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Dallas Green Recorded With Pink, Screamed Hardcore Songs. His Folk Album Will Crush You

By Joseph Hudak

Joseph Hudak

Remember the first time you heard Jeff Buckley’s haunting vocals on Grace or felt R.E.M.’s emotional wallop through the arrangements of Automatic for the People ? City and Colour ’s The Love Still Held Me Near hits just like that. But its creation didn’t come easy at all for Dallas Green . The Ontario, Canada, singer-songwriter had to process two deaths during the making of the album. But it’s that grieving that gives The Love Still Held Me Near its heart — even as it crushes yours.

“When I started writing, I was digging into these emotions I had been holding onto and it all started to unfurl. Now I’m writing about God, and I’m writing about my whole life. I’m writing about these things I’ve been questioning and understanding that it wasn’t singular to me,” he says. “That was the ‘a-ha’ moment — that I can ruminate on all these things and write myself out of my own head, but if I broaden the scope a little bit and make something beautiful out of my pain, then it moves on. It grows wings and then it maybe can resonate with somebody else.”

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“We’ve had everything we wanted, then we fucked it up,” Green sings in his falsetto in the chorus to “Fucked It Up,” a song he admits made him snicker when it came to him one night. “I thought, ‘I can’t say that,’ but then I just sort of leaned into it.”

Leaning into unconventional creative approaches has served Green well over the course of his career. While he remains a bit of a mystery to American fans, in his native Canada he’s regarded for his musical diversity. In 2001, he co-founded the punk-and-hardcore group Alexisonfire , balancing out singer George Pettit’s screamo vocals with his own haunting Buckley-esque croon. The band became shout-along heroes, played the Warped Tour, broke up, and recently reunited.

In 2014, during Alexisonfire’s break, he teamed up with pop star Pink to release an album of folk songs as You+Me . Green says another one may be on the way: “We’ve got about eight songs recorded. I leave it up to the mercy of the giant machine that is her life, but we all talk about it as something that we’ll always be able to do.”

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Recording as City and Colour, Green is nothing but vulnerable. In first single “Meant to Be,” he calls back to his Catholic upbringing and, to those raised in Catholicism, does the unthinkable: dares to question it. “When I grew up I had big city dreams/I wondered if the Bible was wrong/what the hell were they teaching me?” he sings. “It’s hard to shed a lot of that stuff you’re taught,” he says now.

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“It’s about the realization that you do have to live your life” he says, “to honor the people that are not here.”

City and Colour’s U.S. Tour Dates: May 9 — Chicago @ Riviera Theatre May 10 — Indianapolis, IN @ The Vogue May 12 — Columbus, OH @ Kemba Live! May 13 — Richmond, VA @ The National May 15 — Philadelphia @ Franklin Music Hall May 16 — Washington, D.C. @ Warner Theatre May 17 — Boston @ Roadrunner May 19 — New York @ Beacon Theatre May 20 — Portland, ME @ State Theatre May 21 — Ithaca, NY @ State Theatre

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'All I was doing was living': How Dallas Green explores grief on his new City and Colour album

The alexisonfire singer’s new solo album is about life after the sudden loss of a loved one.

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Introspection has been a key element throughout City and Colour's discography.

"When I put out the first record, and it was basically just a bunch of journal entries to six- and- a- half minute long acoustic songs, a bunch of people took that and ran with it," Dallas Green told Q 's Tom Power. "I've always sort of felt supported in this way of writing."

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But, in crafting his latest album, The Love Still Held Me Near , Green knew he no longer could write purely from his own perspective.

"The things I was going through were absolutely not singular to me and my friends," the Alexisonfire band member said.

WATCH | Dallas Green's interview with Tom Power:

"I was experiencing the grief of my friend who I considered a brother, I was experiencing the loss of love in a way," he said. "I was experiencing the sort of loss of what I assumed my identity was — just this person who goes out and makes music and tours, and then that was not there."

Karl "Horse" Bareham was a British music producer and engineer that worked with Alexisonfire on tour from the mid-2000s. When Green began releasing music as City and Colour with his 2005 solo debut Sometimes , Bareham became an integral part of the recording process — helping to produce his 2019 album A Pill for Loneliness .

Shortly after the latter album's release, Bareham passed away unexpectedly. Green toured in support of the album not long after he learned the devastating news and a whole group of friends who had worked with Bareham were left in mourning.

"I think for everybody that was involved it stopped time," said Green. "It's so strange that the pandemic would follow months later — it really just separated all of us too and then we went into this grieving period."

Moving through life

Much of The Love Still Held Me Near is explicitly about the loss of Green's friend.

"So much of it is informed by losing Karl because it's the deepest experience I've ever had to go through regarding grief," said Green.

"It's just about loss as a whole, trying to move through that and find your way to the other side of it," he said. "Me being the way I am, and writing about my feelings, it was a really interesting process to go through.… How do you write about something like that elegantly and still be as honest as possible?"

Helping others

By writing about a very personal experience, Green created an album that appeals to people more broadly.

"I like to have these big, unanswerable questions that I pined over and then just try to write like a little, pretty simple song about it," he said. I can just write a document that represents where I am as a human being right now in this stage of my life and then you just hope that it can grow wings and resonate with somebody else."

But in creating this album, he could also help other friends who were reeling from the sudden loss — mourning exacerbated by the pandemic.

"All I was doing was living," he said. "Then I thought, 'OK, I can write about this. This is not just for me, but this is just something I can do.'"

Learning and growing

While The Love Still Held Me Near is a highly emotional album, many of its songs resonate with hope.

"So many of these songs were about our friend who we used to make records with, and he's not here," he said.

For Green, the album ended up feeling like a reunion of friends — many of whom had worked closely with Bareham.

"We had all been going through their own versions of the pandemic and life changing … but I'm really proud of us," he said. "I think we made a really beautiful sounding record that sounds alive."

In the aftermath of struggling with this loss, Green would return to play some of these songs in Australia, where Bareham had lost his life.

"We went back to the small town, we had lunch where 'Horse' had breakfast, for the last time," he said. "There was no part of me that was not going to go back to Australia because I had had so many beautiful moments there, and a lot of them with Horse."

"To avoid it is to do nothing of service for yourself."

In going through such a personal loss and creating such a personal record, Green feels as if he has changed for the better.

"I did think I found a new version of myself [and] I think I found some way to be proud of myself," he said.

"I think I found that instead of going the way that I could have gone in the darkness, I chose the other way and I do feel different."

The full interview with Dallas Green is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power . Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Dallas Green produced by Vanessa Nigro.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oliver Thompson is a writer, producer and musician. Originally from the UK, where he worked for the BBC, Oliver moved to Canada in 2018.

Alexisonfire’s Wade MacNeil and Dallas Green on breaking their rules, guitar dynamics and the triumph of screamo

After 13 long years, the Canadian rock stalwarts return with new album Otherness – a change of direction or just a fresh spin on how they approach their songwriting?

In the 13 years since Alexisonfire released their last full-length album, much has changed. Screamo has gone from being a punchline to a beloved nostalgic era, as evidenced by the huge crowds jamming into Emo Nights across the continent.

