Reid Millar is the bass player and joint singer in Toronto-based garage/psych/punk band BBQ Pope (pronounced Barbeque Pope). We recently chopped it up and covered everything from their forthcoming record, to theatre and the arts, to politics and streaming and lots in between. Unfurl – their sophomore album is out on October 24th and is available to pre-order (both digitally and as a beautiful limited edition translucent purple LP) and to pre-save now.
Kinda Grizzly: So, it’s midday where you are now?
BBQ Pope: Yeah, I live in Toronto, Canada, so it’s like noon on the dot.
KG: Well, thank you for taking the time!
BBQP: What part of London are you in?
KG: We’re in south London at the moment. An area called Charlton, which is near an area called Woolwich, is famous for its military history. Charlton isn’t really famous for much, but it’s just sort of next door to it. Been south of the river for nearly 8 years now, grown up in London, been here all my life. I was in the East previously. Do you know London well?
BBQP: I don’t know it a lot. I have visited. My girlfriend and I came over for a couple of weeks, and we spent a week in London and a bit of time in Manchester. We stayed in Nunhead, we went around, so it’s possible we may have passed through your neighbourhood – I can’t remember. But yeah, love London.
KG: It’s a wonderful city. It’s definitely right up there. I’ve been to many, and I think a lot of people take the things that surround them for granted and just get used to what they have access to, because they have access to it. But I consciously try to make an effort to enjoy what I feel like we’re really lucky to have around us. I’ve kind of always done that really – since I was a teenager. I think I was just raised that way.
BBQP: Heck yeah. I feel similarly – growing up in Toronto, it’s definitely one of the more major cities in Canada, so just having access to a lot of arts and culture from a young age was kind of, yeah, just something to take advantage of, for sure.
KG: I don’t know much about Toronto. Apart from, like, Drake and The Raptors and The Maple Leafs – I don’t know much about it apart from that.
BBQP: Yeah, for sure – those things are definitely marketed very heavily as in “this is what the city is all about, Drake – we all love him and The Raptors..” – I mean, I do love The Raptors and I do love The Leafs, but I don’t know. I feel like as a city it’s like a cross between London and New York in a funny way because we’re – obviously Canada was colonised by English people, so it’s a similar vibe to London in some ways, and then we’re in such close proximity to New York, so it feels like it’s American because we’re in North America. So it’s an interesting crossbreed, in terms of like, a world-class city. It’s very tiny in comparison to both of those places, so everything feels very tight-knit here, but it’s got a wide variety of influences, which is cool.
KG: You mentioned the tight-knit feel. I was going to ask about the community there and the local scene because, I assume, people are going to be as ignorant as I am on the subject and not have much knowledge of the Toronto scene. So I wondered if you could shed some light on that for us?
BBQP: For sure, yeah. Toronto’s got a great scene. Since I was a kid, I kind of got into going to local shows around the age of 15. When I say it’s very small, Toronto has like, five really important people who have really done a lot of work in the last 10 years to make the music scene better than it’s ever been. One of those people is a guy named Greg Benedetto. He plays in a band from Toronto called S.H.I.T.. The singer actually lives in London now. This guy Ryan from Toronto – he married a woman who lives there, so he’s based there now and is in a band called The Annihalated. So yeah, Greg runs this promotion company called Not Dead Yet, and they put on punk and hardcore shows in Toronto. There used to be festivals that he did yearly, I think with his partner at the time, and it really kind of put Toronto on the map in that world, and so now bands are constantly coming through here and touring. It’s kind of spread to the suburbs – surrounding areas like Brampton, Mississauga, Vaughn – these are kind of smaller municipalities and they all have really crazy cool scenes too. From the psych world, there’s a woman called Juliana who runs a festival called Project Nowhere, and she plays in a band called Hot Garbage, and she’s kind of done a similar thing for psych music in Toronto. There are a few other people. I feel like each genre has a person like that. Who, for the last decade, has just been really hustling to build community and to bring bands here, but also to really galvanize local bands just as much. I think, when I was a teenager, that really rubbed off on me. Going to festivals like Not Dead Yet was really inspiring to me and my friends – I’m maybe 10 years younger than the people I’m talking about. I’d say there’s a strong DIY spirit here and a very community-oriented spirit.
