Dallas Green says City and Colour keeps getting better

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City and Colour

When: Feb. 8, 6:30 p.m.

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Where: Rogers Arena

Tickets/info: From $59 at ticketmaster.ca

The Love Still Held Me Near is the seventh album from City and Colour.

What began as a solo project by Alexisonfire guitarist and vocalist Dallas Green, become an arena act almost upon arrival. A cross-country tour with support from Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats and Ruby Waters lands in Vancouver at Rogers Arena on Feb. 8.

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At home recovering from eye surgery, Green reflected on what it’s like to be in two successful projects at the same time. Reconvening Aleixisonfire with the 2022 reunion album Otherness and continuing City and Colour is a new experience. He also dropped a hint about possible new music from his No. 1 charting duo with P!nk called You+Me.

“We’ve done a couple of City and Colour gigs since the album came out last March between Alexis tour dates, but this is the cross-Canada round,” said Green. “For the rest of the year, I’ll be playing around the U.S., probably go down to South America and definitely be back in Australia as well.”

Australia holds a special, albeit dark, place for the singer.

It was on a tour Down Under in 2019 where longtime producer and close friend Karl Bareham died on a diving trip. The heart of the Love that Still Held Me Near is Green beating through what he has said was “the most tragic experience I ever had.”

By line three of opening track Meant to Be, the St. Catherine’s native is already wondering if the Bible was wrong.

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The dozen songs form a cycle of soul-searching that digs deeper than City and Colour’s already emotional catalogue. Green has come to appreciate that the thing people most often comment on and appreciate about his writing is the way he exposes the harder corners of life to leave one feeling better inside.

“When we lost Karl, I knew that I would try to deal with it by writing about it, as most of the City and Colour canon stems from some kind of feeling or experience I’m trying to process inside of me,” he said. “What I was not really aware was going to accompany that was how openly I would address my Catholic upbringing as well. I think that I was questioning that while grieving.”

That the results were uplifting to his grief was what mattered most.

Beyond the added lyrical depth, the material on the new recording sees City and Colour sounding more like a band than ever before. The presentation of the music is a far cry from the lone artist with a guitar heard on the breakout 2005 debut Sometimes.

“After operating in a five-part democracy like Alexis, this was the place where I didn’t have to ask anyone to agree on anything,” he said. “But I think the version of City and Colour you hear on this record shows an evolution. My frequent collaborator Matt Kelly has become so key to this now that it’s not impossible for me to consider it something close to a band.”

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Having someone who understands both the studio and live configurations and demands of the City and Colour songs has proven key to being able to move between the two very different worlds of City and Colour’s emotional pop and Alexisonfire’s post-hardcore fire. Kelly is, in some ways, a kind of caretaker.

“Ten years ago, I had to make a choice between which version of these two ripping projects was going to be it and left Alexis,” he said. “The pandemic provided time and space to consider that maybe there could be two new versions. Part of the problem before was that there was no real context to look at for how to manage two different bands, two different audiences and so on.”

Coming at it again has meant 20-month tours to 16 countries moving back and forth between projects. But streamlining things, such as having the same road crew for both bands and Matt Kelly playing with both groups has ironed out some of the challenges. Green admits it is still a work in progress.

“Last year, we did six weeks in Australia with City and Colour and then the Alexis guys flew in and we did another six weeks,” he said. “I was explaining this to Ben Harper when we played a festival together and he looked at me and said “nobody is doing what you’re trying to do, you know.” All I can say it that, for the amount of time I spent torturing myself about what would be the best way to do it, I’ve found a nice place in myself at this moment.”

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It’s two sides of the same artist and the You+Me project with good friend P!nk is another.

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Green says the two have enough material for a record, but scheduling is very difficult. The hope is that the two musicians can carve out some space for studio sessions over the next year.

sderdeyn@postmedia.com

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