But when it came time to get back in the studio, capping off a reunion that until now has generated just a handful of singles to go along with regular touring, capitalizing on nostalgia was the last thing the Canadian quintet had in mind. The result of those sessions, Otherness, is a moodier affair.

As always, the band are relying on singer/guitarist Dallas Green’s angelic voice for the hooks, punctuated by the demonic screaming of George Pettit and gravelly whiskey-and-cigarettes tenor of Wade MacNeil. But the album relies less on the fleet-fingered riffing of past releases and more on delay-drenched atmospheric electric guitar lines to complement the trio of voices.

“The approach over the years has changed to allow everything to have its own space,” MacNeil says. “I think that’s really important. It’s more to benefit the song – and finding the most important part that we want people to hold onto.”

Green, whose folky side project City and Colour released several albums during AoF’s hiatus, had seen his own guitar playing undergo an evolution. As the band began work on Otherness, it was agreed that for the first time he and MacNeil would split guitar duties along more conventional roles than ever before.

“On this record, I really became the lead guitar player of the band, just in terms of the way we were doing songs and Dal and my respective interests in guitar playing,” Green says. “He was like, ‘What I really want to do is play rhythm guitar and sing.’ And my interest in guitar over the last few years has moved more toward that kind of stuff anyway.”

To that end, MacNeil spent the past few years throwing himself into the works of artists that are almost never connected to post-hardcore, namely the Allman Brothers Band and the Grateful Dead. While that inspiration is more evident in his own side gig, the psychedelic Doom’s Children, Otherness does have its jammy moments, albeit ones cranked to 10.

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“There are a few places where we go absolutely fucking crazy. I think it’s a nice sign of where Alexis is at in our songwriting, allowing stuff like that to creep in. This record, I think, shatters a lot of the old rules we had for ourselves for what the band can be, what kind of songs we were writing. I really feel we can do anything at this point, which is a very nice way to feel upon releasing a record.”

Otherness is out now via Dine Alone Music.

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Adam is a freelance writer whose work has appeared, aside from Guitar World , in Rolling Stone , Playboy , Esquire and VICE . He spent many years in bands you've never heard of before deciding to leave behind the financial uncertainty of rock'n roll for the lucrative life of journalism. He still finds time to recreate his dreams of stardom in his pop-punk tribute band, Finding Emo.

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Dallas Green Talks Alexisonfire’s First Album in 13 Years: “It Just Feels Perfectly Timed”

The Canadian post-hardcore band's fifth studio LP, Otherness, is out now

Sometimes, all it takes is a little time to realize where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going. For Alexisonfire , that little time was actually a lot, spent on and off the road outside of the particular confines of this band itself. The Canadian post-hardcore band gave us a pretty definite swan song in their farewell tour documentary series, turning to their changing lives, expanding families and fruitful side projects as reasons for seeming separation, though they were never that far from one another.

That’s something proven on Otherness , their first album in 13 years. While its foundation was built during the uneasiness of the pandemic, the album is about so much more than the forced distance we all went through. All five members contributed a piece of themselves to the record but from what we’ve gathered from our conversation with singer-guitarist Dallas Green, it’s more about what the album itself contributed to them as a band, and what it hopes to contribute to their fans. They’ve never shied away from the ways in which they as individuals and as a collective have fallen into the idea of “otherness,” but with it as an album, they hope to redefine the term as a means of acceptance.

With Otherness available now, and Alexisonfire embarking on the summer leg of their 2022 North American tour ( tickets available here ), Green spoke with Heavy Consequence about their comeback album, the future of the band, and more.

In regard to the band releasing its first album in 13 years, why did you feel like now was the right time?

For starters, the pandemic, just stopping all of our collective lives in a way. [Co-vocalist] George [Pettit] is a firefighter as well, so he wasn’t able to not work. He was working all through the pandemic. But for the rest of us, there was nothing going on in our lives. We had stopped, everything had stopped, just like a lot of people. What we did have was this band. Wade, the other guitar player in the band, messaged us one day because he was coming back into Toronto, and said, ‘Should we jam?’ Not to get together, write songs or get together and make a record. Just literally it was something that we could do. We just started jamming because it was this beautiful thing that we still had in our lives, and we still appreciate one another’s company. That was what really started it. I think because it was such a strange time for the world but it didn’t feel like that when we started playing. We had little bits and fragments of pieces of songs on our phones from over the years of when we would rehearse for tours and stuff, and we wrote a couple of tunes, but this was just jamming, and it really just started f**king pouring out of us. We started in the Fall of 2020, and by the end of February, we had an album. We recorded it in a week. It was probably the most simply pure, creative experience that we’ve had since we were kids when we made the first record, and when we didn’t think anybody was going to listen, you know? I wish I had like a more like I wish I had a better answer for you of why, but it really just kind of happened.

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City and Colour: “I Didn’t Know if I Was Going to Write Anything Ever Again”

By Brenton Harris

For droves of music fans around the world, there are few sounds more evocative than Dallas Green’s voice. Whether soaring above the chaotic sounds of post-hardcore outfit Alexisonfire or hovering dreamily over the tender musical modes of City and Colour , Green’s signature tone speaks straight to the soul of his fanbase.

Green has released six albums as City and Colour, and album seven, The Love Still Held Me Near , is due out on Friday, 31st March. Green has deployed his voice in search of catharsis on each of his previous outings, penning songs of regret, grief, heartbreak and anxiety. This approach has yielded rich rewards, both commercially and artistically, allowing City and Colour to become so much more than just an Alexisonfire side project.

The Canadian songwriter is again seeking catharsis on The Love Still Held Me Near , using music to navigate the grief that followed the death of his best friend. On the album’s first two singles, ‘Meant To Be’ and ‘Underground’, Green sounds neither angry nor in shock, but prepared to process the grief.

Music Feeds spoke to Green ahead of an Australian tour that includes the SummerSalt festival and headline shows. Green opened up about the inspiration behind and intentions of a record that he feared he’d never write.

City and Colour – ‘Underground’

Music Feeds: Dallas, you’ve just announced your new album, The Love Still Held Me Near . Are you looking forward to sharing some of those songs with the Australian audience?

Dallas Green: I’ve been kind of sitting on this record for a little bit while we were off doing the Alexisonfire stuff, but I’m really, really proud of it, and it was a really emotional record to make. So, yes, I’m really looking forward to sharing it with everybody.

MF: The album will land less than a year after the latest Alexisonfire record. Does it feel like you’ve found a well of inspiration lately?

Dallas: It does, but when we first started writing these songs, I didn’t really see it coming – and then all of a sudden, I just couldn’t stop. For a bit of context, 2019 was a very difficult year for me, and then at the beginning of 2020, with the pandemic kind of starting, I was in this really strange place in my life. I know it was really strange for everybody, but I think having had this really troubled year before it had put me in a really bad place – creatively and in my life.

I know that is a very cliché thing for a writer to say, but it was truly one of those points where I didn’t know if I was going to write anything else ever again, or if I would even want to play music. I had to have a serious conversation with myself and that led to this creative explosion where I just started writing. And then Alexis started jamming, and by the end of May 2021 I had made both records.

