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CJLO 1690AM Open House- Oven Studio re-Launch

APRIL 7 ~ 3 – 9pm at CJLO: 7141 Sherbooke West- CC-430, H4B 1R6

CJLO 1690AM wants you to come over!

It's great to have a winter project and at CJLO - 1690AM we've been busy renovating, revamping, and acoustically treating The Oven Studio at CJLO!

Now it’s time to have our friends come over and check it out!

We invite you to come have a coffee/ snack & see what’s up at CJLO!

SPECIAL PROGRAMMING

3pm Conversations-

An interview with Montreal musician Ari Swan about her participation in HOWL Collective’s upcoming benefit for Missing Justice

4pm Fear of Music- live studio set w/ Caro Diaro (Maica Mia)

5pm Feel Good Hit of the Summer- 

MTL Music - talking with Blue Skies Turn Black

6pm Maiden Voyage-

An in-studio interview with Montreal band Heathers about their label Saturn Returns, involvement with Rock Camp for Girls Montreal and preview of the upcoming Apr 9 show with Hervana and Nancy Pants- presented by CJLO. Hervana and Nancy Pants will phone in! Apr 9- FB event

7 - 9pm Stroll Around The Grove- Bring-your-own-vinyl event

Share your favourite vinyl with us & our listeners worldwide! Hip hop, electronic, psychedelic, jazz, world, future beats, rare grooves & other soundwaves.

PRIZES for attendees= Passes to UNFRIENDED film, show tickets to Hervana + TBA, BRAIDS tickets, CDs, CJLO swag & more. Snacks by Bela Vista

CJLO 1690AM was already voted Biggest Champions of the Local Scene in 2012 at CMJ- and we’ll represent by playing our favourite Montreal music all day!

Hosted by Catlin Spencer

Stories by Catlin Spencer & Patricia Petit Liang

Produced by Patricia Petit Liang

CJLO is stoked to have an exclusive interview with Ghostface Killah- talking all about his show Friday night, April 3 at Theatre Telus- brought to you by Champagne Productions! Tune into Something for the Radio between 3 and 4pm today! We'll be playing the interview towards the end of the hour and announcing the winners in our Ghostface Killah/ GZA/ Cappadonna contest. Tune in to get stoked for Friday and hear more about the show- get your tickets here!

Omar Sonics / Hooked on Sonics in Conversation with Denis Arsenault / Dirty Work

A heart-felt and informative conversation between Omar Sonics from Hooked on Sonics (Thursday @ 6 PM) and Denis Arsenault from Dirty Work (Thursday @ 4 PM) about the history of CJLO production studio, affectionately called The Oven™.

Transcript: Denis >> Art Direction: Angelica >> Photo: Stephanie >> Setup: Patrick & Marshall >> Good Vibes: Omar

 

D: We are sitting in The Oven; the newly refurbished Oven! It's beautiful in here!

O: It is very nice.

D: We're here to talk about the much regaled room where many bands and many things have been recorded over the years.

O: Many ads, many news reports, interviews, Community Calendars, and show promos, and CJLO station IDs.

D: All the stuff that you hear that is prepared for the airwaves, I dare say, has been done in this room.

O: There's so much history in these walls.

D: [Laughs] How far back does your memory go for The Oven? Is it a decade now?

O: From what I remember and what people have told me — because I have been at the station for a very long time, but with some gaps as well.

D: Right...

O: From what I remember initially, where The Oven is now was actually where the control room was and where the control room is, that was the recording studio. The Oven was kind of the production studio, control room, as well as the Promo Director's office.

D: Wow! That is a lot of uses for one space.

O: It was, and it was a lot of useless space too. There used to be a picture of a local band performing in the control room, all squeezed into there. I mean, look how small it is in there. It's hard enough squeezing a four piece in here.

D: For those of you without the benefit of photography or context, the control room is about the size of a large apartment kitchen. It's a small hallway's worth of space. If it's 15 feet long and 7 feet wide, then you're boasting.

