The Pixo Control play Emergency Festival Saturday August 15

left to right: Keeghan Rosso- Michael Mikus -Steve Edwards

What sets this band apart from other young rock acts in the Sault? 

What do you bring onstage that other bands miss the mark on?

Mike: 

This is a tough question 

because there are more than a few great bands around here 

that ... pour themselves into what they do. 

I don't know what exactly has gotten people's attention about us at all; probably has something to do with the music. 

We just aim to play a good show for people every night. 

When people leave our show, 

I want them to feel different from when they first walked in...

it doesn't matter if we're playing in front of 4 people or 400

...we have to keep doing our thing no matter who sees it. 

You have to really give them that high-energy live show 

that makes them feel something.

That's been our natural approach to playing shows so far.

What local acts are you excited about 
and what do you feel the music scene is missing?

Mike: 
Gnaeus and Caroline Divine are buzzing for me 

as far as young bands. Aldous is another good one. 

Then there's my heavy taste which likes 
Jack Spades and Destroilet. 

This Sault Ste. Marie scene is small right now 

but it's got a lot stemming from the branch. 
I think right now it's just missing the chaos. 
There are a lot of kids here that don't get the opportunity 
to see new music because even when it's promoted, 
it falls short to cover bands. 
In my opinion that's a little backward, but nonetheless, 
the community of people 
who are brought together by music and art 
is growing stronger than it has in recent years. 
Hopefully the city's reputation for music 
will continue to improve with the addition of the Machine Shop 
as a go-to venue for touring artists. 
The bands are here, the talent is here, 
and all the hormonal, pissed-off teenagers are here too, 
we just need to get them off their phones 
and out to a damn show. 
It's a far more memorable and emotional experience 
than today's trending topics.  

Steve: 

As Mike had mentioned before Caroline Devine, 

Gnaeus and Aldous are great young bands in the Sault. 

I also really enjoy bands such as Frank Deresti and the Lake Effect 

and Shannon Moan. I feel that the music scene is missing 

..swarms of teenagers lining up outside of a venue

(for) a band they want to see. 

...the Sault music scene is definitely growing in all genres, 

slowly but surely.

The  band was recently signed to Tidal records: 
How is life on a label for Pixo so far?

 Mike: 

Tidal Records has been great to us. 

We're still a really young band even though we seem to be doing alright. We have a lot to learn, and it's just nice to have people there who can offer you that family-based support that you can't get from a major label. We play the rock n roll, and they provide a good vehicle for us to get our music into people's ears. It's people helping people.

Steve: 

We have had complete support from Tidal Records 

since we first met Dustin and the Tidal crew on day one, 

even before we were signed with them. 

We have just gotten started...

really excited for the future with them 

and the experience that comes along with it.

The album you've just about to release will be the first for the band.

How did you enjoy the recording experience 

and how do you see the album as far as your musical direction goes?

 Mike: 

Recording this album was our first time cutting a whole LP 

and it had bits of all things good and bad about being in the studio. 

We had our moments of pure awe....

hurdling over on the couch in utter joy, 

along with long hours of self-loathing 

where you wanna break the microphone under your foot. 

I like to think it balanced out the way we wanted it to in the end. 

It's as rough as I wanted our first record to be. 

It sounds like a band that is far from well worn-in....

quite the teaser to say the least.

Your music strikes me as being fairly retro in its approach 

to both punk music and the influence of the blues. 

Mike: 

I dig the old aesthetic, I'm not gonna lie. 

I would say I'm more of a guitar player than a singer too. 

I like players like Josh Homme and Kim Thayil, 

Johnny Greenwood, really aggressive yet melodic players. 

And as raunchy as I may like my guitar tone, 

I'm still a sucker for a well-written pop hit. 

There's no perfect formula for what we try to capture in our music,

 it's just me trying to push the limit of rock music songwriting. 

Whatever it is, it's working for me.

Steve: 

Since the earliest of age that I can remember, 

I was always listening to older rock and roll, 

bands like The Steve Miller Band, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, 

Kiss, Ac/Dc and about everything else in between. 

