(Credit: Autumn De Wilde)
On “The Con,” released this past summer, the identical twins showcase their continued and hardly-identical growth as songwriters. While Sara shows a knack for immaculate pop melodies (like lead single “Back in Your Head”), Tegan chases harder edges informed by emo and pop-punk.
Tegan spoke recently about the changes in their career thus far, how the sisters find (and provide) laughs while on the road and why you’ll never see the same Tegan & Sara show twice.
Several years ago, you told me that you much preferred writing and recording to touring. Has that preference stuck?
I think that as the years have continued, obviously our touring entourage has grown. We’re traveling in a bus, and that sure makes things a lot easier. I’ve always enjoyed playing, but back in the day, an hour of playing did not make up for the 23 hours of what felt like incredibly hard work for the first seven years of our careers, traveling alone or in a van or on a Greyhound bus. It was very difficult and lonely. I definitely feel like it’s gotten a lot better.
Now that you’ve had some success, do you allow yourselves any indulgences on your rider? Only green M&Ms in the dressing room, that sort of thing?
When we toured in Europe this summer, our promoter and tour manager thought our rider was insane because it’s so small, and we don’t have any booze on it. I think people are always surprised at how not rock star our lives are still. Having a bus with Internet—those are the kinds of things we’re indulging in these days.
A lot of your live reviews will mention the unusually lively between-song banter between you and Sara. Do you go to other shows and think, “Wow, these guys are stiff and awkward?”
[Laughs] I definitely go to shows and think, “Wow, these guys are stiff and awkward.” But we have our stiff and awkward moments. Our banter happens whether we’re in a good mood or not; sometimes I feel like we hit a bulls-eye and we get off stage and I’m like, “God, we’re funny. Those were some good stories! We had ‘em in the palms of our hands.” Other nights I walk off stage and I’m like, “We should not be talking on stage. We’re a rock band—we should play music and get the hell off.” But as much as it’s for the audience, it’s really for us. We play the same songs every night and we’re not a jam band—we don’t stray much from the material we’ve practiced. It would get pretty robotic, I would think, because we play so many shows a year.
Is the banter ever rehearsed?
We don’t even rehearse, so… [Laughs] No, the banter is pretty off the cuff. Sometimes I wish we would [rehearse] because we can be very funny. We also don’t usually tell the same story twice. Sara will start to tell something that I feel like I’ve heard before and I’m right in there, happy to be like, “Uh, you told that already.” And she’s like “Fuck!” It’s so funny because it’s something that our fans have talked a lot about—a lot of kids will come and see a lot of shows on tour, and they can because even though we’re playing a lot of the same songs, the show is never the same.
Where do you turn if you need a good laugh?
Well, we are all “Arrested Development” and the British version of “The Office” addicts. After shows, when we get back on the bus and are getting into our pajamas and saying our goodnights, we put on “The Office” or “Arrested Development.” We’re total nerds. Basically we’ve regressed—we used to have a pretty diverse backing band and now they’re all 26 and they grew up together. So we turn into five teenage boys. We don’t do fart jokes or burping or any of that kind of shit, but we sit around and quote TV shows to each other and we think we’re hysterical. And we do it all sober, too. I think our crew finds us terribly boring.
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