Sara Quin Joins Rapper Theophilus London on Letterman, Preps Tegan and Sara Doc

Posted on Feb 14th 2011 1:30PM by Jason MacNeil
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Although she's done it before as part of Tegan and Sara, singer-guitarist Sara Quin might be a bit edgy tonight performing the song 'Why Even Try' with hip-hop artist Theophilus London on 'Late Show with David Letterman.'

"I'm so terrified," Quin tells Spinner. "I really want to do my best on the show with him. I probably need to be somewhat rhythmic, I'm not going to be playing guitar, which is what I usually do, but I will be doing something rhythmically. I don't know if anyone will call it dancing, but I will be doing something rhythmic."

The collaboration, which appears on London's newly released 'Lovers Holiday' EP, was rather straightforward, with London sending Quin some tracks to see if any piqued her interest. 'Why Even Try' seemed to hit a nerve with her more than the others.

"There was something about it right from the beginning," she says. "I just felt it was really classic and something that I would hear and really like and want to listen to. I was hoping I would maybe get to sing on it, and that I wouldn't ruin it with any of my ideas.

"A lot of the stuff we get asked to do, and even in our own band, I feel we're often melancholic and [doing] sort of downtempo type things. As soon as I heard 'Why Even Try' I felt like it was happy. There's certainly some strife in the song, but the song itself and the mood of the song really feels upbeat."

Listen to Theophilus London's 'Why Even Try' featuring Sara Quin
Tegan and Sara -- as a unit and individually -- have collaborated with Tiesto, Margaret Cho and Against Me! in recent years, but 'Why Even Try' marks the first foray into hip-hop. The pair also collaborated on two songs -- 'Body Work' and 'Video' -- for the upcoming album by dance artist/remixer Morgan Page.

"I feel like it's a great period of our career where we don't just have to work on Tegan and Sara," Quin says. "It's a great writing exercise and super inspiring to work with other artists, especially artists in different genres because everybody has a different approach to writing music and making music. It's a really great exercise for me and Tegan to sharpen our songwriting skills."

On their own front, Tegan and Sara are in the very early stages of writing their next studio album. A few concerts at summer festivals or one-off shows are possibly in the cards but their energy is aimed at their seventh studio effort.

Just as soon as they complete work on a live album/DVD package that is, a project which Quin expects to be released this summer.

"We're currently putting the finishing touches on the DVD portion and the video part," she says. "The audio part has been mixed and ready to go, and as soon as the video part is done we should be able to come up with a release date."

The live album is from a Vancouver performance Quin describes as "stripped-down, not acoustic" which will also be included on the DVD. The DVD portion will contain three different, roughly hour-long aspects: the live concert, video recorded during the band's tour of India last year and footage shot during their North American tour last summer with Paramore.

"We're trying to keep it lean," Quin says. "We don't want to be too self-indulgent. I think we had a vision of what we were looking for and it's been quite a bump-free project. We're still waiting for edits and these deadlines are self-imposed because this project is a labor of love and we're taking our time with it. Hopefully, it will tide people over while we're writing our new record."