alice rutherford

Carey Mercer led his band Frog Eyes through a backing gig with Dan Bejar’s Destroyer and through a few tense days on tour through America with expired visas. But back home in Canada, they are completely legal. He speaks now on a borrowed cell-phone before driving somewhere where phones don’t work anyway.

Were you there at All Tomorrow’s Parties in Long Beach with Wolf Parade when they did whatever they did that made them name that album Apologies To The Queen Mary?
Yes, and they blamed it on us. I think the security didn’t have enough artists’ passes so they had kind of herded us into an empty ballroom, and we decided we wanted to hold a séance. We had found this old table and people were carving ouija shit into it, and everyone took their shirts off. It’s supposed to be haunted—we were trying to get Winston Churchill to party with us.
Was he your first choice?
Hell yeah. Our friend was a classic drunk—he passed out—
Like Churchill.
Or like Canada’s first prime minister, John Macdonald. He’d get really drunk and pass out on the floor of the chamber while proceedings were going on. Anyway, our friend passed out on the floor and someone wrote on him, ‘I DID ALL OF THIS.’ Then we felt bad. And then the next day the captain came down and said, ‘Guns ‘n’ Roses, Motley Crue and the Rolling Stones have all stayed on this ship—but you are the first to ever get kicked off!’ And cowardly Wolf Parade blamed it all on us—‘No, it was all Frog Eyes!’
The rumor was you’d broken into the submarine.
No, we didn’t even know there was one. We weren’t doing bad stuff—we were just doing kind of bad stuff.
Is your day job fixing stereos?
I work a couple days a week for the Salvation Army. They didn’t know I was in a band for a long time. I started working shortly after a summer tour and I knew I only had four or five months before another tour, so I tried to make myself really useful to them. We get along really well, me and those ladies. Most of them are funny sassy old gals. And they let me come back.
Do they play the oldies station in the store?
Yes, but when I first started working there, it was Christmas carols. Now there’s a modern woman who is trying to get like Coldplay on the radio.
What do you think of American thrift stores?
They’re pretty much all the same. Whenever I go in, it’s like ‘HAIL TO THE BROTHERS OF THRIFT,’ and then a hug of pure solidarity.
Do you worry that there is a finite supply of worthwhile thrift store finds? And that we’re about to run out?
I’m always thinking that. At some point, all we’ll get is stuff from big box stores. Like Big And Rich country CDs and those crappy surround-sound DVDs that aren’t gonna work in two years anyway. Kind of a bummer.
Will we see the end of the thrift store as we know it during our lifetime?
I think our manufacturing capability has somewhat declined, and we’re past the end of that. But we’re still reveling in the good old days.
Do you worry that the American and Canadian economies are based on people sitting in offices basically doing nothing all day?
My only experience with that is in music. A club pays you money, and people write about music for these magazines, and you pay a publicist and produce CDs—but who buys them? There’s mass denial about that part in the chain. Sometimes clubs pay us more money than we’re worth. I don’t know if it’s because they have to play ball with the booking agent or—what I suspect—they’re just good people.
That’s encouraging!
The clubs are probably unaware of their role in this kind of patronage, but for us—they keep us going. Like the art space that gives you 100% of the door or whatever. On one hand, our economy is based on abstraction. But on the other hand, it makes people maybe want to do things that are more tangible. The physical space in a city is important right now—what are we gonna do with it? Maybe the reason people want to actualize their environment is because of that big void of Internet and email. Then again, I’m not an economist. I work at a thrift store.
Are you really an ex-comedian?
Yes, when I was first gripped by alcohol, I was a stand-up comedian. It was the worst possible thing to do. Now you can be an indie stand-up. When I was doing it, there was no such thing. It was purely an act of self-hatred. Even my friends had to go to the toilet when I was performing to hold their head in their hands. I had like three jokes. They were really bad and they took a half hour. In today’s environment, I’d probably be in apartment in Brooklyn, drinking margaritas. But I never pursued it. Which in itself is an act of self-hatred.
And you are also a playwright?
I took a playwriting course and decided to do one at a bar. It was Frog Eyes’ first show, and it was right when it occurred to us that maybe we’d get paid by doing these things. So we decided to just do it as my night: ‘Let’s not have anyone else come in to try and get the money!’ So Frog Eyes played three songs and we had a party sub—probably ten feet long—and on the poster was the band, the play and the party sub. Which was pretty gross—cheese whiz and rotten lettuce. My friend was so drunk and there was a cot on stage—a prop—and while we were playing he just passed out.
The Queen Mary friend?
No, if he was there, he’d have gone to jail! He’s a psycho—he’d as soon shake your hand as throw a microwave at your head. Anyway, he passed out on the cot, and people were throwing the party sub, and it hit the back wall and slowly slid down and fell on his face. It was so awesome—we were all just watching. He took a bite and turned around and clearly didn’t know where he was. He was waking up to a party sub in front of an audience.
Was that the plot of the play?
No, it just happened. That’s the great thing about working with psychopaths. You have no control over them.
Have you ever heard yourself referred to as a genius?
The word is seriously watered-down. If you were to go to the local tea house where the men from Oxford drink and they were talking about T.S. Eliot or Stravinsky, and you were like, ‘And then there’s that other genius Carey Mercer!’ they’d be like, ‘What are you talking about?’
Have you ever heard yourself referred to as a genius in the context of someone being sodomized by an elfin girl with a strap-on?
Oh yes, that’s my friend—that was one of our first reviews. He’s had a wine enema.
Wouldn’t that burn?
Yes.
Did he ever get sodomized by an elfin girl?
It’s still the object of his desire. If it ever occurred, he’d have nothing left. He did kind of step me up there, right? My nickname for that guy is ‘White Urkel.’ So it’s very hard for him to achieve.
So it’s difficult for White Urkel to achieve elfin sodomy?
It’s his Achilles heel. This is a ribald interview.
What do people usually ask you?
‘What is the difference between this record and the last record?’
What is the difference between this record and the last record?
Read another interview.

FROG EYES PLAY SAT., MAY 5, WITH ALEX DELIVERY AS A KXLU PRESENTATION AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVERLAKE. 9 PM / $8 / ALL AGES. WWW.CLUBSPACELAND.COM.