Punk legend digs deep for new album
Art Bergmann helped define Canada’s punk counterculture in the late ’70s and ’80s as a sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll-fuelled beast. He’s a much different animal, writes Francois Marchand
There’s a morbid allure in the way Art Bergmann calls his latest album The Apostate “my epitaph.”
Twenty years after his last original studio offering, Juno-winning album What Fresh Hell Is This?, the Bergmann we find in recorded form on The Apostate is a much different animal than the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll-fuelled beast that helped define Canada’s punk counterculture in the late ’70s and ’80s.
The Vancouver-born former Young Canadian is 63, has been riddled with health issues that sidelined him for more than a decade, and now lives in Airdrie, Alberta, where Bergmann contends he is battling the “dark forces of beige.”
“They painted the whole town beige,” Bergmann says via phone. “There’s a splash of colour now and again when they have a children’s arts festival.”
It’s not hard to imagine Bergmann being one of the town’s more colourful residents, though nowadays he keeps mostly to himself living on his farm.
And The Apostate, Bergmann’s fifth album of original solo material, is a contemplative meditation on a life that could have ended many times before, and will inevitably end some day.
The Apostate distils sources of information, music and culture Bergmann has been steeping himself in since he moved to Airdrie. It includes a fascination with desert and prairie music, from Tuareg blues in Africa to the windswept Americana of alt-country bands like Wilco.
While waylaid by severe osteoarthritis — he had to undergo surgery four years ago to put titanium around his spine to prevent him from becoming a paraplegic — Bergmann buried his nose in novels and history books, and he began to write material that defied the discourse of the victors.
“It’s a big bite to chew on,” Bergmann says.
The Apostate is often soothing and meditative in sound, but at its core rages a burning heart that rails against government abuse, climate change, racism and systemized misogyny.
Produced by Calgary’s Lorrie Matheson, The Apostate is definitely a “post-punk” album. It’s folk, country, and rock rolled into barbed wire thoughts. It’s punk as an attitude, if not as a sound.
“On my previous EP (2014’s Songs For The Underclass), I had a song like Company Store, which is a complete update of (Merle Travis’) Sixteen Tons,” Bergmann says. “I updated that to, ‘You can smell the women burning in the clothes you wear.’ There’s a continuity there that can’t be denied. I tried to update it with all the new music I’d been hearing.”
Women are an important puzzle piece to The Apostate.
Bergmann certainly wouldn’t be where he is now without the help of his wife Sherri Decembrini, to whom a song like Cassandra is clearly dedicated.
“I’ll never know how it feels to be a woman,” Bergmann bemoans at the beginning of the song, before going through a long list of harsh realities women face every day.
“I’ve got a very fine partner in Sherri and she really keeps my feet on the ground,” Bergmann says. “I started the song with, ‘I think I know how it feels to be a woman.’ But she said, ‘You’ll never have a clue.’ So I had to change that line, particularly because one never knows.
“I think men need to be taught respect from an early age.”
In an era where highly publicized events like the Jian Ghomeshi trial have cast a light on sexual harassment and violence against women, Cassandra may be one of Bergmann’s most political statements to date.
“’Feminist’ is like a dirty word al- most, you know? I don’t know how to get around that, except teaching your children.”
Ultimately, at the core of the album is Bergmann’s look at life and death.
“The finality is there every day when you wake up. You really don’t know what life is until you reach that age where the constant pain sets in,” Bergmann says.
“So you really develop a sense of empathy for everyone in this world that’s going through the same thing, some more harshly than others.”
Bergmann explains that the surgery on his neck helped conquer the pain and kickstart his recovery.
“Then it all came back into my lower spine. I’m twisting up into a Tom Waits kind of body.” He laughs. Bergmann can be heard playing guitar on The Apostate, something that seemed like an impossible proposition just five years ago because of the excruciating pain he felt.
“I just do it until I can’t do it no more. I find ways I can and can’t play. If I can’t play, I ask someone else to do it and they’re happy to do it.”
In the case of The Apostate, a good chunk of the guitar duties went to seasoned six-string veteran Paul Rigby.
“The guy is a genius musician. He will keep playing until he’s exhausted. He will play every string instrument there is. I’m flabbergasted by his ability to play steel guitar — you use every joint in every limb. It’s really incredible to watch.”
Despite his health being better and getting some stellar musical assistance from the likes of Rigby, Bergmann says touring is “to put it mildly, extremely difficult.”
“It’s something I have to do,” he adds, taking a working man’s approach to gigs like the one he will be performing in Vancouver at the Fox Cabaret on May 20.
The concert will feature material from The Apostate, as well as songs from his extensive catalogue, with many of his songs having retained their potent meaning throughout the years.
“My Empty House (which appeared on 1988’s Crawl With Me, produced by Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale) seems to come true every couple of years, as we head into another bust cycle,” Bergmann says.
“When I was young, I thought everything was progress. I was so optimistic. Now, that’s gone by the wayside.
“I don’t quite know how to approach the oncoming failure.”
’Feminist’ is like a dirty word almost, you know? I don’t know how to get around that, except teaching your children.