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Photo: David Astorga

It's an understatement to say that Canadian indie alt-rock band Rare Americans have been BUSY. With the recent release of the deluxe version of their album RA3, a stacked European tour—with dates already sold out in London, Birmingham, and Manchester in the UK—festival appearances set for PinkPop in the Netherlands and the Lovestream fest in Slovakia, the release of their latest single, “Love Is All I Bring,” taken from their upcoming album You're Not A Bad Person, It’s Just a Bad World, set to release July 21, and even several animated show projects brewing, the band, spearheaded by singer and guitarist James Priestner, shows no sign of slowing down.

Rare Americans continue to elevate their unique brand of inventive audio and visual storytelling, creating crooked and catchy stories that relatably reflect modern life's bizarre and sometimes heartbreaking realities. This fall, the band will return to the United States for a massive run of dates, playing even bigger rooms than they hit on their completely sold-out first-ever tour of North America this past spring.

Ones To Watch had the chance to chat with Priestner and discuss the band's Euro tour, new music, and their upcoming side projects.

Ones To Watch: You and the band just finished your US tour and are now gearing up for your summer tour in Europe. How do you feel after finishing your first headling US tour?

Rare Americans: Firstly, it was so much fun! We'd never really done that before. It was pretty much our first tour, our first time ever playing in the States. It was so cool. Couldn't have asked for a better first tour just to see all the kids and make that personal connection. For our entire career as a band, so much of it obviously, was in the pandemic, and we would get all these messages from people, and they're really deep and real emotional, and there are kids who are really battling a lot in their lives, but when you read it in a DM or a comment, it's almost like it doesn't really register. Then once you meet these kids in person, everything changes. You can see that connection you've made and how you've helped someone with their life and their depression or even deeper things like parental deaths, abuse, or kids battling suicidal thoughts and looking to our music for help. So, I think hearing those stories in person was when it really clicked for everybody that what we're doing is worthwhile. 

Have you had a chance to decompress yet, or is the band still burning the midnight oil prepping for the EU tour?

There's really no rest for the wicked. We had maybe a week or two weeks in between, and then we came right to Edmonton, and we've spent the last three and a half weeks recording another album here. I pretty much fly back on Saturday for four days at home, and then we go to Europe. I'm trying to stay healthy, and it's probably the most insane six months of my life in terms of just sheer workload. Trying to take it day by day.

As an indie band, you are in charge of writing and producing the music, handling tour arrangements, the conception of the music videos, and so much more. How do you stay grounded when dealing with a workload that makes you wear so many hats?

I'd say that's the hardest part. There are so many jobs because we're independent. It's really all on us. Everybody wears their music hat and kind of their business hat, whether that's running contests, digital ad campaigns, social media, our merch business, or whatever. It's literally just our core little team, so there are definitely times when it's overwhelming, especially when you're here and just trying to focus 100% on making the best possible album you can make. There are times when we could use more teammates, but at the same time, I feel like there are parts of every job you're not going to absolutely love doing all the time. I feel very fortunate that I can do what I do at this point in my life. So, even with things that I don't want to always do, whether it's looking at an ad campaign or something, I remind myself that this is a pretty fortunate position to be in. But, when we're recording, I also set boundaries for myself. My goal here is to create the best work we've ever done, so I try to kind of turn off everything else and solely focus on that, and I think, at least through this recording session, I was able to do that. 

What has been the most fulfilling hat?

I think my favorite thing is probably recording. When you're in there, and you feel like you're working on something special, or you feel like you've caught lightning in a bottle, that's really amazing. I also really get a lot of fulfillment from the idea of creating something from nothing. That's my favorite thing in the world, something that never existed before, and now you have this thing that six, eight months ago, was an idea. This concept album felt like a crazy idea, and now to be here on the other end of that eight months and have this thing in your hands, to me, that's incredibly fulfilling.

On the other side, I would say more outwardly, just the sheer connection or impact you're able to make in kids' lives. I never really figured that I would have the ability to do that, but it makes total sense. There were so many bands that had such an impact on my life. Even when I listen to them now, bands I haven't listened to since I was 12 years old, as soon as I hear a song, it takes me back to a time and a place, almost like what a smell can do. So now, to be almost passing the baton forward in other kids' lives, that's what I would say is the best part of what we get to do. I made a bit of a mission statement this year to positively impact the lives of millions of kids around the world through what we do. Whether that's music videos, songs, saying hello after a show, we always want to be approachable. I want to hear your story, I want to say hi to you, and I want to give you a high five and connect on a human level.

What was 12-year-old James listening to? 

12-year-old James was listening to probably a lot of Modest Mouse. I'd say that's probably my top favorite band of all time. I think he was also probably listening to a lot of Blink-182 and The Offspring, and my brothers, one's eleven years older and one seven years older, are into punk rock. They loved Bad Religion, Pennywise, Strung Out, and Rancid, so they got me into the punk rock scene a little. Through punk, I worked my way down to more indie-type stuff like Modest Mouse and Tegan and Sara, which I really liked. Then kind of found hip-hop on my own. Hearing Eminem for the first time felt like a game-changer. I was just like, "Holy shit, who is this guy? What is he saying? You can say that in a song, and millions of people are listening to this?" It was just so shocking, and he became one of the most popular artists in the world. 

I know you're in the process of releasing new music, but the band has also gone ahead and released a deluxe version of RA3. What made y'all decide to release the expanded version of the album? Did it feel like there was more to be said from that album cycle?

