting Toronto’s Lee’s Palace for four consecutive nights (March 21-24). The singer says that he purposely chose the smaller venue to mix things up a little bit for his fans.

"On the first tour we did in the fall [for Usher’s second solo album, Morning Orbit] we were playing a lot of clubs plus a lot of bigger places - up to 3,000 seats, basically, across the country - and it felt really good playing right with people," Usher says. "And the options were to play at the Kool Haus or to do something different. And I just felt that it might be interesting to do something different. I guess we played the Phoenix last time and the Kool Haus is the natural next step up. But I just wanted to try something different and give people a different perspective."

A different perspective seems to be the name of the game for Usher these days. With his cracker-jack band, Usher’s not literally a "solo" act, but the Moist lead singer is certainly enjoying the freedom and control that comes with billing himself under his own name. While he sticks to the "hiatus" word when speaking about Moist’s current status, Usher also makes it very clear that he sees his solo work as much more than a diversion to keep him busy during Moist’s downtime. The band have no immediate plans to jump back into action and Usher is perfectly happy to continue on as he has been.

"With a band there are much more people to answer to and there’s a lot more discussion that goes on than in a solo career," Usher says. "The other thing too is musically I can pretty much follow my instincts without a lot of consultation. There’s still a lot of collaboration that can happen with a solo record because I’m working with a lot of people all the time. And that’s the point as well - you always want to be collaborating, but at the same time, at the end of the day you get to determine which way things go."

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