As I got older I started enjoying heavier and lighter bands like Alexisonfire, 

Queens of the Stone age, Kings Of Leon, City and Colour 

and tons of other bands. I think our influences come out when we play 

whether we try to or not, 

it's who we are as musicians.

Tell me about the journey from solo Mikus music to the Pixo.

I started writing music when I was 12 or something. 

Just these really simple, sorta cheesy songs about pre-pubescent love. 

I played acoustic shows and that was about it. 

And then I just kept practicing, 

expanding on my musical repertoire 

and eventually I found myself in a two-piece garage rock band 

called The Fever Tops with Mitch Harris. 

We did that for nearly a year and in that time, 

the songs were getting better 

and I was getting impatient to start something new. 

So I quit that band and moved on to Pixo 

and now we're doing a lot more than I thought we ever would. 

How do you keep your head on straight while becoming a teenaged rock frontman?

I still have one more year of high school to go, 

so I'm just gonna keep riding this wave. 
It's been nothing but amazing so far, and there's no chance in hell 

I'm putting the brakes on doing it anytime soon.

What's behind Keeghan's leaving the drum chair in the pixo control?

 Is this a big concern to the rest of the band?

 Has a new drummer been recruited?

Mike: 

Keeghan's just not really in the right mindset 

to devote himself to playing music right now. 

It's a difficult change to take on. He's our friend and yeah, 

it sucks that we don't have our original line-up anymore 

but it's not a concern for the band at this point. 

It would be really silly to live out this band thing 

thinking everything's always going to stay the same. 

That's not how life works, and at the end of the day, 

we're just people who have to take care of themselves. 

We have a new guy that we're working with right now, 

and to me it still sounds like The Pixo Control,

 if anything, a much more focused Pixo Control. 

But we'll save the introduction 

for when he starts playing the shows.

You've been gigging locally on the regular this year.

Where have you played outside of the Sault 

and what's planned for this summer and beyond?

Mike: 

So far we've done one mini-tour of Southern Ontario;

playing in Toronto, Barrie, and St.Catharines. 

Now we're back home to play the Emergency Festival on Saturday. 

We're hoping to book more dates later but for now, 

I think we'll focus on getting the record out.

Danny Lindsay reflects on a decade of The Big City Nights Band

(L to R: Ryan Taylor, Danny Lindsey, Andrew Emon, Brent Fagan, Spencer Linton)

A lot can happen in ten years. 

Does Big City Nights bear any resemblance to the band it was a decade ago?

Man, you’re so right. A lot can definitely happen. 

When I think about who I was at 19 

I usually end up wincing at the .... embarrassing memories. 

We’re all very different now and so is the band: 

the only thing that has remained constant is our recording method, 

which is to track the songs as quickly as possible to get that “new song” magic, 

and to use the bare minimum of microphones.

Everything else has changed. 

Back in 2005 there weren’t any permanent members 

because I couldn’t get anyone to commit full-time. 

The first song we ever recorded is called “Mathematics” 

with Brandon Fleet on guitar and vocals and Mitchell Syrnyk on drums 

(they play in a band called Sleep For The Nightlife that I used to play in as well). 

Our current drummer James started playing with the band in September 2005 

(we did an EP called Teenage Lust that had a Neil Young cover on it, “Don’t Cry No Tears”) 

but he didn’t join permanently until 2007, so ten years ago 

the recordings were usually done with whoever was in the room at the time. 

One night James and I were heading to a warehouse in Brampton to record stuff 

and we ran into a local show promoter at the Beer Store who called himself Brentertainment. 

He came along and recorded three or four songs with us that night, then we never saw him again. 

The same thing happened in 2009 with a guy named Mike. 

He met up with us at the Rehearsal Factory, played drums on “Reena,” 

and we never, ever saw or heard from him again. 

I wonder about those guys sometimes and where they are. 

So back then it was a lot more ad-hoc. 

We still record songs quickly without a lot of rehearsal or planning beforehand, 

but the membership is now set in stone.

Another thing we used to do back then that makes me wince 

was brag about how much we could drink…on the records. 

It was pretty juvenile and immature. 

All my heroes at the time (Robert Pollard, Jack Kerouac, etc) 

were drunks so I mimicked their behavior. 

