Genres: Noise Rock/Punk

David Dobbs’ Instrument: Guitar

Matthew Powers’ Instrument: Drums

I met with David and Matthew earlier this summer before a show they had at the Park Theatre. I was interested in meeting them because I was really new to the genre of “Noise Rock.” To be 100% honest, I was really new to the genre. The loud atmosphere was really exciting and really let me experience a little dose of how loud and how much David and Matthew had when performing on stage. They are currently on tour doing really cool stuff. Follow them on their instagram to see all their exciting adventures. 

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Ashley: How long have you been playing together?

David: Matt and I have been playing together for coming up to 2 years and vampires has been a conception for about 4 or 5.

Ashley: And how long have you been playing your instruments?

David: I started playing piano when I was 8 maybe and that moved to guitar when I was 13. I can play everything though; drums, keyboard, bass guitar and whatever.

Matthew: Yeah I started in piano, my dad tried to get me into it. I never really cared for it, drums was what I really wanted to do. I guess I have been playing drums since I was 12 years old so a long time. More than half my life which is weird to think about. Drums is my main thing but like David we are both multi-disciplinary, we can both jump to guitar and bass and dabble around on piano and all that kind of stuff.

Ashley: Where does the band name come from?

David: It comes from a deeply routed childhood love of vampires. I myself dressed up as a vampire every Halloween for like eight years in a row until my friends started calling me a loser. It’s also an emotional and spiritual reference to how as humans we feed all the time. Whether its actual practical raw matter like food or it’s like emotionally or spiritually feeding off other people. We’re drawing attention to that dynamic of not being ashamed to admit that we all feed off each other and it’s not in an angry or cynical thing it’s just something to acknowledge that we all need each other.

Matthew: We both really like vampires as an idea of a monster. They are kind of the most human-like. They have feelings and emotions and they are even relatable in a way. 

David: It’s the stresses we put on ourselves. Dracula always felt at odds. He was only proud when he was comfortable otherwise he was angry all the time. It just showed that he was like everyone else. 

Matthew: We don’t have any imagery associated with fangs or capes; it’s all a very artistic reference point, I guess.

Ashley: So why did you decide to start playing together?

Matthew: We kind of found each other. [David] had something I was working on on the internet and we started talking and realized that we were looking for each other.

David: I was looking for a drummer and he was looking for another project to be apart of.

Matthew: In that shared time we both kind of realized that my thing was just a in the basement having fun and he already had a project with legs and had momentum and he had a show coming up with Big Fun a couple years back and was just looking for someone to fill in the dates because he had to place it. We got together for that originally and just when on from there.

David: Yeah, we put out a four song EP together and we kind of liked the EP. It was just a showcase of what we were going through at the time. It’s really raw, its four songs that we wrote together and helped established the band in its new direction and it’s new legs so to speak. We just recorded a full-length album and it’s pretty exciting.

Matthew: It’s our first big studio album. Before [the music] was done low-fi, on the down low kind of thing. It’s our first step into a big studio with a cleaner sound. You can hopefully hear more of what we’re doing opposed to the low-fi feeling of the EP album. The songs are going to come through more in this new way.

Ashley: What is a jam or practice session like for you two?

David: Our rehearsals are usually during the week, Tuesdays and Fridays. They start around 7:00 pm typically. They’ll be me getting home from work and I’ll tidy up the space a bit and we’ll go over the lyrics and most of the time we are either writing songs or rehearsing towards a show, those two modes. We’ll play through songs a couple times and play through the songs we suck at a couple more times. Otherwise we are writing songs there is a little more relaxation and experimentation. I guess a jam is just an idea or a very small part of an idea. I’ll have a riff, let’s say, a single riff of 5 or 10 notes, some will be good and some will be bad. Matt will come along and stitch riff 2 and riff 5 together and I’ll be like “wow, it’s a line now.” Other times though they’ll just write themselves. After like four hours we will have a song.

Ashley: Would you say your songwriting is more lyrically or melodically driven?

David: Oh definitely melodically. Music writes itself and usually you find places to put vocals on top so it’s never me humming to myself trying to write guitar to my vocals it’s me matching a vocal line to my guitar I’ve already written.

Ashley: And how do you choose your lyrics? What’s your inspiration?

David: It seems to always be a commentary on social relationships and social dynamics. Personal experiences that I’m watching happen. Some songs are really personal and I wonder how I sing them all the time in front of strangers. Sometimes they’re a way to get people involved.

Ashley: How do you sing about personal things? How do you decide if something is okay to share?

David:  It’s something that happens while playing music. It’s never “oh I’ll just go sit down and write music” they just start to happen. The music makes me feels a certain way so whatever I’m feeling that month or that day or that year and it just comes out. It’s usually reflective stuff, I’m commenting on something and then I decide to make it personal. How it might happen to me. I don’t really know how I let it become about personal stuff, it just happens because it makes sense. It’s okay in that way.

Ashley: Why don’t you [Matthew] write lyrics? Have you thought about it?

