New Inpop Records Artist Article One
05-08-2007
by Kevan Breitinger

When CMCentral caught up with Article One frontman, Nathan Piche, the band was on the road, headed across Canada. I had been warned that they would shortly be entering a no-cell-service area, but we did our best to make the minutes count.

CMCentral (Kevan Breitinger): Hey Nathan, how are you?

Article One (Nathan Piche): I’m good, really good.

You guys are on the road right now, right?

Yeah, we’re actually on our way from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg, so I’m calling you from the van.

Well, I appreciate you taking the time. You’re touring hard, aren’t you?

Well this time we’ve been on the road for 2 weeks now, but we have another 2-3 to go.

Oh, I thought I read you had like 50 gigs in 2 months?

That was back in the fall, we were going crazy back then. But it’s good though, you know? We like it, we’re still young (laughing).

Yeah, that’s a big advantage (laughing). I know you guys came from a very musical home. I wondered, did you always feel like you were headed in this direction, from day one?

We did have musical parents who really got us excited about music at a young age. But they were also very realistic about the difficulties of the life. Our dad actually toured as a Canadian Christian recording artist, and he always said, you know, it is difficult to make it. He used to joke around and say, ‘if you wanna do music, make sure you can’t do anything else’ (laughing). He did always tell us how much work was involved. But as we got older we liked it more and more, and finally got to the point where we wanted to do it fulltime.

Yeah, and you have that built-in support system with the two of you together.

Matt and I have been playing music together for years. Even before this band came together, we used to perform as a family.

I know you do most of the writing. Nathan. With that lifelong intimate knowledge of your playing partner, how does that figure into the writing? Do you find that gives you an edge, knowing so well where Matt’s gonna go?

I do a lot of the writing, but Matthew’s very, very involved in the critiquing process. When I take the new songs to the band, he’s always very good at saying what he thinks could be better or be changed. And the cool thing is that because we have been playing together for so long, I really know where he’s coming from. I know his advice is often really good.

I read that he’s got a jazz background, and I’m bit of a jazz freak too. You can hear a bit of that influence in your chord patterns.

We both took jazz in high school. Jazz is such an amazing genre, with all the harmonies and the changes, so the more we could incorporate of that the better.

Yeah, that and the violin gives you a unique sound.

Yeah.

I don’t know why more people don’t use that 'axe.'  It’s so expressive and rich, but so underused.

Yeah, I totally agree. And that’s one of the things that sets us apart, that we have a violin.

I like the band name, and the fact that it came from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which I had never even heard of.

I think the UDHR comes from the United Nations. I’d have to double check this, but I think it was created after one of the world wars. It’s a list of rights and freedoms that every human being in the world deserves. And when we were at a U2 concert about a year and a half ago, Bono was doing a presentation on the UDHR. As Christians, we know God says to love Him with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself. And here’s this Universal Declaration saying the same thing, that people were born equally, created equally, and therefore should be treated equally. We just loved the fact that we could have a name that stood for something bigger than the music, and a great rule to live by.

And I’m sure it’s a great conversation starter too, outside of the Christian community, which you have to like.

Oh yeah, definitely. We had a name before that didn’t mean anything, so we were thinking we’ve got to find something that stands for something. Well, when we heard this, we knew it was the one we were going to go with.

Did you have any special message you wanted to get across with the new album?

When I sat down I didn’t have a specific theme I wanted to get across, but I was really going thru a period when I was questioning, ‘am I going to do this full time?’ I was spending a lot of time praying and asking God, ‘is this what you want me to do with my life?’ So I think there’s a lot on here about searching and looking for God’s will. I think if there’s one prevalent thing coming across, it’s about trying to seek out what God wants for each of us. But I think the biggest thing we try to do with our music is to encourage and challenge people in their walk. A lot of our songs talk about experiences we’ve gone through, lessons we’ve learned. It’s our hope that these songs can resonate with people, that they can connect with them and be challenged or encouraged in their own lives.

What a great hope to have for your music.

It was at that point that Nathan crossed over into the Great Beyond, the land of ‘out of service,’ or 'dropped call' so we’ll never know for sure if he heard our good wishes.  Listen to Article One to see how strongly Nathan Piche, Matt Piche, and Dave DeSmit accomplish their very commendable musical goals.