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“I love the way that everybody’s been loving me; it seems to be so contagious.”
The first words that exit Sean Prescott’s mouth on The Love Machine’s first, self-titled EP could not be more appropriate to the response they have received around Ottawa and abroad. With their unique indie/pop sound flooded with synth keyboarding, xylophones and the occasional tambourine, The Love Machine have successfully manoeuvred their way into the hearts and CD players of many local folk. Since the band’s inception in September of 2004, The Love Machine – a four piece medley comprised of Jordan David, Allan Gauthier, Mike Laing and Sean Prescott - have successfully released two EPs, performed at several festivals (including Bluesfest for the second year in a row), and embarked on three Canadian tours.
 True to their name, the band puts every ounce of effort into showing as much love for the fans as they do their music. The individual members work collectively at the pulleys and gears, working hard to perfect The Love Machine’s every song and performance. Perhaps the most impressive aspect to the band’s success is the fact that they have managed to accomplish it all on their own, without the support of a record label or funding. Devotion and hard work have driven them to accomplish many of their aspirations in a short span of time, but, simultaneously maintaining stable egos has helped keep the ultimate goal of having fun in the backs of their minds. And if they’re having fun, why stop now?
If you haven’t had the pleasure of witnessing one of the band’s energetic shows, you can experience their sense of humour and laid-back attitudes by watching clips from their YouTube miniseries 30 seconds with the love machine , where you will find them fighting with their wardrobe, busting out some intricate yo-yo tricks, dehydrating themselves with crackers, and spidering.
This past month, (Cult)ure talked with Mike and Jordan about the dedication and fun-loving spirits that drives the band.
(Cult)ure: How did you guys come together to be The Love Machine?
Mike: Ok, basically, all current four members of the band were split into two different bands before we were this band. Jordan and I came from a band called ‘Fifth Grade Hero’, and Allan and Sean came from ‘Hero for a Day’. So really, we didn’t want to be in a band with each other, but, uh, ‘cause the names were so close...we were like, let’s just see what happens. (Laughs)
(Cult)ure: How has your music grown throughout the years,  and how does your second record, If You’re a Bird, I’m a Bird differ from your self-titled debut?
Jordan: Personally, for me, the big difference is we’ve been playing together more with the second one, and I think we tried to go into the studio with a different mindset of not being rushed.
Mike: Basically, our first recording, we did it in three or four days, and it was like three or four nights in a row. We did all the tracking, all the recording, and the mixing, everything in four nights. And for the second recording, we had the studio for two weeks, day and night, all to ourselves, which is crazy cool.
(Cult)ure: Did you guys just joke around a lot?
Mike: Not too much. We were always working, and there were always things going on, but like, while people were working on stuff, the rest of us would be dickin’ around... doin’ emails, eatin’ a lot of pizza pockets... a lot of cold cut sandwiches.
Jordan: But yeah, so we had more time to play together; we played a bunch of shows, did the tour.
Mike: The first tour was small towns Ontario, pretty much...Kingston, Picton, Brockville. It was definitely a first tour.
(Cult)ure: What do you consider your greatest accomplishments so far?
Jordan: We have two CDs out that we released by ourselves, without any help. [That’s] kind of huge.
Mike: The fact that we’ve done everything up to this point with no help is pretty huge. I mean, we’ve had help in terms of getting shows, and all that kind of stuff, but, I mean, it’s something to be proud of. We’ve got a van, we’ve done three tours now, two CDs. Lots of stuff.
Jordan: And we’re constantly working, too.
 (Cult)ure: I’m sure you’ve faced some obstacles along the way. Have you ever faced rejection, and how did you keep up the motivation to accomplish what you have so far?
Jordan: Well, I think the biggest thing for me, personally, would’ve been that ‘Big Money Shot’ thing.
Mike: Yeah, that was pretty bad. It was with Live 88.5. We did the ‘Big Money Shot’, and, I mean, we felt like we had a really good show, and even after all that, I mean, I guess we just really had our hopes up and we didn’t win. We haven’t done a competition since. We don’t do battle of the bands, or anything like that.
(Cult)ure: But you guys got so much air play out of it.
Mike: Yeah, there were a lot of pros that came out of it. I guess it’s just, you know, we wanted to win the whole thing! But that was definitely the point that we realized that [we could do it independently]. We basically had a list of things we wanted to accomplish with the $40,000, or whatever we were going to get, and within a year after that, we had accomplished it all anyway by funding it ourselves and doing all that.
(Cult)ure: How did it feel to play with Metric last year and be invited to share the stage with them once again at Bluesfest?
Jordan: It’s pretty awesome. You’re treated like rock stars, which is really cool. They give us a trailer, and beer and meal passes.
Mike: It’s cool when you’re going and you’re getting your free meal, and like the bassist of Metric is sitting at the table beside you … and like Gogol Bordello is just sitting around, grabbing some food … just all these huge musicians, and you’re among the best, and you’re only a local band.
(Cult)ure: It’s rare to find a band where all members contribute vocals and play more than one instrument in a single set. Do you think this is what makes TLM unique?
