“We would play the smaller venue for like a decade, and rolling our amps through the bigger venue, it was kind of like stinging. So, when our fate changed, it was such a milestone,” says Mother Mother vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter Ryan Guldemond (with whom I last spoke in 2022) of the band’s last stop in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, which had them headlining the 2,500-capacity Fillmore Philadelphia in October of 2022 after many years of playing The Foundry. I’m chatting with Guldemond via phone, the afternoon of the Canadian band’s show at Dallas’ South Side Ballroom. The stop is part of Mother Mother’s co-headlining tour with English singer/songwriter Cavetown, which will be making a stop next Tuesday, July 3rd, at the up-to-7,500-capacity Highmark Skyline stage at The Mann.
“It’s amazing. It’s just a dream tour. It’s so cool to see the cross pollination of our fandom and his fandom,” says Guldemond of the double-headlining trek with Cavetown, which kicked off June 7th in Phoenix and wraps July 13th in Chicago: “It really feels like one of those situations where the sum is greater than the parts.” I ask him how he’s liking the transition from nightclubs to these super huge [mostly] outdoor spaces, and he tells me he’s a big fan: “We love it! The bigger the better! It just means it’s more human energy.” He also admits that some of his best early memories of live music come from outdoor settings: “When we were kids, we’d go to Lollapalooza at The Gorge, and that’s where the voodoo of Rock N’ Roll in the outdoor festival setting really got into our veins, like watching Soundgarden crushing it in that outdoor setting.”
Mother Mother have been releasing music since their 2005 independently released Mother (which was rereleased in a “touched up” format in 2007 as Touch Up). However, their recent spike in fame and popularity – which has had them crowned “Canada’s biggest alternative-rock band” — came during lockdown, via TikTok, where, as of October 2020, the hashtag #mothermother had been viewed more than 56 million times. The majority of tracks featuring the hashtag came from the group’s 2008 sophomore album, O My Heart, whose songs have featured prominently in setlists ever since. When I ask how the post-TikTok period has hit the band, Guldemond tells me, “The touring and connecting with the new global fanbase has been the real highlight. We’ve had such amazing tours in Europe,” but goes on to admit, “But honestly, anywhere we go, really… The culture in this community is really inspiring and wholesome.”
This February Mother Mother released Grief Chapter, their ninth studio album and second for Warner. The LP is the band’s first studio effort since they achieved their current mega-stage status, leading to 12 exceptionally big and hard-hitting tracks, which Guldemond jokes definitely took a sort of toll on the group: “We really did just about kill ourselves on this one [laughs].” Curious how nearly two decades of making music has impacted Mother Mother’s approach to making music, he tells me, “I think the biggest difference worth noting is enlightenment versus naivety,” explaining that a lot of their current approach has to do with trying to unlearn things: “You want to return to the childlike naivety. It’s kind of like spiritual enlightenment… The only difference between a monk and a kid is that the kid doesn’t know their brilliance, whereas the monk worked their whole life to unlearn things.”
Ryan tells me that fans who come out to next Tuesday’s show at The Mann can expect to hear songs from across Mother Mother’s catalogue and that they can expect the same energy of the band’s 2022 shows at TLA and The Fillmore (and even their earlier days at The Foundry): “We’re very high energy. We just grow in intensity from one year to the next. You’d think it’d be the opposite, because we’re getting older, but it’s not, because we’re an older band that understands how lucky they are to be in the game.” In addition to their dates with Cavetown, Mother Mother currently have a plethora of shows scheduled throughout the rest of the year and into next March. I ask Ryan if he’s especially excited about any of the dates (in addition to Philly) and he tells me, “I’m really excited for the two-show banger [on this jaunt] in New York City, and just getting to stay in the same city for a little while… And I’m really excited for South America, which will be our first headline, hard ticket in South America, and it’s doing really well. We’ve only played festivals there, so you never know where you stand, because they’re there for the festival and not the band.”
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