Music

Peter Elkas talks about coming home, and walking lots of dogs for a living

by Nicole Villeneuve

Former Montreal indie rocker Peter Elkas has lived in Toronto for nine years now, but it’s only with his most recent album Repeat Offender that he’s set to take the role of the hometown-hero, headlining the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern on October 1.

“Montreal was really fun at the time when I left,” says Elkas, now writing and performing as a soulful, multi-talented singer/songwriter. “I wasn’t leaving because I thought it wasn’t a good place to be, I just kind of thought if I was really going to make a go of music, that it would be best to move to Toronto…to be amongst the most creative people I knew. It’s a community I wanted to continue to be a part of. And before you know it, you dig your heels in somewhere and things start working.”

The community in question is largely the mid/late-90s Halifax indie boom, led by Sloan and their murderecords crew. Elkas’ former band, the sophistocatedly raucous Local Rabbits, were the first band outside of the Martimes to be released through the label; with members of the Rabbits as well as good friends from Thrush Hermit and Sloan living in Toronto, the move made sense. He’s since worked closely with Hermit’s Joel Plaskett as a tour (and band) mate, and put Repeat Offender out on Plaskett’s New Scotland Records. The album was recorded with another former Hermit, Ian McGettigan, in Elkas’ basement studio.

“When Ian and I were working on the first part of the album we were set up at Giant Studios [run by Sebastien Grainger and Metric’s Jimmy Shaw], then Ian had to go away and we had to pause the recording,” Elkas says. “So we set up some stuff in my basement so I could keep working on my own. But I’d like to graduate from this space.”

The basement recording might have been out of necessity, but when it came time for a photo shoot for Repeat Offender‘s cover, it was first choice.

“It was the main Idea that I’d had for a long time for the artwork,” he says. “Only the day before did I really think about what was logistically involved in getting ten or twelve dogs under one roof at one time and having them be chilled out enough that they could pose for a photo.”

Luckily, Elkas isn’t too shabby at that sort of thing—his day job is owning and operating West End Walks, a dog-walking business that started as a fill-in gig four years ago when his girlfriend took home a flyer from her job at a coffee shop. His business is a huge part of his life, and with the album, he wanted his four-legged clients help tell the story.

“It’s pretty much the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he laughs. “[The cover] is such a good portrait of what my whole life was about in the few years in which I wrote these tunes and was recording.”

And now it’s the album for which Elkas will headline Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern. Though he’s headlined plenty of solo shows—including a successful residency at the Dakota—the Horseshoe has a special reverence.

“It was sort of [the Local Rabbits’] stomping ground in those days,” he says. “I’m excited and nervous. We’ll have maybe not all of the bells and whistles that you hear on the record, but at least some of the bells. Just try to do as good a show as we can. I’m so excited about the way the band has been playing lately.”

Peter Elkas headlines the Horseshoe Tavern on October 1. Check out the rest of his tour dates on his site, or below.

Peter Elkas Tour Dates
09/24/11 – London, ON at Aeolian Hall
09/27/11 – Montreal, Qc at Le Divan Orange Buy tickets
09/28/11 – Sherbrooke, Qc at Centennial Theatre
09/30/11 – Kingston, On at The Grad Club
10/01/11 – Toronto, On at THE LEGENDARY HORSESHOE TAVERN