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CIAMM proudly presents our interview with Canadian musician, actor, multi-media artist, and all-encompassing legend, Robert Dayton. For years, Robert’s renegade spirit has powered the stages of Canada’s halls with a unique quality that cannot be pinned to one genre. Perhaps best known as one half of  beloved Vancouver duo Canned Hamm, or Hallmark‘s main man, Dayton also engages audiences with his incredible brand of thought-provoking comedy. Endlessly energetic, Robert also stands out as a character actor, enlivening scenes with his inimitable style. Look for his terrific performance in 2009′s Leslie, My Name is Evil , for an example. 

Enjoy, as CIAMM looks at the many sides of a gem, as we pepper him with questions about his varied music and acting career, including his work on Chilly Gonzales’ film Ivory Tower, his performance as part of FEELINGS, and the exciting YouTube project that has evolved from it. As of late, Robert  jumps between Toronto, Vancouver, and Los Angeles; as the work, and his muse take him ever further.

The following Email will hopefully provide, you, the reader, a bit of background as to how this interview came to be, as I had met our subject on YouTube, who was minding his own business, and innocently commenting on a Gong Show video. Shameless CIAMM journalist that I am, I corralled him forthwith to undertake the article you are now reading.

From: zoot aloors
To: Robert Dayton
Sent: Mon, October 4, 2010 6:09:05 PM
Subject: Robert, Hello!

I will never underestimate the power of Pee-Wee!

Robert, what can I say? Thank you, man! FYI, we have indeed spoken before, I complimented your comedy, I said the quality of your comedy reminded me of George Carlin’s cerebral style. But you must hear stuff like that constantly, especially on YouTube!

As far my background goes, I’m in Port Colborne, ON, on Lake Erie. My kids are 20 and 23, doing their own thing, so I kinda started writing about Canadian music a few months ago, I met a cool British guy who admins the CIAMM site, and I feed him content.

Some good stuff is in the pipeline too, interviews with Darryl Neudorf, music director Josh Levy, etc., as well as pieces I put together for my own amusement, a bio on The Monks (Drugs In My Pocket), and Goddo! I guess I’m a cut-rate Nardwuar. He’s a definite inspiration!

I’m loving Hallmark. as I type this, I’m listening to Gratitude, Lamb In Spring(Tenderloin), and You Are My Beacon, via CBC Radio 3, and I must say,musically, it’s a knockout! It’s a fair departure from the whimsical style I was expecting. Whoa… You Are My Beacon, so soulful!

Anyways, take your sweet old time, there’s no rush whatsoever, but please let me know when the Hallmark In LA video is available to the public, I’m pretty stoked to watch!

zoot aloors

Robert Dayton: HI ZOOT! Did we speak in person? I kinda remember that comment. And, trust me, compliments are appreciated: sometimes I feel like I am shouting in the dark and with solo stand up I feel like I am belly flopping much of the time!

So glad you like Hallmark!  Trying to find a label for Hallmark, wish us luck!! Darryl Neudorf!? Love that guy! yeah! He produced Bastardsong by SuperConductor, my fave Canadian album of the 90s. I am fascinated that the Drugs In my Pocket Monks are now the forgotten Monks when it used to be the other way around!

Nardwuar is a supportive sweetheart!

CIAMM: That SuperConductor album is my Valhalla. I kid you not. One day, my friend, I will lay my hands on a copy!

Robert Dayton: Plenty on Ebay! It’s not expensive and not too rare! It’s worth it, unless you’re in Vancouver and can buy it at Scratch Records. CD or LP…take your pick!

CIAMM: No Robert, I haven’t had the pleasure to meet you in person, I’m just a random YouTube friend. The Blog interview style is just something I’m doing for fun. I’m usually working on something or other, or researching the scene at CBC Radio 3 Artist Database. My wife and I also go to concerts andwhatnot…hey! – Who’s interviewing who? lol

This music journalism jazz is tricky!

Robert Dayton: Music journalism, yeah, I been on both sides so often I forget where I’m at!  I conduct interviews, too, here’s my latest by my fave current musical artist.

CIAMM: There is marked progression of style with Hallmark’s unique musical approach, to what do you attribute the change?

