>> The Big Lie
bio: They’ve never recorded in the same room, or played a live show together. But the members of The Big Lie are brothers, in a way. Collectively they are veterans of many bands. Bands that lived the agony of unmet expectations. Bands that, despite critical acclaim, were chewed up and spit out the other end of the music industry. And though some make have walked away from music in defeat, they are all artists and unable to stay away for long. Now collectively, they’ve chosen a different path. Now they are the band that does not exist. They are the band that has created this tremendous full-length album and subsequently disappeared because… they were never really there.
The members of The Big Lie had all met each other in passing over the years, and found that they shared a love of the same music. The melodies of the Beatles. The harmonies of the Beach Boys. The arrangements of Queen and Supertramp. The power of Radiohead. The earnestness of Wilco and The Jayhawks… So, even while out of the scene, when they each began recording new songs and needed collaborators it only seemed natural to reach out to each other. The only problem was geography. The band was scattered across Canada and into the US, residing in Winnipeg, Toronto, LA, and Vancouver. But, the solution was simple. Pro Tools, external drives and shipping. Lots of shipping. Most of the key song ideas came from Grosman and Braeside. Along with Chambers, they’d eventually hash out arrangements, then send scratch tracks to click to Kent to record the drums. They’d then finish the songs adding harmonies and leads. When the songs were pretty much finished they sent all their drives to their friend Timothy Burland who mixed the songs in his studio in Saskatoon. Burland cleaned up all their late night home-recorded tracks and mixed them into coherency. He also brought in the string and horn players to add the finishing touches to ‘Her Suitcase is Gone, But Her Clothes Are Still Lying Around’.
The “band” never intended for this collection to see commercial release. They shared copies with family and friends for around a year when one of those friends, Roy Jay, a former bouncer at a now defunct club they used to roll through in their various bands, sent a copy to a friend in New York, who happened to play it for Michael Prommer of Defend Music. Prommer reached out to Jay, who reached out to the “band”. There a problem occurred, as there is no band. Finally, an arrangement was worked out. Jay would be the spokesman for what had become The Big Lie. The ‘members’ would remain anonymous using only aliases. They would do no press, no shows, no publicity. Asked what it would take to get the band to come forward revealing their true selves, Jay replied, “probably an act of God. Or, failing that, a cheque with a lot of zeros in it.”
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