Q & A: City and Colour's Dallas Green talks sports

by Sam Sutherland

September 26, 2012

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Wrong Dallas Green

Dallas Green is kind of a jock. He tweets about basketball. He shows up on Blue Jays broadcasts. He invites Stanley Cup winners into his green room. He is kind of living the dream.

AUX caught up with the road-worn singer-songwriter this summer amidst a flurry of City and Colour dates and the announcement of the final run of Alexisonfire shows. We talked about those things for a bit.

But mostly, we talked about sports.

AUX: I feel like the highest point of musical success has got to be when a baseball player uses your song for walk-up music. And I was at a Jays game one night, and I don’t know if he does it every game, where J.P. Arencibia used “Fragile Bird.”

Dallas Green: Yeah, he’s been doing that every once and a while. He did that one night when I was going to a game, he told me he was going to to it. I met him at the end of last season, and we became pals. He was like, “You should write me a song to come out to.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll work on it,” as a joke. And he was like, “You working on that song?” And I was like, “Oh, no. I’m sorry.” The highlight of my career so far has definitely been building friendships with a couple of professional athletes. But it was the coolest thing. I threw out the first pitch at a game last year, and he tweeted at me. I don’t even use my Twitter. Actually, I used my Twitter the other night to talk about Steve Nash.

AUX: I saw that you were really mad.

People may have misconstrued it. I wasn’t mad that he didn’t sign with the Raptors. I was mad that he signed with the Lakers.


But yeah, we [Arencibia] became pals via that. It’s just so surreal to go to Jays games and know the guys. It’s funny, the more guys I meet… Cam Ward came to our show in South Carolina. It was this dingy club, and the promoter came up, “Uh, Cam Ward, Stanley Cup winning goaltender, is here, and he wants to meets Dallas.” Uh, yeah, he can come back. I think there is this weird cross section of musicians who wish they were athletes, and athletes who love music. And there’s a kinship with the traveling thing. It’s something we share. It’s cool.

AUX: Did you ever, as a kid, feel like it was possible to like both? I always felt like because I liked punk rock, I had to hate sports.

Eight years-old was kind of my year. I started playing guitar, I started skateboarding, and I started playing baseball. I got really into basketball a couple of years later. I didn’t approach it like a jock. I played on the high school basketball team, but I was skateboarding. I was bridging the gap.

dallas green live

AUX: So in your athletic fantasy, what’s your walk-up music?

I would like to come out to some serious hip-hop. I love when Colby Rasmus comes out that crazy southern hip-hop. Here comes this tall, skinny white guy with long hair, and it’s just… I guess it has changed over the years. I’d love to come out to something absolutely ludicrous, like Darkthrone, where it just sounds inaudible and people wonder what’s happening. I also like that Kelly Johnson comes out to “Bull on Parade.”

AUX: He changed it, now he comes out to “What I Got.”

Yeah?

AUX: Yeah. And here’s the thing — “What I Got?” Not a hype up jam.

Put that back to “Bulls on Parade.”

AUX: I always thought it would be cool to really throw people for a loop, come out to “MMMBop.”

The pitcher would be like, “Wait a minute, I know this song.” You’d have the catcher asking why you chose that song, instead of thinking about the signs… Maybe Enya?

Tags: Sports, Cancon, Interviews, News, Alexisonfire, City and Colour, colby rasmus, Dallas Green, enya, Hanson, J.P. Arencibia, Toronto Raptors

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