Deadly duo creates killer tunes
The Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer push limits of blues-rock sound on new album
Shawn Hall and Matthew Rogers have got it made.
So maybe the pair aren’t household names. Their latest album Checkered Past hasn’t bumped Justin Bieber off the charts and a gig at the 16th annual Maple Blues Awards at Koerner Hall on Monday is just their first east of Regina, but they already have one thing that matters: a wonderfully idiosyncratic, utterly unforgettable name.
The Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer.
Although suggestive of some ghoul-channelling goth group, the Vancouver-based duo’s distinctive moniker is actually inspired by their instruments. Hall plays harmonica, or “harpoon,” while Rogers plays guitar or “axe,” a vintage rock ’n’ roll term.
“We’d always seen it as a late-’60s, Jethro Tull kind of band name,” says Hall. “We had no idea people would associate it with death metal or European hard metal music. It has been an interesting name to defend.”
The grisly vibe hovering like a murky London fog around the very words “Harpoonist” and “Axe Murderer” suits what and how they play.
“We take the blues and do something different with it,” says Rogers about prickly songwriting that’s filled with weird sounds and rhythms that go bump in the night.
“We take a lot of our inspiration from the really early blues guys like Robert Johnson who didn’t always play12-bar blues but had this rather skewed approach to the music,” Rogers continues. “For us the blues is just a good starting point.”
“Roll With the Punches,” the first single off Checkered Past, is a case in point. The dramatic rhythmic payoff crunches home at the beginning of phrases, not at the end, keeping the entire song off balance from beginning to end. This is blues at its most asymmetrical; blues for cubists.
“Musicians have become fixated on archiving the blues and being ‘true’ to it,” says Hall.
“Songwriting has paid the price for this over the last 25 years. I didn’t like the feeling I was just an- other white guy playing the blues in Canada and couldn’t offer anything new. In fact, I’ve been influenced by soul, reggae and hip hop as much as by the blues.”
Hall, now 37, grew up in Toronto, went to Oakwood Collegiate and worked as a truck driver for Citytv before heading west.
Rogers, 33, was born and raised in Vancouver, where he’s already garnered a considerable reputation as a “serious” composer writing film scores and receiving a commission from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
Both agree the creative friction due to their dissimilarities has shaped their work like the playful bickering between characters in a successful buddy movie.
“Shawn’s the guy who’s had many ups and downs in his life,” says Rogers.
“I’m the Even-Steven character. He’s the lively guy, the great talker and great frontman. And because Shawn’s the singer I can write from his perspective. Otherwise our personalities couldn’t be more different musically and in life. It’s a source of frustration sometimes but it’s also a reason we make a good team.”
Hall himself came to better understand their relationship during one recording session when he realized how much Rogers had “channelled a lot of crap that has gone on
“If we’d hired a drummer I wouldn’t have learned how to play drums with my feet. Limitations push you to go further.” MATTHEW ROGERS
in my life in writing for me,” Hall explains. “It’s not biopic writing. But Matt the songwriter has benefited.”
Following their meeting during a 2005 recording session for a Vancouver pizza place the pair discovered they shared ideas about the kind of band they felt would work for them.
“If you look at the geography of this country, and the way bands are here today and gone tomorrow, the economics of a two-man band made sense,” Hall goes on. “Although we’re doing three or four times the work that we would being in a larger band, we’re still fighting for our lives and that’s at a good gig.” “We found we could go out on the road and come home with a little bit of money in our pockets,” Rogers adds. The possibilities inherent in working as a pop duo, explored more recently by the White Stripes and the Black Keys, has old roots in popular music going back to those one-man-bands jamming in carnivals and on street corners during the early years of the last century. Blues great Jesse Fuller, with his guitar and “fotdella” or foot-bass, is a particular role model for Rogers, who plays a foot-activated percussion unit. “Throughout time people have asked, ‘Why don’t you get a drummer?’ or ‘Get a bass player,’ ” says Rogers. “But if we’d hired a drummer I wouldn’t have learned how to play drums with my feet. Limitations push you to go further. We have to put up more energy.”