Interviews: Graham Isador goes country with Stuck Out Here's Ivan Rivers

Ivan Rivers is best known for co-fronting Stuck Out Here. Over the last decade the band has played with heavy hitters in the Southern Ontario punk scene, opening for acts like Pkew Pkew Pkew and The Drew Thompson Foundation, while developing a devoted following on the back of catchy pop-punk hooks and introspective lyrics. But the realities of making music in today’s landscape -- friends living in different cities, scheduling conflicts between both day jobs and different artistic ventures -- often meant that Rivers was writing and performing songs on his own.
Originally at shows Rivers took on a persona, the smalltown hillbilly poet Mikey Chuck Rivers. Brash and lyrical, the singer demanded attention on stage with jokes and banter between compelling tracks. But after a few years of living the gimmick the character became less distinct from the musicians day-to-day before it was dropped entirely. Still, the aspects of humor and heart Rivers developed on stage spill through into his recorded material. Today Rivers releases I GIVE, four tracks of hooky alt-country peppered with hints of punk flair. The singer will be supporting the EP with a residency this September at The Cameron House in Toronto.
Recently Graham Isador had the chance to chat with Rivers about his band, the new work, and his love of songwriting. Read the interview below!

Talk to me about I GIVE. Why a solo EP as opposed to another Stuck Out Here Record?

It's one of the things, whereas a band -- goddamn -- we got great songs. But we're hard to get a room together sometimes. Just like the four of us, the core of us. I've been doing my solo stuff in between Stuck Out Here releases for so many years, just because I got the bug and I love playing tunes. I guess last summer I was speaking with [Stuck Out Here member] Emmet O’Reilly and he’s trying to get into producing. And I was like…well, let's just see what we can do here. And before we knew it, we just had a really concise four songs.

The punk rock band to solo country guy trajectory is something that's pretty well worn at this point. Why do you think so many people make that switch?

It's interesting. If you have a proclivity for believing in songcraft, it just makes a lot of sense. When it comes to really hook laden punk rock, we think of some of the touchstones and it’s kind of a shared world. You have a guy like Tim Berry in Avail, who was a really big influence for me when I first started doing, you know, that kind of switch. Chuck Reagan from Hot Water Music. Dave Hause. I can go on. It is sort of a natural trajectory. But the commonality you find in all this kind of punk rock is that it has an emotional center…there's a reason why something like Fest or Riot Fest or these kinds of punk rock institutions, also has a ton of the folk solo crossover stuff. It's because those songs not only hit home emotionally but -- God -- they're earworms too. And country music hits the hooks and, you know, and that kind of shared, it's a shared semblance where you really hit home in the heart but the songs also stuck in your head too.

Is there a big differentiation in your mind between the writing process for the solo work and the stuff playing with the band?

Well, I've been playing music alongside Stuck Out Here since about 2010. A lot of that time -- pretty much all of that time -- I was also writing or playing solo. I used to go by Mikey Chuck Rivers, and it was more of a character thing. It was a small town hillbilly poet kind of thing, right? I used to say one hand has a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and the other has a Sylvia Plath anthology. You're sort of doing the kind of AH GEE WHIZ SHUCKS thing but with a mind for poetics and emotional exploration. It’s a different process because for me it's trying on a different hat and a different tone. It's all very deliberate. It's never really been a moment where I'm like is this a Stuck Out Here song or an Ivan Rivers song. It’s all written on the same acoustic guitar. But you can feel it not only the musical pull but in the delivery.

People like Drew Thompson have called you a songwriter’s songwriter. How would you respond to that label?

Well, first of all, it's a really nice thing to hear. I guess game recognize game. What it comes to -- and I hope it comes across when I'm writing a song, whether it's a beer soaked sing along or a more intimate moment -- is that I just love songwriting. I love the art of songwriting. I love tunes so much. And you'd be surprised how many people don't love tunes. You know what I mean? Like there are artists out there who can write a great tune in a sense of it's a great album with a lot of great feelings or this is a lot of great instrumentation, but the marriage of intention, the marriage of delivery and immediacy, isn’t always there. And I love tunes so much and work really hard on them.
I call myself the celebrated folk icon. It is a tongue in cheek bit but… it's aspirational. I love this. I wake up andI read Pitchfork and Stereogum every day. Still. I wake up and I'm thinking about music and I'm listening to new records because I just -- goddamn -- I care about a good song so much.

Is the celebrated folk icon thing a gimmick for you? Like the character? Or is it the pro-wrestling thing where you’ve turned your actual personality up to 11?

That's exactly it. It's a whole Stone Cold mantra, and obviously that's a big swing itself, but it's very deliberate. I do have Stone Cold Steve Austin’s literal imagery on my stickers and t-shirts. As much as it is a bit, obviously it's a bit, but it's like… stating that is showing that I really believe in the stuff I do and the art I can make. I love performing and I love writing songs. I love making them laugh in the in between and cry when I play. That's sort of demonstrative of it all.

This chat has been edited for length/flow.