MF: What did it feel like to be experiencing such a sudden burst of creativity after all that soul-searching?

Dallas: It was the most creatively explosive time I’ve ever had as a writer. I really did find a well of inspiration, but I still don’t know where it came from. All I do know is that I’ve usually written about things that are troubling me or weighing on me – I’ve always tried to write myself through those moments – but this was really astonishing to me, to be honest with you.

MF: Were the events that inspired these songs still occurring when you were writing? Or was this you processing their impact in the aftermath?

Dallas: It was sort of the latter. In 2019, I lost my best friend, right before my last record came out. So I was promoting the record and I had no idea how to do it. I was not there at all, mentally and emotionally. It was really the world shutting down that caused me to have to sit there and process and think about how to talk myself through all of this stuff.

The record is really about me being as low as I’ve ever felt. It’s about feeling broken and torn apart and just trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together.

City and Colour – ‘Meant to Be’

MF: Your fans connect with your music in a deep and personal way, and your music has often been played at weddings and funerals. How does it feel knowing that your music has played a role in some of the best and worst days of people’s lives?

Dallas: To be honest with you, it’s a complex thing to answer. I couldn’t be more grateful that the music that I write as a cathartic process has been able to translate into other people’s lives. When I was younger, all I wanted to do was to write a song that made somebody feel the way that I did when I heard the music that I loved.

I could never have imagined that people would play it when they were walking down the aisle or in memory of someone that’s gone. It’s an incredibly complex, nuanced feeling to explain. I don’t really know if I have the right words to express how knowing that makes me feel.

Sometimes it makes me feel sad that there are even situations in other people’s lives where they would have to play a song of mine because someone has passed, but at the same time, I understand that those experiences aren’t singular to one person.

‘Meant To Be’ is about the most devastating thing that has ever happened in my life, but I also understand that it’s not singular to my experience; it’s a thing that binds all of us as human beings. While we all differ and we all have different opinions and different cultures, there are some things that bring us all together – and the truest and most universal of those is death.

The Love Still Held Me Near is out on Friday, 31st March.

City and Colour 2023 Australian Tour

Wednesday, 1st February – Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW
Tuesday, 7th February – Ulumbarra Theatre, Bendigo VIC
Thursday, 9th February – Forum, Melbourne VIC
Monday, 13th February – The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD

SummerSalt Festival w/Angus & Julia Stone, Ben Harper and more

Friday, 27th January – Stage 88, Canberra, ACT
Saturday, 28th January – Thomas Dalton Park, Wollongong, NSW
Sunday, 29th January – Esplanade Park, Fremantle, WA
Friday, 3rd February – Royal Botanical Gardens, Hobart, TAS
Saturday, 4th February – Rochford Wines, Yarra Valley, VIC
Sunday, 5th February – Torquay Common, Torquay, VIC
Saturday, 11th February – Park Beach Reserve, Coffs Harbour, NSW
Sunday, 12th February – Broadwater Parklands, Southport, QLD

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Interview: Dallas Green talks new Alexisonfire album, old ideas and true friendship

June 15, 2022
Alexisonfire
City and Colour
Dallas Green

Alexisonfire remain one of Canada’s and the post-hardcore scene’s most influential bands. The charismatic quintet has returned with their fifth studio album Otherness – the band’s first full-length in 13 years – to be released 24 June via Dine Alone Records / Cooking Vinyl Australia .

We caught up with vocalist and guitarist Dallas Green to chat about the new record and what inspired the reunion.

“Life’s pretty good, my friend. Back playing some shows again and trying to find that new version of normal that I think everybody is trying to, you know. It was very strange because this is all I’ve done since I was a kid and the pandemic was the longest time I’ve had away from the road since I started doing this 20 years ago.”

Coming back from such a long break between albums, the band obviously had something to say. Otherness discusses themes of dejection, isolation and love – most likely inspired by the post-COVID lifestyle. The decision to make and release another album was not so much deliberate as it was coincidental.

“It’s weird to say it, but I don’t think the record exists if the pandemic doesn’t happen. George was the only one still working during it because he’s in the emergency services, but the rest of us were sort of sheltered and trying to be creative on our own.”

Dallas Green has been busy in recent years with his solo project City and Colour , including four albums and a headline slot at Brisbane Festival in 2019. With the shutdown of the live music industry and international travel during the pandemic, he turned to music for salvation and his fellow band members saw it as an opportunity to get together.

“It wasn’t until Wade messaged everybody and said, ‘Should we try to have a jam for something to do?’. Because of this gratitude for one another and for this thing that we can still do after all these years, the creativity was just starting to explode out of us and next thing you know, we had a record.”

Featuring the singles ‘Sweet Dreams of Otherness’, ‘Reverse the Curse’ and ‘Sans Soleil’, the 10-track project was self-produced and recorded in about a week and is AOF’s most progressive yet. Some of the ideas for the album, such as the lead riff in ‘Reverse the Curse’, were in the vault for years before the band found a use for them.

“For me, I try not to spend too much time on records. The last City and Colour record I made over a long span by going in every couple of weeks, crafting it that way. But I like to just sort of go in and capture the spirit of what you’re trying to create in that moment.”

“As far as riffs go, myself and Wade don’t throw anything away. Our phones are filled with riffs and voice notes that have been kicking around forever. I would say about 50% of the tunes on the new record are things that we were working on a few years ago. I’d say about 25% of it is all stuff that came about just as we started jamming. The other 25 is stuff that was just hanging around forever.”

The album consists of classic AOF punk riffs, tight drums and blended harsh and clean vocals. While there is a lot of urgent rock elements on the record, it also has tender moments of soft keys and Green’s heart-melting (or heartbreaking) croon with the sophisticated and substantial lyrics we know and love.

“We didn’t want to go and make Crisis 2 or something. We all have such a wide berth of musical inspiration between all 5 of us and we all like different styles of music. The thing about this record I think that makes it a little bit more special is that my friend Matt Kelly was in the studio with us, who is this wizard of a musician who can play anything you put in front of him. Having his ability to allow our ideas to come to life really took the record to the next level.”

Latest single ‘Sans Soleil’ is a harrowingly beautiful track and a standout of the record, written by guitarist/vocalist Wade MacNeil and sung by Green. Something the band does a lot on this record is perform each other’s parts as a collective voice, rather than claiming the lyrics as their own contribution.

“I think we made something that we can be really proud of, especially being in the band for this long. I really love ‘Blue Spade’ – I think I’m more emotionally attached to that song because Chris wrote the lyrics to it and it deals with something that’s very personal to him and to us because we’ve lived it with him. So, to have him write these words and then allow me and George to sing and be his voice was a really special moment.”

The beloved punks are also hosting their own four-day concert series Born & Raised , co-headlined by City and Colour, at St. Catharines in Ontario from 30 June to 3 July. The two artists will both be performing their debut albums in full for the first time ever at the event for their respective 15- and 20-year anniversaries.

