Girls, gigs and edible gifts

Contributor
January 6, 2011

Tegan and Sara, the indie pop/rock duo from Canada, have been a long-time musical crush of mine, so when I got offered the chance to interview them, I jumped at it — and tried my best not to swoon too much in the process.

I was relieved to find that the girls were sweet, chatty, and incredibly well articulated – not to mention teeny tiny.

They spoke passionately about their fans, and when I asked what the strangest fan gift they’d ever received, Sara joked, “We don’t get locks of people’s hair, dead animal carcasses or anything!”

She went on to tell me about a woman in the USA who bakes cakes and cupcakes then decorates them using themes from their albums and songs, not only for them but also for the “family” of bands they collaborate and tour with.

“It’s a great example of someone taking their energy and excitement and channelling it into something productive for us,” she said.

“And it’s like – ‘Yes! We can eat your gift!’”

Having worked with some of my other favourite musicians, I was dying to know who the sisters hoped to write with in the future; Tegan wasn’t giving anything away.

“Everyone we’ve worked with, collaborated with, toured with, met, wrote songs with … it’s all been purely natural”.

The band’s latest collaboration, with comedian, musician and GLBT activist Margaret Cho, was sparked when Cho came to one of their shows – she met the pair after the show and suggested they write a song together, a similar pattern to other recent collaborations. But what future projects?

“I’d hate to curse ourselves by making a list … it just feels like a treat [to have] bands who want to work with us,” Tegan said.

Incredibly modest and down-to-earth about their success and development as a band, they credit the evolution of their music to spending much of their early career as a supporting act for bigger bands.

“It is really challenging to feel as though you could blow up on stage and people would just be like ‘All right, time for the next band’, and not really care,” Sara said, adding that despite having built themselves a career as a headlining act they still love learning from supporting bigger bands.

Currently in the middle of filming for a DVD featuring mixes, live performances, documentaries and a whole lot more, they have also been touring and starting to write for their seventh record.

“If I actually sat down and thought about how much work we have ahead of us, I would start to feel really crazy,” Tegan said. “I think we just got really good at keeping going.”

Although having had “LESBIAN TWINS” stamped on their music from some media channels in the early days, and then later reportedly criticised on occasion by the gay media for not talking about their sexuality enough, it is clear that gay rights and awareness is something they are not only passionate about, but love to discuss.

Taking a stand against GLBT issues, they have rallied against Proposition 8, appeared in a number of GLBT publications, and – along with some of my other favourite gay icons such as liberal sex advice columnist Dan Savage – are featured as role models on revelandriot.com, a website dedicated to providing online resources and information promoting rights, awareness and equality for the GLBT community.

“Somewhere in the mid 2000s Sara and I just realised that it was so important that we talk about our sexuality,” Tegan explained.

“We’re accepted in the mainstream, we’ve played on national television, we tour with men, we tour with women, we tour with straight people, we tour with gay people … I think we’re an example of what the future should be like.”