I mean, yeah! We had a ton of extra songs! Basically, our recording sessions have been very grand, and we recorded like eighteen, nineteen songs. This last time we recorded twenty-two or twenty-four for this album, which is just so many songs. So one thing that we always wanted to do is consistently give people music. We're definitely not a band that puts all our eggs in one single. That's just not what we like to do. We like to write and make songs. So, yeah, we had a bunch of extra songs kicking around, and we asked ourselves if we were going to put these out as a standalone, but they felt like they belonged to that time period. Most of the songs were written throughout the pandemic. So it felt like instead of kicking these to a different further EP, why don't we wrap that chapter of the pandemic up a little bit, and that was with Jamsey Boy and The Screw Loose Zoo. 

Right, so it served more as an epilogue in a way?

Exactly. Many of the songs were personal to me, and it just kind of happened that way. A lot of our first few records were more songs about people not too close to us or maybe from an arm's length, but they weren't from the perspective of "I." The whole Jamesy Boy series happened as I was writing songs related to my life, and I feel like the extra songs we had kicking around also belonged to that chapter. It was a bit more like, "Hey, here's who I am. This is an introduction to my life." 

The first single from this next chapter, "Love Is All I Bring," is super touching, and its accompanying music video serves as a commentary on global warming and environmental catastrophe. Can you expand on the origin of the song's story and the process of bringing it to life?

So I live in Vancouver, right on a railroad track, and then just beyond the railroad track is the ocean and the mountains. It's really beautiful, but it's kind of scary at the same time because I know there's supposed to be an absolutely catastrophic storm that's supposed to hit the West Coast, people say, in the next fifty years or whatever. So I think I literally had a dream about like, "Holy shit, this tidal wave is about to hit, and I fucking got to get out of here," and I had to figure out a way to survive. I woke up after having this crazy dream thinking, "Oh, my God, Is this real? Where am I?" So then I told myself to roll with it and felt that it could be an interesting song and concept, and I think it's very timely given the state of the world and the climate and, obviously, how this is very front of mind for people. So I decided to try to tell the story a little bit, and that's why I just kind of went with it and tried to put myself in the shoes of this catastrophe actually happening, kind of like movies like The Day After Tomorrow.

That movie is insane!

Yeah, it is! It was fun to put myself in this idea of absolute chaos. Animals are scurrying all over the place. People are trying to survive. This character ultimately serves a greater purpose than himself to help people even though he's trying to survive himself, and he can't help absolutely everybody, even though he's trying. I love my dog more than anything on Earth, so I was like, "Alright, let's get Alfie in this. Let's get her in this video." People are starting to recognize her a bit, so I thought, let's create an origin story for Alfie here. So obviously, I rescue this little young pup, and hopefully, it brings a little bit of awareness to people that we're nothing without our planet. We got to treat it with care and kindness and respect because any of these things can happen in a minute, as we've seen this last year or two. It seems like it's just one thing after another, whether it's insane fires, massive storms, or a pandemic. We're very susceptible to anything at any moment.

How do you feel this single fits into the overall body of work sonically and thematically?

Sonically, I think it is actually decently close. I think our intention on this one was to go slightly darker. The Jamesy Boy record was a little lighter in tone, even in color and everything. It was not quite as punk, not that this one is either. We tried to pick on slightly darker, more serious themes. The last song on the EP, "Carson," was a really, really sad story. It was about a kid here from just outside of Vancouver who was getting hardcore bullied. He was really young, thirteen maybe, and he was convinced to take all these ecstasy pills, and he overdosed at the skate park, and kids were filming him literally dying. It was an absolute tragedy, and that really just touched us as it was outside of Vancouver. That was just a really, really sad emotional story, and I couldn't even believe what his parents were going through. So that was something that we wanted to bring awareness to and to write a song about it. I'm actually in contact with his dad about him directing a video for it. Just trying to shed light and hopefully spread the message that things like this just aren't okay. Obviously, a lot of our fans are quite young, and I hope that through that story, people can learn to just be better people and just not stand for shit like that because it's totally unacceptable. I think that there is a serious drug problem going on in the world right now and I think a lot of people have lost someone to an accidental overdose or just seen people go down a dark path and struggle with their own demons and turn to drugs. It's really, really tough, but it's a problem that's not going away anytime soon.

A few months back, you mentioned on a YouTube live stream that Rare Americans' animation company, Crooked City Studios, will be venturing into creating a streaming series. At this time, can you share any more about the project, or are all the details still under wraps? Also, how has the creation process for this project differed from creating and producing your own music videos?

I would say the biggest thing is just the production process is so much bigger. A song can get done very quickly. You can write a song and produce it, record it, and release it in a month. But a show or a movie is like, holy shit. You're going through multiple script renditions. You're rewriting things. You're trying to connect an impactful story that has good story arcs for every character and the overall plot. It's just such a bigger beast and requires so many more people, so I probably underestimated how challenging it is, but I think we've gotten to a really good place. We have kind of two things in the works. We have a film essentially for Brittle Bones Nicky, who was a big character for us, and the fans are really connected to his life. It's gonna expand on his life and how he ended up where he ended up. So with that, now we're just in the animatic process of putting it to hand-drawn pictures before we actually animate it. Then this other show we've been working on for about at least two years called Crooked City, we have all eight episodes of the first season done, and we almost have the pilot fully animated. This is our first time going through this process, so honestly, I don't know. Hopefully, we'll learn a lot in the next three, four, or five months as we start taking meetings hopefully with people like HBO Max, Netflix, and Adult Swim. That would be a great goal of ours! It's just such a longer lead type of thing. But, I feel good about the content! I think the stories are really cool, and hopefully, it can get out into the world within a year or a year and a half.

If you could have any celebrity be a cameo on your show, who would it be?

There's a character named Alfred the Horse, and I feel like he would be played by Snoop Dog. I feel like he would make an excellent Alfred. If only he wasn't like a bazillion dollars and the busiest guy in Hollywood. But who knows? Stranger things have happened.