Fur Trade: “It blew my mind how effective song writing can be if the music and everything works together.”

Mixing indie, sleaze and glam-rock with a dash of 80s city pop, pop genre-smashers Fur Trade, aka Steve Bays and Parker Bossley of Hot Hot Heat, released their new album, Dark Celebration, early this year.

In our latest Cover Story, V13 sat down with the pair for a chat originally about their music and what makes their partnership works. Along that journey, we uncovered tales of addiction, writer’s block, and finding your creative flow in the early hours of the morning…

Thanks for your time, how’s life going at the moment?

Parker: “Life’s been crazy, man. I was just about to get everything ready for this release because the due date for our baby was actually on the 19th then he came two weeks early and it’s been pretty crazy dude. I’m pretty tired, to be honest. It’s as difficult as everyone says it is. I was hoping somehow it wouldn’t be but it is.”

Congratulations though. It will be good fun as well…

Parker: “Thanks, man. It is. One aspect of it that I didn’t realise or think about was just like the feelings of love where you really do love the little guy that changed your life. So yeah, it’s already changing. We’ve got a good support system though. My partner Olivia works in birth working so there is already a little bit of a foundation of knowledge. I’m clueless, man. I’m learning.”

It’s the best way to go into it…

At this point, Steve joins us enquiring about Parker’s take on parenthood…

Parker: “It’s been pretty insane. It’s way more work than I thought it was gonna be. Every time you think that you’ve got your thumb on it, or have this shit figured out or that shit’s gonna get easier, some new random thing comes up. The latest thing was how he hasn’t gained as much weight as he should so now we have to switch to formula and we have to do a little bit of that and a little bit of this. Now he has to learn to like formula and he fucking hates it because it’s not a boob. Just bullshit like that.”

But how much does he sleep in a day?

Parker: “Hardly at all. It’s like, every hour and a half he’s freaking out because he’s hungry dude. So it’s like maybe we get two hours asleep in a 24-hour period.”

I’m concerned you’re gonna fall asleep midway through this interview…

Parker: “Oh, well, you’re okay that won’t happen. I got a coffee…

The room that I’m in right now, I’m converting it to my recording studio. We just moved into a new place also, like right before this all happened so we haven’t had a chance to set up my studio. It’s just bare walls but Steve makes up for it in coolness because his place looks dope as fuck…”

“I just fell out of love with the process of releasing music, in general so Parker and I would just sort of get together and just try out all these ideas and it was just super fun.”

Steve: “Yeah, it’s pretty fun. Although, we might be moving sooner than later too because we got a baby on the way too so we’re thinking about that stuff, you know?”

Parker: “Excellent. That’s gonna be a crazy move. Steve has a lot of stuff.”

Steve: “I found a garbage bin that isn’t locked so I’ve just been doing all these trips to this one garbage bin just getting rid of a tonne of stuff because normally it’s like a half an hour drive to the dump. It costs like 40 bucks each time you go. It’s expensive to get rid of stuff.”

I fucking love going to the dump. It’s like my favourite thing to do…

Steve: “I love it too. It’s so weird. I have this one photo that I find hilarious. When Hot Hot Heat hadn’t been active for quite some time, I was just paying for the storage where we had all our flight cases for years. I probably spent tens of thousands on just storage for no reason. Do we even want these flight cases? You can’t give those things away because now you can’t fly with heavy stuff so everyone’s using lightweight Pelican cases. The big steel and wood ones people don’t want and I couldn’t sell them.

The biggest one was this Ampeg eight by 10 – the classic bass amp that is like six feet. The fridge they call it. So we had a flight case for that and I couldn’t get rid of it. I did the math for how much it was costing me then me and my buddy took it to the dump and I have this photo of this huge mountain of garbage and on the top of it is this massive, huge Ampeg eight by ten case and it just says Hot Hot Heat.”

That’s almost that’s an album cover straightaway…

Steve: “Yeah, when the reunion happens. Or at least the back cover.”

V13 – Cover Story – Issue 41 – Fur Trade

Before that though, you’ve got the new record… I have to admit it’s not my usual thing, being a massive metalhead, but I enjoyed it…

Steve: “Oh, wicked. I played in metal bands for years and years and years. I was just like hardcore and metal. Do you know the band Two Inches of Blood? Or was it Three Inches of Blood? So, the singer of that band, I actually helped in getting him in that band. I was like, you’ve got to sing for this band. You got to sing. I just took their CD and got him to sing over it and recorded it in my apartment and gave it to them and he was in.

He’s the only semi-original member now – the entire line-up has changed over the years, but anyway, him and me were in metal bands for years then I started to get into poppier stuff. He was proper bummed ‘cos he’s got all these like satanic tattoos and I went totally puss as he calls it. But my origin story is like punk, hardcore, metal for sure.”

That’s awesome, I enjoyed the record, it was a lot of fun. I know you’ve obviously worked together during that 10 years on a lot of other stuff but what brought Fur Trade back together?