O: Yeah and our Production Director at the time, Mr. Diego Ferro, I remember he and I were in here and had the idea to flip them. And Diego just started doing it... immediately [laughs]. That's how Diego would work. I remember him taking a hammer and just making a hole in the wall to snake cable through the wall.

D: [Laughs]

O: It was hilarious. That hole over there, Diego just taking a hammer and being like... and running it through to the control room and the DJ booth. Diego was the epitome of DIY and he set up the way the studio is now. And what they did was they brought in a lot of old carpets and old drapes; I don't know exactly where they got them. If the legend is correct, the Station Manager at the time, Ryan Arditi, his grandmother had a whole bunch of carpets and blankets and drapes and they basically taped and stapled them to the walls in here.

D: Wow. Just to dampen the walls, right?

O: It didn't dampen them, really. It looked really gross [laughs].

D: Like an old bazaar.

O: It didn't look nice like it does now. It was really ghetto looking and I'm sure dust got caught up in those carpets like crazy, because no one was vacuuming the walls, or anywhere. But it really did the trick. It was probably more soundproof then than it was after the fact when we first put soundproofing material on the walls. But that's when it all started; it was funny.

O: I'm trying to remember some of the earlier sessions were done in there. We had Scott Kannberg who used to be in Pavement; Preston School of Industry, David Dondero; Murder By Death was probably the first big, major session we had when we had everything flipped around like that in the beginning. From then, we just started booking more sessions. We had bands like Engine Down, and larger Canadian bands like You Say Party! We Say Die!, Controller.Controller, and bands like that started to come in around then.

D: So around what time period was this?

O: I think Diego did that renovation probably around 2003, if I remember correctly because I wasn't working here, but I would sometimes drop by and just hang out with him. I think we booked that Murder By Death session around 2005.

D: So we are a decade in, basically.

O: And it was that session onwards where we really go the ball rolling and started booking sessions very frequently. And back then things were very much more DIY; we had more people who were working here on more of a volunteer basis—there weren't really any paid staff. We had a core group of maybe 5 or 7 people who were just doing it for the love of this place, which was really nice. People would say, "Yeah I'm gonna cut out of work for a few hours and help out with that session"; and it was cool like that, and we were booking sessions like crazy.

D: Do you want to go into how or why this was called The Oven?

O: Well, not to toot my own horn but calling it The Oven was my idea. We always wanted to promote it as a viable place for people to come in to record. And that's when I thought of when you would say "hey you're recording at CJLO" just sounded like you were recording at a radio station. So you know, BBC has Studio 1 and Studio 2 and stuff like that, I thought, why not CALL it something? The one main complaint that every band has when they come here...

D: ...without fail [laughs]

O: ...is how hot it gets in here, especially if you're recording for a longer period of time; especially in the summer. It's one of the few rooms in CJLO that doesn't have air conditioning. One of the obvious reasons is for sound purposes; you get that constant hum.

D: Of course.

O: So because it got super hot in here, I said, "So let's call it The Oven?" I remember some people didn't like the idea, but it just kept calling it that [laughs] and then a few other people liked the idea and they kept running with it. Now people just call it The Oven more than even I refer to it that way. I just call it the recording studio. They'll say, "is so-and-so in there? Oh no they're in The Oven". It's become the go-to name, which is kinda cool.

D: The folk culture of naming.

O: Yeah. When we did those compilations, I thought it would be cool to call them Baked In The Oven.

D: Spicy Eats and Sweet Treats.

D: I have heard some stories about how hot it gets in here; in fact I've experienced a few myself. For example, last year in the summer the band Kuato came and they are a five piece band; they took their shirts off and insisted that no one film them while they played, because they were modest.

O: I remember, Lemuria was here last summer, and between songs they just had to come out of the room because it was too hot in here. And they came when it was really hot outside.

D: I feel sorry for some of the bands that brought large amplifiers in hot weather.

O: Oh yeah.

D: The big fridge bass cabinets and the steps too... I remember when METZ was here a few years ago and Chris Slorach has this hugeold cabinet which must weigh 150 pounds, and it was in the corner. When I walked into the room for a second, it must have been about 40 degrees Celsius in here.