“It’s something that we’ve been kicking around for a while. We’re holding it in St. Catherine’s, where we’re from, and we’ve played there a few times since things got crazy for us. But especially after the pandemic, we wanted to do something in our hometown where we could celebrate live music again.”

Alexisonfire last toured Australia in 2017 and it looks like there may be something on the horizon for their fans Down Under.

“Hopefully we’ll see you next year sometime.”

You can purchase tickets to Born & Raised HERE . Otherness is out 24 June via Dine Alone Records / Cooking Vinyl Australia.

Photo Credit: Vanessa Heins

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Alexisonfire’s Dallas Green: ‘It Feels Like We’re Starting Over, In A Good Way’

The Canadian post-hardcore band’s singer and guitarist talks about the way forward after releasing their first new material in nearly a decade and prepping for a new City and Colour album

Canadian post-hardcore band Alexisonfire. Photo: Vanessa Heins

When post-hardcore was (somehow) part of the mainstream music pie in the early 2000s, among the names being featured on the radio as well as receiving slots on MTV2 were Canadian band Alexisonfire. They became one of the big draws for fans of emo, melodic hardcore and metal when they featured multiple times on American tour series Warped Tour and arguably put Canadian post-hardcore on the map.

But after critically acclaimed albums like Crisis and Old Crows/Young Cardinals , and their EP Dog’s Blood in 2010, there was an unease that set in and by 2012, a final departing EP called Death Letter was gifted by Alexisonfire to fans, featuring re-made, quietened versions of some of their best known material. “The band and the fans, I think everybody needed to have a bit of closure on that period,” says vocalist and guitarist Dallas Green, who was also steadily building his solo identity with folk/acoustic and bluesy rock tunes as City and Colour. Guitarist and vocalist Wade MacNeil too had been taking on other projects, including fronting U.K. hardcore punk band Gallows.

Within three years of the end, however, Green was putting out feelers and Alexisonfire was back in the game, reuniting at bigger summer festivals in 2015. He says over the phone from Toronto, “We’d all been talking. We didn’t break up because we didn’t like each other, it’s just some other stuff that happened.” Slowly and steadily, they went beyond the nostalgia value and grew into the dependables. That idea is best seen (and heard) with “Familiar Drugs,” their first new material since 2010 that came out in February. A video showing all the members raging at their best, was out last week.

In an interview with Rolling Stone India , Green talks about the return of Alexisonfire, writing new material and prepping for an upcoming City and Colour record this year. Excerpts:

George [Pettit, vocalist] mentioned in an interview that you were the one who started putting the feelers out there to see if Alexisonfire wanted to play again.

When I left the band a long time ago, I worked a lot on making records and touring with City and Colour. I think what happened was, just a few years ago, we got an offer to do a show and we all started talking about it and at first we were apprehensive because of the way we had kind of called it quits but then it still made sense, because we were all still talking and still friends.

We were able to do it, so it was, ‘Let’s just play again, because we can and people seem to want to hear it.’ I think that was it. We started playing a couple of shows and we didn’t feel like we’d lost a step, we felt like we were just as good if not better than when we left. I think that had a lot to do with feeling that we were still contributing something. After a couple of years doing shows sporadically, I moved back to Toronto full-time and everybody was around a bit more so we started to write some new songs. And now here we are.

“Familiar Drugs” has lyrics by George about lethargy and it’s still an angry song. With newer material that you’re working on, what is the band’s current lyrical and sonic attitude like? Are there still things to be pissed off about?

A lot of people will just dismiss the music as angry, because of the way we just play and the sound, but it’s not always that. When George screams, people think he’s mad, but it’s not always negative. It’s more focused I think on the energy than anger. “Familiar Drugs” is about something specifically in George’s life but I think in general, it can be relatable. Trying not to let monotony get a hold of you and just trying to… go kicking and screaming, in a way, I guess.

I think the newer stuff we’re working on have a lot of different lyrical stuff, just as all our stuff. For instance, for City and Colour, I use that as an outlet to write very personal stuff, about things in my own life and I try to make them as relatable as possible so that people can hear them and try to take something from that. With Alexisonfire, since it’s a total collective effort, everything is talked about and discussed. We bring out different subjects and try to write them as a group.

It’s not all about being angry. Of course there’ll be stuff we’re angry about. It’s hard not to be angry these days, just with the state of things in the world, but it’s not always focused on that.

In the first decade that Alexisonfire were active, you were all in. What kind of qualities do you think you imbibed in that time that are guiding you even today?

I think we built up a lot of resiliency. When you’re young and in a band – especially a band making not the most popular sounding music – you’re going to be turned down a lot. You’re going to through a lot of… the fact that we’ve been an independent band and never really had much help from the outside music industry. It was all on our own terms and you had some things – like in Canada, which has a wonderful grant system for arts and music – that helped along the way.

You just have to develop a thick skin and a resiliency if you’re going to continue doing it. You’re going to spend so much time of your life in a van, driving to get to the next show. There might not even be anybody waiting to see you play. You might play for five or 10 people and then you got to get in the van, drive to the next city and hope that the next show is better. You don’t have any money to eat. There were a lot of hard times we went through just trying to… not only survive and stay in the band but also learn how to live with other people. There’s just five or six people sitting in a van for 20 hours a night, it can be a little bit trying, but then you have one good show and all of a sudden, it reminds you why you really wanted to try and do it in the first place. Those are the things… you have a happy moment and a good show with your friends and that just fuels you to keep going, to go through all the hard times and that’s just the way life kind of works.

Were there qualities you gained from City and Colour that you didn’t get from Alexisonfire?

No, I just applied the same things, the same work ethic to everything now. Been doing it for almost 20 years, but I still like to think I’m doing the same thing. City and Colour has always remained independent as well. Once Alexisonfire started to gain notoriety – and both, really because I was doing both at the same time – I thought, ‘I’ll just kind of stay this way’. For me, success has always been the ability to continue doing it. It’s never been about numbers or accolades or any of that stuff. I just always wanted to still be able to make music when I was older. I never wanted a hit song or anything like that. I just wanted to make music and hoped that people found something they liked about it.

You’re heading out on tour in June, now after the release of “Familiar Drugs.” What else is going to change on these dates?

Well, we’ll be playing that song, definitely which will be fun. We haven’t had much new stuff to play a while. I think we’ll probably have a couple more new songs. We’ll probably just do what we do, go out and play our songs as best as we can and have the time of our lives. If we can have people in the crowd having as much fun as we are, then everybody’s in for a good night.

Are there songs in your setlist that everyone looks at and just goes, ‘Nah we’re not playing this’? Is there some deliberation?

Sometimes, some of the older songs we just don’t know how to play them any more [ laughs ]. It’s funny but even when we try to relearn older songs, for some reason, they just don’t seem to feel right or they just don’t have that same energy coming from us. The way we look at it is if we just play the songs we feel best about, we’re going to present the best way, that’s better than kind of half-assing through an old song that someone wants to hear. Then you just have a shit version of it [ laughs ] and nobody’s happy. We try and pick the songs we all feel confident about so that we can drum up some feeling about and present it in a new fresh way, and hopefully we have a good time.

