Date: 2003 Author: Publication: radiotakeover.com Headline:

RTO - Hey Sara, thanks so much for giving me a call today. how are you doing today? Sara - Yeah, no problem. I'm doing fine thank you, how are you doing? RTO - I'm doing well thanks. I guess to start off I'll just have you introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about what you do. Sara - My name is Sara and I'm in the band Tegan and Sara and I play and I sing. RTO - Alright. now, you guys are coming back from a pretty busy summer - you were out in Europe at the start, then in western Canada. browsing over your site I noticed there's a picture of you and Tegan with a koala bear. did you have a cool experience in Australia? Sara - Yeah. Actually, while we were there we didn't really have anything to do - like we played our couple of shows, but other than that there wasn't much planned for us. We had sort of always wanted to do that and one afternoon this guy that was managing our tour there was like, "I'll take you guys wherever you want to go. I'll take you to a koala sanctuary!" So we all got to go and hang out with some koala bears. RTO - That's a pretty sweet deal. Sara - Yeah, it was awesome. RTO - - You guys are just going to start crossing Canada again and tomorrow night you'll be in Hamilton celebrating Halloween. What do you guys have planned for that? Sara - Well I told everybody that Tegan and I should dress like Chris (Carlson, bassist) and Rob (Chursinoff, drummer) and that they should dress like us. I thought that they might not get really into it, but I guess Tegan said that they really were. But, I thought they wouldn't get into it, so I bought a giant furry mouse costume from the Salvation Army, so I haven't decided which one I'm going to wear. but I am going to wear a costume. It'll either be Rob or a mouse. RTO - Alright, good stuff. Speaking of special occaisions, you and Tegan celebrated your birthdays at the end of September. What did you do to celebrate? Sara - Tegan went home to Calgary - where we're from - to hang out and spend time with friends and family and have a nice supper there. I've been living in Montreal for the past year and i didn't make the flight back home to Calgary, so I just stayed in Montreal and hung out and went out of town a bit and did some apple picking. RTO - Apple picking? Nice! Sara - Yeah! And then I had an apple dumpling party and had friends over and we drank. good fun. RTO - good stuff. you guys right now are out supporting If It Was You, the newest record. Do you think a Tegan and Sara concert is the coolest place you can buy a quality trucker hat and girls underwear at the same venue? Sara - (Laughs). I don't know. I never thought we were cool. but we have clothing. If you need somewhere to go and you need clothing, then we have some and you can come to our shows and get some. We recently hired someone to design new merchandise for us, and it's been interesting because we love the merchandise and it has sold better than any of our old merchandise. We were looking back on like how much stuff we sold at a show at certain places last year and then this year and there's a big difference. Obviously there are more things than just that to consider, but we're still really happy. RTO - You guys appeal to a lot of musical genres and you come from an interesting musical background in terms of your tastes. What kinds of kids do you see coming out to the shows these days? Sara - You know, we've always had a pretty large demographic of girls and I think there are a few reasons why that is. but we've always had like, moms and teenage girls and younger girls or whatever - we always get lots of girls. I won't say we get teased for it, but people are always like, "Oh, the crowd's 4 to 1 tonight!" (Laughs). So we do get a lot of girls, but it seems as our audience grows, so does the type of people we get out to the shows. so, we get a fairly mixed audience, but nobody ever seems like it's weird or anything. I'm glad that lots of different people want to come and see us. I think we're at the point in our careers where we've decided that this is what we're going to do, and we've changed a lot and we want to make something out of this. So to see all of these different people out is really nice. RTO - Rumour has it that you guys are demoing and rehearsing to go back to the studio in March or April. Any truth to that? Sara - There is! Right now we've started laying down some demos with John (Collins) and Dave (Carswell, producers) from our last record and things are sounding pretty good. we're looking at getting down to planning it in February and then hopefully in March or April we'll be able to get in there to record. it's exciting and we're happy with the music we're making and we're happy that it's all we're doing. RTO - Are you testing out any new stuff on the road right now? Sara - We do have a couple of new songs in the set list - a couple of songs we've actually been playing for this last year of touring and stuff like that. We're trying to keep playing the material, and it's already out on the internet and stuff like that, but we're curbing our enthusiasm a little bit about putting them in the set list because we want something to be sort of new and special