Dallas Green has been to Prince George but not since March 8, 2010 and not since he was in the band Alexisonfire that opened for Billy Talent that night. Now he is coming under his own name, his City & Colour name, to show us the other side of his singer-songwriter, live-performer self.
Green has the record sales numbers and the entertainment industry awards to put him in a spearhead position within the Canadian music industry. Add in his You+Me collaboration with Pink, and you've got yourself a force in Canuck showbiz. But when you talk to him on the phone, with his beloved Toronto Raptors down to the heavily favoured Cleveland Cavaliers, and his beloved Toronto Blue Jays inexplicably struggling to find the win column after the Cinderella playoff run last fall, and his beloved Maple Leafs just being themselves, music is not what he most wants to talk about.
"Here's what I'm going to give you - and it's a rare moment of optimism from the mouth of Dallas Green - I've been a Raptors fan for 21 long years, and the amount of sadness and emotional turmoil I have felt with this basketball team is almost unprecedented," he said. "That being said, we have nothing to be sad about right now. We're getting beat by quite possibly the greatest basketball player of all time (Cavaliers superstar LeBron James), who has destroyed the Eastern Conference since he came into the league. He's on the verge of going to his sixth straight finals; do you know how impossible that is to do? I was at Game 7 when (the Raptors) beat Miami and it was, to me, such a wonderful achievement and a wonderful moment for a franchise that has not been able to do anything special for 21 years."
The Raptors players are young, not at their peak, and yet have been with the team long enough to know the fans and have an affection for the city, he said, so the future is bright for this now-exciting NBA team.
As for the Blue Jays, well, he just reminded everyone that their record was poor at this stage of the season last year, too. He was in SkyDome last year when Jose Bautista hit the colossal home run to put them into the American League championship series, and it was a bigger feeling than when Joe Carter hit his memorable dinger back in the 1993 World Series.
"Having that Bautista home run, having the Raptors get into the conference finals, having the Leafs win the draft lottery - it's a pretty good time to be a Toronto sports fan compared to how it has been. There. That's my positive outlook on Toronto sports from the negative Dallas Green. It's very uncharacteristic."
He calls himself down for his pessimism, but to be clear, he is, in conversation, pleasant and forthcoming. His claims of personal pessimism smack more of being the consummate Canadian caught in the public eye: self-effacing, humble, focused on basing his existence on intelligence and art instead of ephemeral fizzle.
Those are traits that ring out of his songs. Yes, they tend to be tinged in blue moods and introspective atmospheres, but they are nuanced and catchy, thick with storytelling ingredients. He recently bought a place in Nashville close to a couple of his bandmates and close to a trove of music industry resources, so he is even more self-conscious about his ambassadorial role on the stage.
"I have a very large, giant Canadian chip on my shoulder, like a lot of Canadians do," he said, meaning that Canadians have become protective of their cultural personality due to its many differences with the American one that so often gets imposed from over the shared border. The song Northern Blues on his most recent record is emblematic of that.
"It's a weird song for me. It can be perceived that I'm tired of Canada or I have this weird insecurity, I guess, about being Canadian and it's not that at all. It's about how I love being Canadian and sometimes that view of us is thrown to the wayside, worldly. And then living down here, spending some time down here, again, there is a bit of guilt. I love my place down here, but a part of me hates that it's not in Canada. It's a sort of rumination on all that sort of thinking."
Being in Nashville certainly played a role in a plumb gig he had this past weekend. Green was thrilled to share the famed Ryman Auditorium stage in Nashville with Emmylou Harris, Ann Wilson, Boz Scaggs, Kesha, Wynonna Judd and her band The Big Noise, and many others at Dylanfest - an all-star lineup of Bob Dylan fans performing their version of Dylan's material in honour of his 75th birthday.
From there it is up to the Canadian side of the 49th parallel and a full City & Colour tour of the country with special guest Shakey Graves. The two acts will be on the CN Centre stage on June 5.
