In Seattle, The Tea Party isn’t a social gathering, it’s an event.

The pan-cultural rock trio from Windsor, Ontario, is on the brink of a national breakthrough with its second Chrysalis/EMI album, “The Edges of Twilight,” an eclectic mix of influences that virtually defies categorization. If their burgeoning popularity can be traced to any one place, oddly enough, it’s the seaport hometown of grunge rock.

“The first time we showed up there, there were 600 people at our show,” bassist-keyboardist Stuart Chatwood said recently. “Then we came back a few months later and played to 1,300 people at the Moore Theater. Now they’ve offered to fly us back from a tour in Europe to play the Paramount, which seats about 3,200.”

Radio stations in Seattle played tracks off the new album, primarily the first single “Fire in the Head” and the epic “Sister Awake,” weeks before it was released. Fans have been buying import copies at $20 apiece.

Chatwood can’t explain Seattle’s affinity for The Tea Party’s seminal rock sound, but he thinks part of the attraction might be their fearless eccentricity. Chatwood, singer-guitarist Jeff Martin and drummer Jeff Burrows thrive on blowing caution to the wind.

“We’re not afraid to do things that maybe disturb some people or maybe people wouldn’t feel comfortable with,” said Chatwood, who bristles at any comparisons to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull.

“What we’re trying to do is move music forward. We’re sort on the cusp of something that’s new and challenging. What we’re trying to do is incorporate as many elements of world music and put them into a hard rock, intense setting. I almost don’t enjoy calling it rock anymore. I’d rather just call it intense music.”

On “The Edges of Twilight” and when the band goes on tour, there are upward to 30 instruments at their disposal: mandolin, harmonium, sitar, hurdy gurdy, harp guitar, tabla, djemba. You name it.

It’s a diversity similar to Dead Can Dance, a group Chatwood acknowledges is an inspiration. “They also share the no-fear factor,” he said. “Having fear is total misery. You’ve got to be willing to take chances, and Dead Can Dance has that sort of same attitude. They approach instruments that maybe are sacred to certain cultures and they throw out some of the conventions and re-interpret them.”

Chatwood, Martin and Burrows attended the same high school in Windsor but were in different bands. Fed up with the politics of their respective groups, the three merged to form “a band that would play music for music’s sake,” Chatwood said.

“That’s what was missing from all the other bands we were in,” he said. “We knew we had to go for this and make it happen. Fatalistically, the other bands – through none of our guidance – split up within 48 hours of our first rehearsal.”

With its 1993 debut LP, “Splendor Solis,” The Tea Party reached platinum status in Canada but failed to make an impression in the United States.

“We’re just trying to let people know about us now,” Chatwood said. “We don’t want to get lost in the shuffle again.”

The Tea Party will probably never get beyond the status of an insider tip. On the one hand that’s a good thing, on the other it’s a shame. Because “The Edges Of Twilight”, their second album, could have become a mega-seller in the emerging retro craze of the mid-nineties. It did in their home country of Canada, but who wants to compare the North American rock scene with the European one – it’s funny that European music is so revered in America. In any case, Jeff Martin, singer and leader of the band, must be particularly proud of this album, because compared to the debut, the songs here are more coherent, the melodies more catchy and the arc of suspense perfectly exploited. I still find it difficult to really single out one track. From the opener “Fire In The Head” to the finale “Walk With Me”, there is not a single failure. Martin sings on all twelve bombastic compositions (with the exception of the acoustic instrumental “The Badger”, of course) like Jim Morrison’s brother, whom Jimmy Page would have written songs for in his oriental phase (did that ever end?). The fact that the schmaltz is somewhat exaggerated and The Tea Party sound like a copy of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow in the seventies in a few places doesn’t really bother. Compared to the English retro knights Kula Shaker, the three Canadians are much deeper and, above all, more committed to the cause. What’s more, unlike most other bands, their potential wasn’t just enough for a great album. All in all, this should not be underestimated.

Jeff Martin, guitarist and vocalist for The Tea Party, picked up the guitar when he was nine years old. Intrigued by the few chords that his uncle taught him, he admits to being mostly a self-taught player. Some years down the track, Martin is pictured on the inner sleeve of the band’s second album, The Edges Of Twilight, comfortably and calmly strumming the instrument.

“Within my own abilities of where I wanted to go with the guitar I have kind of mastered it for myself,” he comments, choosing his words carefully, cautious of being misinterpreted or misunderstood, or perhaps just displaying an attention to detail that manifests itself in the solid production of the album, on which some 31 different instruments are played.

“I haven’t mastered it in the sense of what the general consensus is of a maestro guitar player,” he muses, “but for what I have wanted to accomplish with my instrument I have got it down to a point now where I can stop thinking about it and I can pull myself back from it. It was at a point where I had to be totally immersed in the instrument. I couldn’t think of anything else, but now it’s at a point where I can let it go where it wants to go because it’s such a part of me now.”

After leaving school Martin embarked upon a formal college music education, which he subsequently became disillusioned with and abandoned.

“I was enrolled in performance classical guitar,” he begins. “The second week that I was there we had this test, and it wasn’t actually my date to perform. I was just watching performances of my fellow class-mates and I found it very funny that the professors could sit there and they actually had a topic – like a classification that they were going to grade – and it was called emotion. They were going to grade how emotional the player was playing. Don’t you think that’s absolutely ridiculous? How could someone know how much emotion someone else is putting into something so personal? So I had a very big argument with my professor on that and we really didn’t get anywhere, both of us, and I just decided that ‘oh, fuck it. I’ll be in a rock band’ and that was it.”

This is typical of Martin’s attitude. Softly spoken yet opinionated and direct, there is no hesitation and he answers every question with a sense of non ego-driven self-confidence and consideration.

“I read quite a lot,” he admits. “I’ve been pretty much immersed in the recording studio for the past few months, so before that I was reading quite happily and I was reading a condensed collective of the works of Carl Jung. I’ve always been fascinated by his thoughts on individuation and the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. I just recently read a book called ‘Being Digital’ It’s a great book, and other than that I read just a lot of poetry. I read, just for enjoyment, a lot of the French poets from the turn of the century like Charles Beaudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, things like that.”

