Stone age keyboardist Dean Fertita speaks

Dean Fertita has done a lot in his musical lifetime. He founded The Waxwings, a Detroit rock group whose song “Fragile Girl” was covered by fellow Motor city maniacs The White Stripes. He’s also toured as a member of Jack White’s “other band,” The Raconteurs. But, he says, nothing compares to his current assignment as touring keyboardist with Queens of the Stone Age. “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing,” he says. “There’s kind of an undeniable feeling. I’m a very lucky guy to go from playing with The Raconteurs [to playing with Queens of the Stone Age].”

That says a lot, given that Queens of the Stone Age aren’t exactly known for keeping people around for very long. In fact, the band has developed a bit of a reputation for being a musician meat-grinder, since forming from the ashes of stoner-rock pioneers Kyuss in the mid-’90s. Over the band’s decade-long existence, Josh Homme, the group’s frontman and sole constant member, has cycled through at least four guitarists, three drummers and a handful of bass players, including former Kyuss bassist Nick Oliveri, who was sacked in 2004 due to varying personal problems. Homme seems to have settled on keeping the core group a trio since former A Perfect Circle guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen and one-time Danzig drummer Joey Castillo joined in 2002. So, was Fertita worried when he joined the tour? “Any time you go into a new job or area of your life, you’re a little uncertain,” he explains. The Raconteurs are made up of White, Brendan Benson and members of The Greenhornes—all musicians Fertita has known for over a decade. “But it was so easy,” he says of his new gig. “I felt like I belonged there fromthe beginning.”

The Queens of the Stone Age gig has also given Fertita the opportunity to play to new audiences in some strange surroundings. In November, the band played a mile underground in a former salt mine in Sondershausen, Germany. And last summer the band embarked on the slightly more conventional(but still off-the-beaten-path) “Duluth Tour.” It took them to some of the less populous cities in the US, like Fargo, North Dakota, and Chico, California, much like the cross-Canada jaunt that brought The White Stripes to Halifax (and every other province) last summer.

“You get used to people telling you how important big cities are all the time,” Fertita says. But after a while, playing them just becomes incidental. “Josh (Homme) has this story about when he was a kid and Billy Idol played the town that he was from and how much it meant to him to have Billy Idol come through his town.

“There’s a purity about it, playing for people that really want to see music,” Fertita explains. “Plus the shows are a lot morefun. I’d take that any day. The people that come out to the shows are really involvedin it. They’re really receptive so you feelappreciated for your time. I think it’s areciprocal thing.”

The Duluth Tour’s Canadian leg (nicknamed “Calling All Hosers”) plowed through parts of the country last summer. The band’s current jaunt brings them to Halifax with Icelandic troubadour Mugison on Tuesday at the Cunard Centre. “We’re absolutely thrilled to come back to Canada. The shows there last summer were amazing.”

With Queens of the Stone Age’s touring commitments for last year’s Era Vulgaris winding down, Fertita says the band is hoping to get back into the studio before the end of the year. In a new twist they’re bringing Fertita with them, which will add a new layer of sound to the band’s usual barrage of guitar dissonance. But Fertita is quick to assuage any fears that the band is looking to throw down on the dance floor. “It’s kind of a tough position and I get it, too,” he says. “I grew up a guitar player so I know the perception that keys can bring to things. But I think we’re working it in a very cool way. I believe that there’ll be a way to incorporate this stuff and make it a new, definable Queens sound.”

This article originally appeared in the May 8, 2008 edition of the Coast.

Record Review – Patrick Wolf/The Magic Position

The path scorched by the Arcade Fire’s orchestral bombast three years ago has left the pop music field wide open for more classically influenced records. Enter Patrick Wolf, an English musical wonder-kid who previously studied composition at Trinity College of Music. On his third album, Wolf does an everything and the kitchen sink job, employing every type of sound imaginable (oh yeah, Marianne Faithfull’s on there somewhere as well). Wolf creates an aural feast for listeners that’s more memorable than you realize – one listen and these tunes will be stuck in your head for the next week and a second listen just keeps them there longer. Ambition never sounded this good.