The end of Alexisonfire in 2012 was quite drawn out – from the announcement in 2011 to the shows in 2012. And then you also had Death Letter . Was there a sense of just doing things right?

The thing is, we had a lot of stuff planned ahead of time in 2012. Even I guess in 2010 and 2011, stuff had already been scheduled. I had sort of already made my decision and I thought I just needed to tell everybody where my head was at. It was a little bit weird for us to keep playing a bit. I think after 2010, it was a little bit strange, I think everybody was still trying to deal with the fact that I was going to walk away from the band for a bit. I think the reason we did those things in 2012 was to put an actual finishing touch on that part of our lives, you know?

It was announced, but then, like you said, we wanted to make sure we gave everyone a chance to see something that may never happen again. In my heart, I always hoped that we would play again but the reason I made it so definitive when I left the band was because I didn’t think it was fair to have everybody wait around. The band and the fans, I think everybody needed to have a bit of closure on that period. I think now that we’re back and playing and making music, it just feels like a new period, a new section of the history of our lives and the band. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been taking a break. It just feels like we’re starting over, in a good way.

You launched your own record label, Still Records recently. Is the new City and Colour album coming out this year?

Yeah, it’s on going to come out on my label. It should be out in the Fall. We’re just finishing the artwork and it got mastered last week. We’ll go on tour and it’s just something I’ve been taking my time with. In terms of being around to work on new Alexis stuff, since 2006, I’d been on tour with either Alexis or City and Colour and making records every year. I think at the end of 2017, I had finished touring If I Should Go Before You [2015] for two years and I thought I needed to take a year away from touring so much and going right back in the studio. I spent all of last year doing a bunch of different stuff, starting the record label, producing other bands and putting the live record out. Slowly, just making the new record and working on Alexis stuff – it just gave me time to do a bunch of other stuff.

You were the oldest in the band and therefore assigned the more “adult” responsibilities. What is that dynamic like now?

We’re all adults now. When we started, three of the guys were in high school still. It was a combination of me being older but also being the one that had a little bit more freedom – I had been out of high school for one or two years when we started the band. I think occasionally, we all look to each other for advice on life nowadays, because we’ve all grown up and experienced our own things. It’s more just a friendship.

It’s a total global tour of sorts in June. Have you ever had any offers from India? Has anyone ever been here?

Steele [Chris Steele, bassist] has been there traveling. After the band broke up, Steele traveled the world for like a year and a half, so he’s been to India. He had a long stay there. But none of us have been there for music. I’m not too sure if we’ve gotten offers from there, but we’d like to. We like to go everywhere, it’s a big world [ laughs ], just a matter of figuring out how to get there. It’s just a matter of trying to go everywhere in the world where people are listening.

Alexisonfire
Chris Steele
City and Colour
Dallas Green
George Pettit
Jordan Hastings
Wade Macneil

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Dallas Green Talks Alexisonfire’s First Album in 13 Years: “It Just Feels Perfectly Timed”

The post Dallas Green Talks Alexisonfire’s First Album in 13 Years: “It Just Feels Perfectly Timed” appeared first on Consequence .

In regard to the band releasing its first album in 13 years, why did you feel like now was the right time?

I feel like that’s a great answer, though. It seems like it was kind of collectively cathartic for all of you to get it all out.

Exactly. After we made the first record, we were a band for a long time. Whether it’s subconscious or not, you go on tour for two years, and you come off and you’re like, ‘Hey, we have to make another album,’ and you have to start to try to write and then you have to get ready to go back on a touring cycle and an album cycle and all that stuff. But for this, there was none of that — we didn’t even have a record label. There was nothing, just us and the tunes. I think the album sounds like that.

I’m curious as to how you feel about future albums, because they may not have that same type of cathartic energy to them …

Yeah, I’m sure there’s a bit of that. It’s weird, because we’ve been in and out of this band for two decades. I said to [guitarist-singer] Wade [MacNeil] when we were midway through recording, how it feels like he started the band over. He was the one who called everybody 20 years ago and said, ‘I have this idea, we should start this band with all of us.’ It was almost like he did it again. I think we feel different about it now, like we’re looking at it through different lenses. There’s this beautiful appreciation for the thing. And of course, you can’t escape the trappings of once you turn it into a product, and you have to sell it, and you have to talk to people about it, and you have to market yourself — it’s just the nature of the beast in a way where that stuff will ultimately kind of creep in. But it does feel like we have this sort of different perspective on the whole idea. It’s gratitude. I think in the beginning, we were shocked that anybody liked it first place. It’s weird music. But I think 20 years later, having lived pretty crazy lives together and separately, we’re trying to hold on to this real sense of gratitude that we can still go to this thing that we started when we were kids. Hopefully, we can keep as much of that as possible moving forward.

I was thinking back to when I’d watched the farewell documentary and the mindsets and the energies that you all had, and I was wondering if anything has changed. Especially for you and how you felt during the documentary versus now …

When we stopped, it was a very emotional period in our lives. It had become this thing that none of us really imagined it could be. And then it was ending because life’s getting in the way and I’m leaving the band because I had this other thing I was doing [City and Colour]. It was a very emotional, sort of heavy time. But, you know, time heals a lot of stuff. We’d been playing here and there, but this just feels a little different. It does feel like we can hold on to this sense of gratitude now, and the shared experience of everything. It’s funny, because when we did break up, we felt like we broke up really well. I remember George saying he was worried about us coming back, even when we started playing again like five or six years ago, because he thought we had done it, and we had ended it on a really like classy note. We’re all pretty self aware. That’s another part of it, too, right? We didn’t want to come back and just make it seem like it was this nostalgic thing or this paycheck thing. We wanted to make sure we were doing it and feeling good about the band still. I think that’s probably also why it took so long for us to make an actual record, because we’ve all been tiptoeing back into it a little bit. When I think about the farewell stuff and those interviews, it’s just a sign of where we were, but this feels totally brand new, in a strange way.

And if it’s any sign of where you’re at now and how all of you have matured, I’ve been listening to Alexisonfire since I was at the tail end of middle school, early high school, and I’m in my 30s now.

And I’m in my 40s.

So we’re not that far off. And you’re right, it’s really indicative of where you were at age-wise and mindset-wise back then, because it was so long ago, and so much has happened in the world and in general sense. I hear you in regards to the “if we’re gonna come back, it’s not going be one of those kind of, like, sell-out reunion tour type things or whatever,” you know?

No, I don’t think we’re capable of it. Right? When I say this stuff, I’m not dogging anybody who does it. It’s just us, this is just our outlook on it, you know what I mean? I don’t think we were ever one of those bands in the first place. I think we got pigeonholed into a scene, but I’ve always felt like we are different. I don’t think anybody sounds like us. We are a weird amalgamation of five people who think differently, but who are also able to think completely alike when we need to. And I’ve learned this about myself, having only made music now for 20 years, I can’t force myself to be creative. I just have to wait for the moment to hit me, and then I go f**king nuts with it. with us making this record, as strange as it seems in 13 years from our last one, it just feels perfectly timed, you know?

Yeah, I get that, and I think that’s beautiful, too. As far as how you all approach writing and recording songs, do you feel that has changed at all?