Based in Montreal in Canada, Martin was born of French ancestors. “The thing I like about the French poets is that they really got down and they explored some of the darker recesses while they were still beautiful. Beaudelaire’s romantic moments are probably more romantic than Shelley’s. Just when he decides to descend into the ego, it’s just amazing. It’s very illuminating and if you get a good English translation of Beaudelaire it’s worthwhile. I’ve seen these bogus translations where they’ve tried to rhyme it like it would be in French. Don’t get that, but get a word for word translation, so it’s not going to rhyme, there’s going to be no metre whatsoever, but you get the essence of the thought of what the poem was about. I mean, metre and rhyme and rhythm, that’s all very nice, but really when it comes down to poetry it’s the thought that counts. It’s the content. I think you would find, especially with Beaudelaire and Rimbaud, that a word-for-word translation is a pretty enjoyable experience. I’m French, so I’ve read the French versions of Beaudelaire as well, so I’ve kinda got the best of both worlds.”

Martin’s conversation is a mass of checks and balances. He talks fluently about Beaudelaire one minute, but a sense of modesty and self – deprecation negates any sort of pretension on his part the next.

When I mention that I managed to catch the band at their Alternative Nation appearance of 1995, where most of the audience was bonneted in plastic bags to shield them from the rain that plagued the day, he humorously but sheepishly offers “They were just trying to hide from my ugliness, that was it.”

Constantly shopped to the public as an enigmatic and prolific figure, the myth of the Martin mystique arises partly from comments like these and partly from the spirituality of the Middle Eastern influence in the music that he makes.

“I’ve collected music from that part of the world ever since I was in my early teens and it’s just been an interest that I’ve grown into,” he considers. “I think what affects me the most with that music is its elements of the sombre, the melancholy, y’know? I think musically it has much more of a power to transcend the spirit than Western music does. The main reason is that Eastern music is much more prone to mantras and things like that. I think if it could be harnessed that’s a very powerful medium to explore in something as aggressive and intense as rock music.

“The ideal of this band from the onset was with every record that we were going to make we wanted to push our parameters a little further. With our first record that we did – it was called Splendor Solis – it was pretty much just your basic three piece with a vocal. We had the guitar, bass and drums and we did what we could with that and we just wanted to get very good at those three things. So with the second record we felt that we wanted to embrace our influences a little bit more. These influences seemed to stem from the music of the middle east, and so we felt the one way of doing that was to interpret the actual instruments that are indigenous to those different countries and also the rhythms of those countries and put it into a rock music fold.

It was pretty much a collective idea.
“Conflict is my main driving force,” he admits emphatically when asked about his motivation. “That’s what drives the soul to go to where we have to go, each of us. We’re all living our own conflicts and that’s what life is about, the beauty of human existence. So that’s what motivates me, is my own conflicts and how I’m going to resolve them. Conflict within myself and within my relationships with others or within my position in society. We’re all trying to resolve things every day of our lives and I’m trying to purge it and trying to excorcise it through my music. It’s just always renewing. Conflict is in a constant state of renewal in our lives, and so once you resolve one another

“It was at a point where I had to be totally immersed in the instrument: I couldn’t think of anything else”

one appears and that’s what makes life worth living.”

So why bother trying to purge yourself of conflict if it is constantly re-appearing? Why try to break the circle?

“Just because that’s what we are. We’re really strange animals. The people that decide that they’ve had enough are usually the ones that commit suicide, and I think you have to be a strong individual to get through this life, especially now, with us bordering on this new religion of technology. You’ve got to be a pretty tough person. The band were forced off the road in November for legal reasons after a change of management. Deciding not to sit around and stagnate, they opted instead to start working on a new record.

“The three of us decided that OK, we’re going to get into music now that we’ve been into for some time but have never really had the time to experiment with,” Martin says. “I’m talking about influences like Brian Eno and Aphex Twin; even old Ministry. I wanted to see if we could do a hybrid of what we do with our music, with the whole Middle Eastern motif, and also bring in this undercurrent, this underground stream of electronic music. That’s what we’ve been doing now for the past four months and it’s just turned out to be the best stuff we’ve ever done. I think we’re really on the cusp of a new type of music, kind of like right alongside the whole trip-hop thing, but it’s still going to be aggressive, for want of a better word ‘rock’ music. We’ve just decided ‘no fences’. If one of the songs called for a more techno groove to it as well, even with the big drum kit alongside of it, well we did it. We just don’t feel as a band that we’re stuck in any one style or any one classification, so I mean I think we’re free to roam around and see where it goes, and what’s happened with this new material is that we’re headed towards something now. It’s not roaming – we’re actually just going for it like a rocket.”

After their gold-plated debut SPLENDOR SOLIS, the Canadian trio’s maturity test now follows. While the first album, which was often inappropriately categorized as “heavy rock”, was quite rightly rather mischievous in this pigeonhole, the band is now taking advantage of their unrestricted freedom in the face of such label fraud. Certainly, frontman Jeff Martin’s affinity to Led Zeppelin and the Doors is unmistakable, but the Jim Morrison lookalike is probably just as fed up with such comparisons as he is with accusations of having dragged heroes out of the ancestral gallery and polished them up. Fortunately, however, stereotypical criticism is usually followed by musical reckonings that are out of the ordinary. The Tea Party don’t see themselves as being forced to follow trends and oriental scales don’t make Led Zeppelin, even if the frontman occasionally likes to work his guitar with a violin bow. THE EDGES OF TWILIGHT stands up to the reality check, from guitar instrumentals to powerful psychedelic underground. Jeff Martin’s melancholy vocals, densely interwoven soundscapes and metaphysical lyrics invite you to experience the sound.
(swo) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The spiritual strains of The Tea Party met with a different kind of mantra last night at the Music Hall.
Chanting “Tea Party! Tea Party!” in full pep rally fervor, the reaction of the sweaty, sold-out crowd instantly defined the structure of the show to follow: A skeleton of mystical experimentation covered with jock-rock muscle.

