This is a continuation of a post I started last week. For the first part of the story click here.

The four of us sat at Sadie’s Diner perusing the menu. Luther was across from me in our corner booth, his small notebook laden with hastily written questions, while Canning and Dagg sat at a table to my right. They were eager to order some lunch.

Seemingly arranged by the magnitude of our respective facial hair, we were a veritable gradient of beardly stages. Luther started things off with a light stubble, after which the counter-clockwise circle hit my few days of growth before passing to Dagg, whose well-groomed barb was slightly more pronounced. Of course, all hairy roads led to Canning on this day, as he blew us all out of the water.

Inquiring about the omelet of the day, Canning passed quickly when he found out it was pizza themed, visibly put-off by the idea. I however, in my usually rash ordering technique, took a chance on the dish, much to Luther’s jeers and amusement.  Muttering something about feeling tired,  I also asked for a coffee.  Canning joked that the brew at Sadie’s Diner would likely do anything but keep me awake.

Dressed casually in a light coloured t-shirt and jeans, Canning was soft-spoken, but polite and relaxed—not to mention hungry.  Luther didn’t eat anything (he rarely does). Instead he placed his Zoom H2 recorder on Canning’s table and got things rolling.

There was an odd air of professional distance that poked in every now and then, but Luther and I did our best to quell that by trying to keep things light.  On occasion it was very obvious that we had asked a question Canning didn’t care to answer—Luther specifically wanted to know if any egos had gotten out of control since the rise of Broken Social Scene, which Canning was understandably hard-pressed to answer candidly.  In fact, if you were looking for soundbites this would not have been the interview for you, as, between two amateurs leveling him with questions he’s likely heard a thousand times and Canning himself being rather quiet and soft-spoken, it was far from a high-energy affair.  Of course, I was tired and Canning was right about the coffee, so low-key suited me just fine.

Not surprisingly the interview was most amicable when it was off-topic—more conversation than interrogation.  For instance, there was some lighthearted banter about well-off Torontonians buying land outside the city (something that frequent BSS producer, Dave Newfeld, has recently done). Though the most laughter undoubtedly came when discussing side-projects, as Canning likened Broken Social Scene to the St. Elmo’s Fire of Canadian indie rock (spurring the likes of Apostle of Hustle, Feist, Stars, Metric and Jason Collett among others). This even led to Luther and Canning trading falsettos in attempts to dicern who sang the theme song from the film (Luther was convinced it was Michael McDonald, but Canning was right to doubt him, as a little googling will tell you that it was actually John Parr).

Overall I did my best just to keep the conversation going.  Granted I didn’t have much of a choice considering that my pizza omelet seemed to take ages to prepare. It didn’t arrive until Canning and Dagg were finishing their meals.  Unfortunately, in my haste I had neglected to notice that it was made with mushrooms. This realization left me less than pleased, though it only provided more fodder for Luther’s enjoyment.  Too hungry to be picky, I dove in full fork and did my best to ignore the creepy fungi.

Finished their meals and eager to keep on keeping on, Canning and Dagg bid us farewell. I put down my fork and once again did my best to stand and shake their hands. The table got the best of me for the second time, however, resulting in the same awkward crouch as during our introductions.

Luther and I chalked this one up to inexperience, hopped on our bikes and made our way back to the East-End.  He now had to turn the contents of the little audio recorder into 3000 words for Canadian Musician (look for that on the cover of next month’s edition) and I had work of my own to get back to.

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Broken Social Scene - Stars and Sons

Hear more at Canning’s Myspace page or grab a digital copy of Something for All of Us here.