Our Lady Peace guitarist lives the dream
Christina CaldwellIssue date: 10/15/09 Section: Calendar
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It's a dream scenario for most. It was for Our Lady Peace guitarist Steve Mazur, too, but his dream actually came to fruition.
The lone American member of Canada-based OLP chatted up College Times to give us a sneak peak of what we can expect from their Tempe show.
College Times: I heard that before you replaced Mike Turner as guitarist for the band, you attended your first Our Lady Peace concert at the Los Angeles House of Blues. Was it your intention to join the band then or was it just a fluke that you were there?
Mazur: No. I mean, I was a big fan of the band. I remember some friends of mine in Michigan turned me on to them. Growing up I remember hearing "Starseed" and "Clumsy" on the radio and really liking the band. At that point it was funny. I was in music college, so I was kind of listening to a lot of jazz and stuff, but somewhere someone turned me on to the band's record Happiness… Is Not a Fish You Can Catch and I became a fan. So then when I moved to LA and saw that they were coming to play, I just wanted to see them play live. I went to see them play and just three years later I was in the band.
What's it like replacing Mike Turner, who was basically the founding member of OLP?
Well, you know, it was [him] and Raine [Maida] that started the band. Basically, the guys made it very comfortable for me. They were just sort of looking to go in a different direction. When I entered the band from day one they really wanted me to do my thing and they were really supportive of it, even though I was still young and still finding myself and all of that. They just wanted a new perspective, so it's pretty cool. From day one it was never 'we need you to do this or that.' They just wanted me to do my thing. It's a pretty dream situation to have a band you think is great [recruit] you to be part of it and let you just completely be yourself and be creative and have your voice. That's a pretty amazing and rare situation.
What do you think you'd be doing if you hadn't joined the band?
I mean, I got bit by the music bug when I was young. For musicians, for better or worse, it's hard to get out of. So I would be doing something with music, I'm pretty sure. Hopefully it wouldn't be a job I hated in music. A lot of people just can't get away from it, even if they're making a living doing music. You know, doing something they're miserable doing but not wanting to give it up. Hopefully it wouldn't be that kind of situation, but I imagine I'd be doing something with music.
You guys recently released Burn Burn, but before that it had been four years since your last album. Why did you decide to wait so long?
First of all, making our last record, Healthy in Paranoid Times, was difficult. It was not a great time for the band. There was a lot of … turmoil with our producer and with our record company and with the band. By the time we were done touring that record, we sort of needed to take a little bit of a break so we wouldn't beat each other up. So, we took a year off … and got away from it. But then … in the back of our heads, even though we didn't like making that record … the tour for it was amazing. I think during that year off we all had that in our heads, and we were like 'man, that's not something we can stop doing.' We have such amazing fans, so we reconvened. One of the reasons this record took so long to make was just that we produced it ourselves, so when we don't have an outside producer, you have to really be careful - and hopefully we did this - to really try to maintain perspective. What we would do is we'd get together at Raine's place in LA for about a week and half and everyone would bring their ideas they were working on and flesh out two or three songs and record them. But then we would leave and take about a month off and we wouldn't take any of the recordings with us to listen to. So basically, when we came back we were listening with fresh ears and we had a bit of objectivity to it. That's kind of a lengthy way to make a record when you do these sessions.
Our Lady Peace, The Clubhouse, October 21, 7 p.m., $24 adv, $25 dos
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