While the enthusiastic response stands as a testament to the kind of celebrity the Windsor-bred power trio has achieved, it conflicted with the band’s attempts to fuse heavy-hitters from their recent release The Edges Of Twilight with the record’s more subtle moments.
This became especially evident during the band’s mid-set acoustic interlude, when fans insisted on screaming and clapping along, which didn’t gel too well with the seance happening onstage.

So, in order to keep up with their audience, the band’s electric numbers frequently rocked right over the international nuances.

Opening tune The River, from 1993’s Splendor Solis, duly found The Tea Party in full rock mode.
Despite the fact that the sound in the hall was as soupy as the air, the band seemed to have gained justifiable confidence in their playing.
Guitar-wielding frontman Jeff Martin, and to a lesser extent bassist Stuart Chatwood and drummer Jeff Burrows, shed melodramatic posturing and maintained a solid focus.

The band would continue their rock kick with sharp renditions of The Bazaar and the meandering Sister Awake, plus the hit single Fire In The Head, where some punters tried fruitlessly to sing along.
But the oft-mentioned fact remains that for The Edges Of Twilight, The Tea Party incorporated 31 different acoustic instruments from across the globe into their playing. Natch, the band book-ended the power chord-driven numbers with exotic instrumental noodlings like The Badger, bringing forth an assemblage of drums and a well-placed hurdy-gurdy.

“If you’re wondering what this thing is,” Martin said at one point, cradling a sitar-like instrument in his lap, “I don’t know either.”
Chances are he did. But why complicate things?
It’s all rock ‘n’ roll, anyway.
SUN RATING: 3 OUT OF 5

When it comes to existential questions such as expanding consciousness or conjuring spirits, Jeff Martin is now well prepared. The 24-year-old singer of the Canadian trio The Tea Party is openly committed to shamanism and its rituals. “I’ve tried out a few and discovered completely new powers within me. I now know that I am on this earth to have profound experiences.” The three men from Montreal are sure to have them soon. The mix of hard rock, blues and folk with ethnic elements sometimes has the scent of Led Zeppelin-style retro rock. There’s only one thing to do about it: the second album, even though – at least according to the band – it can’t be endured sober: “I recommend listening to our new album only after you’ve had plenty of dope,” Jeff Martin tells us. (up) Act. Album: The Edges Of Twilight (EMI)

After their critically acclaimed debut album “Splendor Solis”, the Canadian trio THE TEA PARTY now want to win over the public with their new work “The Edges Of Twilight”. Jeff Martin is extremely serious. In conversation, the singer from The Tea Party tries to give depth to everything he says. Because with their songs, the Canadians want to expand people’s awareness of what rock music is, shatter preconceived ideas and break new ground. “Dedication, intensity and challenge. That’s the essence of The Tea Party. The new songs are a challenge for us, as well as for the listener. We’re not here to make interchangeable pop songs, there are already too many of those. We want to create something that helps the listener to go inside themselves.” It’s not so much hard music as heavy music. Atmospheric, dense blues rock, combined with Eastern and Oriental influences, topped off with Jeff Martin’s haunting voice – the result is a very intense, very unique sound. “We are much more interested in the artistic aspect of the music than the entertaining one. We make music primarily for ourselves, we don’t want to go for the lowest common denominator so that everyone understands us.” According to bassist Stuart Chatwood, “The Edges Of Twilight” is a spiritual album, a sound journey into the inner world and abysses of the human psyche. So a kind of new age rock? “I don’t like  New Age”, Martin clarifies, ”it’s just a fashionable term, it doesn’t do justice to what we do. I deal with the different stages of consciousness: ‘Turn The Lamp Down Low’, for example, is about one of the darkest moments of my life. In terms of devotion and emotion, I want to have one hundred percent integrity. I’m tired of hearing lies in music.” Martin doesn’t want to talk about “damn posers” like Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, the “antitayp of the honest rock star”, nor about the bands that The Tea Party is often compared to, especially the Doors. Comparisons are superficial and simplistic. You don’t draw parallels between Wagner and Tchaikovsky just because they both made classical music. “The more you deal with our music, the more unnecessary and useless the references become.” Perhaps the decisive characteristic of the Tea Party sound is the unusual instruments that the trio plays. Who in this country is familiar with string instruments such as the santoor, sarod, sitar and tambura or the Pakistani dumbek? “We have only ever traveled to the East in our imagination. It’s simply the atmosphere created by this music that fascinates us. There is something deeper over there. In any case, I feel spiritually connected to Asia and could well imagine living in India for a while.”

The Tea Party are one of the very few retro rock bands that can claim to be innovative despite their obvious influences. This is even more evident on their new masterpiece “The Edges Of Twilight” than on their already fantastic debut “Splendor Solis”. The main reason: the addition of Indian string and African percussion instruments, as featured in “Sister Awake” and “The Bazaar”, among others. “It was clear to us from the outset that rock music needed a new interpretation and that this should not be limited to the familiar guitar-bass-drums scheme,” says bassist Stuart Chatwood, explaining the decision. “First and foremost, we want to create intense, atmospheric music. In order not to stick to the same old patterns, we have opened ourselves up to the influences of other cultures and interwoven them with our own traditions. This is the only way to develop rock music further; simply rehashing familiar sounds is just going round in circles – as the current punk rock revival makes abundantly clear. What’s more, our expanded spectrum is a “fuck you” to all those who have so far reduced us to the Doors and Led Zeppelin parallels.” The Indian flair of the music is also partly reflected in the lyrics, which are more mystical than before. “I’ve been through a lot personally in the last few years,” states singer and guitarist Jeff Martin. “With “Splendor Solis” I tried to deal with the events on a more descriptive level. This time I went one step further and questioned the meaning of it all. This has given the lyrics an esoteric, spiritual touch.” Although “The Edges Of Twilight” is not a concept album, it is predominantly about the search for answers. Symbolically, many of the protagonists in the lyrics embark on journeys, whether in the inner or outer world. For example, “Fire in Head”, which is based on W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Song Of Wandering Aengus”, describes the journey of a shaman on the path to divinity. “Turn The Lamp Down Low”, on the other hand, is a more abstract song that deals with the depths of the psyche and expresses both fear and anger. The lyrical dichotomy is also expressed musically, as the track orgiastically escalates from a sensitive ballad into an impetuous bombast rocker by means of a percussion motor and increasingly aggressive vocals. The highly symbolic cover artwork, which depicts the “Fallen Angel” theme, is similarly rich in contrast. “The photo was taken in 1906 after the great earthquake in San Francisco and is not staged. The seemingly desperate, weeping posture of the angel happened by chance when he fell from the pedestal. Our aim is to use our music to lift the angel back up to its original position.” The sound of the new album, which has become considerably heavier compared to the debut, does not really fit in with such romantic sentences. The musical master explains this development with his anger over the aforementioned negative experiences in his private life, which he acted out while composing. For him, “passion” is the key word. Of course, this also includes “suffering”, and the Jim Morrison lookalike obviously does this when interpreting his lyrics; so much so that – just like with Gum’s Sven Schumacher – you are afraid of taking a piece of his soul away from him as you watch him reveal it to you. If the often-used term catharsis fits, then it fits him! “For me, music is first and foremost emotional and not top-heavy. That’s why I only follow my intuition when composing and not any conventional songwriting patterns.” Thanks to this non-conformist attitude, both albums to date have repeatedly featured beguilingly beautiful acoustic guitar instrumentals in the best Triumph or Rick Emmett tradition, such as “Winter Solstice” or “The Badger”. The other two musicians also don’t bother with sales-promoting verse-chorus-solo structures, but instead let their feelings guide them when writing the multi-layered compositions. Of course, this doesn’t exactly make the songs suitable for the masses. Nevertheless, The Tea Party have achieved platinum status in their native Canada. “The only risk is not being honest with yourself,” says Jeff, quite rightly. “Integrity is the most important thing for us. As long as we know we’ve delivered a strong album, neither misses nor poor sales can affect us. We’re not catering to a specific audience, we’re in the process of creating our own.” A look at the band’s history shows that this statement is not just a hollow phrase. In order to be independent and have complete artistic freedom, the trio recorded their debut album on their own and released it themselves. It was only when 20,000 copies were sold within a short space of time that The Tea Party signed a contract with major EMI, who re-released the album on the market and made it even more successful thanks to better distribution. As a result, the band was in a much better financial position this time. The gentlemen took advantage of this to record in L.A. with Ed Stasium, who had made a name for himself working with Living Colour, Biohazard and the Ramones, among others. “On our debut, which I produced myself, I had problems capturing our mood with the appropriate intensity in terms of recording technology,” admits Jeff. ”That’s exactly what Ed has now achieved perfectly.” The producer is happy to return the flowers and says that the collaboration has given him new insights and hopes: “The Edges Of Twilight is exactly the album I’ve been waiting for since I realized that sounds and visions can be captured on record”, he says full-bodied. High-sounding words, but I can only underline them. In the meantime annoyed and disillusioned by a flood of at best mediocre new releases and phrase-mongering interview partners, this band has rekindled a fire and reminded me why I do this job. Having already used various custom-made guitars and a steel pedal live, and recently added sitar, santoor, sarod, tambura, djembe and dumbek, The Tea Party can now transform any stage into a museum of instruments. But that’s not the only reason why the three Canadians’ shows are so special. In addition to their extraordinary playing skills and the resulting jam sessions, they impress above all with the aforementioned emotional depth. That’s why you shouldn’t miss the best live band I know, with over 400 gigs under their belt, if they’re playing near you. What Jimmy Page and Robert Plant can only achieve on their “No Quarter” album with the help of a whole orchestra, THE TEA PARTY do as a trio! And you should have seen it.

The world is a cauldron of color from which you can take mercilessly. This source of inspiration is as old as mankind and its artists. The law of the series allows various trends to return again and again, whether in simply copied or lovingly linked form. How music emerges from all this, and why color and the psyche are closely linked, becomes clear during an enjoyable tea party. Their faces are tired and pale. Behind dark sunglasses and equally dark clothes are three men who have traveled a long way. Half the world – Montreal, Toronto, London and Cologne – lies behind the musicians of The Tea Party and the tension of their exertions is clearly visible. But don’t worry, the three Canadians are used to long trips. After all, the routes in their home country are a whole lot longer than in the USA, plus the mood of their music allows for some free flights and, thirdly, they want to bang the drum for their new album here and now. Last year’s debut “Splendor Solis” caused quite a stir. Not only experienced critics were surprised that a very young band had delighted the hip nineties with an adaptation of well-known structures from the good old seventies. However, fans and the press took the fun so far that the band completely deleted the words Led and Zeppelin from their vocabulary and, despite their success, began to brood. “When we recorded ‘Splendor Solis’, our wings were still a bit red,” is how singer and guitarist Jeff Martin describes the situation. “The album didn’t reflect the band’s performance, but a snapshot in time. Our music was often compared to that of Led Zeppelin and especially ‘Kashmir’. I still don’t see it that way today. We go back to the roots of rock music and are also influenced by world music, just like Jimmy Page did. He didn’t invent this combination, but developed it and brought it forward. However, we are going back to the point that ultimately led to ‘Kashmir’. It’s our interpretation of these influences. I won’t say anything else about the tiresome comparisons.” Whether the band merely embodies eleven of the great airship who are eager to learn, or whether they really provide their own ideas in the rock circus, remains to be seen and is left to those who are constantly searching for explanations and are not satisfied with quality alone. However, the fact that both the first album and its successor “The Edges Of Twilight” contain more than just simple rock songs is indisputable. The hidden, true greatness of The Tea Party lies in the peculiar crossover of classical-electric guitars and the corresponding rhythm section, combined with oriental, Indian and other plucked, string and drum instruments. On the new work, the trio uses 31 (!) different sound bodies whose names nobody in our part of the world is able to pronounce. This is what makes up their interpretation of world music, a term that is fortunately not as overused as some others. “We don’t allow ourselves to be pigeonholed, neither musically nor humanly,” comments drummer and percussionist Jeff Borrows. “We describe ourselves as citizens of the world and dare to take the step that connects cultures. It’s only a matter of time before the world moves closer together. Our task is to combine popular rock music with other types of music. Peter Gabriel does this with pop music and Dead Can Dance with independent sounds. The Ozric Tentacles and Enigma also belong to this circle.” Now the otherwise silent bassist Stuart Chatwood is also joining in. “I think this world music thing is pretty hip and trend-setting at the moment. Musicians in the US are just recycling and limiting the standard by which good music is measured. The whole punk rock thing has also been warmed up and copied again; next comes a new wave revival. The thing should be allowed to grow, on and on. I just hope that our music doesn’t become a trendsetter, but rather an option for the future. Who knows, maybe Japanese Kyoto music will make it big soon.” This topic does not leave Jeff Martin, the actual head of the band, cold either. His opinion seems to be considered a sign of special attention and important content in the Tea Party circle. When he speaks, there is a hush in the room and everyone present listens spellbound. That’s what you call charisma. “What’s happening at the moment can’t really go well in the long term, I don’t see any progress. World music is a relatively innocent thing. There are many talented musicians who are working on realizing this kind of music. But you shouldn’t force things, you should proceed step by step. The whole thing takes place primarily in people’s heads, so nobody knows what’s coming next.” In the case of Tea Party, the fact that music is also mental work is not only expressed in conversation. The musical realization of Jeff’s dark and oppressive stories can, under the influence of various intoxicants, literally replace a film in the listener’s head. This already worked extremely well on their debut and was continued with “The Edges Of Twilight”. The title alone speaks volumes and leads to a deeper level of consciousness, even if some feel reminded of third-rate German metal bands from the eighties, which causes Mr. Martin to take off his black glasses for the first time and take a deep breath. “The title comes from a book by the Irish poet Tom Cohen. It doesn’t sound corny or over the top to me. I will try to explain what I mean. Our songs have a psychological background. If things change in my psyche, the perspective changes too. Most of the songs on the new album scratch at the psyche, so they move in a twilight state of consciousness. I see the songs in images and colors in front of me. For me personally, some things have changed and that is reflected in the songs. For example, my anger and my fears are defined differently than they were two years ago, which is also expressed in the rock songs through increased aggression.” He rattles off this explanation like a shopping list – I’m really impressed. I didn’t want to offend him at all, as I realized myself that the so-called rock songs on the new album are much more blaring than in the “Splendor Solis” era. The quieter songs also seem much more intense and confirm the overall impression that was already apparent at last year’s concerts. The project seems more compact and better structured. “Due to the long tour and the gap between the albums, some factors have changed,” Jeff Burrows sums up. “Our values and objectives have become clearer. The musical quality has also increased. We try to explore the artistic boundaries of a trio. Then we can concentrate on other things again. I believe that the stage standard in particular still offers a lot of freedom. The song ‘Sister Awake’ is already ten steps ahead of this standard as far as the percussion work is concerned. Jeff’s lyrics have also never been so intensely intertwined with the music. You see, there is still a lot to discover.” Their adventurous journey of discovery has earned them the reputation of being an excellent live band. This could be due not least to the fact that they are really interested in how their sound is received by the audience. Conversations with fans and journalists are taken very seriously. However, their language is the music and they presented it three or four times during the last tour in some states to give the fans the chance to really get to know them, as Jeff emphasizes. I respect their seriousness, but sometimes I miss the element of surprise, the humor and the tongue-in-cheek message in the music. Are they really as serious as their image would like to embody, was therefore the last question to Mr. Martin. “There’s already enough satire in music. Especially in the USA. I want to be honest with myself, only then can I move on to being satirical. Satire describes a very simple way of explaining something. My seriousness corresponds to my honesty and, after all, black is not a color. We are not looking for an image, but are always inspired anew.”

MUEN: So Jeff, where did this tour begin?

Jeff Martin: We started out in Texas and we’re working our way up the west coast doing dates with a guitar player named Ian Moore.

MUEN: Well, how are things going so far?

Jeff Martin: A lot is happening. It’s kind of surprising – the things that are starting to happen. I don’t know what it was, but when the record first came out in the states… a lot of people didn’t really believe it. Like they heard the record and didn’t “believe” it. Not that it’s out-of-this world or anything, people just didn’t really get it. You know what I mean?

MUEN: I know. When you came through Toledo two years ago, and played Frankie’s, I thought the same thing: “This is unbelievable” a band like this… I was sort of blown away. And I “knew” you’d be back again, and stronger.

Jeff Martin: Cool man. It’s been a really cool thing.

MUEN: The L.A. Times gave you guys a really great review.

Jeff Martin: Yes, we were very happy about that! And now, some of the “big” rock stations in L.A. have started playing “The Bazaar” off this album, and that is “really cool.”

MUEN: In Toledo and Detroit, The Tea Party is being played heavily on both 89X and BUZZ 106.

Jeff Martin: Yeah, I think the dividing line between “alternative radio” and “rock radio” is getting thinner.

MUEN: So you wouldn’t call yourself “alternative” right?

Jeff Martin: Well, it’s hard to say… The Tea Party does not sound like The Presidents Of The United States.

MUEN: That is certainly a GOOD thing!

Jeff Martin: But then again, we don’t sound like Pearl Jam either. I’m really happy that there isn’t anyone on the scene that sounds like us.

MUEN: Well cheers to the A&R person who took a chance on you! Were there any other albums by The Tea Party, before ‘Splendor Solis?’

Jeff Martin: ‘Splendor Solis was our debut. There was a CD before that, but it was meant more to be a demo.

