Wayne Petti

Winter Songs

With the recent release of the album Way Down Here, Cuff the Duke is gaining momentum. The album is the fourth for the Toronto-based band, and the best one to date. The sound is a rich blend of folk and traditional country elements, occasionally invigorated by an injection of pulsating rock and roll.

Early in December 2009 before a performance at the Starlight in Waterloo, Ontario, lead singer and guitarist Wayne Petti sat down with Canadian Interviews to discuss the making of the album, his musical influences, and the origins of some of his lyrics. He looks ahead to the great gig that the band has landed for 2010: opening concerts for Blue Rodeo across western Canada and northern Ontario!

Way Down Here was recorded at Lost Cause Studios in January 2009 in the barn studio located on the farm of Blue Rodeo member Greg Keelor. The farm is located near Peterborough, Ontario. The deep cold experienced by the band while making the album certainly resonates in many of the songs. Did the making of the album help the band to see a new connection between their music and the Canadian landscape? “A little bit,” Petti replies. “It came out in September, and I think it’s going to line up nicely with the Canadian winter. It certainly reminds me of winter.”

One song that reflects the snowy fields of rural Ontario is the stark elegy ‘Like the Morning’. With just two verses, the extended instrumental sections in the song capture that sense of open, empty space. Petti wrote the song in memory of his grandmother, who passed away in October 2008. “She never saw me play live,” he relates. “She heard the music, and I played guitar for her, stuff like that. She lived to be ninety-three. She had a long life, but the last couple of years were really rough.” In this light, the feeling in the song of separation and vast spaces takes on the added meaning of the distance between the living and the dead. In the final verse Petti sings ‘Time will heal your pain/ Like the morning you’ll rise again’. One might imagine the morning sun coming up over a farm field, corn stalks sticking up through the snow, all which remains after the harvest.

There were several exceptional moments in the fourteen-song set at the Starlight. Suggestive of the sound perfected by Neil Young, the swirling guitar work by Dale Murray on the song ‘It’s All a Blur’ definitely stirred the crowd. It should come across powerfully in the larger venues on the Blue Rodeo tour. Another standout was the gentle swing of ‘Follow Me’, one of the most immediately catchy tracks from Way Down Here. Many of the new songs have a contemplative, introspective feel, yet the live performances exude real buoyancy, most strikingly evident in the twang of ‘Rockin’ Chair’. The main set closed with a solid rendition of ‘Promises’.



Cuff the Duke will be on tour to promote Way Down Here for much of 2010. Most of the concerts in support of Blue Rodeo take place in January, and three extra dates are currently scheduled for late March and early April. Having played before with Blue Rodeo, Wayne Petti is confident that fans of the celebrated band will embrace the opening set by Cuff the Duke. “We just try to play with as much enthusiasm and energy as we can. I think that their fans tap into that.”

CI: Cuff the Duke recorded Way Down Here at Lost Cause Studios on Greg Keelor’s farm near Peterborough, Ontario. Paint a picture for everyone: what was a typical day like on the farm during the recording process?

WP: Well, it was really cold. It snowed a lot while we were there. It was mid-January. We would get up, kind of putt around for a bit, make some coffee, make sure the fire was raging, and then play some songs just on acoustics to each other. We’d pick a song. We had decided to do no pre-production, so none of us had heard the songs before. Then we would sort of arrange it, talk about it, play it for Greg – if he had input, he put it in; if he didn’t, then we would just go upstairs and start laying down the track. The way that his studio was set up at the time, it was an eight-track, one-inch tape, reel-to-reel style. So we had eight tracks to work with. We just layered it, bounced tracks around to make room for things. The beauty of it too was that we chose to not move on to other songs until we mixed that song. We would start in the morning, hear the song for the first time, record it all day, get into the evening and break for dinner, after dinner finish whatever we needed to finish, mix it down, and then the next day start over. So we were doing a song a day, essentially.

CI: That’s sort of an older style of recording.

