Joel Plaskett is holed up in his Dartmouth recording studio pumping out a song a week until his new album Scrappy Happiness is finished. After almost two decades in the music industry, Plaskett knows what it takes to write an album. And if a song a week is a challenging concept, he’s no stranger to wrapping his work in a larger narrative.
His two most recent albums, 2007’s Ashtray Rock with the Emergency and 2009 solo effort Three, both have something of the concept album in them. Three is a triple-album, where the initial idea was to have each song title repeat the same word three times, like the single Through & Through & Through. That was toned down for practicality’s sake, but the theme of threes runs through it. Ashtray Rock was something of a nostalgia-fueled rock opera, looking at a love triangle that would eventually break up a Halifax band.
“I wanted to evoke the feeling of playing music as a teenager and what it meant to me at that age,” Plaskett says.
In a way, Scrappy Happiness is a mashup of the conceptual challenges of Three and the sentimental introspection of Ashtray Rock.
Finding larger narratives woven through his music is no accident. It’s a reflection of the way he works.
“If I’m missing a lyric, I look at the other songs and think about what’s going on here,” he says. “What’s the theme, and what are these songs about. What do I already have that might point me in the direction of how to complete this. So I’m always revisiting songs and even previous records.”
As a result, Plaskett will often survey his past in search of rich pockets of experience to mine.
Plaskett was born in Lunenberg and music was a constant presence in his upbringing. His father, Bill, played in a folk band called Starboard Side. Joel didn’t pick up an instrument until giving saxophone and drums an adolescent try in school. When he moved to Halifax at the age of 12, he made some friends that pushed him in a musical direction.
“By the time I was 13, Rob Benvie got a guitar and Ian McGettigan got a fretless base,” he says. “I figured if I got a guitar we could start a band, and that became Thrush Hermit.”
Thrush Hermit was a mainstay of the Halifax music scene in the 90s. They released three albums and a handful of EPs, toured widely, appeared on movie soundtracks, and were at one point signed by Elektra Records before returning home to link up with Sonic Unyon.
They had their fun, ignoring their own work on the main stage at Edgefest to crank out a set of Steve Miller Band covers. A Thrush Hermit show would include a bright neon “Rock & Roll” sign, some breakdancing and possibly McGettigan breathing fire.
After the band members went their separate ways in 1999, Plaskett would go on to release a mix of solo albums, and albums done with his group Joel Plaskett Emergency.
His recent successes have outstripped anything he accomplished in the past. Both Ashtray Rock and Three were shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, with Three taking home the Juno for adult alternative album.
It's this success with songwriting and the extra push adding a challenge that makes trying to produce an album in 10 weeks, one song at a time, possible.
“I really like albums and I always liked fiction,” he says. “So I thought tying a handful of songs together with a theme or a place. I get more out of it myself if I think about it on a thematic level.”