It seems that 2022 is here to stay, and that’s good news, because Rocktographers gets to share another fantastic addition to The Zone’s Band of the Month program with Trevor Lang.
Trevor Lang is an accomplished Victoria-based producer, songwriter, visual artist, and audio engineer. With his work as a founding member experimental band Cartoon Lizard, and collaborator with Haley Blais, his sounds have been creeping into our ears for years. Trevor Lang is now taking his turn in the spotlight with his own brand of catchy psychedelic indie rock.
Rocktographers had the pleasure of meeting up with Trevor Lang, not once, but twice. The first with his handsome cat Star in his home studio for our Band of the Month photo shoot, and the second at Vinyl Envy for a quick interview with Tyson Elder.
Tyson Elder: Hi Trevor, how are you doing?
Trevor Lang: I’m well, very well.
TE: Congratulations on being February’s Zone Band of the Month!
Trevor: Thank you. I’m surprised and elated.
TE: I’m looking forward to hearing your music on the radio, it’s gonna be great. Let’s talk about the single.
Trevor: I’ve sort of been operating on just like a single-by-single basis. I released two singles last year and then another single in 2020. The first of this year is called Spotlight, which is coming out February 18th… anywhere you get music.
In a way, the last three songs kind of felt like different sides of what I sort of want out of my own music, whereas this next one kind of feels like a more of an amalgamation of all of those inspirations and stuff. It’s kind of all coalesced into one piece. Which is why I wanted to release this one last, because it almost felt like the last three songs were like a preamble of sorts to this one. I’m really excited to get it out because it’s different than all the last ones, but it’s also kind of the image of all of them being smashed together into one piece, if that makes sense.
TE: That’s great. So Spotlight is going to be the new single coming out in February? And The New! Solution is gonna be the song The Zone is going to be playing?
Trevor: Yeah, totally.
TE: Now, I’ve got a couple questions about the song. Mainly, how do you say The New! Solution because you’ve got punctuation in the middle of the song? Is it THE NEW! Solution? [laughs]
Trevor: [Laughs] No, but that makes sense. I consider The NEW! Solution. The emphasis is on new. The NEW! Solution. [laughs]
TE: Can you tell me a little bit about the songwriting process on that song?
Trevor: It’s essentially… naturally, for a lot of musicians, the pandemic brought a lot of insular creation to the table for a lot of people, and I was no exception to that. The New! Solution started as a song that was potentially going to be a Cartoon Lizard song. Then once lockdown started happening I found myself with a lot more free time I was interested to hear what it would sound like if I were to just make more music solo. I had done this in the past: the first Cartoon Lizard EP a few of the songs were done sort of just by me and I would play all the instruments, and before that I’d made some stuff solo as well under a different name. A few years past doing stuff with Cartoon Lizard, Hailey Blais and some other artists and I started to wonder what it would sound like if I entered the solo domain again.
The New! Solution was the first of these singles to be recorded, mostly because it was fully written when I started recording it. It was kind of just an exercise to hear where I’m at on a songwriting and production basis. For anyone who’s like heard Cartoon Lizard, it’s kind of the most Cartoon Lizardy song out of the bunch.
TE: I would agree out of the three songs you’ve released so far.
Trevor: Someone called it, like, proto-post Cartoon Lizard or something like that. [laughs] Anyway, so it kind of came about in that situation. Then a lot of the sort of social events and stuff of 2020 I mean, obviously I don’t have to tell anybody about what kind of year that was and continues to be. It inspired a lot of the songwriting because for me as a person, I was being introduced and educated in a lot of things that I hadn’t really thought of very deeply before. At least not to the same extent as I started to in 2020. The writing and the actual lyricism has a lot of personal practices and holding yourself accountable to your own thought processes and biases. It’s so cheesy and so preachy, but like the way that I do actually keep myself grounded for personal accountability is a lot in my writing both in music and poetry and art in general. The song is kind of another kind of preachy word, but it’s a rumination on all of that sort of stuff, if that makes sense.
TE: How have you found the creative process during the pandemic? Everyone’s had a different takeaway from it and like you mentioned it was very insular. Being part of a band and then going off just to do solo stuff. How is that different for you now?
Trevor: It’s actually more or less the same in a lot of ways, because I’ve always done a lot of writing and recording by myself. Just because I’ve I’ve learned all the instruments I need to record and have spent a lot of time producing with the band. So I’ve cultivated a set of skills to make it sort of economical and more efficient to just do it all myself, even though I like working with other people. In a way, Cartoon Lizard is less of a band and more of like five solo artists working together, because we all do stuff on our own and we all write our own stuff. We’re all capable of making our own full productions but we just like working together because we’re best friends. Working solo is kind of like my truest form of working. Working in a band is a way different dynamic.
TE: Especially when it’s like you said, five different individuals who go solo themselves.
Trevor: We try to subscribe to totally democratic process, which means that every decision has to pass by at least three out of five votes. So, it can be a slow process as well, whereas working solo is faster, it’s kind of like easier to focus on things.
