Musicians are people too, with other interests outside of recording, playing and collaborating. In that spirit, we present a new series Sports Talk, whose title is fairly self-explanatory, I hope. 

Our first subject is Dallas Green, the Canadian-born musician who has risen to fame with such acts like punk outfit Alexisonfire and currently City and Colour. Green follows all things Toronto sports, even getting a chance to hoop it up with Raptors players along with attending many Toronto Blue Jays games, including the famed Game 5 against the Texas Rangers, which culminated in the bat flip heard round the world. Green interestingly enough calls Jose Bautista’s go-ahead homer a bigger moment than Joe Carter’s that won the 1993 World Series for the Blue Jays. 

Fear not, however, there is some music talk, including a particularly poignant story about Green’s connection to the attacks in Paris, as he recalls playing in a side project with Eagles of Death Metal drummer Julian Dorio. Green recounts when he first heard of the attacks and how he processed stepping back on stage. For more on Dallas Green and City and Colour, pick up their new record If I Should Go Before You and check them out on the road.

The big story in Toronto this fall was the Blue Jays’ run through the postseason. Obviously it wasn’t the end you guys wanted, but what was that experience like?

Me and my wife and a couple of my guys were at Game Five versus the Rangers where all that crazy drama went down and Bautista hit a home run to put them on top. Honestly, I don’t think that anything would have topped that moment. Obviously if they had won the World Series that would have been great but I don’t even know if that would have been better than being in that building for that crazy inning.

That was a great season; that was unexpected. When Marcus Stroman went down I was like, “Okay, this is just going to be another one of those years,” but then when they made those big trades—it was great, it was a great time to be a sports fan in the city. We haven’t had something like that, at least not for the Jays. The Raptors have been doing good, sort of creating a new little buzz in the city, but you know—baseball has been sort of dead and gone for a long time in Toronto. It was nice to be able to watch the team do that and to be able to be home for some of the games as well.

People are still referring to that inning as one of the wildest in baseball history. And Jose Bautista’s bat flip really capped it off, even causing the benches to clear. 

Especially to be standing there watching this—like when Russell Martin had that strange play and to think…well to be a Toronto sports fan we were like, “Well, obviously we’re going to lose, we’re going to lose because of this weird rule.” There’s apparently this rule that nobody knows about, but it was like a perfect sort of moment. It was like a Cleveland moment, in a way. And then when he hit that—well, watching those three, when they made those three consecutive errors, you think, “Well, we don’t stand a chance.” And then Bautista just…yeah.

Some people think this is blasphemous, but I think that home run was bigger than the Joe Carter home run. With the Joe Carter home run, obviously that’s a massive moment because they had won the World Series then. But they had won the World Series the year before. It was game six, they had a loss, in game seven they were hitting a home run in a situation where if they lose, they’re eliminated. [This year’s team] had gotten into the playoffs for the first time in 22 years. I just think that the stakes—even though it wasn’t for the World Series—it just seemed like there was a lot more attached to it, in my head. Just being there—maybe it was because I was a kid when the other happened, but to me it just was one of the biggest—if not the biggest. To me that will be the moment to remember forever, as far as a highlight of sports. I’m a pretty crazy sports fan, so it was nice to kind of witness that.

Toronto has a pretty good basketball team this year too. 

I’ve been watching them pretty much since the day the Raptors got franchised. I was a Pistons fan growing up because they were the closest team to Toronto, and when Toronto got a team, it was like, “Okay, well that’s my team now.” It’s been fun. Obviously last year was a bit of a bummer watching them get swept by the Wizards. I got to go to a couple of those games [last] season. They have a really tough schedule to start the season and they’re sort of slogging through it and they’re still up and around the top. There’s a lot of new guys, too. I think there’s seven new guys this year.

The Raptors have really done a great job involving the entire community too, particularly during last year’s playoffs. 

Toronto, you think of it—obviously you think of it as a hockey town, with the Maple Leafs. But the Leafs have been bad for 60 years, really, and basketball saw its window. It was starving for somebody, because the Jays were bad too. So now, I think, with the combination of the last couple of years of the Raps and the Jays—it’s been fun. When you think about it, the Jays went 22 years without making the playoffs. We’ve spent a long drought just to get to late August and you’re already mathematically eliminated and you’ve got to watch meaningless September baseball for twenty years.