Robert Dayton: With the band Hallmark, Jessica plays keys melodically, while Scott adds guitar in a more soundscaped manner: a real reverse of the usual dynamics that happen in bandswith synths and guitars.  Different people means different dynamics. I was most certainly trying to bring a glittery romantic rock intensity to the project, late night confessionals, cracked mirrors.

CIAMM: I’m your typical New Pornographers/Destroyer devotee. Do you have any happy memories during the recording of Karazma!: Reimagined?

Robert Dayton: Karazma!: Reimagined was a self-initiated tribute to Canned Hamm’s first album Karazma! We just let the acts go, we let them record the tracks and have fun with them. And fun they did have!  Yeah, I have a very personal affinity for some Destroyer songs such as Trembling Peacock. Hopefully someone will put that Points Gray album out on vinyl someday, it’s a peculiar album and I am proud of the work that Dan, Julian, and I did on it(I won’t release it as DIY has sucked me dry). It’s got that damaged vibe, a trio of loners.

What I love is that all these great artists’ interpretations of Canned Hamm songs veered madly all over the musical map yet still made a very cohesive and listenable whole. The Destroyer track was originally an instrumental and I think Dan didn’t even so much as play a lick, I know Steve and Scott and others-eeps, names escape me-played on it in real time (listening to the original Canned Hamm version in real time on head phones). We told Dan that there already was an instrumental or two on the album (Boyfriend -which features members of Lesbians On Ecstacy and Heavy Filth-covered ‘Shortnin Bread’ as an instumental),  Canned Hamm just ripped off of the Beach Boys’ version  anyways, Love You-era Beach Boys seriously inspired us at the time).

So we asked Dan Bejar to cut a vocal with Mark Szabo, a seriously under-rated talent who is a big unspoken influence on Vancouver music, his Capozzi Park album is a must listen! I think the New Pornographers track was done during sessions for their 3rd album and it even boasts duet vocals with legendary artist and gentleman Rodney Graham!

CIAMM: Is Irony dead in Popular Music?

Robert Dayton: Irony is but one tool from the toolbox. I would often use homor in some of my musical work, which often gets blanketed over and misconstrued with the term ‘irony’ (tho I do use that tool occasionally as well). I actually find that a lot of  musical comedy uses some sort of ironic distance and I’m not sure how healthy that is, it’s not something that I am really into. But how healthy is my lyrical approach of often really getting my hands emotionally dirty by working through pain? I do need to clarify that not all of my work is ‘funny’ per se. Canned Hamm certainly is, and July Fourth Toilet goes to that well often, but with any other musical projects, if it ever veers funny, it’s deeply covert with poker-faced darkness and other fluid agendas overshadowing.

 CIAMM Quote- “Something tells me that maybe something is going to happen with the kind of giant musical ensembles that were responsible for Hair. You’ve got the Polyphonic Spree, the Arcade Fire, and the Hidden Cameras. They all have this big-ensemble feel. The leader of this multimembered, costumed concept movement will be Vancouver’s July Fourth Toilet.” Nardwuar The Human Serviette, on the topic of July Fourth Toilet

CIAMM: Both of your previous bands, July Fourth Toilet, and Canned Hamm have relied on electronic equipment that would befuddle Giorgio Moroder himself. Who creates your amazing soundscapes? Is it a team effort?

Robert Dayton: I am not a technically trained musician on any instrument other than my voice. I often write lyrics with a  rudimentary vocal melody in mind. With Canned Hamm, Big Hamm created all that music himself! “Erotic Thriller” definitely has a Moroder and dance-pop influence, I wish more people could get a chance to hear it, it’s a dense layered dance-pop album that frequently winds up in the comedy section ghetto. Deejays: please rescue, please remix.

When it comes to electronics in July Fourth Toilet (which I feel hasn’t ended, just taking a break due to logistics), all manners of people in the band have an interest in using them in an organic sense whether it’s jody, Mark Gabriel, Josh Stevenson, etcetera. It often depends on the show/recording and mandate of ‘No Two Shows The Same’ and such a strangely fluid, large, fluctuating line-up. For Side One of our Balls Boogie LP,  Mark added G-Funk style keys to the hard driving biker boogie.
July Fourth Toilet is a real multitude of people, Julian and I formed the band in 1994 with a mandate of no two shows the same. For our second album we brought my brother Frank, a hard rock veteran, in on guitar and that made the project that much more personal and meaningful. Side Two of the album had different combinations of people in the band creating short cosmic pieces, it is available for order at Art Metropole‘s web site. I was in a particularly messy boozy place with that record and it intentionally shows, at times it’s like running while repeatedly tripping over one’s own boastful cape.

