C'mon's Ian Blurton on 'LARPing' and His 'Hardcore band' With the Sadies -- NXNE

Ian Blurton is one of Canada's greatest unsung rock icons. Since leading Change of Heart in the '90s, Blurton has spent time playing in bands like Blurtonia and Bionic, as well as producing records for a diverse roster of musicians, including the Weakerthans, Amy Millan and the Rheostatics. Since hooking up with C'mon co-leader Katie Lynn Campbell, both musically and romantically (though rumour has it they've recently broken up), Blurton has been making some of the heaviest, most unabashed rock and roll of his career. The heavily-bearded guitar hero took some time off from melting faces to field a few questions from Spinner.

You live in Toronto full-time now, while bassist Katie Lynn Campbell lives in New Orleans. Does that cause any problems for the band?

It's the opposite, actually. We just tour when we tour, we work when we work. We don't do a lot of one-off shows or anything like that. That's kind of nice, because we all have day jobs and stuff. But it differentiates us from a lot of bands, because it means we don't do a lot of hometown shows. I still go down [to New Orleans] maybe once or twice a year, but I used to live there like half the time. Now I'm mostly in Toronto.

Have you been working on anything with C'mon since your last album, 'Beyond the Pale Horse'?

We have a 10-inch that's coming out for this tour. The A-side is a 12-minute long song, which is pretty different for us. It's definitely more psychedelic, and I think there's more of like a Voivod/Thin Lizzy than what we usually do. We'll probably never play the song live. At one point in the song, there's two versions of the band playing with each other, which would be a bit too complicated to try to recreate. We're also doing a two-song flexi ... Do you remember flexis? They're like seven-inches but really thin and flexible, and they used to come in magazines a lot. That'll come out through Saved by Vinyl in Calgary, Alberta. There'll be about 2,000 copies in this month's BeatRoute Magazine.

Is it true you've recorded a song for the upcoming LARPing movie, 'Lloyd the Conqueror'?

Yeah, that's actually one of the songs on the flexi. LARPing stands for Live Action Role Playing, which isn't something any of us really know anything about, so we had to do some research. We actually took all the lyrics from LARPing videos on YouTube It's pretty ridiculous. They wanted a metal-ish kind of song for the movie, so we wrote something kind of 1970s Judas Priest-ish.

Do you also have a new album in the works?

Yeah, we're getting to that point now. We just took forever to finish the 10-inch, but we've started writing some songs. I think it's probably going to be a really simple record, after the last couple of recordings have been a bit more complex. We're trying to get a producer right now, but I don't want to say anything because he hasn't said yes yet.

You've produced albums for bands like The Weakerthans and Amy Millan. Why don't you record C'mon's albums yourself?

Producing and recording require two totally different mindsets. To try to do both at the same time and also be the songwriter and the singer, that's really hard. It's also just not as much fun.

So then do you consider producing your day job?

Yeah, that's what I do for a living, but it's nice to change things up a bit. I wouldn't want to just sit around and record rock bands all day long. I would go crazy. After I finish a really heavy record, it's always awesome to have something really mellow afterwards. I need a change of pace sometimes.

Is that where your solo album, 'Happy Endings,' fits in?

Whenever I produce another band, I usually record a drum track with that sound. And so that whole album is basically built on drum tracks recorded during different sessions. I worked on that for like five or six years, and I just happened to finish it while we were taking a few years off from C'mon. I just re-recorded the album live in the studio with Huron, who acted as my band when I played solo shows. That should be out by late August or September. Everybody in that band plays pretty much full-time as professional musicians, so I doubt we'll tour much.

Watch Ian Blurton Perform With Huron
Do you have a favourite place to play?

We just toured Europe for the first time last year, and it was great. Especially Spain, which was just so awesome. They're really into heavier rock music over there. Like the Stooges and MC5 are absolutely worshiped in Spain, which makes it a totally welcoming environment for us. I mean the very first show that we played, a guy ran out of the audience and gave me a huge kiss on the mouth because he was so happy. They know all about Canadian punk rock, too, which I think is incredible. I went to a bar in Spain for my birthday and they had a Teenage Head mural on the wall.

Is it true you're recording a punk record with Sean Good from the Sadies?

It'll be a seven-inch, actually. That's like a full-on hardcore band with the drummer from Teenanger, Sean and Dean from the Sadies, and Kate Boothman from Sunbear. We've played one show already and we just did all covers, but we wrote some songs for the seven-inch. It's all super punk, so it's going to be really fun to record. We're supposed to do that in the next couple of weeks.