Record Review – Battles/Mirrored

Featuring ex-members of Helmet and Don Caballero, skull crushing grooves could be expected to make up a large portion of Battles debut LP. But unexpected were the number of hooks that would ride those grooves and propel Mirrored from just a pretty cool instrumental record to one of the best albums of the year. Unlike their two EPs issued in 2004, vocals are included on many tracks, but they’re consistently manipulated to the point where they effectively become an instrument themselves, a feet best heard on lead single “Atlas.” The words are indistinguishable, but who cares – they’re not the point. This is Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music meets the Beatles.

Record Review – The Book of Lists/ST

This is the sound of Television taking over the world. The Book of Lists are the latest in a line of loosely affiliated musicians centered around the Hive Creative Labs in Vancouver, BC. Like Black Mountain’s guitar groove, and the Pink Mountaintops psychedelic swirl, TBOL reference the past while aiming to the future. Opener “Long Weekend” sets the tone for the record, featuring laconic vocals spewed out over expansive tunes punctuated by flittering guitar leads. Guitar rock took a huge credibility hit in the past decade, but bands like the Book of Lists could be the harbinger of what’s to come from a new generation of guitar heroes.

Rich Aucoin

Believe it or not, but Halifax’s very own Grinch Rich Aucoin has played under his own name for just 9 months and he’s already making his debut at the annual Halifax Pop Explosion this month.

Aucoin previously played with his brother Paul’s band the Hylozoists, but began recording what would become his calling card last year. The result was Personal Publication, a 30 minute EP purposely recorded to accompany the visuals of Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

In May Aucoin took his Grinch synch with him when he biked across-Canada to raise money for the Childhood Cancer Foundation. The attention surrounding the tour caught the eye of Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP who, in the middle of the tour, sent a cease and desist letter.

“They were really nice. They said ‘we understand that you’re doing this for charity and we think it’s great that you’re biking across Canada. But you’re breaking a number of copyright laws.’”

Aucoin retired the Grinch synch upon his return to Halifax, but is already hard at work on his next EP which he has planned to once again to contain a large visual component.

“I’m going to try and be a little sneakier with this one,” he says.

He’s also scored several short films for local filmmaker Eric Duncan, one of which screened at the Atlantic Film Festival last month.

“I like putting constraints on my writing” he says. “It you have too much freedom, you just kind of get lost in the malaise.”

A version of this story originally appeared in Halifax Magazine.

Mugi-Boogie

So yeah, Queens of the Stone Age played down at the Cunard Centre last night, and yeah, they were awesome, but you can read about that all somewhere else on the Internet. What we’re going to talk about today is last night’s opening band Mugison. Mugison (pronounced Moo-gy-son) is the brainchild of  Örn Elías Guðmundsson and isone of Iceland’s top selling artists (that’s where he’s from if you hadn’t caught on yet). Normally he operates as a one-man plus laptop band, but for this tour he’s got a four peice backing band to beef his sound, giving the whole thing a beer-soaked blues on steroids vibe. The band hit the stage with an air of confidence around them and promptly launched into their set. Mugison’s songs run the gamut from Tom Waits’ caterwauling and Hawksley Workman’s falsetto with a little bit of Eels jagged edged blues mixed in for good measure. And ho-boy can these guys swing (Sasha Frere Jones should take note), thanks in no small part to their drummer who was standing up pointing his drum sticks at the crowd about as much as he was actually playing and the crowd ate it all up. If all this weren’t enough, the band played a second set later that night at the Seahorse Tavern. By the time this blogger got their the lineup ran up the stairs and across the front of the Economy Shoe Shop. So while I didn’t get in to see the band, I have no doubt that they had no trouble making new friends.