SubModern Session: Kestrels

For our latest remotely recorded SubModern Session, Chad Peck of the band Kestrels Zoomed in from Canada to chat with me about his latest album Dream or Don’t Dream, which was released back in July.  He also quieted some of the album’s songs down to solo / acoustic-ish renditions that you can listen to below.

Congrats on the album.  I didn’t realize it was the fourth album from Kestrels until I was just doing some reading.  I was aware of your last one, the self-titled record, but I guess maybe because it was self-titled I just kind of assumed that was your first album.

Yeah. That was a bit of a reset in the band. At that point, we felt like a self-titled record would be a good re-introduction so in a way this is the second record that just happens to be the fourth one under this name, if that makes any sense at all.

Oh yeah. I think so. But from what I read, this was kind of another reset.

It was, yeah. I mean, it was not expected necessarily, but the band that was on the self-titled record and the EP before it had, you know, we had toured a lot. We’d been to the States and the U.K. and Canada a bunch of times, and just reached a point where a change had to happen and people were getting older or moving on in their lives and maybe had different ideas of how things should look. I was still passionate about it and wanted to keep doing it. And so yeah, this record, I did all the guitar and the bass. Well, not all the guitar, there’s one special guest appearance.

Oh yeah!  We’re going to talk about that, but don’t give it away yet.

I won’t!  And you know, I wrote all the songs and sang.  And my friend and now band mate, Michael Catano played drums, and my girlfriend Norma [MacDonald] sang on it. But in a lot of ways, it’s like a solo record, in a sense. It was kind of just my baby this time out.

So is it kind of safe to say then that Kestrels is you and whoever you want to work with?

Yeah. I mean, I hate that characterization, but it’s definitely accurate. It’s okay. It makes me feel like I’m difficult to work with, but…

You don’t seem, I mean, you seem very pleasant. I can’t imagine you being difficult.  I’ve only been talking to you for a few minutes, but and you’re Canadian and everyone in Canada is nice.  No one in Canada is difficult to work with. Right?

Yeah. I mean, that’s mostly true I think.

That’s the good kind of stereotype. Okay. Now do you want to tell us who the special guest guitarist on that song [“Grey and Blue”] is?

Yes. The special guest guitarist is J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr.

That’s a pretty amazing get! And from what I understand, you were a lifelong Dinosaur Jr. fan.

Yeah. Probably like the Green Mind, Nevermind, Goo trifecta was a big one when I was a teenager. So yeah, it’s hard to even talk about it in a way. It’s hard to even believe it happened even after the record’s come out. It was a pretty amazing experience. Like the stuff dreams are made of, I guess!

Dream or Don’t Dream! And you did dream, and that dream was achieved, I guess.  So, how did that come together? How did J. get involved?

So we put out a split with the band Kindling in 2017 and toured with them. We did like three shows for that self-titled record and one of them was opening for Dinosaur Jr. at a secret show at The Bike Shop in Amherst, Massachusetts. And after that show, which was incredible, I met J. and his wife Louisa and Justin Pizzoferrato, who is the Dinosaur Jr. engineer. He has a studio in East Hampton, Massachusetts. So we had talked about recording some stuff with him for this new record. And we were down there tracking and J.’s wife invited me over for tea at their house. And we got to see the Dinosaur studio. And J. kept handing me all these famous guitars to play, or guitars that are famous to me anyway. And when we came back to the session that week, Justin said, “Hey, I think J. should play on the song. It sounds like a song he would like to play on.” And so Justin asked him and J. said yes. And a week later I had eight guitars tracks of great takes of J. playing leads on the song. So picking between the ones was one of the more challenging things I had to do as a musician, for sure.

How did you choose?

They’re all incredible, so it was like almost arbitrary when I picked the ones. I kind of like cut two together that I thought were cool. But I mean, like when you hear them, you’re just like, “Oh my God!” They all sound like him, they’re all in the same vein, but there’s some cool, incredible parts in all of them. He’s such a good guitar player and a major inspiration, obviously.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the inspiration is obvious because listening to the record, if someone just said that J. Mascis is on this record, but didn’t say it was only one song, I would’ve thought he’s on more. There were definitely a couple other times where I thought I heard him. So yeah, the inspiration is definitely clear. Does he know what a big inspiration he was to you? How do you articulate that to him?