Although the pitfall of being a solo artist is that if in the end the recording doesn’t work out for whatever reason it is nobody’s fault except to your own. In a band you could be like “You could be like ‘it was your fault that made it not work.'” I mean it’s more or less the same, honestly. I work better in a band if I’m also a solo artist because it allows me to sort of shed a little bit of my personal ego. It’s hard entering a collaborative process and being fair and unbiased in working with other people because obviously your ego gets in the way. When you have an idea you think it’s the greatest idea and it might not necessarily be or maybe it is. Maybe you need to stick to your guns. That’s something that in Cartoon Lizard we’ve spent a long, long, long time trying to sort out; those interpersonal issues to get through to the core of what we’re actually making. Working as a solo artist helps me alleviate some of the the weight of being in a band.
TE: Beyond music you are also a visual artist. You directed both your music videos. For both Maggie’s Making Changes and The New! Solution. How is it being in full creative control? Most people don’t get to choose the direction of their music videos and stuff like that?
Trevor: It’s interesting. I mean, there’s like a meme that goes around every now and again. I always see it. Where it’s like being a solo artist in 2020— 22 . . . is you’re a writer, you’re a producer, you’re a director, you’re a social media analyst, you’re a writer, a grant writer, you are whatever. Again, it kind of comes out of necessity. Like a lot of people, I can’t really afford as much. I’d love to go out and hire some of the most respected people in the community to do stuff. Which I will and I want to.
TE: It just takes takes a little time.
Trevor: I need a little bit of momentum before I get there. Music is now such a visual medium and you can’t really get by with just recordings because of social media and all that. They dictate the rules of engagement now, basically. It’s partially me sort of adapting to a current landscape for music promotion, but it’s also because I’ve always been really into visuals. I just haven’t really had a medium to explore that. When I was in high school, I made short films and later on sort of gotten to photography, but then it was a friend of mine sort of nudging me to get into animation and After Effects.
TE: Well, and you made Layton Kramer’s video When A Love’s Not Around.
Trevor: I have so much thanks to give to Layton for that because he gave me full creative control to do something and I was like, “I cannot disappoint. I Love Layton’s music. I need to make something that can work beside it and feel like a quality product alongside some really quality recording.” That was really how I cut my teeth doing it. It was all of a sudden that I had a deadline, a budget and I could spend this many hours on it.
From that it just kind of spiraled into like doing a video for… actually, I’m kind of missing the chronology. I was also working on a video for The Instruments, which was my first single in 2020. The cards or the dominoes started to fall after that, where then I made a video for Dana Sipos, who made an incredible song, Breathing Barrel. As soon as I heard the song I like couldn’t wait to make a video for it and then to get people to start to ask me to do things. I was like, “why? How is this? How’s this happening?” I felt so lucky, so incredibly lucky to have people like trust me and also be willing to let me just sort of roll with ideas and just do stuff. Super lucky to be able to do that and ultimately now I have this whole other language that I can communicate with. I’m excited to be doing more stuff for my own sake, as well as working with other people. I don’t know, it’s just it’s part of it now. You know, it’s another part of the production.
TE: Yeah and you’ve created and captured beautiful versions of not only your own music, but like, like the Layten video is wonderful.
Trevor: Thank you. Yeah, I’m specifically very proud of the Layten video. That’s still probably my favourite.
TE: And I love with photography in your Maggie video and recognized some of those places from our photoshoot? Maybe there was a mirror in there that might show up in our photos. [laughs]
Trevor: It’s actually funny we filmed that between our two houses. So we used to live just down the road, like a few blocks away from here. We started it in, I guess it was like June or something, and then we moved to our new place in July. So like we we’ve made this sort of house out of our favourite rooms in each of the two apartments that we currently live in. Then and then the other parts of it were done out in John Dean Park out sort of in Sidney because I would take my family dog out there. Then that’s my family dog Coda, who was the absolute star of the show. I mean, they’re both the stars of the show. I shouldn’t say that. Cut that part out. [laughs]
TE: A dog will always steal the attention from me. As soon as a dog walks by in this interview… I’m gonna…[trails off as his attention turns to dogs walking by]
Trevor: Totally. We’re both really lucky to be blessed with animals. I mean, you met Star, our cat. Then Coda is my family dog and she’s just an absolute like angel. She looks like an angel and she truly embodies what an angel can be.
TE: That’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much. We’re looking forward to having you as Band of the Month.
Trevor: I’m super excited.
TE: It’s gonna be great hearing your stuff on the radio every day.
Trevor: I’m stoked! Thank you.
Turn your FM dial to The Zone @ 91-3 this February to hear Trevor Lang’s single, The New! Solution. Visit his Band of the Month microsite to hear two more songs, including the brand new song, Spotlight.
Rocktographers is a proud supporting sponsor of The Zone’s Band of the Month program.