We’ve always been pretty collaborative as far as trying to write songs. Nobody ever just like showed up with a song. It was always one of us start with an idea, and then everybody puts their input in until we can get to the point where all of us are in agreement that this is the way it should be. There are concessions made from your own personal opinion, because you’re trying to be in this democracy where five people are trying to agree, right? But I think this record was the most collaborative we’ve ever been. Top to bottom it was all of us talking and constantly writing the lyrics together. You know, ‘what is best for the song?’ Not not just ‘I’ll do this part because it’s my part’ or, George has to sing the thing that he wrote and I have to sing the thing I wrote.’ It’s a trust in one another that we can, in a way, we can speak for one another.

So then I’m curious, because when I think of a term like “otherness,” I think of being a racial outlier or gender outlier, or things that are particularly pertinent within society right now. I’m wondering what your personal connection is to this overarching concept of otherness, and how the band came to a place where that was the overarching theme of this album?

I think it’s a beautiful word, and I think being different should be celebrated even though it isn’t all the time. When I think about this group of people that I’ve known for half of my life, we’re very weird people, and when I wrote “Sweet Dreams of Otherness”, it was almost at the tail end of having written all the other songs, and I’ve always had that word written in my notes to try to use in a song. I was having such a beautiful experience being back collaborating with these dudes, and being reminded constantly about how wacky we are. I started writing that song as a total reaction to my love for these people. I think Alexis has always had a bit of “otherness” to us. My favorite part about music is that you can write something from your own perspective, and then it can go out into the world and everybody can take what they need from it. I also wanted to try to write an anthem for people who feel sort of a kinship to that idea, and have it be celebrated and not be this like derogatory term. I wanted to flip the idea of this word being a negative thing and have it be something to embrace. It’s weird, since it’s five white, straight men singing it, but I feel like it can be more than that.

I agree with you and I also feel like, and this might sound funny, but I feel like the fact that it is coming from five straight white dudes at a time like this, kind of does mean something. I feel, as someone who, in the bad sense of the term, is an “other,” and has been made to feel that way, predominantly by white dudes, that this touches me, you know what I mean?

That’s good! That’s what I was hoping for, and we talked about this when I wrote the song. When we decided to call the record that, we had this conversation like, ‘Is it okay for us to do this?’ Like I said, we’re aware, and we are not ignorant people, and I think we all agreed that if it was done the right way that it could be more than just the song for us. To hear you say that to me, that’s all I was hoping for.

I know when I’ve been at certain shows, as a woman of color, it’s sometimes not safe and that’s really a bummer, because we’re all fans of the same kind of music. That’s why we’re there. I feel like for many other Alexis fans of color this will be pretty special. That type of acceptance isn’t always one that I’m used to feeling when I go to shows that are in the scene, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I do. I grew up in it, right? Like touring around, and being on all those hardcore shows and all that stuff. It can be a very shitty place to be. George always, always says an Alexis show is a safe space for anybody who feels different, but it is a decidedly unsafe place for f**king misogynists, homophobes, racists and anything like that. It’s not a safe place for those people.

What would you say are some of the other themes present, but maybe not as apparent as this one of otherness, on the album?

Well, we allow ourselves to write about whatever we feel we need to write about. It’s always been that way — we cover a lot of topics. But this one somehow felt even more personal. It’s hard for me to say it any better than [bassist Chris] Steele did. On “Reverse the Curse,” he speaks openly about his journey with recovery, because him and Wade are both recovering. It’s been a long journey for both of them. There are two songs on the record, “Reverse the Curse” and “Blue Spade”, that are both written by Chris. He kind of allowed us to be the voice for it, and that’s the first time we’ve ever openly spoke about it together. There’s a song on [our 2006 album] Crisis called “To a Friend”, and that’s me writing to Steele, I wrote that song about him. Because of what he was struggling with at the time we never, ever really spoke about that. It was just this internal conversation between us. I know that’s not any lighter than what we were just talking about, but it’s real, you know? And, it’s one of those things that’s not a singular experience to Chris — it’s something that a lot of people deal with, or have to try to deal with. So being able to write songs about that, and kind of be this voice for it, is something I think that we took very seriously.

Dallas Green Talks Alexisonfire’s First Album in 13 Years: “It Just Feels Perfectly Timed” Cervanté Pope

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A Conversation With Dallas Green (City And Colour)

Post author By MAGNET Staff
Post date April 4, 2023

Since City And Colour emerged in 2005 as a prettier, more refined offshoot to Alexisonfire (the influential Canadian hardcore outfit he co-founded), Dallas Green has ushered his singer/songwriter project through numerous permutations. But the common thread has always been his voice, an aching freak of nature that has the ability to wrench your heart from its chest cavity. It does exactly that on “Meant To Be,” the leadoff track to The Love Still Held Me Near (Still/Dine Alone), City And Colour’s first LP in four years.

Like many of us, the Juno Award-winning singer/songwriter has had a tough few years. Green’s pandemic angst was compounded by the loss of two close friends: cousin Nicholas Osczypko and City And Colour producer/engineer Karl Bareham, the latter whose drowning death inspired “Meant To Be.” Throw in Green’s trial separation with his wife, and you have a pretty solid explanation for why City And Colour’s seventh release can be a serious emotional workout at times.

Green worked through the grieving process with longtime band member Matt Kelly, who co-produced The Love Still Held Me Near , and he’s since reconciled with his wife. Chatting with MAGNET for the first time, he puts some perspective on the chain of unfortunate events that fueled his latest work.

Let’s get this out of the way right now—that voice. Do you ever see it as anything but an asset? One of the best things I have in my life is when I sing. Since I was very young and singing along to the records I loved, it always seemed to feel like more than just singing to me. It was a way of emoting that I couldn’t necessarily do by speaking. The answer I want to tell you is that I’ve never felt anything but great about it. But I do know that people have judged me and my music based on my voice. That’s something you learn when you sing for people half your life, and you realize you’re asking for their opinion, whether you want it or not. I’ve had people say really terrible things about my voice, and I’ve had them say really nice things, too. At this point, I’m just comfortable with it. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more comfortable with my voice—or who I wanted to be—than on this record.

Condolences on the loss of your two friends. How does mortality inform The Love Still Held Me Near ? I just don’t think there was any way to avoid it. There was so much tied to what we were all feeling about my friend Karl. It was so sudden, and he was out on tour with me. I’d made a couple of records with Karl producing with me. He was like a brother to me. I’ve always used City And Colour to kind of ruminate on things that are weighing me down. I wasn’t sure how I was going to address it at first. How do you make sure you’re going to speak elegantly about these things? But somewhere along the way, I started to realize that this is just what I do—I use this as a process to help myself through everything in my life.

This album has to be your most emotionally direct. I was working through such a heavy batch of emotions, so it needed to have this urgency to it. The record became more about me blossoming into this thing where I was healing—but healing out loud. I started to feel like I had to be as direct as possible.

