The Sam Roberts Band will appear at The Intersection in Grand Rapids on July 9.

Sam Roberts was raised on Pointe-Claire, an Island directly Southwest from the city of Montreal in Quebec, Canada. He, alongside the Sam Roberts band, has released six albums and has garnered critical acclaim in both his native Canada and here in the United States.

He won six Juno awards including Artist of the Year in 2009.

The Sam Roberts Band will be making their only Michigan tour stop tomorrow night at the Intersection in Grand Rapids. I chatted Sam up during some down time while he waited to perform at Milwaukee’s Summer Fest. We discussed his most recent album, “Collider,” the brotherhood of Canadian musicians, the introspective nature of northern artists and much more.

NOISE!: Tomorrow, you guys will be in Grand Rapids playing at the Intersection, and that will be playing to around 300 people. What do you prefer, playing these big outdoor festivals or playing in a club setting? What’s your style?

SAM ROBERTS: It’s nice to be able to switch it back and forth. If you do any one thing over and over again it can get tiring in any environment; so in the summer time, yeah, after a long hard winter like we have in these parts of the world, it’s always nice to be able to get outside and spend some time outdoors and it’s hard to keep playing rock ‘n’ roll in a small club.

NOISE: Speaking of long hard winters, I imagine Pointe Claire is a pretty tough place to grow up, you have to be a pretty hardy dude to come from that island, right?

SR: It’s a hard winter — I mean six months out of the year — but when you’re a kid, you don’t notice it. I think the problem comes when you’re a teenager and you’re still trying to wear your sneakers in the middle of January. When you’re a kid and you’re well-dressed, you have your scarf wrapped around you so that only your eyeballs are showing so you can weather the conditions.

NOISE!: I guess on that note, would you say that Northern artists or Canadian artists like yourself are maybe a little more introspective and more inward leaning in their artistic abilities just because there’s that isolation factor with the long winters?

SR: I’d say that’s an interesting point and a definite possibility — without the external stimulation that you get during the warmer months you do have the tendency to spend a lot of the time with yourself, for better or for worse. I’m sure it plays a role in not only how you make music, but how you’re thinking. I’m sure If I lived in Hawaii, I’d put a record out every ten years.

NOISE!: I don’t know if this plays into coming from where you’re from, but you’ve certainly had some struggles in your career — it has not always been a downhill road. How much of the idea that you’ve had to overcome obstacles to be where you are effects your songwriting and goes into the music that you’re making?

SR: I try not to dwell on my own career trajectory when I’m writing music and I try to sort of look beyond myself as much as possible and that has been my approach to songwriting. I’d rather talk about whatever, love and trying to find a place for yourself in this world, but outside of the context of the success or failures of my music career. It should remain separate in some ways — I think enough songs have been written about that, about being misunderstood musically, about staring out of a van window watching the prairie roll by, you know, there’s enough of that. I think there’s a lot of other things that I’d rather focus my attention towards than my own trials and tribulations.

NOISE!: You’ve been recently releasing records on Rounder, which is a pretty well-known American folk label. How do you think your sound fits on a label that’s more known for acoustic and string band music?

SR: I think it’s an interesting fit, but yeah, we don’t necessarily fit the traditional Rounder act. But at the same time, I think when you’re on a label, it’s often in your best interest to be that band that sort of sticks out from everything else that the label promotes. It teaches you to carve a little bit of a corner for yourself.
This isn’t the first time — we put out a record a few years ago on Lost Highway, which is like a country label, and we we’re putting out psychedelic rock. It didn’t last very long, but it was an interesting experiment.

NOISE!: You mentioned that your sound has shifted a little bit — you tried the psychedelic rock thing and now you’re doing more of an indie-rock ‘n’ roll sound. Do you think going the non-traditional route a little bit is good for both the label and for the artist to make sure things don’t remain static?

SR: Absolutely, and that goes for both the label and the artist. If you are constantly going back to the same form over and over again, it’s only a matter of time before you lose your own motivation and you find yourself uninspired or the label finds themselves uninspired. Then it becomes just like any old job and this should never be that. A label and a band should both thrive on the shifting nature of music. If I had to do the same record over and over and over again, I don’t think I’d be able to find the will to perform. I certainly wouldn’t be nearly as inspired to keep doing this after all these years. But I still feel there is a future with building towards and worth working towards.

NOISE!: When Canadian bands are touring through the States, do they have any camaraderie between them or is there any competition between bands when they come to the States? Would you say there is sort of a family thing or is there no connection at all?

SR: There is a real connection. There’s no real ‘us vs. them’ mentality when it comes to Canadian bands coming down like we have to band together to fend off the big bad United States — that’s not the case. I think there isn’t nearly as much competitiveness in Canada between bands as there is in the States. When we were making our record in Chicago and Broken Social Scene came though on tour, we all went out to the show and had a great night, had the opportunity to reconnect before going back home. There’s definitely a brotherhood for sure and that sustains a lot of us when you have to be out there and have to be far away from home. You want to feel as close to it as possible and it definitely helps to have that. And it’s not like we’re all musically-minded people, just people that share a physical connection with something.

NOISE!: Can you tell me a little bit about ‘Collider’. It was released in May, what has the response been so far?

SR: It’s always a two-fold response, you’ve got the people who seem to be enjoying the new direction vs. those who rebelled against it. There’s always that period of watching people, watching it resonate. It’s always fun for the band to live through it and you also have that other part where we have to go and play it on stage and find a way to translate it from the studio into a live setting and that’s always a challenge. That’s what I love about it — it’s an opportunity to rethink the record on a daily basis.