WP: Totally old school, yeah, which is what we wanted to do. We wanted to go with a first thought-best thought philosophy when we were recording. We tried not to overanalyze too much. We were writing parts on the fly.

CI: Did you have all the songs written and together going in, or were you writing as you were recording?

WP: The songs were written fundamentally, and lyrics and stuff like that, but anyone who was creating a part to go with the song, that was all created in the studio. Sometimes we would do little arrangement changes. For instance, if I had a song, and then the guys made a suggestion to lengthen a bridge or do something, we would do that, and that was all sort of impromptu in the studio.


Greg Keelor at the controls in his Lost Cause Studios near Peterborough, Ontario. Photo Credit: Stewart Jones

CI: As you know from traveling around the country, vast open spaces define the nation in a lot of ways.

WP: To say the least, yeah …

CI: With this album, have you come to think of the relationship between your music and the Canadian landscape a little differently, just given that you were out in the country in the cold while making it?

WP: A little bit. It came out in September, and I think it’s going to line up nicely with the Canadian winter. It certainly reminds me of winter. Like I said, it snowed a lot while we were there. There was probably a solid two and a half, three feet of snow that fell over the eleven days that we were there. And there was obviously already snow there when we got there! It definitely reminds me of that open space, like you mention, you know, being alone, wind through the pines - like those shots in Twin Peaks. I don’t know if you ever saw Twin Peaks, but they always cut to these shots of pine trees blowing, and you hear the wind through it. Anyway, I’m obsessed with Twin Peaks. It’s all I’ve been watching! … Yeah, so not in a major way, but in a certain way, rural Ontario - that record will forever remind me of rural Ontario, for sure.

CI: One song that stands out on the album, maybe not as the most immediately catchy song, but one that stood out to me just because it was stark and rather contemplative, is ‘Like the Morning’. It almost struck me as an elegy, a song of mourning. What are the origins of that song?

WP: Actually, yeah, you nailed that one. I wrote it after my grandmother passed away last October [2008]. I tweaked the lyrics a little bit because I didn’t want it to be obvious, but at the same time I did want it to be somewhat apparent. So yeah, that’s totally what that one is about. She never saw me play live. She heard the music, and I played guitar for her, stuff like that. She lived to be ninety-three. She had a long life, but the last couple of years were really rough. She was a widow for thirty years. Her husband died when my Dad was eighteen – so actually she was probably a widow for over forty years. So there’s that whole thing. And ‘The Words You Ignore’, the chorus in ‘The Words You Ignore’, is also sort of about her, the idea of her going to heaven, and ‘he’ll take you back to a time of peace’ – she finally would see my grandfather again. That, and a friend of mine, Glen Bensley, who I referenced in our previous record Sidelines in the City, he also passed away, and that was all within a couple of months. Glen passed away in September, and then my grandmother passed away the third week of October. This record is a lot more introspective than previous records, and that song definitely is. Like I said, you kind of nailed it; that’s what it’s about, for sure.

CI: When you were growing up, what was the trigger that got you into music? What was the first instrument that you played that got you started?

WP: Guitar, for sure, and I think, like so many people that are in my age group, it was Nirvana, really. The idea that you could get a guitar and you could, depending on how much you played, but for me within a month or two, I was playing half that record. Within six, seven, eight months, I could play that whole record.

CI: Nevermind?

WP: Nevermind, yeah, and that just gives you this sense of accomplishment right away: ‘I can do this. This isn’t hard!’ I mean, it is of course; you realize later. But when you’re playing, the actual playing of an instrument, that you didn’t need school or anyone else’s approval or guidance - you could just figure this out on your own, if you were somewhat musical, you know? So I guess that’s where it began. I didn’t really want to be in a band though probably until I was in grade nine, I think. I really just wanted to be in a band. I hadn’t even actually started playing guitar at this point! I asked this buddy of mine who was looking for a bass player. He said, ‘oh, do you own a bass?’ I said, ‘no, I don’t’. He said, ‘oh, but you play bass?’ I said, ‘no, I don’t. I don’t do that either. I just really want to be in your band. I can learn. I’m a quick learner. I know I’ll learn it!’ A buddy of his had a bass, I used it, and that’s sort of how I got into it. I weaseled my way into it.