I had the silly notion that it was profoundly cool to drink, 

so a lot of the songs were about drinking and you can hear the bottles 

clanking around on the floor while we recorded. 

Our first album was called Born to Bar Band and the songs pointedly romanticized alcohol. 

I thought it made us seem interesting and worldly. 

I have since realized that that’s a pretty lame way to view the world. 

We still drink while we record stuff, but we don’t sing about it anymore or brag about it. 

If you can’t enjoy yourself playing music sober, 

you probably/definitely have a substance abuse problem.

How does it feel to prepare and release a two disc retrospective? 

Have there been surprises on this trip down memory lane?

It feels fantastic but also a little bittersweet. 

It’s like finding your old high school yearbook and flipping through the pages and going 

“Ohhh yeah, I remember that fuckin guy!” 

I’m a really nostalgic person. 

I can’t help it, even though I know that nostalgia can be a dangerous thing. 

It selectively remembers things for you so that you romanticize and exaggerate past experiences.

 Too much nostalgia can hold you hostage in the warehouse of your own memories, 

but it’s healthy in small doses, so it’s been cool

 to go back and listen to songs we made a decade ago 

and remember the silly jokes we made while recording them. 

And there have been a few surprises, yeah.

 I hadn’t listened to “Mathematics” in years and forgot about that totally badass, 

jazzy guitar lead at the very beginning (that’s Brandon Fleet playing, not me). 

A similar thing happened with “Vegetable Bros,” which is on the first disc. 

I wrote that song after watching Deliverance for the first time (amazing movie) 

cuz I wanted to ripoff the creepy banjo vibe. 

But I totally forgot about that whistling part, which makes the whole thing creepier. 

That’s James doing the whistling. His whistle is our secret weapon. 

He even has a throat whistle he busts out sometimes, 

but I’ve never been able to convince him to record it. 

Another surprise was on “Hell Song” from the second disc. 

I asked David Contin (The Flying Museum Band) over to my apartment to help me sing it, 

but I’d completely forgotten about that insanely low vocal line he does right around 1:27. 

It’s totally fucking awesome. I love that guy.

I’m happy that we have a best-of compilation 

because it’ll be an easier way to get people who haven’t heard us to check out the band, 

instead of saying “here’s eighteen albums. Good luck.”

Basically my favourite thing to do is make records.

 Back in high school I had a fake band in my head called Bozer 

and during class I’d write out fake track listings for fake albums. 

Bozer had something like thirty “records,” starting in 2001 

and going all the way to 2025 or something. 

So I always wanted to be in a band that makes a lot of albums, 

but I didn’t realize that doing things like this can kind of alienate people. 

It’s a lot easier to check out a band that has a three-song EP streaming 

than a band that has a billion songs.

How does music fit into your life? 

Are your creative endeavors very compartmentalized, 

or do the films, books and albums you work on inform one another?

There’s definitely some overlap, but music is such a joyous, 

communal celebration that it’s definitely my favourite of those three activities. 

I’ve been trying to finish a novel since January 2009 called All the Quiet Hours, 

and I’m finally almost finished (it’ll be done this year), 

but writing is such a lonely, solitary activity. 

A lot of the time it’s not fun at all. 

Self-doubt creeps in and it’s hard to get motivated. 

So the only way writing overlaps with the music stuff is the titles. 

A lot of the times I’ll use the same title for both a song and a story. 

We have an album called Yawns Beyond and I also used that title for a short story 

about two guys who rob a grocery store 

(I submitted it to the Toronto Star Short Story Contest but I never heard back...;-) 

“Sleep Kilometres” is another one that’s both a short story and a song. 

Same thing with “Let’s Go To Hell.”

The movies we make for fun but there’s definitely overlap there too. 

The song “Miss Me Baby” was featured prominently 

in a mockumentary we made back in 2011 called Sudbury ’96 

and the song “Former Building” is the theme song 

to yet another mockumentary we’re trying to finish 

about a Christian rock band called Give Us This Day 

So yeah, for me, all these creative activities inform one another, 

but music is definitely my favourite:

and I hold no delusions about my very meager talent 

when it comes to each of them.