And now with the NBA All Star Game is coming to Toronto, the first time it has ever been to Canada. What does that mean for the city?

Yeah, it’s amazing. We’re actually going to be on tour in Europe when it happens, but it’s cool. It’s cool for the city. Toronto is a great city, too, so a lot of people are sort of turning their attention on it, it just gives everybody a little bit more of…you know, for people who thinks it’s just Canada. It’s a big city, there’s a lot to do, so it should be fun.

You mentioned you’re on the road—how do you keep track of the games? How do you follow a team when you’re out touring around?

We have NBA League pass on the bus. My guitar player Dante [Schwebel] is from Texas, he’s a big Spurs fan, so last night after the show we went onto the bus and we just watched the archived games on League Pass. The Raps beat the Hawks last night and the Spurs beat the Bucks. And we try to go to games. We played in Portland a couple of weeks ago and the night before we played, the Spurs played the Blazers and it was when LaMarcus Aldridge returned to Portland, so we flew out there early and went to that game. We like to go to as much stuff as we can when we’re on the road. We try to take advantage of being in a city that you might not find yourself in in normal circumstances.

Do you guys play at all? Do you pick up games when you’re out there, or do you just watch?

Oh yeah, definitely. When we did the Canadian tour last year, we played bigger places up in Canada, so we could bring some more stuff. We would bring a basketball net with us. We would just pull it out of the truck and set it up in the arena. Sometimes you think, “Wow, if I could jam my thumb here, I could not be able to play the show tonight.”

Did you hear the story about Arcade Fire and Pearl Jam playing a pickup game in Australia? I think [Pearl Jam bassist] Jeff Ament ended up with a broken nose before their show.

It was probably Win, too. I’ve played basketball with Win and he’s a pretty competitive guy. He’s a big guy and he can really shoot.

A couple of music questions for you: Your new record really showcases the full band (which includes members of Dead Weather and Spanish Gold). When did that mindset start and how did it wind up on this record?

It really all started with getting all these guys to go on tour for the last record. And then just sort of watching over that span of two and a half years of being on the road with all of the other material. Jack [Lawrence] played on the last record, but none of the other guys had played on any of the records. We had to create all of these new versions of all of my old songs. Watching how they took such good care of my old songs, before I even started writing new material, I just thought, “Well, why not write a record and utilize all of these guys?” instead of just sitting in my basement and demoing everything alone, which is what I usually do. I’ve got this band full of guys that I trust, and I’m ultimately going to be asking somebody to play drums and this and that on the record anyway, so why not just save time, in a sense, too. If I’ve got an idea for a song and a vibe of where I want it to go, I’ve got these guys. So why not just do that?

You dedicated  “Against the Grain” to the victims of the Paris attacks shortly after that happened. From a musician’s perspective, when something like that happens at a concert, how does it alter your perspective the next time you step on stage?

It was a really strange moment, firstly because it’s not like we didn’t realize that there’s atrocities going on in the world, but they’re not supposed to seep into something like this. Music and art, for me, is that place for people to escape from whatever is bothering them, from whatever tragedies that are going on in their lives or in the world that they don’t want to deal with. You go to see your favorite band play. For it to sort of walk itself into that world—a place that we spend our entire lives in, we’re in music venues every day of our lives—it was really shocking. And then also, we’re friends with those guys. Julian [Dorio], who was playing drums for [Eagles of Death Metal]—me and Dante, Dante does this other thing called Rumba Shaker and we just went and played some shows before this tour, and Julian was playing drums. We’re watching CNN and there’s this footage of our buddy ducking away. So not only is it in your world, but the proximity of it…it’s right there.

We played in Seattle that night, and it was hard. It was hard to just go out and think that there was a purpose. After watching that, you go out and you think, “Well, I’m going to sing these sad songs about myself now, like it matters?” But then some people were like, “Oh, no, that’s exactly what you have to do. That’s the most important job right now is to go out and sing and play and not let whatever it is those people are trying to do affect you.” I guess you have to move on. But definitely that night when we walked onstage, it was the strangest feeling I’ve ever had onstage while you were thinking about that.