CI: So you started on the bass?

WP: On the bass, yeah, and for the longest time - it wasn’t until Cuff the Duke that I played anything but. I was in a band with Paul Lowman, who plays bass now in Cuff, and he played guitar and I played bass. I was doing some solo stuff, early Cuff the Duke songs from the first record. When I got a band together, I was playing guitar, so I said ‘hey, do you mind playing bass? You can play my bass.’ Because I don’t want to play bass and sing, I would rather play acoustic. And he said ‘yeah, yeah, totally man.’ He became the bass player, and he’s an amazing bass player. It was kind of fate that it turned out that way.

CI: Nirvana was the first band that you heard that made you think that playing music was what you wanted to do.

WP: Yeah, for some reason it was just the right time in my life. I grew up listening to the Beatles a lot, some Beach Boys stuff, and I was a big R.E.M fan prior to Nirvana as well. But it was Nirvana that made me want to be in a band. That was when the mystique sort of set in – ‘this is awesome, this is what I want to do!’

I somehow always knew. I felt like I would do it to some extent. I didn’t sit at home thinking ‘I’m going to be huge’ or whatever. But I just had this confidence that I was going to be in a band: ‘I know I’ll be able to be in a band. I don’t know how big we’ll be’. Honestly, when we first started, all I wanted was to be on an indie label and tour across Canada. That was perfect. And then we did that, and I thought, ‘alright, now I want another tour, and we’ve got to make another album’. You quickly realize that it’s just a domino effect. Success is something that you can’t really put a cap on unless you choose to.

CI: The band has already played quite a few shows across Canada in support of the album, and early 2010 you’ll be heading out in support of Blue Rodeo. Most of us will never be in this position! What are the main challenges in opening up shows for such a legendary and well-known band?

WP: We just try to play with as much enthusiasm and energy as we can. I think that their fans tap into that. People forget, when they go to see Blue Rodeo now, that they’ve been a band for twenty-five years. Their set-list is stacked with hits. But I’ve seen footage of them in ’85 and ’86, and they’re jumping all over the place – it’s a rocking show, you know? I don’t even think they had acoustic guitars on stage. They could have, but this early footage is really raw. They have so many fans that have been with them the whole way, and I think that their fans really like that. They respond to an energetic band that’s playing well and has catchy songs. I think that we do well opening for them because we can just tap into that and not get too intimidated by the size of the venue. I mean, it gets scary – there are nights when I think ‘oh my God’ and I’m crapping myself backstage. Then you get on stage. For me, it’s always by the third song in the set where I just totally chill out, and then I’m good. The first couple of songs are a little jittery, and then you mellow out – ‘alright, it’s just a gig’. At the end of the day, it’s a show, and you just play and do your best.

I find too, if you’re appreciative at the end - I just like to thank the crowd, especially when you play to a big crowd like that, for coming early enough to see you. I’ve gone to see shows where I go to see the opener, and it’s less than half full. More often than not, with Blue Rodeo, the place is three quarters of the way full, if not full. They have good fans like that. Blue Rodeo traditionally has always brought entertaining opening acts, so it’s kind of an honour to be in that slot for starters. Their fans appreciate that Blue Rodeo brings out good bands, so they do go early. I just like to thank them for coming. Not every band always thinks to do that necessarily, you know? A lot of people do, but I always like to make a point especially for them because you’re playing for fifteen hundred to four thousand people a night.

CI: This is a question that I like to ask musicians: on YouTube, there are a number of videos that fans have shot at your live shows, and out of curiosity, does it bother you that sometimes your performances are recorded without your knowledge and put online, or is it just one more way to circulate music?