O: Yeah. There's really only been one band that's refused to come back based on the little bit of a "lug" it takes to get their gear in here, otherwise most bands have no problem with it. I mean, it is a pain. I can't blame anyone, but I thought it was kinda funny when that one band was like, "you know...we did it that one time and uhh... I don't think we'll do it again".

D: [Chuckles]

O: I think the worst though was—I can't quite remember if it was an early incarnation of USA Out Of Vietnam, or near the final days of Bionic, but—one time when Jonathan Cummins' band came in here to record a session, they brought all of their gear, their huge amps and everything else. They started playing and then they were asked to turn down due to a noise complaint and we had to kill the session.

D: [Sympathetic groan] Oh that's terrible.

O: And these guys had come all the way, brought all of their stuff, and they couldn't do it.

D: And they have a Herculean amount of gear too.

O: It was really unfortunate. And that was sometimes one of the problems we ran into here. It hasn't happened here in a while, but there was one year there when we were constantly getting noise complaints from the classes downstairs [laughs], and we ended up having to shut down a few sessions. There was a post-hardcore band from the Prairies, I think it was Ghosts of Modern Man, and they only got to do two songs before the session had to be shut down.

D: Wow.

O: But we've been pretty lucky with that. At one point we just pulled out the class schedule, and made sure that when we booked a session, we would tell the band, "look if you are going to come around this time, then it will have to be an acoustic session" and stuff like that.

D: And that's smart, at least to know your surroundings and at least capitalize when you can.

O: The teachers at that time were getting very antagonistic towards us and threatening to tell the Administration, and we really didn't want to risk losing our space. Now at this point we don't really care because people have become really accommodating toward us lately. Unless those noise complaints start again, I think we are on OK ground.

D: [Laughs]

O: Knock on all of the wood that is now in this room.

D: Yes the floors have been changed in the last few months from carpet to a wood finish. When we walked in we were in sock feet and I felt the floor had a little bit of bounce to it. It's so comfortable.

O: The funny thing was when we did the acoustic treatment for the whole room during the renovation previous to this one, we had to put down a thick layer of rubber on the bare floor before putting down the carpet over it. I don't know if it was a budget thing, but we couldn't get the carpet on time so we just had that rubber in here... and the rummer smelled like you just set a tire yard on fire. It smelled so bad!

D: [Laughs]

O: And I remember we did have a couple of sessions then and we'd always be like, "I'm really sorry about the carpet". And it was fresh rubber too, so it was really sticky in there.

D: And it smelled like cheap sneakers or a sex club.

O: Yeah, it was pretty gross. But then we got the carpet and the smell kinda went away. But that rubber on the floor is probably why you feel that give underneath.

D: I'm more familiar with the most recent five years of The Oven, but did we always offer this space as a place for bands to record, or is that more of a recent thing.

O: Yeah we did. I think the reason it didn't really take off at first was because we didn't have any real "in-house engineers" like we do now with Patrick McDowell and Marshall Vaillancourt. And with those two guys being volunteers here, being on the production staff and seeing that this room could really be a viable place to record bands, they really took off with it and brought a lot more acts in and started working on their own projects. They really pushed the name out more by just doing more recording of numerous local bands. I'm not just talking about sessions, but actual studio recordings for bands. It wasn't something we didn't want done before, it's just that we weren't really using it; a few of us were, but those two guys really just started using the hell out of this space.

D: And we've used it to help younger bands in the last few years to get EPs done from recording to post-production.

O: Yeah and we received a grant to do an artist outreach project and essentially it was to find new up and coming bands, record an EP in The Oven, and then help with the promotion aspect of it as well. And that helped to get the name out there too. Now that people will see the renovations done, I think and hope that will bring even more bands into here to record. It's a really good space; it's a solid room too, not big, but big enough to have professionally recorded material on a budget.

D: For sure. And it's yet another service that CJLO gives to the community, when it comes down to it.

O: Yeah it's another way to give back to the community; it's a community radio station. The whole mandate of it is to give back to and entertain the community. This is a way to do that and to contribute to the arts as well.

