City and Colour’s Dallas Green reveals why he keeps coming back to Alexisonfire

CANADIAN rockers Alexisonfire have reunited ‘just for fun’ as City and Colour’s Dallas Green returns to the band to headline the Unify Festival.

Canadian post hardcore rock band Alexisonfireare reuniting. Picture: Vanessa Heins

A BAND announces they are calling it a day; fans start the countdown to the reunion tour.

Canadian rockers Alexisonfire officially announced their breakup in 2011 after four records and a decade of touring but didn’t put the band to bed until 15 months later with a run of shows to farewell fans.

Dallas Green, whose decision to focus on his acoustically-driven side project, City and Colour, sounded the death knell for the band’s future, admits the months post the breakup were a “heavily dark period for us”.

But it wasn’t long before Green, frontman George Pettit, guitarist Wade MacNeil, bassist Chris Steele and drummer Jordan Hastings would regroup, announcing a series of reunion shows in 2015.

Since then, Green says the band enjoy the luxury of maintaining their other musical lives while reigniting Alexisonfire when they get an offer too good to refuse. Like coming to Australia for summer concerts and to headline the Unify festival.

“We all have moved on from that initial period of when it was over,” Green says.

“I think the way we are looking at us now is we are very thankful to have an opportunity to still do it when we can and people are excited about that. We appreciate it.”

Success can spoil the fun. While music can be a mission, the motivation for a bunch of people to join together to perform songs tends to be the pursuit of a good time.

Multiskilling: Dallas Green in City and Colour mode at last year’s Bluesfest. Picture: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images

Alexisonfire formed out of the remnants of other bands and quickly found themselves not only one of the most popular bands in Canada but on the international hard rock circuit.

Their records, from the 2002 self-titled debut to 2009’s Old Crows/Young Cardinals, won awards and enough gold and platinum plaques to impress the relatives.

Their breakup was less about internal tension and more about those pesky musical differences. Green couldn’t do double duty with the band and his side project and MacNeil was being courted to front English hardcore punks Gallows.

Now Alexisonfire is fun again.

“I could speak for the other guys to a degree but specifically for me, because I had shifted all my focus to City and Colour, doing this is solely for fun,” Green says.

“I felt like a kid again last summer (in 2015) and I didn’t know how I was going to feel. There was a part of me that wondered if I would be about to sing like that again.”

City and Colour showcased the range and beauty of Green’s golden voice while Alexisonfire was more power than precision.

Green finds it hilarious that Pettit’s screamed vocals are variously described as “unclean”, while his are defined as “clean”.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that; I have heard my vocals called clean and George is usually dirty,” he says, laughing.

But that also ties into another reason for Alexisonfire’s universal appeal among hard rock fans.

For every fast and furious, almost-emo anthem there was an ausmingly titled counterpoint like Boiled Frogs.

Good times: Canadian post hardcore rock band Alexisonfire are looking forward to touring Australia this month. Picture: Vanessa Heins

“I think you know this about me ... I take my music seriously but not myself too seriously,” Green says.

“And we were always conscious of that, especially George. People would assume George was angry because he was screaming and he wanted to make sure people knew that wasn’t the case.”

Ahead of the Australian tour, Green has been enjoying a couple of months off and while he suggests he planned on doing nothing, both of us know he is incapable of indulging his inner couch potato.

Bits and pieces of songs he has been collecting for future City and Colour songs will probably be bashed into some kind of shape by year’s end and before he knows it, “I will have a new record that I need to get out of my brain.”

Who knows how the Alexisonfire tour of Australia will further fuel those creative juices?

“We’re all pretty excited about coming there and I have a particularly fond place in my heart for Australia; that’s where City and Colour started,” he says.

SEE Alexisonfire perform at HBF Stadium, Perth on January 11, Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre on January 13, Festival Hall, Melbourne on January 17, Hordern Pavilion, Sydney on January 19 and Riverstage, Brisbane on January 21. All concerts are all ages.

Originally published as City and Colour’s Dallas Green reveals why he keeps coming back to Alexisonfire