KG: That really puts it into perspective, actually. When you said things were small and tight there, and then you said there were 5 people who were instrumental or influential, especially in the last 10 years. When I think about London, there are going to be at least 5 people worth mentioning in each South London town who are doing that. I guess it goes back to what I said about taking advantage of what you’ve got access to – if you don’t have a vast network or a massive town, then you have to work with what you’ve got to create something worth having, I suppose.
BBQP: Yeah, totally
KG: So you guys have got a new album coming out?
BBQP: Yeah – a brand new record coming out on October 24th called Unfurl. It’s a 9-song LP – just like our first album, another 9 songs. We’ve been working on the album for quite a while now; it’s been a two-year process. We took a hiatus starting around 2022, and we didn’t play together for a couple of years. So we resumed playing shows and made the decision to make this record. We wrote it about a year and a half ago and have just been in the process of recording, mixing and mastering it since then. We recorded it with a good friend of ours called Dylan Frankland, who plays in a band called Tallies, who are from here; he’s produced the record. We’re putting it out independently, we’re getting some vinyl pressed – we’re all really excited. It’s been a fun and challenging process. The songs are definitely an evolution of our sound. We have always called ourself a garage psych-punk band – because when we were kids we really liked garage-punk, psyche and punk, so we were like “let’s just be all those things at once” – but with this record we’ve kind of incorporated a bit of influence from britpop, a bit from shoegaze, a little bit of post-hardcore – all stuff that as we’ve kind of matured and grown as fans of music and musicians have gravitated towards. I feel like it’s a much more mature record than anything we’ve done before, and I’m very stoked and excited for it to come out.
KG: The singles from it are really good. I haven’t been a very responsible interviewer – I should’ve gone back and listened to the stuff that predated it – but I know that the three singles from the album that I’ve heard so far have all been really strong. The first two – I’ve spent less time with the third one because it’s newer – were immediately impactful. You should be very proud. I think it’s a very exciting prospect, the full album, and I look forward to hearing it.
BBQP: Thank you, man.
KG: No worries! I wanted to ask you specifically about – well, there are three of you in the band, correct?
BBQP: Yeah, we’re a three-piece. It’s me and our guitar player, my friend Sean Hackl, and our drummer, our buddy Duncan. Sean and I split vocal duties, but I sing most of our songs.
KG: I wanted to ask if you guys had any other artistic projects?. Everybody you mentioned from the Toronto scene so far, or even your producer, you mentioned that they do one thing, and they also do something else. I wondered if you guys had any extracurricular activities outside of BBQ Pope that you do?
BBQP: Yeah! I mean, we’ve all played in all sorts of bands over the years, and some of us continue to have involvement in other projects. Duncan plays in a band called Jay Feelbender – it’s our friend Jacob’s solo project, and Duncan plays lead guitar in that project. It’s a bit more, kind of like poppy, indie, bedroom/garagey kind of stuff. I’d say – going back to talking about the Toronto scene – Jacob is someone I should mention who, like, I think more in the scene that we exist in, is someone who has really kind of ushered us into doing music and stuff. He used to play in a band called Goodbye Honalulu when we were all teenagers, we were just like, obsessed with them. We latched onto those dudes and punished the shit out of them and asked them lots of questions and stuff and became buddies eventually. So Jacob’s band is rad, and people should check it out. Sean is a producer. He works in film, he does sound editing, and he’s a great engineer. He definitely had a large hand in the production of the record we’re putting out, and he also has a solo project. I don;t believe he has a name for it yet, but he’s sitting on a crazy record that’s – I won’t say too much about it because I don’t know if he’d want me to – but all I’ll say is that whenever he does put it out, it’s gonna be very cool. I used to be in a band called Cloudage, which is still active in some ways. We’re not doing too much right now – all the members are quite busy with other parts of their lives – and that’s kind of more of a straight-up, indie-punk sound. Stripped back and in your face, kind of, and funnily enough, I went to school for acting. I was, like, a theatre kid when I was younger. I have a degree from York University in acting for theatre. I don’t really do very much theatre these days, but that was a pretty big part of my life when I was a kid, and I still do some film and television stuff here and there. So, yeah, we’re all very artistic and multi-faceted, but I’d say music is the main focus these days.
KG: The theatre stuff is interesting – does it remain an interest of yours on a non-professional level? Just on a hobby or interest level?