Steve: “I just fell out of love with the process of releasing music in general so Parker and I would just sort of get together and just try out all these ideas and it was just super fun. Usually, we’d be up all night – almost every song was written when the sun was coming up. In the meantime, I was doing other stuff with him in another band called Mounties that Parker is also in on bass and then another band called Left Field Messiah and then I was wrapping up a lot of Hot Hot Heat stuff.

Fur Trade was more just an excuse to experiment with production and songwriting ideas and just stuff that would have been fun but wouldn’t have the baggage associated with striving for radio and blah, blah, blah…”

“One thing in particular being like a massively dark breakup and that really started to inform a lot of our songwriting. Even if it was in subtle ways, you know, you just can’t help but be informed by the things that are in your life at the time.”

From fun, when did this new record start to form and did you have a vision for the record?

Parker: “The first half of the record started out just like how Steve was saying. It was very much him and I getting together, making whatever music we wanted to make, experimenting with production and songwriting and hanging out because we have each other so like, that was great fun. Then, once the label thing came into place, we started to really think about the tracklist where we’re at, and how the songs work together.

It just so happened that, in the second half of the writing record, both Steve and I were going through some pretty crazy changes, like big life changes. One thing in particular was a massively dark breakup and that really started to inform a lot of our songwriting. Even if it was in subtle ways, you know, you just can’t help but be informed by the things that are in your life at the time. So we came up with this dark celebration thing, and it was like this suite of songs. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth songs became this like through line of the record. I just really loved the concept of a dark celebration and of this idea of being able to play with both positive and negative things, and the contradictions that make up life.”

You’ve talked about the record being peaks and valleys, happiness and heartbreak. Ten years is a long time, people go through a lot of personal changes, and a lot of personal experiences. Did that inform the other themes on the record?

Steve: “I would say yes on my journey to me landing in a good space with a good person. There were a lot of weird decisions and choices and getting screwed over time. I got screwed over so many times and had to go through so much self-assessment and therapy and mental health issues. It was a really weird, twisted, period the last 10 years. Somewhere in there, the one consistent thing was, that I had my studio, and I just made music 24/7. And I don’t think I’m gonna stop.

I also branched out into video and photography, artwork, and all that stuff. So basically, creativity is the one thing I can rely on. I’m with somebody now I think I can rely on but, until recently, there were a lot of life ups and downs where I didn’t think I was going to come out of it alive.”

Fur Trade ‘Dark Celebration’ Album Artwork

One of the songs I wanted to ask about “Make It To The Morning” indicates that this was quite a cathartic record to write lyrically?

Steve: “With “Make it to the Morning,” literally we wrote that song when a friend of ours was up in the house detoxing, and it went really bad for him. He had to be hospitalised, an ambulance had to come, and someone was trying to take care of them and help them detox. We were just in the studio writing while this crazy thing was happening. It is also informed by my own addiction issues that I’ve dealt with, or that I’m permanently trying to deal with. How can you not write about this thing that’s happening to you, when it’s right in front of you?

I don’t know, part of me thinks maybe it’s because we’re in the arts so we’re around people that are drawn to the arts often for self-soothing reasons. There is a connection between addiction and art but I think, in general, I subscribe to the theory that everyone has an addict mindset. How you navigate that, comes down to your relationship with dopamine response. We’re in Vancouver and there’s a lot of addiction around us here. It’s a hub for things people get sucked into and I’ve seen people I know accidentally die and stuff which is just so crazy. I’d say that 2023 is a very addiction-in-your-face-centric time period and I don’t know if that’s gonna go away.

I think that that definitely informed that song while we were writing it. I mean what also influenced that song was Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Ryuichi Sakamoto, who just passed away. We were trying to fuse that with the weirdest synth sounds possible. That also comes back to the dark celebration thing where the record no way is a downer. Even when we’re dealing with heavy topics, it’s like this bright, lush, vibrant soundscape which was so fun to do with Steve.

We usually write the bulk of a song in one night. We might tweak it and massage it and try all these different experiments with it after the fact but, usually, we’ll write a song in one night and it’s usually after we’ve been talking about something crazy that happened the night before or that week so emotions are usually running high and it feels like the most important topic in the world at that moment.”

Is it specific themes that have inspired this record or is it just triggered by random things that have happened throughout your life?

Steve: “I’d say most often it comes down to relationships with friends, or love life, or just struggles with trying to survive economically and keep creativity a priority.

One of my favourite songs on the record is “Dark Celebration”, With that song, that’s the first time that I think we’ve ever experimented and perfectly recorded something that had happened which is so hard to do. It’s almost like you’re writing a novel to just get exactly what happened because this crazy thing happened. It just turned out that it blew my mind how effective songwriting can be if the music and everything work together.”

You talked about writing between sunset and sunrise. What is it about that period that makes you most creative?

Steve: “I think it’s partially there’s just less noise. I find I’m getting notifications and phone calls and emails constantly and the older I get, the more I become horrible at replying to them because I just associate notifications with anxiety now. There’s something so freeing about knowing you don’t have any responsibilities after most people are asleep. Then the period where people are frustrated that you’re not messaging them back is like you’re sleeping through it.”

