Chicago’s Canadian Rifle recently played one of the last shows ever at Quenchers. We met up with singer/guitarist Jake Levee and bassist/singer Tim Murphy before their set to talk about their latest album, Peaceful Death. We discussed its writing process, the nature of some of the lyrics, and how they connected with Dead Broke Rekerds for the LP’s release. With Peaceful Death, Canadian Rifle has refined their take on midwestern punk and also managed to capture the raw power of their live shows. We spoke about how they were able to do so in the studio, as this marks the band’s first collaboration with producer Sanford Parker. We also conversed about the record’s artwork, future touring plans and more.

Bill – What was the writing process like for Peaceful Death? Were these songs that you had written for a while or did a majority of the writing happen closer to recording?

Jake – Well, a lot of the songs we had written for a little while, at least musically. It took kind of long time to write. We hadn’t done a full-length record for a couple years. Lyrically, I wrote most the lyrics and that all pretty much happened just before we were about to record. For me personally, I was going through a lot of shit. I went through a divorce and I was living in a hotel and writing lyrics in bars and stuff like that. It’s kind of what kept me going, really. For me, this whole band started based on inner struggle. Now I’m in my 40s, going through adult shit that’s beyond teenage angst. So, I just used it instead of wallowing in it. That was my role.

Bill – With that in mind, would you say these lyrics are more personal than others that you’ve written in the past?

Jake – No, I always try to write about whatever is kind of happening. Maybe a lot of the lyrics in the past were more eagle’s eye view on social encounters. This one, there’s a few songs that are personal to me, but there’s always been a few of those on our LPs. For me, the struggle was something I just tried to use for the band. The band is the only thing I do artistically. I write lyrics, I play guitar, and I write most of the framework of the songs and then we kind of piece them together as a group. But the writing process had different phases and it wasn’t all about that. That was just right before we recorded. We went through some lineup changes, even during the writing of the record. That’s kind of why it’s been five years since our last LP. We’ve even had a lineup change since Peaceful Death came out. A band like ours, that’s going to tour and be as active as possible, you need to have everyone on the same page. All it takes is one person to kind of put a snag in things, but I understand that. I understand if someone doesn’t want to do this; I get that. I appreciate everyone who’s been a part of it. For me, Canadian Rifle is something that’s on my mind all the time. I don’t work an office job and then on the weekends play my gigs. It’s something that I feel like I’m connected to all the time.

Bill – Where did you record Peaceful Death and what was that experience like?

Tim – The studio was called Minbal and the engineer who recorded it was Sanford Parker. It was my idea to record with this guy. He’s an old friend of mine and has made a fairly big name for himself mostly doing doom metal, death metal and black metal. Not to speak ill of anyone else that has recorded us, but I always felt that none of our recordings really captured what we sounded like live, the heaviness and the aggression of it. I just knew that he would be able to do that. I spoke to him first and said “We want you to do this record. When do you have time and where do you want to do it?” And he dictated that. He chose the studio and when we were going to do it. And I give him a shitload of credit for how that record sounds.

Jake – Yeah, it was an eight-day session and it was my favorite recording session that I’ve ever been a part of. Especially when it came to the vocals, he made me do shit over and over again. In the past, as much as I love all our other recordings, it’s always been like “Well, how did you feel about that take?” I’d be like, “I guess it’s fine.” They’d be like, “Alright. Good. Let’s move on.” But Sandford was like, “No, man. Do it again. Do it again.”

Tim – Jake would barely make a sound and Sandford would be like “Nope. Bad.”

Jake – And he was purposely trying to aggravate me so that the right thing would come out, because we’re an aggressive band, you know what I mean? I loved working with him and hopefully when we do our next LP we’ll record with him again.

Tim – Nothing but good things to say about him.

Bill – Awesome. It seems like Peaceful Death was intended to be a cohesive album, as opposed to just a collection of songs. Many of the songs transition from one to the next in somewhat of a fluid manner. Was that something your prioritized doing from the beginning?

Jake – Well, what you may be hearing is the way we sequenced the album and the way we have most of the songs back to back and have kind of some noise between them. The sequence was really important and it was intentional. All the feedback between songs and the instrumental, “Grassface II,” to me is all a crucial part of the record. For me, we’re a pretty basic punk band. The songs have a pretty simple structure, they’re between two and three minutes, but I don’t want it to just be that. I like having the noise on the vinyl in between songs. We do that live. I want the aggressive feeling to kind of go off into this spaced-out, numb area and then it’s back again. So it’s nonstop or like it’s one thing, you know what I mean?

Tim – It was important to me to have no silence. But I would say they weren’t written with that in mind. We had to look at them as a whole once they were done and then figure out a way to do that with them.

Jake – Yeah, I mean it just grows. You water it, you work on it and it fuckin’ grows into a thing.

Tim – Shit is important too.

Jake – What’s that?

Tim – You gotta put some shit on it if you want it to grow.

Jake – Yeah, yeah.

Tim – I’m talking about fertilizer.

Bill – (Laughs). That’s great. “Shining Night” is one of my favorite songs on the album. What in particular inspired its creation?

Jake – It’s funny; a lot of the people I’ve talked to have said that “Shining Night” is their favorite. I didn’t even want to do that song and my band kind of talked me into it. That song was written in the Czech Republic on a European tour, in the back of the van we were touring in. It honestly just had to do with the weird mystery that’s within yourself that you don’t know that’s there. And then if you’re so far from home and so disconnected from your home life, you just have a conversation with someone or you have an experience with people where you realize there’s this whole fuckin’ world out there. So much of it is stuff that you know you’re never going to experience again, you know what I mean? You’re meeting this person, you’re talking to them, you’re hanging out and you know that’s never going to happen again. It has to do with things that are sacred, like things that you just don’t want to share with other people, but not things that are wrong. I’m not talking about anything that has to do with lying or anything sexual. Just like here you are, right fuckin’ now and it’s never going to happen again. It’s also a time you’re just going to keep to yourself. That’s what it is to me. He might have a different take on it…

Tim – I think an important part of the lyrics to that song, and I don’t know if this was intentional or not, are about expectations. Or, especially when you’re traveling, if you have one of these experiences that seems so important at the time and then in retrospect you’re like, “That was fuckin’ nothing.” Not to belittle the experience or that it wasn’t important at the time, but they just sort of fade and don’t remain crucial to you.

Jake – Yeah, there’s a small part of that song that’s about confiding in someone and trusting in them, but then you hear from someone else what you confided in them. You’re like, “Aw, man…” and it’s just another example of mistrust. There’s a line, “Holding a secret so warm and nice/I embraced it, turned out to be ice.” It’s like you think you’ve got this thing and then you don’t. You fucked up again.

Tim – And I think you can relate that across the board to relationships and experiences.

Jake – Yeah, and this is not towards a person. A lot of our songs lyrically kind of trail off into different regions, but that’s about all I have to say about “Shining Night.”

Bill – Would you say the lyrics on this album have a central theme?

Jake – It’s an album that’s a lot about mistrust and thinking things are going to be one way and they’re not. Nothing that most people haven’t gone through in some relative way. The record is a lot about whatever you’ve got to do to get through the day. And wanting to be left alone instead of having attention drawn to you, I guess. I’m just saying what comes to my head…

Tim – It felt like a lot of it was about the end of your marriage, to me.

Jake – Yeah. I said it.

Tim – I don’t know if you even want to include that, but that’s what it felt like to me. Like it was dealing with a lot of those feelings and sort of putting a cap on it.

Jake – Yeah, it was. A lot of the songs are just about going through that kind of shit and not wanting to give up on something because you committed to it. But fuck man, what are you going to do? Just fake your way through the rest of your life or live it?

Tim – Both.

Jake – Yeah, it’s a little of both I guess.

Bill – Wow. Thanks for sharing that. …How did you go about partnering with Dead Broke Rekerds for the album’s release?

Jake – Dead Broke Rekerds is run by a great guy, a great friend of ours named Mike, who plays bass in Iron Chic. He had been wanting us to do a record for a long time. Our last record came out on Dirt Cult Records, and those guys are buds, but we were like “Well, let’s just try doing one with Mike.” And he was pretty enthusiastic about it and has totally helped us with tours. He’s been a really good, positive force on our band. He approached us and I didn’t even know him when he first approached us. Then we started playing shows with Iron Chic, we started hanging out with them, and I was like “Let’s try doing a record with them. It’s right up our alley.” So we did and he’s been nothing but reliable and good to us.

Bill – Who was responsible for the album’s artwork and what exactly influenced its creation?

Jake – I am. I had a friend, Pete Ziegel, who’s done a lot of our other artwork. I usually have a vision of how I want things to look, but I’m not an artist in that sense. So I would get together with Pete and explain what I wanted. The deer head logo has been around since the beginning of our band. Our buddy Al Burian, who played in our band briefly, he did that. The photo is one of Lake Michigan that I took at like 5:00 AM and the front cover is just flipped upside down and the back cover is right-side up. It’s very basic. But I’m only responsible for the vision of it. Al Burian, Pete Ziegel, those are the guys who really helped make it happen.

Bill – With tonight’s show being one of the last ever at Quenchers, do you have a favorite memory from playing here?

Jake – Well, we’ll see after tonight…

Tim – We had Jake’s 40th birthday party here.

Jake – Yeah, I turned 40 here. It was great. They threw a pie at me and it got all over my fuckin’ guitar.

Tim – We bought like 200 black balloons and we got a cake that was a picture of him with his shirt off, laying in a bed of flowers.

Jake – Outside the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, yeah. But Quenchers has been a great venue. We’ve never had a bad show here and tonight’s gonna be good. It kind of all bleeds together to me…

Tim – I have a Quenchers story that’s not about playing here.

Bill – Go for it.

Tim – It’s on the back of the shirts they made with the list of important events that happened here. I was sitting in this very room, right over there, when a fuckin’ car crashed through the front window, right through the front door. I was with some friends and glass came flying into the room. We had to climb over the car to leave. I looked at the guy in the passenger seat and he seemed fine and I was like, “I can leave.” And then I slipped on some glass on my way out.

Jake – That’s a great story.

Tim – I didn’t tell it very well. We’ll do that again later, maybe. No…it was perfect.

Bill – I liked it. What else do you guys have planned this year in terms of touring or working on new music?

Jake – So we just started working on new music about two weeks ago. We have an east coast tour in September, a short run of about six shows or so. Then in December we’re doing a tour of the UK that we got offered by the guy who runs Drunken Sailor Records over there.

Tim – He didn’t offer us the tour. These guys in Scotland wanted us to come play their fest and I wanted a tour around it. Julian agreed to book us a tour around this fest.

Jake – So Julian is the guy who runs the label. That’s how it went down. It was nice to get asked to go somewhere instead of just deciding to do it ourselves. And then in the summertime we just like to stay home. There’s so many bands coming through to play with and touring in the summer is kind of a hassle because there’s so many bands on the road. And if you’re going to live in Chicago you should probably just stay home in the summer for the two months that it is or whatever.

Tim – And there’s a loose plan of doing a west coast tour in February of next year. We were just talking with the band Daylight Robbery about maybe doing that.

Jake – So yeah, the year is booked up, which is great.