Ford Pier talks vinyl albums and rock shows
By Lindsey Rivait
Arts Editor
March 18, 2009
 Canadian singer-songwriter Ford Pier is a musical jack of all trades. Besides working alongside such names as Neko Case, Carolyn Mark, and Veda Hille, Pier is a theatre actor and chamber music composer.
Pier headed across the country to perform Dave Bidini’s (of Rheostatics fame) “5-Hole: Tales of Hockey Erotica” with Calgary’s One Yellow Rabbit theatre company.
Joining Pier in his Ford Pier Vengeance Trio tour is Bidini and fellow Rhetostatic member Martin Tielli.
New this month from Pier is his full-length album, Adventurism, the second part of his 2007 EP, Organ Farming.
Adventurism was recorded in the winter of 2006-2007, at the same time as Organ Farming.
“The records I had done previously were sort of ambitious, weeping, heavily textured things, which took a lot of care and involved a cast of thousands. The idea behind these records is that I would just go into the studio with my live band and bang them out as quickly as possible, but it didn’t turn out that way,” Pier recalled.
This time around, he played all the instruments on Adventurism except the drums.
“I must have done bad things in my life because for some reason every single record that I’ve ever made takes about a year after it’s done to actually see the light of day. That’s probably just because I’m by nature a very disorganized and irresponsible person,” Pier continued.
Adventurism is available on CD and vinyl. Pier says he plans to release future endeavours on vinyl as well.
“I’ve always wanted to, it just wasn’t a viability before now,” said Pier, who owns somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 vinyl albums.
After a long period where almost no one produced vinyl albums, Pier recognizes the importance of vinyl’s resurgence.
“There’s this resurgent fetishization of vinyl, which I don’t actually believe is so much an audiophile consideration as that it’s a format interesting to young people. A lot of teenagers have grown up thinking CDs are more or less for saps. Why in the world would you pay for it, because digital music is free on the Internet. But, these same kids will pay $25 for a classically minted vinyl copy of Face to Face by The Kinks, which is weird. You could save a whole lot of money by just getting it on CD,” he said.
Being able to interact with the large, physical form of vinyl is another plus for Pier. Additionally, the extra room available for cover art on the vinyl format, as opposed to the small amount of space on CDs, is also an advantage.
“Design never really took advantage of the limitations of a CD’s dimensions and made them positive attributes,” said Pier.
“There were a couple of things with some interesting sleeves and things that would open out into something bigger. I think if you were to view everything the same size, probably types got a little bigger across the board for that period of time and graphics were more minimal. Always exceptions to the trend,” Pier explained.
As for what the future holds for Pier, when he gets home from the tour the Standing Wave Ensemble in Vancouver, B.C. will be performing a piece of chamber music he penned. After that, Pier looks forward to touring and promoting Adventurism as much as possible.
According to Pier, his live show is loud and focuses on the rock more than anything.
“A couple more textured or gentler things have been left aside for the time being. That’s sort of what this band is about, to go out and grab people by the throats and throw them all around,” explained Pier.
Copies of Adventurism will be available at the Ford Pier Vengeance Trio show on Friday, March 20 at Phog Lounge, located at 157 University Ave. W.
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