WP: To be honest, now that it goes up on YouTube, I love it. There was a time when we first started that people would bootleg it and I’d never get to see it! You’d ask them, ‘hey, can you send me a copy? I love that you taped it. I want to see it.’ And if they did, it would be on VHS or a DVD, but there’s something about it going on YouTube, yeah, everyone can see it. Technology like that doesn’t intimidate us. The downloading thing sucks for us. It sucks for the bottom line for the industry, but at the same time it gets your music out there quicker than any way ever in the history of music. It’s instant. You can put something online and have people checking it out. Anyway, the YouTube thing, I don’t mind it, especially if people post it. The thing that sucks is if it sounds bad and people still put it on YouTube. Sometimes you’re recording and it’s loud in a club and it just gets distorted, but they still post it! What’s the point? Having said that, lately people have been posting pretty great clips. We can share it with other people because that’s a nice thing for people to see. And now our record is coming out in the U.S. too, so if people go to our website they can see stuff like that and think, ‘hey, cool’.

CI: On the question of distribution and the business side of things, Way Down Here is out on your own label, Noble Recording Company, and distributed by Universal Music. How challenging has it been to get that started?

WP: Well, Universal was really supportive, and they help a great deal. I said it once before: where before I used to see an ad or something for the tour in Exclaim! or in whatever weekly magazine, I would think ‘oh cool, there’s an ad, there should be an ad for the tour.’ Now I’ll look at the ad and be like ‘oh crap, I can’t believe how much that costs! That’s four by five.’ You know? That’s my first thought. That’s about the only thing that’s changed. I’m just more aware of what everything costs! And that’s good, that’s healthy. It’s great, too, when I see a band that’s on a major label, and obviously has a big deal on the major label, so that the label is spending a lot of money, and I’ll see posters and all this stuff – and I think ‘holy crap, they are spending a lot of money. I wonder how many records they’re selling …’. It’s getting harder and harder to spend a lot of money and make your money back, as a label. Anyway, it’s funny how it’s just made me think about money more [laughs]. As a responsible business owner, it’s what I should be doing!

CI: In most of the reviews of Way Down Here that I’ve come across, there are frequently comparisons made between your songs and the sound of other bands, typically Neil Young, The Byrds, The Band, and one article that I thought was interesting [in Eye Weekly] mentioned the ‘Zeppelin-esque’ sound of your song ‘Another Day in Purgatory’.

WP: Nice! Ah, I didn’t read that one …

CI: Mostly do you find these comparisons flattering, or do you find it frustrating that music journalists always seem in a rush to make comparisons?

WP: That’s been going on forever. I bet, if you dug up some old Led Zeppelin reviews, they were getting compared to something else. It’s just human nature. You need to put something in a category so that, when someone is reading about you, they identify with it. They can’t just say ‘well, it’s Cuff the Duke, and it sounds really good!’ If they do that, people would be like ‘what the fuck does it sound like? I need to know what it sounds like.’ So they say The Byrds and Neil Young. People who like those bands are going to think ‘hey, that’s kind of worth checking out’. Then they’ll hear it and think ‘I guess the guitar sounds a little like Neil Young, but the song doesn’t sound like Neil Young, or The Byrds or whatever’. If people think the songs sound like The Byrds or Neil Young, that’s not insulting to me! We’re huge fans. I’m a massive Byrds fans, and have been since I was a kid. I have the bulk of their records on vinyl and in MP3 form. I’m a total nerd for the Byrds – nerd for the Byrds! There you go! [laughs] So yeah, it’s a compliment. I don’t mind being compared to stuff. And it’s cool recently, about a year ago, I read a review of a band and they got compared to us. I thought ‘oh, they must be pretty good!’ But I knew what they sounded like! And I knew what they were trying to say. It was funny: when I checked out their record, I thought, ‘they don’t sound like us! That must annoy them! That must totally piss them off that people compare them to us because they don’t sound like us. They sound like them.’ People just have to do that. People have to put things in a section, like in a record store, a ‘rock’ section. Things have to be divided like that for different things to make sense.

Date of Interview: 12/02/2009
Location: The Starlight, Waterloo, ON
Link: www.cufftheduke.ca