Toronto Indie Rock Band The Alter Kakers Unleash the Torrid Tale of Love’s Highs and Lows in “Stopped Being In Love”
Love is a double-edged sword. At its highs, nothing beats it. At its lows, you’re fully defeated. Toronto indie rock band The Alter Kakers captured the torrid experience of a love affair gone wrong in its latest single, “Stopped Being In Love.”
Combining influences from both rock and country, vocalist and guitarist Steve Bronstein serenade the listener with a twangy sound that emanates the emotion and turbulence of a relationship falling apart. He starts from the beginning, explaining how he and the nameless woman met at a truck stop some time ago. The relationship unfolded from there, but it fell apart down the line, and now Bronstein confesses that he might have stopped being in love.
The track intertwines with the band’s motif – alter kaker is a Yiddish term for an old person, or as the band likes to call it, it means “an old fart.”
“Is this band a group of Alter Kakers?” the band asked, rhetorically. “Probably, but think of it this way: to become an Alter Kaker, you need to have the will to never give up or stop trying, and that’s what we have done.”
While “Stopped Being In Love” mostly touches on the sadness and loneliness that a love gone wrong can deliver, it maintains a balancing act, acknowledging that for as bad as things feel right now, there will be a tomorrow.
While writing the song, Bronstein said he wanted contrasting ideas in the chorus. It all came to him while sitting at a red light in his car on his way home from the dog park. All it took was about 15 seconds, he said.
“Then I think I need a counterpoint like Lennon and McCartney, as in ‘you say yes, I say no,’” he recounted. “So then I sing, ‘but it’s not,’ then another triplet, ‘the end of the world,’ and hold the word, ‘world.’”
He repeated it in his head until he got back, then figured out how to play it on the guitar. His bandmates, bassist, and background vocalist Cary Corvair and drummer Dan Barsi, co-signed Bronstein’s creation, and they went from there. Fast forward about a week into the future, and The Alter Kakers have what they consider to be their best single yet.
In June, the band published a music video to go along with the song. It was an organic idea that came from Bronstein and Corvair meeting up at the Bloor Viaduct and seeing what happened. Shooting the video themselves, it turned into a story of a man and woman who can’t quite get on the same page. The man is always too many steps ahead of the woman, played by Bronstein’s dog walker, Julie Logie, who finds clues along the way to hint that she’s onto him but just a bit too late. The video implies that the man may have jumped off a bridge in the aftermath of their breakup, but it leaves that open to the viewer to decide.
“I took a chance filming on the first night by jumping up onto the concrete ledge of the bridge, standing close to the edge,” Bronstein said. “Even though there is suicide netting, it still made my stomach turn. I am afraid of heights.”
All three of the band’s members are seasoned professional musicians, individually and as a collective. The Alter Kakers have recorded three EPs and an array of singles, including a cover of Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” that earned Sports Illustrated’s video of the day recognition and helped put the band on the map.
The Alter Kakers especially pride themselves on their live shows. They’ll play original music and covers of the greatest hits – they’re entertainers and don’t mind playing to a crowd. Their work has received such notice that the band achieved its dream of playing at The Dakota Tavern in Toronto. In fact, The Alter Kakers have featured at the venue now a half-dozen times with great success, and there are more dates on the way.
With “Stopped Being in Love” available now and two more releases, along with accompanying videos, on the way, The Alter Kakers are extremely excited for the future. Check out “Stopped Being In Love” to follow along on the band’s musical journey.
Watch the video for “Stopped Being In Love” below and learn more about the band via our mini-interview.
Care to introduce yourself?
Hi, I’m Steve. I play guitar, sing, and write most of the songs in The Alter Kakers. The band has been together for almost 15 years, and we’ve recorded three EPs and several different singles, including a few covers like the classic Duran Duran song Hungry Like the Wolf and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. I’m pretty obsessed with guitars—buying, selling, and playing them. My favourite brand is Reverend. I also have a dog named Tori that I’m crazy about.
Tell us about the process of writing and recording “Stopped Being In Love”?
Stopped Being in Love was a songwriting exercise after listening to a Rick Beato episode where he was interviewing Sting, and Sting mentioned how he liked a melody that was not predictable. I started thinking I should take a new approach to writing a song: chorus first, forget about chords and riffs, just think about the melody. So I’m sitting in my car at a stoplight, coming back from the dog park, and I’m thinking, Where should I start? I like the motif stop, as in “stop in the name of love,” so I start there by singing “I might have stopped.” Then I think I need a triplet to make it interesting, so I add “being in love”. Then I think I need a counterpoint like Lennon and McCartney, as in “you say yes, I say no” so then I sing “but it’s not” then another triplet “the end of the world” and hold the word “world”. I repeat it in my head until I can get home and figure out how to play it on the guitar. At our weekly jam night, I played the chorus for the guys to see if they liked it; they did, and we discussed options for how to play it, and I got a sense of where the song could go from there. Over the next week or so, I come up with a few verses and an idea for a bridge, and the song quickly comes together. The first line, “I’ve seen it all; it’s all been done, but I wouldn’t say no to a little bit of fun,” is a comment on how nothing shocks me anymore and we’re living in a crazy time, yet I’m still up for it, still up for a little bit of fun.
We started to feel like the song was something special, so we decided to record it, and we enlisted the help of Dean Marino. We worked with him in 2011 when he tracked and mixed our six-song EP, Painting from the Past. In November 2022, we started recording at Dean’s studio. The bed tracks for bass and drums were completed in 2 days, along with some guitar parts, with the idea of coming back the following week to complete guitar and vocal. The space between sessions gave me time to think about additional guitar parts, and I ended up coming up with the slide guitar that is peppered throughout the track as well as the Spanish-flavoured fill that helps transition from the bridge to the chorus. We also tried new ways of doing vocals—very Beatlesque—with Cary and me singing some parts together into the same mic to get a more live feel. They were fun sessions.
What’s it like being a musician in Toronto?
Is this off-the-record? It can be tough. There’s no shortage of talent, and we’ve met some great musicians over the years. But playing in clubs can be challenging; most places don’t have a regular clientele that comes to see the bands, so you’re expected to bring out the crowd. Most smaller bands have the mentality that playing live is where you get exposure and make fans, but it’s a catch-22 because if you don’t bring out people, it can be harder to get rebooked. We’ve noticed a difference post-pandemic; people seem a bit shy still.
Who was the first and most recent Canadian artist to blow you away?
The first was Rush, way back when I was 13 and learning to play guitar. I had a songbook of theirs, and I went through the whole thing learning how to play it, including the bass lines, which were equally fun to learn. I’ve been a fan of Sarah Harmer for years, and her last album, as usual, was beautiful.
You’ve been making music for a while now, what’s one piece of advice you can offer to those starting out?
Whatever you are doing—playing guitar, writing songs, playing live, or just playing in your band—do it because you love it; don’t do it because you want to make tons of money because you probably won’t. We’ve been together for almost 15 years, and to me, that is the real accomplishment.
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