CIAMM: Why do I listen to your Sincerely Christmas CD all year long?

Robert Dayton: I am so glad you enjoy Sincerely Christmas!

CIAMM: Oh I do! Especially Rum and Egg Nog!

Watch-

Thanks, cannedhamm!

CIAMM: I spotted your work in Chilly Gonzales new video/movie. Director Adam Traynor cast you and Leslie Feist as TV color commentators during the climactic chess match. Amazing! How did that role come about? How did you put your own spin on playing the part?

Watch-

Thanks,

PIASENTERTAINMENT!

Robert Dayton: I actually haven’t seen the Gonzales movie yet. I hope to one day, I was in LA doing shows with Hallmark and doing stand up and showing art for LAVA when it played in Toronto. At least I can use that to boast here that I was doing that as opposed to “I was stuck in bed.”   Hopefully it will play again. I did the movie more as a musician/pal tho I wasn’t doing any music (unless ya call my talkin’ riffin’ as being musical) and I’d never met Gonzales, but an interconnected gang that I’d known over the years was involved: The World Provider, Lynn fromLesbians on Ecstacy, Peaches, even Corpusse was on the shoot for a day.

It was my first time meeting Leslie Feist and we played chess commentator co-horts, it was a real treat meeting her and I ran to the library to take out her albums right after, wow, those albums hit my heart, man!

So, yeah, producer Fraser Robinson stopped me on the rainy streets one depressing day(month? year?) and told me he wanted me for the role. That brightened things up! Got some lines to flow, some context, but they let me do alot -A LOT- of improvising and I’ve been told they kept a lot of it in, they also let Leslie and I fiddle faddle with our characters’ relationships with each other. I really love doing stuff like that where I can get the creative juices flowing, improvise.

CIAMM: You were at The Ossington, in Toronto recently, performing a midnight recitation, as part of “FEELINGS“. Where does the show go next?

Robert Dayton: I did do “FEELINGS” at The Ossington for a while, took it to Montreal to limited ’boutique’ acclaim, as well, unsure where it will go next. A couple venues have approached me so it definitely will return, stay tuned.

My new YouTube show “The Canadian Romantic” naturally came out of the Midnite Candlelight recitations that happened so his name will be on the posters from now on. I performed that character at The Ding-a-Ling Tuesdays in LA and noticed that Don Bolles was deejaying some similar stuff that I deejay for FEELINGS!

Well, we’ve traded records over the years, and he’s turned me on to some great stuff (as has my man Kevin Howes that I started those events with). But the kinda stuff that is deejayed isn’t deejayed very often, certainly not in Toronto, so having it happen again would be a good thing. It’s not weekend rager music, it’s more introspective which is perfect for a setting where one may want to talk and reflect.

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CIAMM: You trade records with Don Bolles, of the seminal L.A. punkers, The Germs? That’s amazing! Have you two ever had the opportunity to write music together?

Robert Dayton: If Don would ask me to collaborate I would in a second. His new act Fancy Space People is on the glitter tip replete with Zolar X wigs so it makes sense. Hallmark seems to be happening in LA and he has booked us, he said we were like Jobriath if Jobriath didn’t suck: semi-ouch!

CIAMM: I see that you are casting a line for musicians in Toronto. What do you have in mind?

Robert Dayton: Sooo tough to find musicians here! Need a home-base band! Tobey and I really love playing together in Wet Dirt. However Robin’s in Berlin, Simon’s focusing on his visual art and we have an album in the can. It’s a very primal and pungent four piece rock band and we need a bassist with style and substance to tour and make new songs: bass keyboards are fine as well. Please contact me.

Do I have to list influences and be pinned down? Slade, Edgar Broughton, mid-period Butthole Surfers, Simply Saucer, lots more, I dunno…we may have a guitarist, we just haven’t played with her yet, she’s neat and she gets it so that’s most of the battle right there.