Mike: I definitely think one thing that is really unique about the band is how everyone contributes their ideas. How it really is four people, four minds on a lot of the songs. The structure of the songs aren’t really written with the four of us, but once the vocals are being added, and the extra parts and all that, it really ends up being a four person process. I think that’s unique, how we write songs.
Jordan: Personally, I think it’s so inspiring to play with three other guys who I just respect what they do so much, and I have total faith when I write songs that if I can’t think of the right part, someone will. I’ve never felt like that before in a band.
 (Cult)ure: There’s no pressure?
Jordan: Well, obviously, there’s pressure...you want to get things done. You want to play the songs, but, I mean, if you don’t sweat it, it usually comes out good. I dunno, we’ve been lucky.
Mike: One thing I think we’ve learned a lot over the years is to take the pressure off of ourselves, cause I think we used to pressure ourselves a lot to write, and I think by doing that we were sort of putting up a wall, and now we’re just sort of letting whatever comes out, come out, and we work with that. It’s become such a better environment overall.
Jordan: Our old history with our other bands ... we would write so many songs, and just play so many songs, and not really sit and focus on one.
Mike: We would play a show, and that day we would’ve written two of the songs in the set.
Jordan: I don’t know how fun that is for the audience.
Mike: We were havin’ fun! But, we’re definitely a lot more serious now.
(Cult)ure: After playing other cities and being on tour, does it feel good to come back to play for the local crowd? Is the audience response different in other areas in any ways?
Jordan: For starters, Ottawa is a very underrated city. We’re very, very lucky to have such a good, responsive crowd at all our shows. When I first started going to shows, I was that kid who went crazy for the Transit or whatever, and now I think they have us convinced that they like us ... There’s no other city that I’ve played like Ottawa. I think it’s ‘cause we’re a new band.
Mike: It’s hard any time when you play to a new crowd. The thing about when we play Ottawa is ... people know our songs, and people know, those couple of songs, all the words, and people are singing along, and you just feed off the crowd so much. When you go and play in another town, you can’t expect to quite feed off the crowd as much. You can just show them what you are as best you can.
Jordan: But regardless, though, we always try to bring it. We don’t calm down the show or anything.
Mike: We were really lucky though, on our one east coast tour we opened for You Say Party, We Say Die, and it was only them and us, and it was a packed house, and it was an awesome show and the crowd reacted to that right away.
Jordan: It felt like an Ottawa show.
Mike: I think that’s the best out of town show we’ve had. In Toronto we had a couple of good ones, too.
Jordan: Yeah, that was just a magical night.
(Cult)ure: Your fan base is constantly growing, Myspace and Facebook being proof of that. Do you have any advice to give other local bands in terms of acquiring decent exposure and a steady fan base?
Jordan: For starters, put out a quality recording, or just put out a recording.
 Mike: Put out something, but sooner rather than later, put out a good quality recording, where you can tell what’s going on. People put out recordings where you can’t even tell half of what’s supposed to be there.
Jordan: Yeah, and then that might turn the fans away from it if they can’t understand what’s going on.
Mike: Be personable. Be welcoming.
Jordan: Drop the ego.
Mike: One thing for us that’s been like, a point of note I guess, is that we don’t add people on Myspace or Facebook. For us, we just want people to add us who want us. We’ll send personal comments and stuff, and you know people love it, they’re like “wow, an actual comment, from a band,” and you know that makes us stick out, and then they’ll listen to our music.
Jordan: That goes back to being more personable, too. We want to know our fans, and know who’s listening to our music.
Mike: We owe it to you.
(Cult)ure: What are your musical goals for the near future?
Mike: I think we’re ready to take it to the next level. We want to branch out of Ottawa a lot more because I think we got Ottawa pretty well.
Jordan: It‘s good to have a home base. You need to be cool in your own city before you can take over other cities.
Mike: I would love to do across Canada, for sure. We’ve been out East. We would love to go out West. I don’t know if we need to do it all in one stint, but I would just, at least, want to go out West so we can say that we’ve been across Canada.
Jordan: [Perform in] The states.
Mike: Yeah, I know one goal for this year was to at least play one show in the States, we should get on that. We have been talking about record labels and that, as well, because we’ve never shopped ourselves or anything. We were on the cover of Myspace for a week, and a couple of years back, we were on the cover of purevolume as well, and during those two weeks combined, there were a lot of people interested in us, but we never really followed up on them. Some of the ones that we did follow up on … there’s always strings attached. They always want you to pay, and one rule is to never pay for something.
Jordan: I think our main goal right now is to take what we’re doing and times it by like ...
(Cult)ure: A million?
Jordan: Yeah, really. Honestly, we’ve been working really hard, and we want to just meet a lot of new people and play new music for people, and just make the most of our time here as The Love Machine.
You can check out The Love Machine at www.thelovemachineband.com or at http://www.myspace.com/thelovemachine . You can also check out more of their music at www.purevolume.com/thelovemachine . Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for new songs coming out, a new music video for the fresh track L.I.O.Y.S., and more upcoming show dates both locally and out east again.
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