What was it like co-producing with Matt Kelly? It was beautiful. Matt’s been playing with me for 10 years. When I started realizing I had a good batch of songs cooking, it coincided with COVID restrictions easing up and Matt being able to come visit me. As we started working on the songs, we realized there was this whole new version of our working relationship as we grieved together. When it came time for us to think about going into the studio, Matt became this sort of catalyst for me. He helped me get the vocal performance I wanted. He just sat at the board, and I got stoned and was like, “Let’s fuckin’ do it.”

“Meant To Be” and “Begin Again” resonate for so many reasons, and the vocals on both are heartbreaking. Was there ever any doubt that those songs would the album’s bookends? No. It really presented itself early in the process. “Begin Again” was the first song I started to write in February of 2020. When I finished it, it felt so joyful … It ended up feeling like the finale. And “Meant To Be” had to be the first song.

For someone who’s just discovering the City And Colour catalog, what two albums would you most recommend for newbies—aside from this one, of course. I’d say (2008’s) Bring Me Your Love , because it’s a good snapshot of the young me, and (2015’s) If Should Go Before You , where I really explored some musical territory I love. I wrote that record after really getting to know the guys I was touring with. It was a great period in my life.

On a personal note, you have the same name as one of the most famous Philadelphia Phillies managers. Is that a coincidence? Not at all. I was born Sept. 29, 1980. My mother wanted to name me Graham-Todd—hyphenated, by the way. My dad did not want to name me Graham-Todd. That year, he bet money on the Phillies to win the World Series. They did—and he named me Dallas Green. My father was a gamblin’ man.

—Hobart Rowland

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CITY AND COLOUR + ALEXISONFIRE Announce a 4 Day Concert Series In Their Hometown

Alexisonfire, City and Colour, Dine Alone Records and Live Nation Canada have curated a very special line-up that will take over Montebello Park in the artists’ beloved hometown of St. Catharines from June 30 to July 3, 2022. Tickets for this all ages event go on sale Thursday, March 17 at 10am ET at ticketmaster.ca .

Alexisonfire and City and Colour have partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every ticket sold will be donated to the Indspire Building Brighter Futures Scholarship program through the City and Colour Indigenous Student Bursary and the Alexisonfire Indigenous Music Bursary , which were established in 2019 with the goal of supporting students as they complete their education and achieve academic success. To date Alexisonfire and City and Colour have donated over $120,000 combined.

Born & Raised is a celebration and homecoming for bandmates Dallas Green, George Pettit, Wade MacNeil, Chris Steele, and Jordan Hastings. Alexisonfire rose up out of the St. Catharines, Ontario underground in late 2001 with City and Colour’s Platinum certified album Sometimes debuting a few short years later in 2005. AOF released four hugely successful studio albums, all Music Canada Platinum-certified and would go on to define a generation of contemporary music in Canada and abroad. Now back with a vengeance, and on the heels of announcing their first studio album in over 13 years, Otherness, Alexisonfire, in partnership with Dallas Green’s multiple award-winning and critically acclaimed act City and Colour, is bringing the music back to where it all started. Featuring 4 nights of music, food, and drink in the city’s Montebello Park over the July long weekend, Born & Raised is a not-to-be missed concert event.

“Something special happens when Alexisonfire gets together,” says AOF vocalist George Pettit. “When we’re all on stage playing in the pocket, we elevate and the audience comes with us. Born & Raised is going to be a beautiful spectacle. City and Colour and AOF are returning to the very streets that created us, joined by a slew of great bands. Can’t wait.”

Joining Alexisonfire and City and Colour are longtime friends and very special guests, Billy Talent. The concert series also features a stellar line up of support acts including Broken Social Scene, Pup, Sam Roberts Band, Elliott, Hot Water Music, cleopatrick, Ruby Waters, Chastity, Dooms Children, NOBRO and The OBGMs.

The festival line up is as follows :

June 30 City and Colour Sam Roberts Band Ruby Waters Chastity

July 1 City and Colour Broken Social Scene Elliott Dooms Children

July 2 Alexisonfire Billy Talent – SPECIAL GUEST Hot Water Music NOBRO

July 3 Alexisonfire Pup cleopatrick The OBGMs

Alexisonfire also recently announced that Otherness , their first new album in 13 years will be released on June 24th. See the current pre-order bundles + listen to their new single ‘Sweet Dreams of Otherness’ here .

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Dallas Green On Alexisonfire Reunion: 'A Part Of Me Wondered If I Would Sing Like That Again'

"... I didn’t know how I was going to feel."

After regrouping at the back end of 2015, Canadian post-hardcore treasures Alexisonfire are gearing up for their triumphant return to Australia next week, but vocalist Dallas Green has admitted he didn't know how he'd feel leading up to their first shows.

Green, who has devoted his time to solo project City & Colour in recent years, spoke about the reunion in an interview with News Limited (via The Daily Telegraph ).

"I could speak for the other guys to a degree but specifically for me, because I had shifted all my focus to City and Colour, doing this is solely for fun," Green said.

"I felt like a kid again last summer (in 2015) and I didn’t know how I was going to feel. There was a part of me that wondered if I would be about to sing like that again."

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After calling it quits in 2012 due to Green’s desire to focus on City & Colour and lead guitarist Wade MacNeil joining UK-founded outfit Gallows, Green says the band are all on the same page ahead of their headlining spot at Victoria’s UNIFY Festival.

"We all have moved on from that initial period of when it was over," Green told News Corp.

"I think the way we are looking at us now is we are very thankful to have an opportunity to still do it when we can and people are excited about that. We appreciate it."

Though the future of Alexisonfire is currently unknown, Green revealed that he plans to release new music by year's end, following on from his 2015 LP, If I Should Go Before You .

"I will have a new record that I need to get out of my brain," he said.

For more details on Alexisonfire’s Aussie tour, as well as UNIFY, head to theGuide .

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Album review: City And Colour – The Love Still Held Me Near

A poignant platter from the sensitive side of Alexisonfire’s Dallas Green…

Somewhere in the middle section of the third song on The Love Still Held Me Near, the eighth studio album from Toronto’s City And Colour , Dallas Green sings that ' we had everything we wanted but we fucked it up' . They ' had everything we needed but it wasn’t enough' . At which point, seemingly out of nowhere, a lead guitar solo snakes into the track with the devilish intent of electricity out on loose and looking for trouble. The mood is not as it once was; if the party isn’t over, certainly it’s turned sour.

Because if Alexisonfire , the group with which Dallas Green first made his name, are the sound of a vast army of people bonded together in unified joy, City And Colour, at least in this current iteration, are the sound of the inevitable and necessary clean-up operation after the show. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. Inspired by the untimely deaths of a family member and a musical colleague and friend, The Love Still Held Me Near resonates with the timbre of a music-maker who has reached the point at which the impermanence of life becomes a permanent fixture. And while youth, it is so often said, is wasted on the young, the ominous toll of encroaching age suits Dallas Green well.

