I made a lot of decisions involving the show – some good, some bad – but by far the best one was “hiring” Will Fraser. After that first year I wanted someone else involved: someone down there to make fun of, basically. All I knew was that the thing had to grow, and my gut feeling was to place someone in the role of “intern.”
Will lived on the same floor as me, and one day I passed by his room while he was playing Arcade Fire’s Funeral on vinyl, which was the first album that really turned me on to the contemporary music scene. So I knocked on his door, and we talked about it a bit, and the next time I saw him I offered him the intern position. I said if he didn’t like it he didn’t have to come back. He ended up staying three years.
Will would never admit this, but I’m almost positive he hated me for the first few months. I was absolutely ruthless to him, which is certainly a regret I have – it was all in the interest of a comedic style I was still honing in on. It became clear, though, that he was the perfect foil for me and that I’d hit some sort of jackpot by stumbling across him. Will is, far and away, the greatest musician and songwriter I’ve ever known personally – and in those early performances on the show you can literally hear my respect and awe for his craft growing. This was all before he’d started up Wild Firth, played any shows, recorded any tapes other than a project he’d done the previous summer. It was like watching an artist come into his own in real time. This song, entitled “Dance Nance,” had a guitar riff that I simply couldn’t get out of my head – I edited out the track from the show and put it on my iPod I loved it so much. It probably sounds like I’m fawning over him, but listening back to these early clips just shows his apparent genius from the beginning, both as a musician and as a sidekick. I’m probably more indebted to him than anyone else when it comes to On Patrol – if I hadn’t knocked on that door, the show would’ve ended long before it became what it eventually would.
