dijon

brady makes veggie baos

How long have you been veggie?

Six years. I became a vegetarian when I was working at the Sherbrooke Deli and like, slicing brisket all day. Well it’s the reason I became vegetarian. I was pretty much slicing five cows worth of brisket a day, and just from the smell of it realized that I didn’t want to eat it anymore. I was only eating the borscht there - just borscht for two years - and then I was like ‘holy shit, I just became a vegetarian without doing anything.’

Did you get scurvy?

Ha, no. I was also afraid of getting fired for not eating meat, so I didn’t tell them, I only told them when they made a huge dinner for us, and it was all meat, and I was just like, “I’m good.”

Where do you stand on shorts for a man?

I mean, I like to wear them to my ankles. Just above the ankle. No, I like shorts, I wear them. I never buy them though. If you go the store, a pair of shorts is basically the same price as a pair of pants, and you can just take those pants from last year, and give them a little snip. So all I have are cut off shorts but they don’t look great. I took my dress pants and made them into cut offs last year and that didn’t work.

What would be your dream job if you weren’t a musician?

Hmm. I think I would just be some kind of artist. But if that’s not an option, which it basically isn’t… I don’t know, I don’t want to do anything. Do I have to do something? I think I would probably be an old man and live up north and like grow pumpkins or something. I might actually do that.

When will you say that you have “arrived” with your hair?

Well, probably not right now. Yeah I’m trying the mullet thing. I’m just trying to have fun with it before it goes away forever and I just have to ‘Bruce Willis’. That’s the only option I’ll have left. I don’t think I’ve ever had good hair, I’ve always just been trying too hard and it’s never been good. I need to just go with the classics - but I just get so bored. Living in Brandon for so long, no one knew how to cut hair. It was like military cuts only, so I cut my hair the entire time, and I was really bad at it. Any time I’d go somewhere they’d give me like the Ultra Cuts #2 so… now it’s too late.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

I have two answers. Probably the absolute worst was Canada Revenue, when I was a ‘financial services agent’ or something like that and I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do. My boss was completely deaf, like 100% totally deaf and just wouldn’t really communicate. I was in this room that was floor to ceiling with boxes, and he just wrote on a piece of paper, "make sure that all the boxes have all the papers in them, in numerical order." It was like a storage room of extra filing, so I would just go through each box and be like, ‘one, two, three, four, five, six, seven… 64, 65, 66,’ all day. That was my only job, that’s all I did. I finished it in like two weeks, and was still working there as a summer student for the whole summer, so I asked him, “what do I do now?“ He just looked at me and went (sleepy bed time hands) and I was like, “ha ha ha” but yeah, he was serious. I turned around one time and he was fully sleeping. He would sleep hours a day in there, and people would go to his office and knock but he wouldn’t wake up because… he’s deaf. He was totally using it as an excuse to do whatever he wanted. No one told him what to do and he was responsible for me, and he didn’t give a shit. I’d be like “ok, I’m dying, what can I do?” And he’d write on paper, “Do you like Xbox? Me too.”  

Worse than that, was when I worked my first job at the junk yard when I was 15. They called me “bitch,” and my job was when they got an order for a part, I would to go into the warehouse or into the junk yard and pull the part and clean it and bring it back to them. One of my jobs was to take the gas tanks out of trucks and – this is so fucked – puncture holes in them with a pickaxe, and then flip them upside down into a funnel and pour the rest of the gas out and then climb a ladder and fill a big vat so they could fill their up their trucks with dirty old gas. It was the middle of the summer and I’d be covered head to toe in gas. If you get gas on your skin it actually burns you. My clothes were soaked in gasoline, my skins burning and I was like ‘I gotta go home, this is insane.’ My boss, who routinely locked me in rooms and joked about raping me, fully lit a cigarette and threw it at me. I was 15, and thought ‘ugh, no wonder everyone hates work, amirite, like gee whiz, this sucks’ and didn’t fully understand but that day I went home and told my dad. He gets in his car, drives there and I dunno, like freaked out on them or something. 

My dad got me that job, I was so pissed at him because when you’re 15 and its your first job, you’re supposed to work at the movies and like make out with people in the storage room, that’s what you’re supposed to do. Not work for a bunch of old degenerate fucking assholes. Ugh. And I made $7/hour. 

What’s your pet history?

I had a hedgehog for maybe a week and my mom got rid of him when I was at school one day. I came back and he was gone, I don’t even know what that meant, '“got rid of,” but he was gone. I was 12 and I bought him with my own money. I was like, ‘I want this, this is something I want,’ but then I brought him home, ‘sweet I have a pet, bye, I’m a kid I don’t know how to take care of it.’ My mom was stuck cleaning its cage, like every day and hedgehogs shit only the most disgusting diarrhea. She was like ‘well I don’t want this to be my life now,’ so she got rid of it.

I was finally getting him to warm up to me without spiking me to death, and then he crawled on me, and I was like ‘oh we’re finally bonding’, and then he crawled over to my wrist and shit all over my watch. Maybe that’s why these animals aren’t supposed to be pets. 

I don’t even know how I feel morally about pets at all. Dogs, I feel are quite interested in living with a human, but I don’t think a cat is, and then any other animal. Especially a bird. Nothing is more sad than a bird in a cage that’s supposed to fly around.

Why do you live in Winnipeg?

Because rent is cheap, and there’s a lot of support here for music and art. But mostly because it’s affordable. I can rent this place and live here by myself, and then also rent a jam space that’s huge and beautiful and so nice for whatever I make. If lived in Toronto I’d be working three jobs just to pay for a little room and then I wouldn’t do music because I’d be working all the time. Plus all my friends live here. 

What’s your perfect day?

Probably something to do with gardening, and then maybe sitting outside on a sunny day or going to the beach with the guys, y’know just jammin’ with my boys. Maybe having a nap, drinking some brews. I sound like I’m from Kenora when I’m describing my perfect day.  

What’s your favourite type of mustard?

I think it might be Dijon, but I can’t. That’s not allowed. One time I had hot mustard, like homemade hot mustard, and it gave me a nosebleed. Like it would not stop bleeding, I was eating dinner and then just like wrecked my nose.

Interview by Katy Slimmon & Ali Vandale
Photography by Ali Vandale