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You’ve always been pretty free artistically and followed your own path, but has the new attention opened any new avenues for you to do even more now?

I’m going to play bigger shows, and travel to places to Australia and New Zeland, where I haven’t played yet. You get a little more money, and you can go further distances to play. I’m starting to feel like I can stay in the Super 8 Motel on tour, and it’s not going to prevent us from having enough gas money to get to the next show. So I don’t have to worry as much about where we have to sleep. Sometimes we’ll still stay with people, and sometimes we’ll stay at hotels, depending on what we find is clean, comfortable and safe. I’ve had offers for some other stuff, like a Wal-Mart commercial and bank commercials—things that I would never do. I also got some pretty big publishing offers that I’m not really interested in either. I want to do things pretty much like I’ve always done them. I hired a booking agent, just so I’m spending less time on the Internet. Plus, now that I’m playing bigger venues, I just don’t have the contacts to do it myself. I don’t know the people, and I don’t know which venues are non-smoking, and have a baby friendly backstage and all that stuff. I’m pretty particular about where I’ll play, so I needed help with that—not playing Clear Channel shows, and things like that.

It’s great that you’ve maintained your commitment to making your shows open and inclusive for everyone.

I think one of the best things about music is its ability to bring together communities. I think all shows should be a community event, and age exclusive shows don’t allow that. I want the Great Grandmas, the babies, and everyone in between to come.

God willing, I’ll be a Great Granddad out at shows. You have all these new fans at your shows now, but do you ever feel the need to let people know about the music you’ve done that isn’t on the Juno soundtrack?

I feel like most people go deeper on their own. They got the soundtrack, then went and discovered my other music. When I do get requests from people to put songs they know from the soundtrack on my MySpace page, I’m like “Wait, you already know that one. I want to put songs from my older albums on there, so you’ll look into my older stuff.” Honestly, I can’t care that much really. There are some people that are just going to click the songs from the soundtrack, because they have that visual association with the film. Maybe that’s all they’ll ever want to hear from me. They might love it to death, but never be able to get into my other stuff. It’s not the most super-duper accessible music, otherwise tons of people would like it already. I’ve been doing this for a while. So their love goes hand in hand with the film for them, because it’s a little more polished than some of my other stuff. So if they don’t get into my other stuff that’s totally cool. I’ve been surviving doing this for six years now, so even if thousands of people forget me after this hubbub dies down, there will be a few more people that like me now than liked me before, and I’ll still be able to make my living then. As long as the people who have always liked me keep liking me, and I don’t have to get a job in food service, I’ll be cool.

—Chas Reynolds
03.26.08

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