For Carey Mercer, mastermind of the indie avant-rock band Frog Eyes, his new album Pickpocket’s Locket is one he thought he might never get to make.
After watching his grandmother and father pass away within months of each other in 2013, he, himself, was faced with the possibility of his own imminent demise.
And while there is likely no good way to get the news that the growth on your neck is, in fact, cancerous, perhaps the worst is from a specialist unaware that your non-existent family doctor hasn’t informed you of the news, flippantly remarking, “Cancer. What are the odds, huh?”
And so it was that Mercer, father to his then three-year-old son and husband to his wife (and Frog Eyes drummer) Melanie Campbell, found himself faced with the very real possibility that he might not be around much longer.
“I’m not a crier, but I bawled up,” he says of that moment. “I was gasping for air. I thought of my son, I thought of my wife, I thought of my family.
“It was such a profound shock.”
And what about his music? Would he ever get to record another album? Even if the treatment was successful, would the damage to his throat mean that he could never sing again?
“There was a huge weight on me.”
That weight was compounded by the responsibilities he had to his record label, Dead Oceans. The advance he had received for his just-completed album, Carey’s Cold Spring, was already spent on recording and mastering, and he would be unable to tour in support of the record. Dead Oceans would likely never make their money back on their investment.
Mercer could have reneged on his obligations, and given the circumstances, few would have blamed him. Instead he vowed to pay back every penny of the advance, releasing the album himself online by donation.
“Within a month I was able to pay it all back,” says Mercer. “I even had a little left over for me.
“I bought a sweater.”
Mercer says the response from the public and the press was overwhelming.
“It was a really salient couple of months,” he says. “I felt like I really existed.”
Mercer, of course, survived his ordeal with cancer. After close to two months of radiation therapy and another two months of recovery, he was back to a somewhat sluggish version of his normal self. Today he is cancer-free with no long-term side-effects.
“There was a lot of pain and morphine,” he says. “I can’t ride past the cancer centre without a sense of dread and radiation queasiness.”
At the risk of sounding cliché, Mercer admits the ordeal helped him put many aspects of his life into perspective. The priority he places on being a father and husband, for instance, and the preciousness of music.
“Music is very important to me. I protect it. I try to be careful, because it can suck you dry.”
Thankfully, his position as a substitute teacher with the Richmond School District allows him the flexibility and financial independence to make music on his terms.
“[Teaching] works well with playing music,” says Mercer. “You can step out of it if you have to. It affords you a bit of patience. And I get to pick and choose how I want to engage.
“I don’t have to go on a 40-day tour of the US if I don’t want to.”
There are many parallels between the the stage and the classroom, he notes.
“When the bell rings, you walk out in front of people you don’t know, and you have a short period of time to build rapport,” he says. “And if you go out on stage in a good space, you just have to plug in and people will respond to that.”
Mercer already had four songs recorded for Pickpocket’s Locket when he was diagnosed with cancer, and completing the album became a motivating force for him through his treatment and recovery.
“I had left this unfinished task, and that created an impetus for me,” Mercer says. “When the new record arrived, I had a real moment. It was a symbol of my present health.”
Pickpocket’s Locket has a noticeably different sound than previous Frog Eyes records. Gone are the crashing drums and frenetic electric guitars. Instead the drumsticks are replaced with brushes, and in the absence of distorted guitars are strings, horns, piano, and pedal steel. The manic energy remains, but the arrangements are more complex, more nuanced. It’s a contemplative album to be sure.
“I felt the electric guitar was covering up a lot of things. It has the tendency to cut right through everything,” he says. “I value softness… If you listen to [loud] music all day, it wears you down.”
However, Mercer admits he had his doubts about the record. His expectations were so high after everything he had been through, that perhaps a letdown inevitable.
“When the record was all done and it was all mastered, I was very sad,” he says. “I thought that I had made my record, I thought this was the one. But imperfections started to present themselves. Those realizations and moments of doubt and insecurity are really hard.”
But time offers perspective. With 10 albums to his credit as Frog Eyes, as well as another half dozen with side projects like Swan Lake and Blackout Beach, Mercer knows there is no such thing as a “perfect” record, and says in retrospect that he is happy to have created something imperfect.
“[If it was perfect], where would I be able to go after that? Thank God I have those nagging doubts.”
• Pickpocket’s Locket is available now through Paper Bag Records. Frog Eyes appears at the Rifflandia Music Festival in Victoria, Sept. 17-20, and at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver with Destroyer, Oct. 17.
