second coming

DAVID USHER'S SECOND COMING AS A SOLO ARTIST

Author: Greg Burliuk
Source: The Kingston Whig-Standard
URL: www.thewhig.com/content.asp?contentid=2840
Date: September 14, 2002

To his friends and colleagues, David Usher is known for many things - his insomnia, practical jokes and single-mindedness.

To Canada’s music industry, he is known for one thing - being on a roll again.

Last year, Usher was the lead singer of Moist, a popular band that hadn’t performed in a year. Then his second solo album Morning Orbit came out. He got a band together and barnstormed the CD.

It worked. The CD has since sold 115,000 copies and is a hit in both Germany and Thailand.

At the recent Juno Awards the CD won for best pop album; and at the MuchMusic Video Awards, Black, Black Heart was named best pop video.

Is he fazed by his solo success?

Not really.

"It’s nice to win the awards since I’m going off into a new area and it’s nice that there’s the recognition," Usher, who is 36, says in an interview. "But the awards themselves, they go straight to my mom’s house. They’re sitting in the rec room of the basement.

"Whenever you put out a record you never try and predict what will happen because you’re so close to the music. But I am surprised that it has sold over 100,000 copies and is still on the charts."

It’s not like Usher is any stranger to success. Moist, for which he is the lead singer, has sold more than one million CDs in Canada, 400,000 copies alone of its first album, Silver, which contained the megahit Push.

Barbara Sedun, vice-president of creative talent at EMI Publishing, first championed Moist and got them signed to a recording deal.

"I saw a hit song, they were amazing on stage and they had toured back and forth across the country with no support," she says.

"I think David was an amazing talent to start with because after all, Push was a pretty big hit. And I think he’s gotten even better as a songwriter."

Larry LeBlanc thinks Usher could become a bigger star if he wants to.

"I think his potential is limitless," says LeBlanc, the Canadian editor of Billboard magazine. "Right now he’s a star with a small ‘s’ rather than a capital one. He’s better known than his songs are.

"It’s now time for him to make a real statement and commit to a real ambitious project with his next album. He’s got to step up to the plate."

Craig Halkett has worked at MuchMusic since 1985 and is a senior music programmer there.

"When this record came out we wondered if [Usher] still was relevant but then it started getting lots of air play in several different formats so we figured we can get behind this. He’s been a staple for us for a long time."

"In terms of Canadian artists, the tiers can change quickly. Right now Sum 41 or Avril Lavigne can do no wrong. David’s not there but he’s continued to be incredibly productive."

Asked why Black, Black Heart was named best pop video of the year at Much, Halkett says, "There was the staggering effect of the images in the video and the closeups of him are quite good. It didn’t look like other videos we had aired and had a rich quality to it. He’s used a lot of the top Canadian video directors in his videos."

For the unscientific, do a search of the name David Usher on the Internet and you get a total of 14,800 hits.

Edmontonian Bryan Lee has an informative Web site on Usher. When asked why he took the trouble to do so Lee replied by e-mail, "He is an amazing artist, particularly live in concert. His songs offer a wide range of emotions that are easy to relate to. I also admire him for trying something new and original with his first release, Little Songs. Not only is it a great album, but it is also nothing like Moist’s albums."

Another big independent step Usher took last year was taking over the reigns of his career. He and his friend Graeme McDonald (former Moist road manager) of Camden East formed Kharma Management company to guide the careers of Usher, Kingston performer Chris Koster, and several mixers and producers in Toronto.

"I think it’s been empowering for him to have the control over his own career," says Billboard’s LeBlanc. "Now he doesn’t have to share his vision and that’s a much more positive step for a performer."

"Before it was a five-man democracy and now the band jokes it’s a benevolent dictatorship," McDonald says. "But the decision-making is much quicker and easier. You don’t have to make any more transcontinental calls to decide what colour the T-shirts should be."

Usher says the band he has put together, which includes Moist compadres Jeff Pearce and Kevin Young, has played nearly 140 gigs in the last year.

"The audience has been from 100,000 people on Canada Day to 300 in a bar," he says.

Young has known Usher since they were teenagers in Kingston. They didn’t go to the same high school (Young went to Loyalist Collegiate while Usher was at Rock and Roll High, also known as Kingston Collegiate, which spawned The Tragically Hip, the Mahones, and Hugh Dillon of Headstones) but they did hang out with the same group of friends.

The two met up again in Vancouver and played in a couple of bands out there before teaming up with Pearce, Mark Makoway and Paul Wilcox to form Moist in 1993.

"David has very specific ideas about what he wants to achieve and he goes for it," Young says.

"He can be fluid and accept change very easily within the writing and recording process but he’s always focused on the goal. He does what he has to do to get the job done."

The keyboardist says there’s a rare condition in this group. "You couldn’t get a nicer more congenial group of people on the road. Even the crew loves touring with us. There’s not an asshole in the bunch and usually there always is. Some of us have never been happier."

Being one of Usher’s oldest friends has its drawbacks, however.

"David’s a great practical joker and I’m often the butt of his jokes," Young says. "He has style. Some of them have been very elaborate."

The real litmus test for capital-S stardom is how well a performer does in the United States."

"The States for us on this record is a non-issue," McDonald says. "We approached different lawyers and record company people down there and there was interest but it’s absolutely crucial that you have a champion like Avril did. We didn’t find that person so America wasn’t in the cards. We spent a number of years kicking the can down there with Moist so we know what it is to struggle uphill."

Overseas is another matter, however. Immediately after performing at A Joe Show tonight, Usher travels to Germany to play in a festival there. He performed earlier this year in Thailand.

His wife Sabrina, who is a interdisciplinary artist, shot video footage while they were there that became the basis for Usher’s latest video, My Way Out.

Asked if he is rock and roll’s answer to Tiger Woods (they both have Thai mothers), Usher laughs and says, "He’s the king and I’m somewhere down the rung. I always go to Thailand once or twice a year. There is a very warm feeling for me over there. We had an amazing time this past time and I loved introducing the band to my relatives.

"I speak a little Thai and I get braver at it as the whiskey gets deeper."

Usher’s mother Samphan is a long-time local painter and his father Dan is a professor of economics at Queen’s University and author of several books on the subject.

"My mother’s proximity to the arts and the fact that she’s an artist has definitely affected my brain," Usher says.

There isn’t an interview Usher does that he isn’t asked about the fate of Moist. Is the band quits or not?

"We’re still together but we’re just not making records," he says. "We talk together almost every day.

"I don’t know when we’ll get back together. But I do know my next record will be a solo one. I have some songs that I really want to record."

Usher won’t have any trouble finding time to brainstorm the next album because he is a near-insomniac. (He called his CD Morning Orbit because most of the songs were composed at 4 a.m.)

"That’s how we became friends originally because we tended to keep the same lousy hours," McDonald says.

"If he’s lucky he’ll get a couple of hours sleep and then he’s up with the sun. He’s surrounded by a lot of people most of the day and evening so late at night is the only time he has to himself."

The singer visits Kingston every few months but hasn’t lived here since he was 16. He attended Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and then lived in Montreal.

He says now that he’s not settled in one place.

"We’re on tour a lot and I go back and forth between Montreal, New York and Toronto," he says.

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