O: The main reasons that we put together that compilation of those past sessions were on one hand to celebrate and showcase what we have done here, and on the other hand to provide content to our listeners and supporters of The Oven from the beginning.

D: And if you want to visit our sessions page on the website, you can see a huge list of past sessions that you can listen to online.

O: Yeah and there's still so much more to be put up in there online, which we are in the slow process of getting done. A lot of these sessions are aired live on shows and then we have to post them up afterwards, but there are so many more too, and I think a lot of people will be really surprised at some of the names that we've had in here. We're very proud of this space and proud of the work that we have done here. I think the results speak for themselves in the amount of sessions that we've had—really big name bands and bands that have gone onto larger things—and the quality of our sessions. And all of our production directors, past and present, what got our name out there: 1) we were/are always in contact with bands, reps and labels 2) I think we provide a nice inviting space for them (bands), and 3) the quality of our recording by all of our PDs was/is so top notch. Most people when they go into a community radio station to do a session, they're not expecting it to sound that great.

D: Yeah, it sounds fantastic.

O: Currently Patrick is doing an amazing job.

D: Seriously!

O: You wouldn't even think they were sessions! [Laughs]

D: Exactly! The Operators session that we did was the last session we did pre-renovation and I listened to that session by myself and it does sound like a well recorded, mastered proper release, and it's live off the floor here!

O: But you know all of the sessions here are done live off the floor. It's all about having a live aspect to it.

D: Right.

O: We did have one band that came in for a session and then put their own vocals in afterward, which I thought was very weird. I think at the BBC they prefer that you actually do that.

D: Yeah, to prevent bleed and all that.

O: But we love to do things live off the floor, baby!

D: [Laughs] This is an on-the-spot question, but do you have any personal highlights of bands that came in where you were thinking, "I can't believe they're here, this is so good"?

O: Julie Doiron came in here. I wasn't here when it happened, but I really wish I had been. And from what I heard is she came in and asked the engineer to not put any reverb on her vocals or guitar or anything she was doing. She wanted it to be as sparse and as dry as possible, so it was just mixed with the levels being balanced. Nothing was added in post or while it was recorded at all and it sounds so good.

D: It does sound really good.

O: Another one was the Women session. That performance of "Lawncare" just sounds so amazing.

D: That version is about twice as long as the original!

O: It is! And that's one of the selections that we put on the compilation. From what I heard of that session, it was either due to a noise complaint or due to a technical problem, but they only got that one song put it, but what a performance it was of that one song! Another stand out was when—and I always loved it when they came in—Uncut and Magneta Lane would come to the station and from there they became good friends of the station. Controller.Controller too was a funny one too because when they came in, they were super late, and we were so sure they were going to cancel, but they insisted they come in and set up. Back at the time they would perform in the dark with just these red lights set up, and they set up in the studio as if it were on stage and they just gave us our own little private show. They played three brand new songs for us, and from that point we would give later bands the "Controller.Controller Challenge" and ask them if they would play us a new song. After they tore down and went to the venue, they were really late for sound check and the sound tech at the venue was very angry and upset with them. They said they had fun with us and didn't really care.

D: [Laughs]

O: Sleepless Nights, a band from Halifax, they came here on their first round. We were getting a lot of bands from that scene coming to us at that time as well; the word was that if you were coming to Montreal, you should check out CJLO. Sleepless Nights featured members of The Superfantastics, and Share at the time, and they had two bassists, three guitarists, two keyboardists and two drummers and we crammed them ALL in here. And I think I remember our PD at the time was engineering that session and he said that he didn't even have enough tracks on the board to capture all of the instruments. He captured two drum kits with two mics, and the session sounded amazing! There was so little room in here that one of the bassists, Trevor, was standing on top of his cabinet because there wasn't enough room on the floor for him to stand [laughs]! I really wish there were pictures of it, but there was no space in there to stand and take a picture! And another favourite was when Fucked Up came in and performed "Year of the Pig" and we think someone took video of it, but we can't get our hands on it.