 Who's in the band now? Who has come and gone over the years?

The band now is Ryan Taylor on bass and vocals, 

James Chernoff on drums and vocals 

and myself on guitar and vocals.

Reena Taylor, Ryan’s wife-but-then-girlfriend, 

played keyboard at some shows in 2009...

doesn’t play live with us anymore, though she still sings on the records. 

We had a second guitar player for most of 2009, 

our buddy Stefan Kupych who plays in The Flying Museum Band, 

but he’s a really busy guy and it was a lot to ask of him to learn all our old songs 

so he stopped playing with us toward the end of that year. 

My ex-girlfriend Jessica Fisher sang on a lot of stuff, probably over fifteen songs. 

But aside from Stefan and Reena, we’ve had no other major members 

but we’ve had a shitload of guest vocalists and friends play on the albums. 

Here’s a partial list of players with their main band in brackets: 

Russell Holley and David Contin (The Flying Museum Band)

Darcy McMann (The Beekeeper’s Society)

Brent Fagan and Spencer Linton (Fidelity Friends)

Brandon Fleet and Mitchell Syrnyk (Sleep for the Nightlife)

Eric Lister (The Violent Light)

 Jamie Harvey (Wild Waters)

Courtney Vanderploeg (The Golden Years)

Carey Linton (The Circus, Cosmonaut)

Mike Mikocic (Meeko Cheech)

and, last but not least, Omri Horowitz. 

Omri is probably our #1 fan, the most supportive guy I’ve ever met 

who has his own project called Li-on Grevier 

and has a song called “Apple” that is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. 

He recorded the string parts in my bedroom while I was at work

...I’m glad to be glancingly associated with its production.

How have your goals and aspirations as a musician changed since the beginning of big city nights?

Back then I practiced guitar a lot. 

I was obsessed. I wanted to be a shredder. 

Then one day I just hit a wall and realized I couldn’t play very fast, 

so I stopped practicing guitar and focused on learning how to play other things, 

piano and drums mostly. I also worked on singing better, which sort of worked, but not really. 

Nowadays I use the guitar solely to write songs, not to improve my paltry abilit(ies). 

I love the instrument but it’s no longer an obsession for me: 

I’d rather listen to a good song than a great guitar solo.

I also nursed the sick delusion back then

 that we’d be able to do the band for a living someday, 

touring and selling t-shirts and whatnot. 

The decline of physical album sales notwithstanding, 

I’ve realized that we’re not really the types of band that “makes it.”:

We don’t practice much 

(maybe two actual practices a year…though this calendar year we haven’t rehearsed even once), 

we can be a little sloppy live, 

we put out way too much material for anyone to keep up with, 

and we don’t have a lot of industry contacts 

cuz obtaining said contacts usually requires 

a lot of ass kissing and sucking up to unpleasant people 

and starting a Sonicbids account to throw money at behemoth festivals 

like NXNE and Pop Montreal 

in the hopes that they’ll deign to let us play. 

I’m not against bands that try that route, but it’s not for us. 

We’re a basement group. Born to Bar Band.

While it would be cool to have a few more people listening, 

I like things the way they are. 

Like I said, all I’ve ever wanted to do was make albums with a band, 

and that’s all we do.

 Our current aspiration is to make a really meticulous album someday, 

something with a lot of sonic texture and depth like a Flaming Lips record or something, 

but still recorded in a house or jam space. 

I’d love that album to have a bunch of thirty-second sound collages, 

bits of dialogue from movies we love, 

surf rock instrumentals, some orchestral synth stuff, 

songs recorded over the phone, etc, 

interspersed with fully fleshed out pop songs, 

and tied together sorta like Songs for the Deaf, 

with fake radio DJs making jokes and announcements. 

Some people think that the DJ skits on that 

Queens of the Stone Age record wear thin really fast 

but I’ve always loved them and would really like to make an album

that’s all over the place musically...but tethered together by a series of phantom radio stations. 

Not an original idea, I admit, 

but we’re not a very original band. 

We’re more like parrots. 

We don’t have a lot of patience, 

but I think we can make this album sometime soon. 

That’s the goal. It’ll be our own Sgt Peppers.