Alas, as with other City and Colour albums, this one suffers from moments of terminal blandness. It’s one thing to be a proper ‘grown-up’ songwriter, but quite another to sound quite as sensible and suburban as City (Dallas) and Colour (Green) do, or does, on tracks such as Underground and A Little Mercy. Elsewhere, though, on offerings such as Meant To Be and The Water Is Coming, The Love Still Held Me Near is the sound of a hard and necessary rain that will one day fall on us all until the day we die.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Chuck Ragan, Dustin Kensrue, onelinedrawing

The Love Still Held Me Near is released on March 31 via Dine Alone

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People got very excited when celebrated Canadian artist Dallas Green announced he was bringing City And Colour back to Australia for a series of theatre shows and festival dates in the early part of 2023.

Now it's time fans of his heavier work to get fired up, because Alexisonfire have today confirmed their first Australian tour since 2017, which will happen just after the City And Colour dates wrap up.

It's great timing, as the band have just recently released Otherness , their fifth album and first in 13 years.

It's an incredibly strong return from the band, who swore they wouldn't release any new music unless they felt it was really the right thing to do.

"As much as we love playing the old songs, we don’t want to be a nostalgia act," frontman George Pettit said in a statement.

"The only reason to come back is if we feel we still have something to say."

The band took a few years off at the start of the 2010s and were blown away to discover their popularity hadn't dwindled one bit while they were away. Most importantly, when they got back together, the magic was still there.

"Coming back to Alexisonfire is a purely enjoyable creative venture," Petit said. "Something special happens when we get in a room together."

Green recently got the chance to Take 5 on Mornings with Zan Rowe, picking a broad selection on songs that offered a great insight into the music that's been inspiring him of late. Hear it below.

When the band return to Australia in February, they'll play huge along the east coast and in Adelaide.

It's the eighth time they've toured here – safe to say those first shows were a little bit smaller than these ones – and anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing them in the past will attest to the consistent power of their performances.

As if this news wasn't exciting enough, they'll also bring Tasmanian punk favourites Luca Brasi along for the ride, making this an unmissable night of high quality, emotive punk rock.

Catch them playing the following shows. Tickets are on sale Thursday 17 November.

Friday 17 February – The Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane

Monday 20 February – Enmore Theatre, Sydney

Friday 24 February – The Forum, Melbourne

Monday 27 February – Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide

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sports Golf

What North Texans should know about the Masters: How to watch, odds and more

Dallas’ scottie scheffler is the overwhelming favorite to win another green jacket this week..

Scottie Scheffler watches his tee shot on the first hole during a practice round for the...

By SportsDay Staff

8:00 AM on Apr 8, 2024 CDT — Updated at 1:42 PM on Apr 9, 2024 CDT

The golf world converges on Augusta National this week for one of the most anticipated events of the year.

Dallas’ Scottie Scheffler is the overwhelming favorite to win another Masters green jacket, over defending champion John Rahm , at the 88th edition of the event which starts on Thursday. Scheffler is the No. 1 player in the world with two wins already this year.

The Masters will also be the first time all the top players from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf play together since the British Open last summer.

Here’s everything fans in North Texas need to know about this year’s event:

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How to watch

The first round begins at 7:15 a.m. Thursday, when honorary starters Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson tee off on Tea Olive , the first hole at Augusta National. Jock Hutchison and Fred McLeod were the first honorary starters in 1963, but it was not until Byron Nelson and Gene Sarazen took over in 1981 that it became such a treasured tradition.

The rest of the field tees off following them in groups of three, which were announced Tuesday . After the second round, the top 50 players and ties make the cut for the weekend and are paired according to score for the final two rounds.

TV: Thursday-Friday, 2-6:30 p.m. (ESPN); Saturday, 2-6 p.m. (CBS); Sunday, 1-6 p.m. (CBS)

Streaming: ESPN+, CBS/Paramount+, FUBO+ Masters.com

The par 3 contest also takes place Wednesday on ESPN+ beginning at 11 a.m. and ESPN at 2 p.m.

Jordan Spieth hits from the bunker on the 16th hole during the final round of the Masters...

Local golfers

Scottie Scheffler: Dallas’ Scheffler, the No. 1 golfer in the world, is the most overwhelming Masters favorite since Tiger Woods in 2013. He already has two wins this year and nearly had a third in a row at the Houston Open. His tee-to-green game is at levels not seen since Woods at his peak.

Jordan Spieth: Dallas’ Spieth is coming up on two years since his last win and he missed two straight cuts at The Players Championship and Valspar Championship. But Augusta National suits him and his putting. He holds the record for leading after seven straight rounds and has played in the final group three times.

Will Zalatoris: Plano’s Zalatoris is making his third Masters appearance. In his first two starts at Augusta National, he finished runner-up and one stroke behind Hideki Matsuyama in 2021 and T-6 in 2022. After withdrawing prior to starting last year’s Masters, he underwent back surgery and missed the rest of the PGA Tour season . Following his return to competition, he finished runner-up in Los Angeles in February and T-4 in the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando in March.

Ludvig Aberg: Two players in the top 10 in the world, U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark (4) and Aberg (9), are making their Masters debuts. Aberg finished runner-up in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February and eighth in The Players Championship in March. Last June, he concluded his collegiate career at Texas Tech as the top-ranked amateur in the world and has continued his success into his pro career.

Bryson Dechambeau: An SMU product playing on the LIV tour , Dechambeau is making his eighth Masters appearance. He finished T-4 in last year’s PGA Championship at Oak Hill for his fourth top-10 performance in a major in the past four years. He won the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot by six strokes.

Tom Kim: Kim, a Dallas resident, is making his second Masters appearance. He was T-16 in 2023 in his debut at Augusta National. In October, he earned his third career PGA Tour win with a successful title defense in Las Vegas.

Related: Masters tee times: Scottie Scheffler paired with Rory McIlroy for first two rounds

Odds to win

Scottie Scheffler +500

Rory McIlroy +950

Jon Rahm +1200

Brooks Koepka +1700

Ludvig Aberg +2400

Jordan Spieth +2800

Will Zalatoris +3100

Bryson DeChambeau +3600

Tom Kim +7500

Tiger Woods +12000

* odds as of April 7, via FanDuel

2023 result

Rahm had to play 30 holes on Sunday in a rain-delayed Masters. He got within two shots of Brooks Koepka in the morning, and then pulled away with a 3-under 69 to win by four shots over Koepka and Phil Mickelson . Koepka went 22 consecutive holes Sunday without a birdie and shot 75. Mickelson shot 65 and at 52 became the oldest runner-up in Masters history.

Tiger tales

Five-time champion Tiger Woods has never missed the cut as a pro at the Masters. He has played only 24 holes of tournament golf this year, most recently six holes on Feb. 16 in the Genesis Invitational before withdrawing with the flu.

The Associated Press contributed to this post.

More Masters coverage

- Masters preview: Golf’s competing tours converge with local stars on both sides

- Masters tee times: Scottie Scheffler paired with Rory McIlroy for first two rounds

- Plano’s Will Zalatoris leans on advice from Tiger Woods while prepping for the Masters

- Scheffler, Spieth, Zalatoris: How Dallas’ big 3 have fared at the Masters

Find more golf coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.

SportsDay Staff

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Alexisonfire’s Dallas Green: ‘It Feels Like We’re Starting Over, In A Good Way’

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