Amos The Transparent: Dance practice and Christmas shows
Amos The Transparent returns for its annual Christmas show December 21 at Club Saw
Jonathan Chandler, Amos The Transparent’s singer and guitarist, is at dance practice.
This isn’t prep for the return of the band’s annual Christmas show, though – it’s just standard fare for the musician’s now-number one job: Being a dad.
Parenthood is just one of the things that’s changed for the band as it prepares to enter its third decade in existence.
“We all sleep a little bit less and we all need more concrete incomes and schedules become a little bit more spare,” said Chandler.
“And I spend my Wednesday nights at a dance studio instead of a recording studio.”
Amos The Transparent will play Club Saw on December 21, marking the return to what has become a tradition for the Ottawa-based folk-rock (or, in Chandler’s words, “suburban dad basement rock”) band: Its annual Christmas show.
The gig – which will feature support from friends Menno Versteeg (of Hollerado), Alex Newman and Trevor Lapointe – is a bit of a rare occurrence from the band these days.
As schedules have become more focused on the members’ growing families – let’s just say there are children that, someday, they could probably form at least one Amos The Transparent tribute band – playing live happens less frequently than it did in the past.
That’s allowed them to be more selective about which live shows they choose to focus on.
“It’s not really something we’re interesting in doing anymore,” he said. “We’re only playing a couple of gigs a year. We’re more or less focused on writing and recording.”
Which just goes to show how special the annual Christmas shows have become.
The band took a few years off from the Christmas gigs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The show on December 21 is the continuation of a now long-running trend.
So the question then becomes: If there’s no desire to get back into a van and tour endlessly across the country, why bother continue being a band at all?
Chandler says what used to spur the group – both internal pressures to be constantly writing and creating and external pressures to be delivering new music and shows to fans – is gone.
Now what keeps them pushing into their 20th year (the band started in late 2005) is a pure love for what they do.
“The honest to God truth is just because we want to,” he said.
“Anyone will find the time to do the things they enjoy.”
The band still gets together and practices every Friday night – even if they don’t have gigs to prepare for.
In the meantime the band is also working on recording new material. They’re still trying to determine what form it will take – Chandler mentions the possibilities of anything from releasing an EP to a full-length album to not putting out anything at all.
If it ends up being a full-length release, it would be the first since 2018’s Anniversaries.
“We’ll put something out when it feels right and we’ll put something out when we’re happy with it,” he said
It’s difficult to say what exactly the future holds for the band. But one thing is almost certain: It will involve Chandler in one shape or another.
A few years ago, pre-pandemic, Chandler tried to quit. He told the band he didn’t want to play music anymore.
To hear Chandler tell it, the rest of the members reacted with a knowing sort of bemusement – a sort of “go ahead, just try to quit.”
They even went so far as to schedule a final Amos the Transparent show, which ended up being cancelled due to the pandemic.
It provided the exact opening the rest of the band needed to, in Chandler’s words, “talk me off the ledge”.
“It made me realize: ‘what would I do if I wasn’t playing music?’”, said Chandler. “And they had me. Checkmate. What would I do?”