“I’d say most often it comes down to relationships with friends, or love life, or just struggles with trying to survive economically and keep creativity a priority.”

I can totally agree with you on that. The opening line on the record talks about writer’s block. Again, was that inspired by your own experience?

Steve: “Writer’s block sounds nicer, and it rolls off the tongue but I’ve never really suffered from writer’s block, but I do constantly battle with it. In my head, there’s always this voice asking if this even matters. Does anything even matter? I use creativity to battle depression and anxiety. I use it to not grow up because I just don’t want to grow up. This voice of logic comes in and tries to shut down the party, and that’s, that’s the block.”

You say that your head says it doesn’t matter and things like that and it’s an issue but you also say the band’s not about mainstream sales or record sales or anything like that. Fur Trade seems like more of another creative outlet for you. Is that the case with this? Do you worry about things like record sales?

“For me, the reward is the process. It’s not the success because I would see people that make success their top priority and I see what they do and they do such a better job at self-promoting. For me, I just love the process.

A cool thing that’s happened is all of our successes have been very organic. Even with our first record, we just put out that music video, I shot it with my partner at the time and it went super, like super viral, we shot it for like $2 in one take. Suddenly we had a fan base. Even with this record, “LOL Trash” getting a bunch of radio play, getting like a weird, Grand Theft Auto hoax online, which was so bizarre, it took us forever to figure it out. All these little things, the organic successes the things that I think we’ve been most lucky about and they just surprise us and it’s great.

I feel like every day someone tells me about an artist and I check, them out. They have like, 3 billion monthly listeners and 8 trillion plays, if you try and compare yourself to numbers, then it’s like, why even bother? Whereas I feel like, if I walked down the street in my head, I’m thinking that that new song or that new video is so sick and it doesn’t matter if anybody in the world acknowledges it. I don’t know how many records I’ve put out at this point but I’ve been a part of a tonne of records and I feel like the success for me is a consistent, unique curiosity that is just embedded in everything.

I feel like there’s a flavour to what I do. Sometimes it’s been successful and, other times, it was never even given a chance to get off the driveway because of the wrong label wrong manager, wrong timing or the band breaks up or nobody is on top of social media which is usually the case. To be successful it’s not just about the music, or the art.

So, if you’re disproportionately excited by the music and the art more than the self-promotion, then you’re relying on lady luck coming by spotting you. Throwing you in her Lamborghini and taking you for a ride. Whereas I don’t put a lot of weight behind it, my hope is that lady luck makes me wildly successful. I do go through phases where I’m excited to promote something because it’s still fresh then I’m telling everyone to check out what I did.”

I want to talk about the creative processes behind all the video stuff and all the photography and artwork. It feels like every DIY?

Steve: “I will say that because my brain works like the process is the reward, I love to roll up my sleeves and have an excuse to make a music video. I’m working on four music videos at the moment. I love artwork and I love photography. I just got this crazy new lens and these crazy new lights and I’ve been I’m constantly messing with them. I’ve gone down a crazy rabbit hole just this week alone. It’s insane. Yeah, just I love collecting gear. I got this crazy, huge 135 lens then we’ve got our little virtual DJ setup going on here for this residency in November…

It’s all just toys and, to me, it’s the same as playing with Lego. It’s so much fun. Also, I hate telling people that I don’t like what they did so, if you hired someone to make a video for you or take a photo, I hate micromanaging. I just enjoy it when I look at something, or I hear something so consistent with the artist. They have slowly been learning how to understand them so it’s like every video, every photo just gives you a little bit more insight into the personality of the artists. Then, when I see a high-end music video, if it’s high-end, and it’s cutting-edge technology, then that doesn’t interest me. For the most part, a lot of music videos, they hire guys to make this video and they did a great job but it doesn’t necessarily give me insight about the artist.”

Parker, regarding the lyrics, and the peaks and flows and happiness and sadness, what do you hope somebody like myself would get out of listening to the record?

Parker: “In a perfect world, there’s, there’s a little bit of what Steve was just talking about, which is you get to the bottom of the authenticity between two best pals playing music that impresses each other. It’s like with Steely Dan, half of what they were doing was just trying to crack each other up and they happened to also be making brilliant music, that’s the cool side of it. I’m terrible at self-promotion. It’s also a hard question to answer because I don’t know you…

I will say that the goal is… I find there’s a lot of music that has cool elements and pushes boundaries in interesting ways, but it still doesn’t entertain me. It doesn’t necessarily give me free energy or positive vibes. I feel like we try to make music that does serve a bit of a purpose which is to make you feel good, and just give you a feeling and a mood that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Influence-wise, at the end of the day, we love pop music. We just love pop music that is a little bit left of centre. That’s also been a thing with our DJ sets realising how we digest music and seeing how literally in our playlisting, the things that Steve and I agree on and that we both love in the same way. At the end of the day, I guess loop back to that question is we’re trying to make really interesting music, that’s also fun just like each other.”

For more information on Fur Trade, head over to their social media here.