Dallas Green promises that sometime next year he will record another City and Colour album.
For now, though, he’s on vacation. “I’ve got enough songs for the record,” he says on the phone from his Toronto home, “But if I recorded them now I’d have a nervous breakdown. I need some time to myself.”
The singer-songwriter, who made it big as the guitarist and vocalist in Alexisonfire, as well as a dreamy-voiced solo artist, has been on the go almost nonstop for the past year. When he wasn’t touring with Alexisonfire, he’d play City and Colour shows; August was the first month he had off.
All that touring hasn’t allowed him to write songs as quickly as he’d like. Green says he needs to spend time crafting a tune — he can’t just churn them out.
“I don’t understand the people who say they write a song every day,” he says. “I never do that. I don’t even think it’s a good idea to write a song every day — I’d end up writing a bunch of shit.”
While he has music for a new disc, he’s waiting until January to enter the studio. He says he may write a few new songs between now and then, but he’s adamant about not overloading the record with needless tracks.
“I don’t want to hear a record that has 15 songs on it,” he says. “That’s asking too much for the listener, especially now, when attention spans are so short.”
Fortunately, his fans do want to hear more than 15 songs from him, at least when he plays live.
That’s why he’s headlining Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre for the first time on Saturday.
“That will be neat,” he says. “I’ve never gotten to play when it was dark out there.”
It’s also been two years since he played Toronto, and he’s excited for the hometown show. Expect two new songs, and a track he wrote about the BP oil spill.
“I was reading a ton about it and it crept into my subconscious, and I wrote a song about it,” he says.
