Q&A with Andrew Whiteman, guitarist of Broken Social Scene

After last year’s release of “Forgiveness Rock Record,” the collective of musicians that comprise Broken Social Scene are back together to play a handful of U.S. and Canadian shows, including this weekend’s Coachella. The band’s animated guitarist Andrew Whiteman spoke with Daily Bruin Arts & Entertainment contributor Elia Rogers about his disdain for festivals, his taste in music, the family dynamics of the band and his dream tour.

Daily Bruin: What about Coachella are you looking forward to most this weekend?
Andrew Whiteman: Personally, I don’t really like festivals so I’m looking forward to doing a lot of reading in my hotel room. Other than that, the bands that I’m excited to see are playing right before Broken Social Scene. Erykah Badu, and also I love Gogol Bordello. I’d like to see P.J. Harvey, but in a giant Coachella situation it might not be great.

DB: Do you enjoy performing in a more intimate situation than a festival provides?
AW: Playing music, I love to play whether I’m playing a festival or a normal show. I think I like playing normal shows a little better than festivals because with a festival you really stick to your script. Your set list and time is very tight, and I like things to be a little looser. So I prefer our normal shows but sometimes the tension of the festival can make something really amazing happen. Sometimes real magic happens. I love to play no matter what, though. It’s great. I’m very honored and blessed that we get to play.

DB: What kind of music are you into?
AW: I like a lot of music that is very old, from the ’50s and ’40s and ’30s. I like music that isn’t English mostly. I like music where the lyrics are sung in a different language than English. I have fond memories of when we played Coachella before and I got to see Erykah Badu. I love hip-hop, but the hip-hop community hasn’t quite brought the level of their shows. … Hip-hop shows are notoriously dull, kind of like a drunken frat party. Not all hip-hop shows, of course, but often. So I listen to mostly beats.

DB: If one of your fans wanted to get more into the kind of music you listen to, what artists would you suggest they listen to?
AW: There is a record label. It’s actually an American record label, and it’s called Sublime Frequencies. They carry a lot of music from the north part of Africa. There is some Arabic music and a lot of Asian music. That’s a great place to start digging for things. If you dig an artist a lot and you are crazy about their music, maybe you want to find out what they listen to. Like wow, what do they listen to that makes them so good? Or makes them do what they do? And then when you start digging you find that the artist that those artists are probably listening to are stuff that you might not even be into or know about.

DB: You guys are known for being a large collective of musicians that come in and out of the group as they please. What is the performance dynamic like with the rotation of musicians?
AW: It’s great. We’ve been doing this for 10 years. So when we play a show it’s like being in somebody’s bar mitzvah with Dr. Phil on acid. Or it’s like going to your extended dysfunctional family’s picnic and everyone bringing their weird potato salad and chocolate marshmallow dessert. You just go with it. It’s fun.

DB: Do you think this element of the band has something to do with the band’s longevity and success?
AW: Well, we are great friends, and we are a great family. Families stay together (laughs). Right after I made that comment about our band being a family I was being hugged by our drummer which is a nightmare. Our drummer, he’ll hug you and when he goes in for the hug it’s like a horror movie and you see him coming and you go, “Oh no! Oh no! He wants to hug me!”

DB: Do you have a favorite concert story?
AW: Well, no, I don’t have a favorite but I will tell you the first one I thought of. We played a festival, Leeds, at the university in the summertime, and to my great delight this venue where we played is the same place where the historical The Who recorded “Live at Leeds” was recorded, The Clash played there, The Who played there, The Rolling Stones played there. This is a totally historic amazing place to play. We were kind of friends with Johnny Marr and so he came out that night and he sat in and played with us. So that was super exciting, jamming with Johnny Marr. He is obviously an incredible musician. So that was a really, really fun thing to be playing at this historic joint in England and chilling with Johnny. It was good.

DB: Who would open for you on your dream tour?
AW: You’re asking the wrong guy because if I’m picking the band, they are not going to be well-suited for our audience. I would probably pick some poets. If it was my dream I would have poets come and I would want a lecture before the show. Maybe we would pick Naomi Klein to go with us on tour and she would talk about tar sands. … I would be into political people, but that doesn’t go with our kind of feel-good audience.