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He tells a funny story about going to L.A. back then. He bought a 1969 Oldsmobile Delta 88 for $250 (the seller gave him a deal because he thought Roberts had good energy), but it cost him a fortune in gas driving around L.A. and the brakes would heat up so much that he’d go sailing through red lights. His band at the time was Northstar, and they had a mini-album. The trouble was the cover art was so ugly.
“It was our Spinal Tap ‘Smell the Glove’ moment,” Roberts says.
He and his manager didn’t have a cellphone, so they got a pager and every time it went off, they had to hike a mile up the canyon to the closest phone booth to call the record company back. He says they met maybe three people in California over three months.
Last year was the 20th anniversary of the release of We Were Born in a Flame, and there’s a sense that anniversary informs Roberts’s latest album, The Adventures of Ben Blank, which came out in the fall. It’s a concept album based on a what-if notion: What if it was the fictional guy Ben Blank releasing music, not Sam Roberts? It’s like Roberts dreaming of escaping his history. That desire comes partly from the fact that the first album was by far his biggest commercial success.
“I think it’s natural that there’s a growing frustration that newer things that you make … when they don’t find the same kind of foothold in people’s lives, it’s always frustrating,” Roberts says. “Does it mean you resent the old stuff? I don’t think that’s how I’d say it. I do think there’s a struggle every band, our own included, goes through, to convince people that what you’re saying right now is as valuable to them.”
The Sam Roberts Band performs on Feb. 29 at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium.