Quick-fire Questions: 10 minutes with Michael Cloud Duguay of Scions
Like Uncle Terry at a buffet, Scions are not messing around. The band consist of Nova Scotia’s minimalist chamber jazz quartet New Hermitage, Ontario’s drone-hymn duo Joyful Joyful, and producer/composer Michael Cloud Duguay. This colourful cacophony of minds results in a fittingly awe-inspiring sound. Their debut album roars like the Baffin Bay, swings like Pampas Grass Pamela from down the road, and thrills with more seamless originality than the Theory of Relativity.
The neoclassical compositions crafted for To Cry Out In The Wilderness are a brooding swarm—the sound of a band who feel like they’ve been together for years. In reality, things fell into place far more suddenly than that. It all began with an impromptu, cobbled-together festival performance that went rather well. Surprised and impressed by the alchemy of their own sound, they absconded to a small island.
As Michael Cloud Duguay explains below, this unique setting liberated the band and somehow weaves its way into their powerful, mystical sound. There is a wail of everything in this debut record, and it showcases what each constituent member is capable of. It is a transportive collaboration that proves great things often can simply rise out of creative happenstance.
Ahead of the release of To Cry Out In The Wilderness on November 9th, we peaked into the creative of mindset of the helming chair of the project, Michael Cloud Duguay. His journey is as fascinating as the so—perhaps one can’t be prised from the other. And we probed at his thoughts on The Beatles, strangest shows, and favourite records of 2024.
Quick-fire Questions with Scions:
1. What song would you want played at your funeral?
“Gavin Bryar’s ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet’. All 25 minutes of it.”
2. What is the weirdest gig you’ve ever played?
“In my early 20s, I was on an EU tour with a Canadian band, The Burning Hell, and we somehow got booked at a psychiatric hospital in northern France as part of the Nancy Jazz Pulsations Festival’s social outreach programming. We had no idea before we arrived that this was the gig, and we performed a set in the cafeteria for inpatients. It doesn’t get much weirder than that. I share this with love and respect for the folks who were living there at that time. I’ve had to adapt on the fly to all manner of surprising weird gigs over the years, but nothing else like this.”
3. What would be your dream venue to play?
“We haven’t made it to the UK to perform yet, but I can’t wait to play at Cafe Oto in London one day.”
4. Who is the most underrated guitarist of all time?
“I’m by no means a guitar guy, but my answer is Sonny Sharrock, the non-guitarist’s guitarist. Those who know him rate him just fine, but he should be at the top of every list. If you’re new, check out his playing on Herbie Mann’s cover of ‘Hold On, I’m Coming’ from the Memphis Underground set, and consider that what you’re listening to was performed in 1969. Everything he did straight through to Ask The Ages in 1991 is totally deadly. I don’t buy into guitarist-worship culture, but I pray at his altar.”
5. Where is the best bar in the world?
“I’m a sober alcoholic in recovery, so I try not to judge and compare the merit of bars any longer, but I am currently drinking a coffee and looking out over the water on the back porch of the little blue cottage at The Hotel Wolfe Island, where I am performing tonight and where we composed all of Scions’ To Cry Out In The Wilderness, and am inclined to say that they win. Bar, restaurant, hotel, venue – they have a Steinway grand and Hammond organ in their backline. They’re situated on a tiny island between Canada and the US reached only by ferry, and even though you can usually only draw about a dozen audience members to most shows, it’s always a weird and magical time.”
6. Have you ever cried at a concert?
“Aye, which concerts have I not cried at? I’m an emotional listener. Some recent ones that come to mind are Beverly Glenn-Copeland, The Bad Seeds, and lots of my friend’s performances. I love hearing my friends make music. Arnold Dreyblatt made me cry earlier this year at a show in Toronto.”
7. Do you believe in ghosts?
“I believe in spirits. I don’t think of spirits as imprisoned or vengeful or as omens and portents of death or anything like that. I think all that is evil in this realm is material. I do think we are guided through our experience on earth towards divine love by the wisdom and care of our ancestors. My bandmate, Corm, is really into ghosts; the Scions’ record is pretty ghost-y. OK, maybe I believe in ghosts.”
8. What is your favourite podcast?
“Flavortone Podcast – a really wild and sort of hilariously discursive podcast about music, philosophy, culture, and aesthetic experience hosted by two American artists and thinkers, Nick Scavo and Alec Sturgis. I have no sense of how well-known this podcast is, and I can’t remember how I stumbled over it. Listening is like hanging out with the two funniest people from your critical theory masters program, and they’ve got great taste in music and art.”
9. What genre of music are you yet to explore but would like to attempt?
“I’ve never made a rap record, but I’m just about to start producing one for an amazing Montreal-based rapper and singer, Quinton Barnes, in collaboration with some stellar free jazz and experimental noise musicians from that city. Rap music has had a big influence on me, and I’m excited to participate in this process.”
10. What has been the best album of 2024 so far?
“It’s been a good year for music. Clarissa Connelly’s World of Work has stuck with me all year – she combines pop form and pre-modern Celtic folk music and its magic. Just magic.”
11. What is the best book you’ve read in the last year?
“Maël Renouard’s Fragments of an Infinite Memory, an incredible essay by a young French philosopher that investigates how the internet’s endless archive is turning our brains into mush.”
12. Do you have a sporting hero?
“You’re asking the wrong guy. My nephew has been doing really well at hockey, and yesterday, he told me that he didn’t make the rep team, but he took this failure like a champ. So I guess my answer is Anderson, eight years old, and his chill and sportsmanlike comportment.”
13. Which track has the greatest vocal performance of all time?
“My grandfather passed away this year, and I inherited a 78 RPM recording of his vocal quartet made in the mid-1950s, singing ‘I Have a Dream, Dear’ by The Mills Brothers. My grandpa was an incredible baritone singer and the only other musician I am related to by blood. Speaking of spirits, he is the reason I do what I do. I wouldn’t argue that this is the best vocal performance of all time, but it means the most to me, and I listen to it every day.”
14. Can you recommend us a movie we might not have seen?
“I’ve been obsessed with The Elmchanted Forest, which was the first animated feature produced in Croatia and Yugoslavia in 1986. My grandparents must have got it for me in a bargain bin when I was a kid, and I recently rediscovered it. It’s about an artist who is anointed with magical powers by an elm tree, can speak to animals, and has to save their forest from being turned into a desert by an evil king who is also a cactus. The artist convinces the cactus king that he is unhappy because he has never been able to fulfil his true nature and gives him a drug that allows him to perceive himself as he is, thus saving the forest and its inhabitants. There are a lot of overlapping metaphors. It’s absolutely trippy and wild, and the music is great. You can find it on YouTube.”
15. Are The Beatles overrated?
“The Beatles are accurately rated. I’ve never been a total Beatles-head, but if not for their cultural impact, we never would have been blessed with ‘Wonderful Christmastime’, which is my favourite Christmas song, if not my favourite pop song. Do people really argue this? ‘Across the Universe‘ holds its own against any potential argument.”
