“I read the news today, oh boy.”
While these words might have been sung by The Beatles, Toronto band Enter The Haggis literally did read the news when it came to their new record The Modest Revolution. The songs on the album are completely ripped from the pages of The Globe & Mail’s March 30, 2012 edition.
Enter The Haggis multi-instrumentalist Trevor Lewington spoke with Here Magazine about the group’s wildly successful crowd-funding campaign and well as what inspired The Modest Revolution.
Who in the band came up with the idea to make a record based on events found in the newspaper on March 30, 2012?
It was I who came up with the idea but it wasn’t necessarily the first time that our music had been inspired by the news. In 2010, we took part in a songwriting workshop in Boston and were staying in the basement of a friends house. On the morning of the songwriting clinic, the area we were staying in was hit by severe flooding, the sort of pictures I had never seen with my own eyes. I suggested that we sequester ourselves and come up with songs based on our impressions of the flooding. Brian’s song The Flood made it onto the album that followed. Drawing inspiration from the headlines and our experiences that day ended up spawning the idea for basing an entire album on one issue of a newspaper.
Was it equally important for you guys to focus on the good news stories as heard on Can’t Trust The News opposed to only focusing on the darker side of the headlines?
It is the whole idea of the song Can’t Trust the News. If we get too focused on the negative headlines, it is easy to feel a sense of despair. There was less real estate given to positive stories in the newspaper from the specific day that we based the album on, but luckily you don’t need more than a few words to inspire a song.
You raised more than three times the original amount that you were looking to get from your Kickstarter campaign. That must be an incredible feeling to have had your campaign be so successful.
It is still hard for us to believe the success of the campaign. Every last penny was invested into the record from studio time to set design for our supporting tour. Crowd funding has been great for us, as it has allowed us to continue to do what we love without dealing with a record label.
Article published in the May 9, 2013 edition of Here Magazine
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