D: Awww.

O: The funny story about that is the same kind of thing. They had three guitarists, a keyboardist, a drummer, I think Jennifer Castle was singing and playing keyboard too. They were tired from touring, and had just played a show the night before, and were gearing up to play a midnight show that night for POP Montreal, so they were just hanging out in the lounge area while we were getting the studio ready for them. But despite that, they were super nice to us and they told us that they had never performed "Year of the Pig" live together ever before doing it here. And that night was the first time they had performed it live in front of an audience, and I remember it was at 1 AM. I had to convince a fellow DJ at the time, and I remember it was one of the best shows I had ever seen and he was so glad I got him to come along for the show. That was back when Damien was still breaking bottles over his head — he was bleeding so bad at that show, man!

D: Awww man.

O: Having METZ in here was awesome, because I had been a fan of that band for so long, and it was right before everything started blowing up for them.

D: It was right at the doorstep of that!

O: When we had You Say Party! We Say Die! in here, it was the week of that Pitchfork review that they got that just kinda set everything off for them. I'm trying to think of something more recent. Yeah, having Chuck Ragan was a great thing because I'm such a huge Hot Water Music fan, and having him be such a nice guy to all of us and then really helping to promote the session after the fact, too was really nice and encouraging. Zola Jesus came in and performed live to air too, and she just made it in time to do the session in that on air window we had for her. She came in and asked if she could just go in and bang it out and asked for no cameras or anything, and we were fine with whatever she wanted to do. We could see that she was shaking, and she walked in and did a stripped down version of "Sea Talk" and her voice was so amazing!

D: One of my personal highlights was when PS I Love You came in and took over the space; we had a piano at the time.

O: PS I Love You was actually the first band to use that piano when we had it in here. It was them and then Ken Stringfellow.

D: At the time, Paul Saulnier hooked up his pedals and a microphone to the piano so he could created a bit of a sound collage. The bench was sort of askew, and all of the pedals were on there, and he was sitting there with a guitar in his lap and hitting piano notes, making this crazy amount of noise. He called it "Death Dreams 3", and the album has "Death Dreams 1" and "Death Dreams 2", so he made that track just for the session.

O: PS I Love You is one of the bands that has come by the station more than once. We tried for a third time recently but Paul's voice was shot from touring. Having The Posies in here was a huge highlight, and having Ken Stringfellow come back afterwards was really great, and he used that piano for half of his session, which was awesome! Wintersleep has been here twice as well and they also came here right before they blew up and became Juno Award winners.

D: And that version of "Weighty Ghost".

O: That's an exclusive!

D: Yeah and I dare say I think I like it better than the studio version.

O: I definitely like it more than the studio version; and that was years before they actually recorded it, in fact we were told we could put it up for streaming but not to make it available for download because at the time they were still workshopping it. And having North Of America was a huge highlight for me too. When I really think about it, we have a lot of really cool sessions in here; and you know, to recently have Dan Boeckner bring Operators in here was phenomenal. The coolest thing now is, a lot of the time we are having people come to us without having to pursue them, which is really nice and encouraging that the word has gotten around. That Operators session, that was pitched to us! We didn't even go to them, and they made that happen which feels more rewarding because all of those years of hard work has really paid off with a reputation of quality which is tied to the station's name.

D: And not only that, Operators played all new songs! They didn't play anything from the record that they were promoting! [Laughs]

O: [Laughs] They sound checked with songs from the EP, and then for live to air they were like, "yeah we'll play the new songs", so that was super cool. You know, we have a lot of really cool ones that are coming up and I'm looking forward to those, which will be the first sessions in the new room. You know, come to think of it, Solids have been here more than once and they've been on my show numerous times and having those guys is always a fun time too! Local bands in general we always try to have many come in and to support them when they have new shows and new records coming up. I'm just really happy that we have used this space to its fullest potential and with the renovations here, it's just gonna be crazy.

D: So stay tuned, because The Oven will be bringing you more good jams and great songs and people for years to come, I would say. Omar, thanks for coming in and talking about this.

O: Thank you, Denis.