when the new record finally comes out in a year. But yeah, there's definitely some new stuff on the set list and for this tour we're rehearsing with Matt Sharp and Tegan and I are going to come out and play with him a little bit during his set and then he's going to come out and sing and dance. It's going to be fun. RTO - Nice. Back in the day you guys went by Sara and Tegan not Tegan and Sara. Why the change? Sara - Well, we had a little bit of a coup. (Laughs.) You know, at that point we were really just sort of flying by the seat of our pants and we thought that Tegan and Sara - it didn't necessarily flow better - we thought that it was stronger. It stood out. there are so many Sara's in music and so we decided when we did Under Feet Like Ours, our independent record, that we'd go with that and we printed an extra couple hundred copies. So we thought, "Hey, on this couple hundred CDs let's put Tegan and Sara instead." RTO - And now those other ones are very valuable collector's items somewhere. Sara - They are. I think my step dad has like 5000 of them. He's always like, "I have the original Sara and Tegan album!" I'm just sort of like, "Calm down." But he's probably on the internet right now selling them. RTO - There used to be a story on your guys' site that I thought was particularly cool. it involved the band being at a casino, a hotel door getting broken, something about a swimming pool and you almost breaking your neck. How about you tell the whole story. Sara - (Laughs.) Ah…there's not much to tell - it's actually pretty funny because it was about a year ago now. One of the first shows we did for this tour was in Halifax. We just decided after that we would have a good time and go out for a few drinks and three hours later we were at a casino. We had had a lot to drink. I generally drink wine or beer - I don't drink that much. anyway, that night we had quite a bit and I had Zambooka. so we were trying to get into the hotel pool and it was late and we couldn't. We had just started working with our tour manager and we tried to break into his room and broke the door. We busted into his room and started jumping on the bed and Rob flipped me over and I hit the floor on the other side of the bed and I just sort of laid there. our tour manager was freaking out, yelling, "Oh no! You're gonna break her back!" He was really, really upset that they had almost hurt me. So then we were grounded for the rest of the tour. RTO - Oh…well there you go. That's an awesome story though. What's the best record you've heard lately? Sara - Wow, I really like this question because I'm a major music buff, like I just love records and music. umm…you know, this is going to sound like I'm so behind because it's old, but I haven't been able to take the Fischerspooner record out of my CD player since I got it. it's just really good and I really, really like it. RTO - Is there any good reason to go to Calgary in the wintertime? Sara - Yes! Oh my god, yeah - the Chinook! RTO - The Chinook? explain what the Chinook's all about. Sara - Ok, the Chinook - oh, it's so good - is the warm air front that moves into Calgary between the mountains in the middle of winter and makes everything nice and warm. It feels so good. it's definitely something to check out. RTO - How cool was it to hear Ryan Adams covering a song you wrote? Sara - It was great. We toured with him for a while and he seemed to really like that song, "Not Tonight." It sounds really good when he sings it and that's sort of the ultimate compliment you can get when another artist wants to sing one of your songs. Even on a way smaller scale we've always thought it's awesome when we get tapes in the mail of kids and their bands covering our songs. We used to do the same things, so we think it's great and sometimes it gets done a little - or a lot - differently and it can sound really cool. So we were flattered and we love it. I think it's great. RTO - Give me three reasons why Tegan and Sara will always be cooler than the Olsen twins. Sara - (Laughs) Well, it's not like we're really cool or anything, but…well, I don't know if it's just me, but isn't there something sort of eerie about them? RTO - Yeah, for sure. They're creepy. Sara - Yeah! So there's that - we're not really creepy or anything. I'd like to think that we make good music and I don't even think they make music. If they did though, I'd like to think that ours would be better. RTO - Ok, we still need one more reason. What about seeing cheap clothing with your faces plastered on it in lousy national stores? Sara - I'd like to think that if we had our own clothing line we'd pick somewhere to sell it with a little more integrity than Wal-Mart. I mean, we're not going to have a clothing line in stores, but if we did, I think I'd want it to be somewhere with some class. RTO - Nice. Awesome, Sara. just to finish up, I'll be at the show tomorrow and you'll be there because…well, because you're playing. So can I tell my roommate that we've got a date and that you'll show? Sara - Absolutely! RTO - Excellent. Any final thoughts or parting shots to pass along? Sara - Yeah, thanks a lot for the questions and for your interest in us. This was a lot of fun and I'll see you on our date tomorrow!