WHO IS HE?
With his unique talents as a folk artist, Rae Spoon has earned the admiration of a cult following — for which he has paid heavy dues. Spoon is a transgendered artist who writes starkly personal, empowering songs and performs them with compelling poise. He has also spent the better part of this decade playing as much as possible.

Raised in the prairies, he recently left Calgary for Montreal (though the move was typically followed by a cross-country tour). “I think it’s harder to live in Calgary from day to day, being who I am,” he says. “It’s different walking down the street in Montreal. Calgary’s a very conservative town with a lot of problems — racism, homophobia and transphobia. It’s a tough place to live if you’re different. I think Montreal is a lot more multicultural and people aren’t going to turn their head at me when I walk down the road. It’s more relaxing.”

DOES THIS TRAIN STOP AT LAKE SUPERIOR?
Spoon’s excellent new album, superioryourareinferior (the title is a razzing of the ‘greatest’ Great Lake), is a divergence for him in many ways. Unlike his previous three records, Spoon’s latest disc has less of a countrified flavour, edging more towards rock with traces of glitch-y noise, and was inspired by touring and living in Europe.

“I tried to write a whole album without using a train beat,” Spoon laughs. “It was getting a bit hypnotic and I needed to try something else. I started by writing more folk songs that are closer to my old style with an acoustic guitar. Then, by the end of it, I was writing songs with electronic sounds I’d made on my computer, which was a pretty big departure from anything I’d done.”

Superioryourareinferior is a farewell letter to Spoon’s Western Canadian roots, with songs documenting closed-off Calgary communities, mindless prejudice, socio-political perseverance and Spoon’s internal conflict. “I only lived in Calgary for a few months at a time in the last ten years with all the touring. This album ended my exploration of the prairies.”

HOW MANY ROADS MUST RAE SPOON WALK DOWN?
It’s difficult to imagine Spoon at any kind of fixed point. In many respects, his life has been one of constant flux, striving to satisfy an insatiably restless soul. While he’s honed a particular folk-country aesthetic and cites Bob Dylan and Paul Simon as influences, strains of punk rock permeate his personal politics, and his musical persuasions are eclectic.

“I’ve been writing songs since I was 12 years old, so I think it’s a matter of just getting bored with myself,” he explains. “Strangely enough, I started writing Christian music because I was a Christian and that was what I had to express at the time. The church I was at wasn’t open to people who were gay, so when I discovered I was gay, it was splitsville for me and Jesus,” he chuckles, and then deadpans, “before I was a man.”

Spoon hit the road hard, and as soon as possible. Now that he’s on the other side of 25, he’s contemplating slowing down. “I thought I was done touring and then I did a Western Canadian tour with, like, 15 shows in 20 days, and I had so much fun. I’ll never stop touring, but I did 250 shows once in a year and I got very ill at the end of it. I think it’s better to play like 100 or 150 shows a year. So, perhaps for me, slowing down is still pretty fast.”