Surviving the music business free fall

Older, wiser, happier Leslie Spit Treeo gets a fresh start

Friday matinee at The Cameron House is a tough row to hoe. The audience ranges from bar flies who've lingered too late into the afternoon to neighbourhood irregulars and the after-work crowd, kicking off its shoes and in no mood to be messed with.

The prudent thing would be to stick to your most familiar material, along with carefully chosen covers. But holding down that gig these days is The Leslie Spit Treeo - now a duo, in fact, of Laura Hubert and Pat Langner - and this is one band that doesn't do prudent very well.

TONY BOCK / TORONTO STAR

SQUARE ONE:Laura Hubert, Pat Langner and four-legged pal Tag make up the enduring Leslie Spit Treeo

"I think it's the best environment for working up new songs," says Hubert."A lot of the time the audience isn't listening, so they don't notice if something doesn't work out. And when you get a reaction from other than your friends," she adds with a mischievous grin, "then you know you've got something.

"We've got so many new tunes written that we've had no choice but to go ahead and work them up, anywhere we have the chance. We're getting enough done for another album in the summer."

If they don't exactly thrive on adversity, Hubert and Langner have a solid record of prevailing against it. The pair started The Leslie Spit Treeo as a busking unit, playing folk for spare change, then came in off the street for a deal with Capitol at the turn of the decade.

Things were good. And then the Treeo watched helplessly as things got really bad.

"We don't really want to talk about the bad things because we did meet some good people, we got to tour in the U.S., and won a Juno for Most Promising Band in '91," says Langner.

"We learned a lot about the business. I'm not into thrashing anybody, butI'd like to say to all record company types out there to take courses in treating your artists like human beings.

"Sensitive moves like asking an artist to leave the room while they discuss the career aren't exactly a confidence builders."

Actually, the group's debut album did well enough and established a fan base for the Treeo's evolving brand of grit-folk.

Then came the prophetically titled Book of Rejection, which pleased no one. A patchwork album born of high-pressure circumstances, Book of Rejection was the source of an unhealable rift between the band and the label.

"Basically, after going through the thing of trying to please, it came down to everyone standing their ground and going in circles. They weren't happy, we weren't happy, but for entirely different reasons. There was much relief on both sides when the split happened. And we were plenty scared, too," says Langner.

And depressed. Langner tells of dark days of grappling with the sudden descent from being on the bus to having no money, not even to feed themselves and canine band member Tag.

"It was pretty bad. Dark enough that just packing it in didn't seem drastic enough. Kind of walking around in a state of depression," says Langner.

To shear away the past, the duo trimmed its name to The Spits, sold all worldly possessions and prepared to hop on the bus to Vancouver.

But Vancouver never happened for the turn of a friendly card. Memphis producer Joe Hardy, the aural architect behind the ill-fated Book of Rejection, played white knight, inviting the band down to his home studio toput together a new record.

The result, released independently on Toronto's Dark Light label, is Hell's Kitchen, named after the Kensington eatery that fed the group during its darkest hours.

"We'd sent him (Hardy) demos from time to time and out of the blue he calls, says he has some slow time and would we like to come down and record. We went from cold and shivering to this rock'n'roll dream house. Big pool, recording studio, acreage out back, games room, the whole bit," explains Langner.

"Definitely the most fun recording experience we've ever had. We got about half of Hell's Kitchen done that way and then other people started coming around to help out.

"That's been the upside ever since," says Langner, "that so many people have been supportive. People like Ron Searle, who gave us time at Manta Studio and Jason Sniderman, who came up with the coin for the initial pressing.

"It's a fresh start with a fresh team, even though we've gone back to the old name. We know and like the people at Dark Light and Serge (Sloimovits, DLprez and the group's manager) digs our music and is willing to let us alone to get on with it."

More Info:

• Hell's Kitchen (liners and lyrics)
• Band History
• Excerpts from Hell's Kitchen (An article by Pat and Laura)
• Spits on the Street
• Hell's Angel
• Beyond Hell's Kitchen