BBQP: Yeah, definitely. I mean, lots of my friends are working professionally in that world and stuff, so I still go to see plays and I still occasionally will do readings or workshops or stuff. I really love theatre – it taught me a lot about how to be a good artist and a hard worker and about approaching things through a process and having deadlines and sticking to them. A thing that I found challenging is that, within that world, it’s so competitive, and it’s hard to make opportunities happen for yourself, unless you have a lot of resources and a lot of money. Whereas, I find with music, it’s a lot easier to be like, “I want to XY and Z,” and if you have been doing it long enough and if you have the right toolkit, you can make those things happen.
KG: Yeah, DIY theatre is not so much of a thing, is it?
BBQP: It’s true, yeah. I feel like I kind of try to bring a DIY mentality into theatre. In my early 20s, I did start a theatre collective called Rookies With Friends, and we produced a couple of plays here in Toronto, but I think the difference with music is the DIY threshold. You kind of hit a ceiling with theatre very quickly because it’s just a very different workload – making a play vs. performing a show with your band. It’s a very different amount of labour. So it just becomes sort of inequitable to not get paid to do those jobs when you pass a certain point, but it was a fun experiment. I feel like I learned the hard way, at least, that there is a certain amount of space for DIY in theatre, but it can’t be entirely DIY, but yeah, I still love theatre. I think it’s something that is very important and brings people together and tells some important stories, and there aren’t a lot of things like that in the world. I think if you can make it out to the theatre, I encourage people to do so.
KG: Absolutely. I was just at the theatre yesterday. I like the theatre, but my partner, she’s a massive theatre person, she’s been to like 15 shows this year. We went yesterday and saw a family classic, one of those things that we grew up with and saw incessantly when we were kids, because my Nan only had like 2 videos we wanted to watch, so whenever we went and visited, we watched the same films over and over again. So Mrs. Doubtfire was one of the things we watched over and over again, and Calamity Jane – the old Doris Day musical – was the other, and that’s what I watched yesterday, and it was really nice.
BBQP: Oh, very good. Yeah, when I was in London, my girlfriend and I went to the theatre there – it was a cool experience.
KG: Do you remember what you saw, just out of interest?
BBQP: I can’t remember what it was called, but it was a play about these two people who are in a medical study where they’re taking this pill that is supposed to improve their mood. Some of them have been placeboed, some of them have not, and these two people develop a romantic relationship while they’re in this test study. They’re not really supposed to be interacting with each other because it can screw with the results. Anyway, they end up getting together, but one of them has been placeboed, and the other one hasn’t. So whether or not their feelings for each other are real is kind of the thesis of the play. I was really cool. It was in the round so I could see people sitting across from me. It was tight.
KG: Cool, sounds good. As you say, there are definitely experiences you can have in theatre that you can’t really have elsewhere in terms of the environment and the way things are produced and the experience. It’s definitely something everybody should do. I wanted to ask you about your ambitions and goals. Obviously, the new album is the first big thing, but what do you think is the – not a five-year plan – but what do you think is the next natural progression or target point, after the album? I know obviously you’ll be in album mode at the minute, but do you have anything afterwards that you intend on doing or want to do?
BBQP: Yeah, I’d say immediately after the record we’re going on tour, at least here in Canada, at a level that we never have before. We’ve played lots of shows in Ontario, which is the province where Toronto is based. We’ve played in Quebec, which is the province right next to Ontario, quite a few times, but we’ve never made it out to the East Coast. That’s all the maritime provinces like Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, so we’re gonna do a tour with some friends of ours, all the way out to the east coast and back, which will be very fun. And then I feel like immediately after that, more touring goals. We’ve never been to the west coast of Canada, like the BC, Vancouver and Alberta areas, so it would be very cool to get out there. Then I think eventually getting over to the UK or to parts of Europe would be our next goal. We’ve played with some bands from parts of Europe here in Canada, so we have some friendships with some musicians who are living across the pond, so it would be cool to maybe link up with them and do something, or maybe to open for another band. And then probably just making more music. Following up on the new record as quickly as we can, but doing the best that we can at the same time, and not rushing it too much.
KG: Yeah, that’s a tricky thing, isn’t it, in this day and age. I feel like there’s definitely an increased emphasis on output, productivity and production. I feel like, once you’ve put something out – obviously, I feel like I’m part of the machine here, asking you what your plans are after the album that’s not even out yet! – but, I think in this age of fast fashion and fast everything else – I feel like fast music consumption is a real issue. I don’t think people sit with things as much as they used to. It’s always about what’s next. At least that’s my perception. People might not necessarily feel that way, but that’s how it seems to me. I think it’s down to moving away from albums and the increase in dropping tracks and singles. I think maybe that’s changed the culture and how people digest music. I don’t know. What do you think?
