Tegan and Sara Show 'True Colors,' Working on New Album

Posted on May 12th 2008 2:00PM by Denise Sheppard
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Sara Quin -- one-half of the musical sister duo Tegan and Sara -- admits that she is both excited and nervous about their upcoming string of concert dates, a back-and-forth shuffle between their own headlining shows and stops on the Cyndi Lauper-led True Colors human rights concert tour. "Pretty much for the last three years, all we've done has been playing to our own crowds," she tells Spinner. "That is easy. In a weird way, you become weakened. You come out on stage and everyone loves you, you barely have to do anything. Even though I know the True Colors crowd is going to be amazing, I'm terrified because we haven't done any support stuff in so long. To support the tour and what it represents, though, you can't go wrong."

The band wanted to participate in last year's string of concert dates -- a series designed to raise awareness about discrimination against the gay, lesbian, bi and transgender communities -- but were in the studio recording their latest CD, 'The Con.' Quin admits that she followed the action on tour religiously. "I felt jealous," she jokes, "because I saw [Gossip frontwoman] Beth Ditto hanging out with Rosie and Cyndi Lauper and I wanted that love, I wanted the sunshine on me." Tegan and Sara have made plans to shake their set up significantly for the human rights tour. "We're gonna strip it all down and do pretty much alternative versions of everything. It could end up being really cool or a disaster. I want to give this crowd a different look at us -- to have people hear the songs in a different way."

When their touring dates are finished, Sara jokes that their summer will contain "beverages and bikinis," but in truth, they will be hard at work on other projects. "Tegan and I are both writing furiously for the next record," she says. "I have always felt like I was squeezing songs out of me slowly, but lately I've been writing a lot. We recently played a show with Death Cab For Cutie, where we talked with [guitarist/producer] Chris Walla who worked on our last record. We're pretty much signed up to work on our next record with him again."

Additionally, the Quin sisters have plans to record and release their third DVD this summer, which Sara admits to being extremely enthusiastic about. "Instead of shooting a live concert, we'll do something lo-fi and kinda punk rock -- doing stripped-down versions of the songs -- in an environment with lots of questions and answers, probably at the end of June in a secret Canadian city," she says. "We're hoping that we can release it along with an audio CD of all 'The Con' demo versions that Tegan and I recorded by ourselves. It'll be very directed at fans but hopefully very cool."

The pair also plan on continuing to donate their time and energy to causes they believe in, including PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) for whom the band have appeared in a series of print and video ads in the past. According to Sara, however, her oft-mischievous identical twin sister nearly caused some ruffled feathers with the vegan animal rights group. "Tegan is such a bitch," Sara jokes. "She really likes to get people going. The PETA people came to our show recently and she told them that I have fur jackets. Then they were like, 'We really like Tegan, but we heard you've got fur,' which I don't. We torture everyone equally."