You know, we texted and e-mailed a little tiny bit and I saw him play a solo show in Toronto. And actually, this is a little weird. He has a signature guitar pedal that just came out earlier this year with the company Running Cup. And actually they hired me to write the booklet that goes along with it. It’s about his guitar style and his history with gear. So yeah, he probably knows. I mean, I really like his style, it’s like almost off the rails, like in a good way. It has that like exciting, not meticulously mapped out, sort of like technical shred metal solos. It just feels like very improvisational, but melodic. And to me as a listener, I think is exciting to listen to, and as a guitar player it’s yeah, it’s a really, really sort of creative and fun way to record for sure.

Well, yeah, that’s really great. Congrats on getting him on the record.

Thank you.

So another prominent artist of a similar era, you know, associated with the 90’s, who has some bearing on this album, even though he’s not on it, is Tim Wheeler of Ash.

Yeah.

Because you were writing while living with him for awhile?

Well, yeah, I mean, I wasn’t living with him. He was on tour. I’m a school teacher in my, like, real life. So for the summers he’d be on tour and I would just go rent this apartment for the summer. I was like a mega Ash fan as a teenager growing up in rural Nova Scotia. And he was from like a rural part of Northern Ireland and was a teenager playing rock music. So he was a huge inspiration for me and we become really, really good friends over the past 15 years I guess. And he played on one of our earlier records back in 2012, actually. If I can get like Kevin Shields and maybe like Lindsay [Jordan] from Snail Mail or something, I’d have my rock guitar pantheon complete or my bingo card. So yeah, I was living in his place and he had left the guitar that was used on the first couple Ash records and I was feeling very inspired and wrote probably four of the songs and the ideas for a couple more of them and yeah, it was just like, a really, really inspiring place to be. And he’s a good friend. He’s been such a mentor in a lot of ways in terms of like suggesting recording techniques or equipment to pick up or songwriting. He’s just like the nicest guy you could ever meet. He’s been a huge inspiration for me, like for the better part of 20 or 25 years, I guess. So yeah, it’s cool that we’re really good friends now. All the guys in that band are super nice.

You mentioned that you’re an English teacher in your quote unquote real life. But at this point, I mean the band is your real life too. How do you balance those things? Is it a full-time teaching gig? Like where you can’t tour when school’s in session?

Yeah. It was basically like based around my breaks, you know, so summer vacation or spring break or long weekends. There was a lot of like fly-in gigs that we were doing where we’d meet in the city and we just play sort of local to that city. Yeah. It was challenging. I mean, I did a master’s degree over the past few years and taught full time and made this record. So it’s been super busy, but I have a studio in my house. That’s really facilitated a lot of the stuff.

Do your students know about your rock star life?

Yeah, they do. You know, they can be harsh critics, but they’re also super supportive. There’s always a few vinyl heads in high school, which is weird, but it’s kind of exciting that they see the colored vinyl or the gatefold, whatever, and they get pretty excited, and they love the t-shirts. I think they love that they have a teacher who’s a bit left of center in terms of their outside interests. They think that’s cool. Like when I was a kid in high school, my music tastes were so like regimented, it was like, it had to have guitar and bass and drums and some sort of angry guy or something, you know. But these kids will go from The Eagles to 100 Gecs to Kestrels to Cardi B or whatever. I don’t know who any of those bands are honestly. But you know, they show me their Spotify playlist and it’s crazy the genres they cross over, which is kind of inspiring honestly. I kind of like regret my days of having blinders on musically.

Right. But yeah, that’s cool that they’re into what you’re doing.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty cool. They’re awesome.

Kestrels new album, Dream or Don’t Dream, is available now on Darla Records.  Find them on Facebook and YouTube. Check out the SubModern Session here.

By Josh T. Landow