BBQP: I agree. Funnily enough, we recently had a conversation with a friend of ours – he plays in bands, that’s how we know him – but he sort of makes his living on the back end of things in the music industry. Grant writing and working with labels and stuff, and he was saying a similar thing. He said, “It’s cool that you guys are putting this record out, but the industry is just not an industry of albums anymore”. It’s all about songs, it’s all about singles. A friend of mine recently said Spotify is like a coup d’état of the industry. It’s like they’ve just completely fucked everything up. Maybe the record will continue to come back. To me, it still holds a lot of value. I work in a record store here in Toronto. I love vinyl, I collect vinyl, and I don’t even really listen to streaming that much. I don’t think I’ve ever really discovered a band I love from the fast-paced track culture that we live in. It’s a weird time. We’ve been a band for so long. I remember when we first started, we were just putting our music on Bandcamp and making cassettes. That’s all bands were doing, and then suddenly streaming became a thing, and it seems like it’s the only thing. Also, making physical formats is really, really expensive. We’ve been a band for 10 years, and we’re only finally now putting something out on vinyl despite all being vinyl lovers and collectors. The digital age we live in is extremely suffocating and limiting.
KG: Absolutely. You make several good points. What you were saying about the continuing vinyl boom… Jack White was saying a while ago about putting the onus on big companies to enable greater manufacturing. First of all, we need more record pressing plants. Secondly, there needs to be a quicker turnaround with the queue not being dominated by Taylor Swift and her thirteen variants or whatever. We need a system that works better for more people, rather than being monopolized by a select few and so inaccessible to the majority of people. But I don’t really know what that looks like without the pie-in-the-sky idea of the generosity of The Big Three companies that own all the other companies, in terms of labels. As you touched on, it’s just such an investment – physical media. It will be out of the reach of so many artists for so long. 10 years is a long time to work towards a goal, and how many people will give up on that goal because it takes such a long time to get to it? It’s quite sad, really. Soul-destroying. On the plus side, and in relation to the whole moving away from Spotify thing, I think people are embracing Bandcamp a lot more now. I’m seeing a lot more emphasis on talking about Bandcamp now. Although people do like to talk about the fact that Bandcamp has changed hands twice, in terms of who owns the company. There’s a new thing up-and-coming called Subvert – have you heard of Subvert?
BBQP: I have, yeah, that’s the one that’s artist-run, right?
KG: Yeah, artist-owned, I think, and labels. Lots of involvement from artists and people in the industry, trying to do what they can to make a small difference. Well, it might end up being a big difference, depending on how it goes. It’s in its infancy, it’s not even launched yet, but it sounds like it’s potentially a very interesting idea. Like, this Bandcamp Fridays thing, for example. That should always be. Every day should be Bandcamp Friday, in terms of the money-making side of things, but obviously, it’s a very, very tricky thing. From an artist perspective – because I make music as well – what you mention about streaming…I mean, it was a goal of mine to get our music on Spotify. Not just available or streaming anywhere, but on Spotify. I think because it’s recognized as the market leader, for smaller bands who are shunning it, it’s hard. For Neil Young, it’s fine because he’s Neil Young, but for smaller bands, it’s difficult because it adds a certain amount of validity to your artwork and to your audience and to what you’re doing. It’s almost like shooting yourself in the foot by removing it; it’s tricky.
BBQP: Yeah, I mean, obviously, the politics of it are important. I respect and support anyone making that decision. Something like Subvert, perhaps, could solve some issues, but it does feel like it lacks a certain amount of creative thinking- it’s just another streaming platform at the end of the day, the same way there are like forty versions of Uber now. How long does that exist and not get sold to a corporate company, you know? How many times does that happen? Not to sound completely jaded – I think what they’re doing is cool – but I think the things that are really important to celebrate and galvanize are independent labels, people who are just doing it, the DIY festivals – that stuff exists completely in opposition to everything, and it’s never gone away since streaming’s prevalence. Something like Maximum Rock & Roll – none of those bands are on Spotify, well, some of them are – but the majority of them are doing limited vinyl pressings, and you can buy them on Bandcamp or at the one record store that stocks them. There are independent touring routes; all of that stuff still exists. I don’t think it’s necessarily good for other sub-genres to ape punk and hardcore – because that does happen a lot in this day and age- but I think the DIY spirit can be taken up in arms by any sub-culture.