MUEN: After ‘Splendor Solis’ was released, I know a lot of people seemed to compare your voice to that of Jim Morrison’s, but after awhile, I don’t hear that anymore.

Jeff Martin: Yeah, it has died down a lot, especially since the release of ‘The Edges Of Twilight.’ After they’ve realized that we are nothing like The Doors.

MUEN: Jeff, Your music sounds heavily influenced by the East to me… Do you find yourself drawn to any particular Eastern religion or culture?

Jeff Martin: You know, to tell you the truth, I am a Theosophist at heart so I tend to take a little bit of each religion and melt them into my own pot. I guess

“in my attempt to find the absolute, I’ll raid as many different religions as I possibly can.”

I mean these dogmatic trains of thought have been around for thousands of years – to totally devote yourself to one is… I think, a really silly thing.

MUEN: By using drastic tunings on your guitar you are able to simulate such instruments as the sitar, etc., but are there times when you use the actual instrument itself?

Jeff Martin: That was the thing with this record. I did that whole tuning trip on the first record, and I still did that on the new record – basically every song on ‘The Edges Of Twilight’ has a different tuning on the electric guitar, but what we also did this time around is we used a lot of instruments from the cultures that we are influenced by, such as instruments from India, Pakistan, Morocco and Turkey. I played the sitar on this record, I played the tantura, a sarod, the santoor, and even French instruments like the hurdy gurdy. I think another important part about this record was the percussion element that Jeff Burrows added. He used a lot of different types of drums from different parts of the world like the club dumdek, which is an instrument normally used in folk music in countries like Turkey, Morocco and Egypt. He also used a lot of different drums and kettle drums from Africa.

MUEN: That’s all very interesting. Did you teach yourselves how to play these different instruments?

Jeff Martin: Yeah, well the way we went about doing that is, we just listened to a lot of the music. None of us have really been instructed. To learn how to play a sitar properly, you really need to study sitar groove theory for 12 or so years, but our approach was more of an innocent one as opposed to being a technical one. Myself, I’ve been listening to music from that part of the world since I was about 16. It was always a real passion of mine. So when I picked up an instrument wuch as the sarod or sitar, I knew what I listened to all those years and I knew the mood that the instrument invoked – how it made me feel – I knew how to get that out of the instrument.

MUEN: Growing up in Windsor, Ontario, why do you think yu were and are so drawn to the mystic, darker realms of music like you are?

Jeff Martin: It’s melancholy you know, I was always a pretty dark kid (laughs), I just think that the mood and the melancholy inheritance of Eastern music was what attracted me to it. Just like with poetry, I’m more interested in dark poetry.

MUEN: I wanted to ask you about the songs on ‘The Edges Of Twilight’… are these songs at all inspired by personal relationships you’ve had with women or one woman?

Jeff Martin: No, those are all metaphorical man. It’s more or less just using the feminine, sexual thing to explain things like inspiration and the creative process. The song “Turn The Lamp Down Low” really comes from an experience I had with… well

“like with any creative thing, you have to really go down, in order to bring something back up.”

The state of mind I was in around the time I wrote that song was pretty intense. I went down a little too far. Lyrically, the song is pretty metaphorical and all that, but because it was so heavy, we felt that we needed to offset it with something and we threw in some traditional blues.

Similar to the Boston Tea Party upheaval, Windsor’s Tea Party is also busy rebelling against the status quo in today’s music scene. Their second album, The Edges of Twilight stands out as a mosaic of sounds from almost every culture on Earth.

I received a phone call from drummer Jeff Burrows who was in Montreal at the time (the fat cats at EMI paid for the whole thing). When discussing the new album, Jeff sounded very excited: “The album musically describes all three of our lives rolled into one.” The Edges of Twilight features about 31 different instruments such as dumbek drums, sitar and santoor. “We set out from the beginning to incorporate all these influences. This was our way of reacting against the traditional Detroit-influenced Windsor rock scene of the 80’s. In 1988 we began listening to world music on public access radio and that’s when those sounds started infiltrating.”

When performing, the band insists on playing all those instruments live, with no sampling or the addition of other musicians. This turns their live show into an experience where “no idle hands are allowed.” During one song, vocalist Jeff Martin alternates between two types of guitars and Aboriginal drums, while bassist Stuart Chatwood plays harmonium, bass and keyboards. This kind of hyper-activity makes a Tea Party concert intense both musically and visually.

In 1993, after the release of the Tea Party’s debut album Splendour Solis, heavy criticism was directed towards the band’s image. This was due to Martin’s vocal similarities to Jim Morrison and the band’s Led Zeppelin-like vibe. This doesn’t really seem to bother the band as much, “The question now is only asked in retrospect anyways,” says Burrows. “We never denied listening to Zeppelin, but we all know about four Doors songs, and that’s about it.” At this point we started mocking these bands, until I told Jeff that I own a Zeppelin flag…silence followed.

The band is currently on a Canadian summer tour. On July 2, they will play the Fort Erie Friendship Festival. From there on, the band will tour the U.S. with Bush (the band, not the wimp ex-President) and will appear on the Conan O’Brien show. So if you want to listen to world music and not feel like an elitist snob, pick up a copy of the Tea Party’s The Edges of Twilight.

