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