KG: You mentioned something called Maximum Rock & Roll – what is that?
BBQP: Oh, you don’t know what MRR is?! It was a magazine. It was a very long-standing magazine that started in the Bay Area in the 80s, and it was kind of the official punk and hardcore fanzine. Not official, but probably the most well-respected and recognized. It was also the most divisive. It was kind of like the Pitchfork of punk and hardcore. They would either tear you to shreds or give you a review that would make people want to listen to your band. It still exists as a blog; they sadly no longer do a print magazine, but it’s good. It’s the one place that, if you mail a physical copy of your record to them, it’ll take maybe a year, but they’ll review it and it’ll end up on the blog. It’s a historical thing, it’s a lineage thing. It’s cool that it still exists, and they take every record that they get sent to them and they put it in this collection in a house in the Bay Area, I believe. It recently got sold and moved to a library somewhere, but it’s all kept together, and a lot of new music I listen to, I learn about just by reading stuff that they talk about. It’s a super cool thing.
KG: That sounds great. I love the idea of them making a library of those recordings. We’ve got something that – well, it’s not the same at all – but we’ve got something called the V&A East Storehouse that opened in East London recently. I think they turned a warehouse into, literally, a storage facility for like 250,000 items from over the years – from cultural apparati to historical things to albums to books. I haven’t been there yet, but it sounds like a wonderland of stuff, and what you’re talking about sounds like a much more specific collection of stuff. I just love a collection of stuff. My family are collectors. You mentioned vinyl earlier – I have a fair amount of records too – which is something we’re moving into, actually. I say we, and I don’t mean Kinda Grizzly in this context. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Black Rainbow Collective? It’s something that I run separately from Kinda Grizzly, and we’ll be starting to do vinyl soon. I just happened upon this company in England called Elastic Stage that makes vinyl on demand. So, you don’t pay for it. They just make it for you and take loads of your money when you sell a copy. You get more than you do for Spotify streams, and your album gets to exist in real life, so you know, win/win.
BBQP: Yeah, I’ve heard of them. We debated working with them for our record, but I think just being based in Canada and them being in the UK – it seemed complicated at the time, so we went with a domestic pressing plant for this, but it’s something that, perhaps if we sold out of this run, we could get it up on there. The on-demand thing is cool.
KG: Going back to what you said about Subvert – and I don’t wish to sound too cynical either – but how long is it going to be before Elastic Stage is owned by Sony or UMG or whatever? Someone is gonna buy that, surely? It’s too good an idea not to, right?
BBQP: Yeah, I think that’s the sad thing about capitalism. Good ideas get bought, and then they get destroyed. They get bought and privatized, so get in while they’re good, I guess!
KG: Absolutely! LOL! Get it while you can! We’re coming to the end now. Is there anything in particular you’d like to make people aware of before we go?
BBQP: I don’t know. I mean, follow us on Instagram, it’s the best place to keep up with us. The record is coming out, there are three singles out already – Content, Pop Punk Song From 1994 and Face The Future. We have videos out for all those tunes which our guitarist Sean directed, so check those out on YouTube. And yeah, the records out on the 24th – and whatever way you want to listen to it, we would appreciate you checking it out and if you want us to come play your city, message us and we’ll try to make something happen.
KG: Are you doing international shipping on the vinyl? Out of interest.
BBQP: I will, yeah. Shipping stuff to the US is very complicated right now, but shipping to the UK is very straightforward, so if anyone in the UK or Europe wants to order our record, please do!
KG: Two last quick-fire things I wanted to ask you before we go. The first one is – off the back of one of your singles, being called Pop Punk Song From 1994 – favourite pop punk band? Go!
BBQP: Operation Ivy.
KG: OK, interesting. I’m not overly familiar with them, and I would not have thought they would have fit into the pop punk category specifically. I always thought of them as more of a straight-up punk band, but that is interesting. I’m going to go listen to them off the back of that. And lastly, you mentioned a zine earlier, Black Rainbow Collective has a zine, and I’d love to send you some – maybe to stock in your record shop, if you wouldn’t mind?
BBQP: Yeah, please do!
Written by Kinda Grizzly