If you thought Splendor Solis was exotic, wait until you hear the Asian and African musings of The Tea Party’s Jeff Martin, Jeff Burrows and Stuart Chatwood on this startling new release. With guitarist Martin expanding his arsenal to include santoor, sarod, sitar and tampura string instruments, and percussionist Burrows utilizing the djembe and dumbek drums of North Africa and Pakistan, Edges Of Twilight seduces you with its trance-like rhythmic patterns, explorative guitar passages and Martin’s ethereal vocals. With songs like “Fire In The Head”, “The Bazaar” and “Sister Awake”, The Tea Party meld traditional acoustic and electric rock with the same exotic textures as Plant And Page’s recent No Quarter release — only they play the instruments themselves (31 in all). It’s a challenging piece of work that demands attention, and some of the tracks, “Correspondences” and “Drawing Down The Moon” in particular, are hypnotic to the point of being sleep-inducing. Yet the fiery fervour of “Fire In The Head”, “The Bazaar” and “Sister Awake” are exhilarating enough to keep you spellbound by the sheer scope of this ambitous effort, handled superbly by producer Ed Stasium(Living Colour, The Ramones)

Jeff Martin has often cited Charles Baudelaire´s “Les Fleur du Mal” as a much read influence and the line “flowers of evil in my head” in “Fire in the Head” is an obvious reference to the title of this poem. What drew Jeff to Baudelaire is probably what draws so many, his ability to pluck beauty from the the jaws of decay, to find perfection in a garbage heap. The title of the song “Fire in the Head”, however, is drawn from Tom Cowan´s book of the same name (which also contains a chapter entitled “The Edges of Twilight” and Tom probably got the title from the poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus” by W. B. Yeats which is about experiencing a vision or hallucination and starts with the lines “I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head…”. Since Jeff has often said that the song was written about an LSD trip this connection to Yeats is especially appropriate although it could be coincidental.

You are startled for a moment when you meet Jeff Martin for the first time, because this man could actually be a demon in the flesh, an ominous apparition – or to be more precise: the ghost of Jim Morrision, legendary singer of The Doors. Jeff Martin is of course flesh and blood, but he also has the same job as Jim Morrison, he is the singer of this exciting Canadian band called The Tea Party, and like Morrison, Jeff wears baggy black leather jeans, the casual white shirt is wide open, and the intense, dark eyes blink out from under a thick, brown mane of curls. Memories come flooding back – memories of the late 60s, of infamous black and white photos of an unleashed Doors frontman who quickly built a legend around himself, who lived rock ‘n roll like no one before or after him and who congenially combined earthy blues with impenetrable mythology and shamanism. For 20 years, there was no one who had translated this wild combination into adequate music and thus convincingly taken up Jim Morrison’s position. And suddenly The Tea Party, the trio from Toronto, appeared. The group’s first work from 1992 remains largely unnoticed, only appearing in the trio’s Canadian homeland. The songs on it are decent work, but remain largely stuck in well-intentioned, amateurish-sounding approaches. A year later, the band released album No. II “Splendor Solis”, which turned The Tea Party into absolute superstars in Canada, so that record giant EMI reacted to this hysteria by releasing the album in 20 countries, including Germany. In doing so, the corporate giant demonstrated a sure instinct for quality, because “Splendor Solis” is indeed one of the ten most important works of the past year – the eleven tracks on it are bursting with unbridled energy, rude mythology and untamable ferocity. It’s been a long time since a rock production has been imbued with so much magic. Of course, comparisons to the Doors were made immediately after the release. Not without good reason, because frontman Jeff Martin has a similar pitch, while at the same time adopting Morrison’s vocal principle of hoarse whispering, which is convincingly paired with piercing screams. This combination creates an emotional intensity that is unparalleled in the rock biz of the 90s. But Jeff Martin and his two comrades-in-arms Jeff Burrows and Stuart Chatwood want nothing to do with the Doors, and questions about their musical influences are soon answered in monosyllables or not at all. “We are,” says Jeff Martin grumpily, ”The Tea Party, a band from the 90s. Sure, we like bands from the 60s and 70s, such as Led Zeppelin, Cream and the Doors. But we are completely at home in our decade, both personally and musically.” The Tea Party are not the Doors, as can be heard above all on their third stroke of genius “The Edges of Twilight”, which has now been released. It sounds rockier than its predecessor, more driving and much more dynamic. On the other hand, the virtuoso trio is prepared to experiment even more than before. The musical tradition of the Orient and Asia has particularly appealed to The Tea Party this time, with powerful, brute heavy rhythms being combined with Indian raga meditations and rather quirky oriental set pieces, giving them a mystical component all of their own. However – in terms of their creative approach, the Doors would probably dare to experiment in a similar way today in order to advance the development of rock music. And what Jeff Martin still has in common with Jim Morrison is his irresistible physical charisma and the obsessive compulsion with which he approaches his work and his limits. “Once again,” Jeff Martin implores me at the same moment, ”we are not a retro band! The task of The Tea Party is to mix Western rationality with the spirituality of the Occident. For us, the world is a huge playground with a myriad of possibilities. We see ourselves in the tradition of Dead Can Dance or Peter Gabriel, although our roots lie more in rock. And we try to harmonize rock music with – for example – Asian tradition. At the same time, The Tea Party is about passion, that’s the driving force behind our sound. Without the right passion, you won’t convince anyone in this day and age.” The Tea Party approach the largely unknown musical traditions of foreign countries like – according to Jeff Martin – “children with their eyes wide, wide open. And of course it’s all about respect, we’re not Paul Simon raping foreign cultures and forcing something on them. For us, it’s all about symbiosis – and a constant expansion of rock ‘n roll.” At the same time, the members of the formation are self-confident enough to incorporate their own ideas about music and thinking into their songs. “Splendor Solis” and ‘The Edges Of Twilight’ both thrive on a self-contained philosophical world of thought that has been extensively thought through and practiced by the three late-twenties. “We are,” muses Jeff Martin, ”at home in the twilight, that is, in the time span between day and night. Very few people go there, which means we are very lonely. There is a world of difference between day and night – while the night is very exciting and mysterious, the day draws extremely sharp contours, everything is clear and bright. In twilight, however, these two extremes mix together, they swell up enormously and threaten to blow your head apart. Everything suddenly becomes really scary and extremely existential. But we at The Tea Party have now made ourselves as comfortable as possible in this world. We steal all our ideas from this microcosm. No wonder we sound so mystical and lost – those who are at home in the twilight don’t really know any home. Sure, we are lost! But at least lost ones who are creative enough to bring great songs to light from their terrible position.” After this quote, it becomes clear that Jeff Martin is not the reincarnation of Jim Morrison – but at least his brother in spirit. The Doors were always just as much at home in the twilight as The Tea Party. And the most exciting, gripping art has always been created under the spell of twilight. “The Edges Of Twilight” is one of the most important albums of this still young decade!

