The Cape May rises again
Calgary trio leaves behind the curse and the cult with its new release
BY Colin Smith
Photography by Marc Rimmer
When The Cape May released its first album, Central City May Rise Again, in 2005, a series of unfortunate incidents befell the band. They lost a guitarist, freak injuries made members look more like hockey players than musicians and, in a scheduling mix-up, Shakira bumped them from the studio. But with its second album, Glass Mountain Roads, released in September on Flemish Eye records, the band appears to have broken its so-called curse. This Magazine’s Colin Smith chatted with band members about the album, the curse and a run-in they had with a cult in Arizona.
This: How did you end up working with legendary engineer Steve Albini [the Pixies Surfer Rosa and Nirvana’s In Utero] on Glass Mountain Roads?
Jeff Macleod: We wanted the best possible documentation of our sound for Glass Mountain Roads. We realized that we had to use tape to capture the type of sound we wanted, because digital recording devices can’t yet extend past certain frequencies very well. Albini is the king of analog engineering.
This: The band has had some bad luck in the past. Is there a curse of the Cape May?
Clinton St. John: There were some unfortunate things that happened to us leading up to and after the making of Central City May Rise Again, and there were plenty of good things happening at the same time. But the angle of all this chaos in our lives is much better reading, so that was something the press focused on.
This: I hear you found yourselves in a frightening situation on a cult compound.
Macleod: It’s true. We didn’t have the time to investigate the regulations emailed to us. They offered free meals and housing, and we thought at worst they would be some variety of newage hippie, but we discovered they’d been accused of screwing members out of inheritances and breaking up families.
We decided to back out of the show, but we were already at the venue, with our bags at the estate. All told, seven people paid, yet there were over 50 people in the audience. “We always allow members of our community into shows when the crowd is scarce,” they told us. So essentially, we were playing to a bunch of cult members for free. However, that part wasn’t in our contract, so we had a loophole to bid farewell to the creepy situation.
