Jason Webley

Accordians. Introduced by Urkle, perfected by Jason Webley.

On route from Pearson International Airport, Jason Webley graciously took some time to chat about his music and the brand new project Evelyn Evelyn.  Coupled with Amanda Palmer, the two arrived in Toronto to bring the grim but comical performance to The Great Hall.

Francois Mouton: So, Evelyn Evelyn has just wrapped the European leg of the tour. How did that go? Anything you had to tweak or change for the North American dates?

Jason Webley: The European tour got off to a strange leg in that all our flights all got canceled because of the volcano in Iceland, so we kind of had to reconstruct our show from the ground up over the course of that tour as our crew slowly got reassembled. What we’ve changed for the North American tour, we actually have just – for the very first time, have done the show the way we originally conceived it. But it’s kind of nice, I mean having done a much more stripped down version in Europe, we actually took a lot of elements from that and I think they’ve made the show stronger.

FM: How does the show play out, in terms of a line up? Lots of costume changes happening?

JW: Well, it um – basically there’s three of us – myself and Amanda and then Sxip Shirey who is our  friend and our opening act and also serves as the MC during the Evelyn Eveyln portion of the show. So, Sxip opens the night with his solo material and then the twins perform, and that’s kind of the centre piece of the show. And after that, there’s a short intermission where Amanda and I change out of our costumes then we come back and we play, in a kind of looser fashion, some of our solo material and some special stuff we’ve worked on together for this tour.

FM: How did you and Amanda deal or cope with the logistics of moving around the stage as conjoined twins?

JW: That’s the whole fun of this particular project and this show. Um, you know like, we’ve written all these songs around this concept and then figuring out how to manifest that on stage within the physical limitations that we’ve set up. We move to the piano, guitar, accordion, ukulele and a little bit of modest percussion.

FM: How did you and Amanda conceive this project? Did one person bring the idea to the other? Did you always know you wanted to work together?

JW: It was totally our weird idea. I mean, we were friends before but it’s actually the act of working on this project and conceiving this project that cemented our friendship. It’s been – it’s something that we’ve just kind of been joking about ever since we first – I used to tour with her as an opening act for the Dresden Dolls. Somewhere, just as a result of kind of weird word play, we came up with this name and this concept and we’ve kind of toyed with it and joked about it ever since. It just kind of gradually became more concrete and real.

FM: I recently came across a blog called Feminists with Disabilities where a woman blogged about how she sees the entire project as generally insulting and reinforcing stereotypes about disabilities. How did you guys react when you discovered that some people saw the project as discriminatory?

JW: Yeah, well we both reacted in different ways at first. Um, and then it kind of rattled around in our brains for awhile and then we kind of came to a sort of shift in the way we were talking about the show. I mean, I was at first kind of shocked and kind of hurt cause it was a project that was conceived just with, you know, a lot of fun and lightness and love, I hope. The fact that people got really upset about it was hard to digest. There were kind of two things: on one hand I feel like a lot of the points that they bring up are very valid. So part of me – there was this instant polarity where… the woman that wrote that blog, she and I have corresponded a bunch actually and she’s a very articulate, thoughtful, smart woman who ‘s not at all out to attack us. I certainly didn’t have that kind of feeling toward her. What happened that I think was unfortunate were a whole lot of other people got very opinionated very fast on both sides.  You know, a bunch of people started attacking the project from one camp and a bunch of people, almost worse in defending us, started attacking the people on that site and the woman who wrote that blog and that all feels kind of regrettable. In the end, I’d like to think that it was just one side – you know maybe it is not a politically correct thing for Amanda and I to do, to dress up as conjoined twins and perform this show. If that’s the case then that’s a shift that has happened in just the last couple of years cause this is something does happen in popular culture. You know, every couple of years there will be a movie about, for example conjoined twins, and it’s always able bodied people portraying them and it’s fictional but (that has) never set off alarms like this before.

FM: Anything you would have done differently in retrospect?

JW: I personally am of the opinion that part of the fun for us with the project and how we were talking about it and promoting it – we were always talking about the twins in the third person, like their these separate people. And we thought that was fun and something for the fans to play along with. In the end, when it came to promoting it in a larger sphere, I think that that really opened us up to criticism in an unnecessary way. I mean it (would be better) if it didn’t look to outsiders as if we were trying to push some kind of (struggles to find word) ….hoax. Cause like, outsiders coming in and looking, when they’re already upset about something– like they were approaching the project with this question “Is this offensive or not?”  And then they saw us talking about these people as if they were real, it’s being exploitative. I would have done that a bit differently. You know, made sure that anytime we were playing that game (that the twins are real people) there was a clear ‘nudge nudge’, ‘wink wink’ along with it.

FM: I know you have to run but I just had one last question. When the album came out, you guys offered these different packages which included personalized storybooks, custom Happy Birthday recordings a hand painted ukulele. In addition to that you had some high priced packages that included a dinner, a trip around the word and even a trip to the moon with the Evelyn twins as a guide. Did you guys get a response for those packages at all?

JW: Yeah we only sold three trips to the moon actually. (both laugh) Obviously, I’m kidding.  We ended up selling a lot of the different packages but none of the silly, high priced ones. We got tons of inquiries about the dinner package and all that but… (I hear noises in the background)But it was really fun putting together the little special stuff, like the handmade little books. And we ended up recording a couple hundred personalized birthday songs. (Pause) Hold on. Sorry, we have a driving direction situation…. We’re just approaching the free way exit. I’m just being quiet for a second.

(I wait)

JW: What was the question again?