There is an interesting kind of hypocrisy that goes with the territory called “rock and roll.” In other musical genres, young artists are expected to learn from their antecedents, and to a certain extent, to mimic their heroes’ moves in the nascent stages of their own careers, finally developing styles of their own. Early on, Muddy Waters took his style from Robert Johnson, and the young Miles Davis copied Louis Armstrong, although both artists went on to eclipse their forebears artistically, extending their respective genres, blues and jazz, beyond the parameters they inherited.

In rock and roll, however, this is only partly true: Green Day can get away with mimicry of the most obvious kind (are they the Ramones with English accents or The Clash with American accents?), and that’s OK, because punk has a certain critical “cool” which has yet to abate. The Tea Party, however, hailing from Canada’s version of The Motor City (Windsor, Ontario) draw on two classic rock bands which initially found enthusiastic audiences in Detroit, and whose influence there has never really waned: specifically, The Doors and Led Zeppelin, both mega-bands in the annals of “Detroit Rock City.”

Because of this, the Tea Party has sometimes been critically panned– especially by music critics from Toronto, a city whose most famous recent “rock” export has been the execrable Barenaked Ladies–for remaining true to their Motor City roots, and unfairly so, as they show every sign of going beyond the territory staked out by their musical forebears and creating a signature style of their own. This concert showcased a band on the verge of becoming a powerhouse rock unit to be reckoned with, the Tea Party conjuring up powerful echoes of not only of greats from the classic rock past, but also inviting comparison with more recent alternative hard rock peers like the great God Machine.

The show opened with the Canadian hit, “The River,” (from their debut lp, Splendor Solis) which crashed along powerfully enough on its bluesy wah-wah riffery and lyrics a little too cliched for my tastes (i.e. references to the River Styx–which brings to mind the band Styx, which brings to mind “Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto” ….. ughh). The band themselves seemed to want to get this one out of the way immediately (the crowd went nuts, of course), and then proceeded to launch into a trilogy of very strong material from their new album The Edges of Twilight.

“Sister Awake” progressed through a couple of Eastern sounding phases (and a “Kashmir” vibe does indeed permeate the new album–a good thing, in my book) and ended up crashing and thundering on the strength of singer-guitarist Jeff Martin’s insistent riffing and drummer Jeff Burrows’ powerhouse drumming (a very complimentary and seldom made comparison to the greatest of all rock drummers, John Bonham, is apposite here). “SEES-TAH!” bellowed Martin, evoking the basso profundo of “Roadhouse Blues” Jim Morrison in the song’s chorus, yet seemingly summoning his own, singular muse. Similarly intoxicating were the following “Fire In The Head,” another guitar-charged number whose title sums up its effect quite nicely, and the epic, multilayered “Walk with Me”, which saw Martin improvising the chorus from Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, to this critic’s extreme approval.

At times, the Tea Party can seem almost too ambitious, as if they want to demonstrate everything they can do in the span of one concert appearance, a forgivable fault that can be put down to youthful over-enthusiasm. This was the case in the middle “raga-rock” section of the show, replete with East Indian draperies and candles, which momentarily arrested the quite sizable momentum the band had built up with some delays and false starts. All it took, however, was the opening bars of the first album’s barn-burner, “Sun Going Down” (which interpolates Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil Blues”) to get things back up to speed. Martin shone here on acoustic slide guitar, going back to Zeppelin’s roots for a greasy jam in which he confronts ol’ Satan himself and finds to his surprise that “he looked a helluva lot like me.” The rapturous audience on this second night at the Danforth Music Hall was only too happy to follow Martin down Lucifer’s well-worn path, trod by other rock icons from Aleister Crowley to one Jimmy Page.

The show hit its apex, however, with another of the strong Splendor Solis tunes, “Save Me”, which is built around a percussive main rhythm and an exploding chorus. The band extended this one with a middle section based on a familiar drum pattern which soon revealed itself to be “Hurt” from Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral. Judging from the sing-along crowd reaction as Martin repeated the song’s line “You can have it all,” I would say that there is a sizable cross-over of NIN and Tea Party fans, dispelling the notion that the band merely attracts those trying to (re)create a “classic rock” experience.

Of the encores, the ballad “Correspondences” improved upon the Edges version, with some In Through The Out Door guitar licks replacing the original’s piano fills. Finally, “A Certain Slant of Light,” the band’s signature tune, just missed falling flat because of the extreme volume at which it was played, murking up the mix and giving the impression that the band was tired of the song and trying to get by on volume instead of emotion. Still, the punters went ape.

Overall, a very good show. Things only look bright for The Tea Party as The Edges of Twilight was released Stateside. Go get em, boys.

ANOTHER TEA PARTY: One of the surprise Canadian success stories of the last two years, The Tea Party, has wrapped up its next opus. Called The Edges Of Twilight, it’ll be in stores here March 28. The title “comes from a book called Fire In The Head, about the transition the soul goes through and how it’s related to the sun going down,” bassist/keyboardist Stuart Chatwood explained this week from the Toronto offices of the band’s record label. The album, which is being mastered today in L.A., was produced by Tea Party frontman Jeff Martin and Ed Stasium, known for his work with The Ramones. And how does it compare to its predecessor, the 120,000-selling Splendor Solis? “Really mature,” says Chatwood. “The touring we’ve done definitely shines through in the performance. “I’m playing keyboards more than ever, and Jeff Martin dived right into sitars. We just went nuts buying instruments. I think we have a total of 31 instruments on the record, so even if you hate the music, you’ve got to at least admire the depth and effort that went into it.” Meanwhile, the band will play two warm-up dates in April, likely in London and Kitchener, before heading to Australia to headline some theatre shows. As for Toronto, look for a late-May or early-June show, plus an “unusual” event in March as part of Canadian Music Week.

There are a couple of release we don’t have text access to, but here are some of the Covers of these releases.

Impact Magazine:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canadian-Musician: