Canadian Musician - January / February 2020 | Page 34

Look Back on 20+ Years with Together & LaGuardia By Adam Kovac 34 C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N So, to be more specific, Patty McGee is in Toronto looking for a new-to-him car. He spun out on black ice in his old ride, dinged it up, and just like any other middle class Canadian, he’s left fighting with his insur- ance company. And he’s not having much luck on his hunt. “They’re all garbage,” he admits. “Any car made since 2011, as far as I’m con- cerned, is a piece of garbage.” There’s something vaguely symbolic about the mundanity of his struggle. Twen- ty years into their existence, Stars have set- tled into the grand tradition of celebrated, beloved middle-class Canadian rock stars. Patty McGee is in Toronto looking for a new car. Well, that’s not the en- tire truth. His band, Stars, is famously based in Montreal but the drummer is in the Big Smoke for decidedly more artistic reasons than just test-driving a new whip. The band is starring in Stars: Together, a play based on music and anec- dotes from their 20-year- long career. But instead of a Spinal Tap-esque farce or Rock Star-ish examination of the debauchery that can accompany worldwide fame, the production is a love letter to the excite- ment, mundanity, and dra- ma that comes from being part of a collective with six different personalities over the course of decades, told through vignettes and selections from their eight full-length albums. It’s a fittingly low-key project given Stars’ cult status. Emerging from the vaunted early 2000s Montre- al indie scene that also gave birth to Arcade Fire, Stars have built an impressive body of work and career, though never quite became the zeitgeist-definers of that band of contemporaries. Of course, that is not an insult. Making music when you have the financial security of U2 is easy; mak- ing widely-adored, some- times challenging indie-pop and then turning that into a play? That’s a risk when you’re artists who, if not criminally overlooked, have sometimes been commer- cially underappreciated. Let’s be clear: despite the drama onstage at Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre during Together’s nearly three-week run, Stars’ members still like each other. But a bunch of near-middle- aged indie poppers chatting amiably for two hours doesn’t make for particularly exciting theatre. “I think it was the only story left to tell; it’s the truth at the end of the day,” says bassist Evan Cranley. “We’ve been a band for over 20 years and we just thought our personal drama would interest people and it was also a challenge for us to not hold anything back and have everything at stake while doing something like this. We’re trying