If you walk into the Tranzac or any other comparable Toronto music venue on any night that the Om Tree Folk Collective are playing, you might be a little confused. There’s a dude centre-stage hammering away on an acoustic guitar, singing in a folk-troubadour-meets-Tom-Waits bark that’s as invigorating as it is melodic and cueing solos sections for the different band members that he’s leading through the songs. Each person on stage may have played the songs before or they could be newly arrived, winging an organic creation with the other members of the collective. The result is watching a relationship build on stage between the players and the music they’re playing, which is a rare sight in a music scene that typically values tightness and perfection over energy and organic creation.

For the newest installment of the Hinterview I had the chance to meet up with the illustrious and bearded Chris Eakins of Om Tree Folk Collective to discuss his new EP North River, his collective approach to song and performance, his former band Basement Arms, and living in the ‘burbs and getting knocked up.

PG: Why don’t you start off by telling me a little bit about North River?

CE: In 2008, I was living with my soon to be wife at the time, and soon to be ex-fiancé at the time, and I woke up one morning and realized that I wasn’t doing anything that I wanted to be doing. The Basement Arms had fizzled out by this point. Everyone was working on their own projects so I said, 'I gotta do my own thing too...'

The only thing I could do was leave the person I was with at the time and buy a car, put all of my musical instruments in the car and move to Keswick, about 40 minutes north of here. So I moved into my parents basement for six months and during that six months I recorded like a fiend. I got about 12 tracks recorded…

In August I came down to Toronto and spent basically a month at Brian’s house, mixing the album. I cut it down to 5 tracks because I had a bunch of tunes that were just kind of funny, like “Take Me from Behind on Tuesday” and “Hillbilly Love.” There were also a few that were super duper cheesy love songs that I was writing with this girl down on the dock… I was writing her super duper cheesy love songs trying to convince her that she wanted to be with me! (laughs) So I decided to cut seven tracks from the album. It was going to be 8 but I was convinced to keep the first track “Time to Die” on there.

That was the first track I recorded… it was like, the pits of the depression of changing my life completely over drastically. Now when I listen to it, I’m in a good spot and… well, I can’t really listen to most of the tunes on the album.

PG: So what do you do in that situation? Do you have new material that you’re working on?

CE: I’ve got a new album ready to go, another 12 tracks. This one is a concept album. It’s called For the Birds. I don’t… quite know what the concept is, but it’s an orchestral piece centred around the idea of the birds and bees.

For the Birds is going to recorded with Will (Whitwham) from the Wilderness of Manitoba. We haven’t done much yet, but we’ve been practicing every Sunday and we’re playing a show soon.

PG: Om Tree Folk Collective, the Woodchoppers and the Loneliest Monks all seem to have a similar approach in terms of band setup: invite amazing session musicians and dialogue with them over the songs. How does having a fluid line-up affect your live approach?

CE: It’s just a way to get together with people you don’t get to see on a regular basis and actually have a reason to make music together. Sometimes you need that audience to pull the musicians out of their regular grind and get them to come out. You say 'Hey, let’s talk, have a drink, play a tune together!'

Playing with the Basement Arms for as long as I did… maybe 5 years… yeah, I came in right at the very beginning. They played a couple shows and after I met Brian, the drummer, at Long and McQuade he invited me to a Basement Arms show at Mitzi’s. After the show I walked up to Dwight Schenk afterwards and said 'Hey Dwight, this is the band of my dreams, can I be in your band?' and he said, 'Yup, sure. We practice here on Wednesdays, bring whatever you want.' And I was like, 'Really?!'

That was my first introduction to just coming out and playing. Dwight kicked my ass on a daily basis to just open up, open up, open up. Don’t worry about the parts, don’t worry about anything… just play the music. Sometimes it was just the four of us, but we played a show at St. Stephens where we had literally 35 other musicians. You can check it out on Youtube.

Playing with Dwight, there wasn’t a single show the Basement Arms ever did that felt really stagnant because the songs weren’t ever the same. It wasn’t like we practiced, it was like we jammed and that was the key to music for me. It showed me that music doesn’t have to be beautiful parts that are perfectly in place every single time you play it, it’s about the process of making music with somebody else, or multiple other people, and just enjoying yourself.

I don’t have any pipe dreams of becoming famous with my music. I really could care less. I just want to hang out and play music with my friends. I think that’s the key to what the Om Tree is all about.

PG: I love the title track off of North River. What went into the writing of that song?

CE: That was written actually on the road. I took off to Halifax and I pulled over to go to the washroom of the side of the highway in New Brunswick. And there was a little sign, pointing to a river, like, a tiny little creek and it said "North River"… so, I sat down after I went to the washroom… not in the spot where I went to the washroom (laughs), and sketched the sign and that became the album cover for North River.

By the time I got into Halifax I had the whole “North River” song written in my head. I got my guitar out and sat on a rock by the ocean and wrote the whole thing. The first thing I did when I got back was record it… James McKie played the electric guitar for that.

PG: How does being a multi-instrumentalist change your approach to songwriting when you can theoretically do everything by yourself in the studio?

CE: Being a multi-instrumentalist, there are still certain things that I can’t do and need to rely on other people for. When it comes to songwriting… well, I’m a piano player first and foremost. It’s what I’ve been doing most of my life. I started when I was about 3… I’ve been teaching piano privately for about 13 years now. And you know what? I can’t write a song on piano to save my life.

I wasn’t able to write a song until I learned how to play the guitar. I can take a guitar song and transpose it onto the piano and expand it, but I can’t write on anything other than the guitar… because I’m so shitty at guitar (laughs) it’s really simple so the melody gets a chance to come out. My piano playing is developed in such a way that it doesn’t leave room for anything else, but the guitar lets the melody stand up.

PG: Do you think growing up in Keswick, or the ‘burbs influenced your songwriting?

CE: No, absolutely not. Keswick is a dull boring piece of shit town. I would never recommend that anybody move there. It’s like box house after box house after box house on one main street. If I didn’t get a job teaching music up there I’d probably be in jail (laughs). There’s no community, community centres, the kids just get in trouble… There’s a lot of drugs. I think it’s a huge problem in suburban Canada… what else is there for kids to do? Nothing. If I was to live in Keswick now, I would probably open up a community centre. Just teaching music in a community centre, jamming with kids, getting them off the street.

PG: Hey, but being in the ‘burbs can breed creativity. When your only options are getting hammered or playing music, a lot of people make music… but the other half get knocked up when they’re 17 or something.

CE: Terrifying! I don’t want to ever be knocked up, that would be uncomfortable. A terrible situation to be in. Don’t knock me up, I’m from the ‘burbs.

• Check out Om Tree Folk Collective on Myspace here.
• For the Birds should hopefully be ready by September, but most likely will take until next March!
• Om Tree will invade the Tranzac on May 14^th. I’ll see you there!