Metric plays The Fillmore Silver Spring on Sunday.
By DCist contributor Christina Smart
Most touring musicians don’t spend their downtime strolling down Route 66. But when I caught up with James Shaw, founder and lead guitarist of Canadian indie rock band Metric, he was doing just that.
“I’m in Albuquerque, New Mexico and I’m actually walking down the old Route 66 in search of a record store. I think I’m basically wandering at this point‐on a recommendation from Google and nothing else. I seemed to have wandered into some rogue motel-type neighborhood. I might end up being an extra on Breaking Bad Returns.”
Walter White locale aside, Shaw took a few minutes to discuss Metric’s current tour, supporting their 2015 release Pagans In Vegas.
“ I think it might be my favorite tour we’ve ever done,” Shaw said. “We’ve just got a lot of good responses and the band is in a really good space and we’re just having a really good time. We’re playing a show that’s really enjoyable plus the shows are selling out. It’s a good time to be in Metric.”
With a 15+ year career behind them, which included sets at Coachella in 2013 and touring with artists including The Rolling Stones, Muse, and Imagine Dragons as their opening act, fans needn’t worry about Metric rehashing any set lists or just playing their singles.
Said Shaw, “This show that we’re doing right now is a long show—almost two hours—and we’re playing everything that we’ve ever done. It’s all in there. It feels very much like this is the history of the whole band.”
And if you’re a Metric fan that’s also concerned about climate change, you’ll be happy to hear that $1 from each ticket sale from this North American tour benefits 350.org.
The decision was an easy one for Shaw. “From our point of view, it’s such an easy thing to do. Becoming more aware is being coupled with the situation getting more dire. The necessity for awareness is rising. It’s something that people need to be paying attention to.”
Releasing their music independently, Metric has done the practically unthinkable in the music industry: lasting more than fifteen years. “It’s like dog years. Fifteen years in the music industry is like sixty-five years in some other world,” Shaw said, laughing.
Whether or not Metric would still be around if they had signed to a major label, is anyone’s guess. “With being on a major label, there’s so much risk involved and your destiny is so much wrapped up in the fate of other people’s ideas and thoughts and wishes for their lives and their careers and their money and their stockholders and all of those things,” said Shaw. “That way of being a musician where you’re essentially beholden to someone else’s vision of what your career is supposed to be is so risky.”
Not that they couldn’t be cheeky when they were dropped from their development deal with Warner Brothers early on in their career. Shaw recalled, “Emily [Haines, lead singer] called the A&R guy’s voicemail and sang “Don’t You Want Me Baby” which is just the raddest thing ever. No talking, no hello. Just (starts singing) ‘I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar…’ I think for Emily and I we realized a long time ago that we don’t make good employees.”
Metric is playing The Fillmore Silver Spring on Sunday, March 13th at 8 PM, with special
guest Joywave. Tickets $31.
