In a choice between fame and infamy, Sarah Gregg Millman
(pictured, left) chose the latter. Seeking a name for her new band, she
asked former Deadly Snake Max McCabe-Lokos. He suggested Toronto Blue
Jays or House of Lancaster, a strip club on Toronto’s Bloor Street
offering the “ultimate nude sports bar experience.”
“It was a couple of weeks of ‘I don’t know if we can be named after
a strip club,'” says the Halifax-born, Toronto-based Millman. “I guess
it’s a kind of Toronto-centric joke, but I’m not a stripper. I’ve never
been there. Well, I used a phone there maybe once.”
Yet, the name fits. As a visual artist, Millman’s video work is a
cinema-inspired lexicon of single working girls. And when it came to
recruiting a drummer for House of Lancaster, it was important it be
another woman.
Millman already spent years surrounded by Matt Murphy, Brent
Randall, Mitchell Wiebe and Dave Ewenson in the band City Field.
Working with these “super-pro people” built up Millman’s confidence,
but House of Lancaster is the first time she’s performing her own
material. She was more comfortable learning with another girl. For this
tour she’s enlisted Eleanor King on drums.
Contrary to the traditional guitar pop of City Field, House of
Lancaster is more keyboard-driven. Millman switched to keys recording
and performing in her poppy Guided by Voices cover band, The Girl
Guides. House of Lancaster, though, is like the soundtrack to a
slow-motion blizzard in dreary downtown Toronto. She doesn’t consider
it an extension of her art practice, but like her videos, her music
creates “a fantasy world…where light and airy narratives mask the
presence of oppression and anxiety lurking beneath the surface.
“I don’t think it ever could be super-direct pop,” she continues.
“As in my art, I really like banality and repetition. I like
boringness. Banality and repetition can give way to something more.”
House of Lancaster
w/Rich Aucoin, The Grass, Brent Randall and his Pinecones
Saturday, November 28, 10pm, $6
Gus’ Pub, 2605 Agricola Street
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2009.