Matt: I guess with my own music I do, but I guess I never stepped into that role with vampires. Not to say that it’s not in the cards that if I have some lyrics that I felt passionate about. I’m still getting into singing with vampires, they used to have a pretty big back and forth vocal dynamic between the Dobbs and the drummer and that’s something we’re trying to bring back in my own way so there may be a time when I’ll have something to say but until then I’m just hitting stuff in the background.

Ashley: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

David: Still being band. A lot of bands, I think, find the internal dynamics to be too much pressure. It requires patience and hard work. We used to play at Sled Island Music Festival and that’s a huge accomplishment for this band. We’re putting out a record with a big name recording studio and that’s another huge accomplishments. We’ve gone on a couple fun little tours so far together and haven’t broken up. At the end of day it’s a band about social reflection so that interactive connection of getting other people’s take on the music so it’s always a cool moment.

Matthew: it’s nice to have people after show and say “oh I haven’t seen people do that or have that much fun on stage since I was a kid, or in years, or since this band.” People are looking at our music and what we are doing and there is a nostalgic feeling or energy that is brought back to them. I think it’s an amazing accomplishment to have that connection with people.

David: We talked about why it’s special. For us it’s just us doing what we’re doing, It’s the matter of that generational gap of the old rockers and the new kids. There is also this feeling of tolerance and inclusion, of just being seen somewhere. Part of going to a show now is just having certain people see you and tweet about you. I’m just interested in a good time.

Ashley: So you mentioned that you’re going on tour, what’s the most stressful part about going on tour?

David: The most stressful part was finding ways to keep going. We all work 8 hours a day and you’re one activity is playing then you sleep and you drink a lot.

Matthew: The days off or feeling like you’re not just wasting your time out there.

David: Learning how to maximize your time. We don’t have an agent of a publicist so we are in full control of our time and there are some points of it where we should be doing more. That’s just hard shit though; it’s not really stressful.

Matthew: It’s a breeze being out there when you’re driving to a gig and it’s going to be a new show in a new city with new people and there is always something to look forward to. Maybe it’s stressful that you’ll always needing to be “on”. You don’t want to drink yourself on the road, we want to network and meet know people and remember them.

David: That’s the most stressful part; always making you’re sure you’re at your best. Finding ways to recover to clean slate. US we’re doing the same thing everything everyday but for those people who are just seeing us for that one day.  On a personal level to meet people and say I’m a stranger and you’re a stranger and at some point you might even want some space but it’s not fair to others. It’s not out of our control

Ashley: What advice would you give to beginners who are nervous about starting out?

David: Don’t be nervous.

Matt: Yeah, just get out there and do it. You’ll find that once you’re on stage that nothing else matters all those things you were worried about don’t matter.

David: Be bad. Be the worst, you can only get better if you start out bad.

Matthew: Let yourself to be that too. Don’t expect you’re going to be a rock star right from the get go. My first show I got heckled with my first band. The first show we did outside of the basement. That experience was enough to be like “stop, I’m done.” But no, you want to get better and you want to prove those people wrong.

David: I’m so impressed when I see a bad who suck but they did it. They tried. I find that’s way more exhilarating than [a band] who has practiced for 10 years before finally taking the stage. Don’t perfect it. Work it out if it shows and really reflect at rehearsals. Try it out, if it doesn’t work out for a show and you’re cheeks burn red scrap it but if it works, you’re a better man.

Ashley: So what do you guys do to deal with nerves before a performance?

Matt: I don’t really get nervous anymore, I’ve been doing this for so long that it’s more the anxiety of wanting to play. It’s not that I’m scared of anything happening it’s that I just want to be on stage now; I want to be on stage where I feel comfortable.

David: I still get nervous on bigger shows. To be closer to the gear, to the stage, to the bartender or the sound guy, to feel the room that’s how I work through it. For the bigger show I’ll get nervous, it won’t be a crappy nervous where I’m sweating, it’s a nauseous nervous. I feel that’s a real strong energy that I can use to my advantage.

Matt: Yeah use it like adrenaline in a way and ride off it.

Ashley: What is your favorite song to perform live?

Matt: I really like the newer stuff. The foot we are stepping forward with, the new songs are really fun. Because we wrote them so quickly before getting into the studio just to get them out kind of the thing, I feel the songs are still evolving. What you hear of the album is just the first conception of them, us playing them live they are evolving and parts are becoming longer and things are getting cut, so things are really coming to life.

David: That’s the best to say, we’re always pumped to play the new material.

Ashley: How do you balance your music with your other obligations?

Matthew: Carefully

David: Yeah very carefully. You don’t have a social life. Your band and your art will make you very social. If you are partying all the time, you’re losing a lot of time. I have a radio show, I record that, I work at a restaurant and I do [music]. I do so fucking much. So managing your obligations, you knowing what you’re doing is important.  Continue to say, it’s important that I work toward this so you find the time. If you care about it you’ll find the time.

Matt: Music has always been a big priority of my life, as much as I tried to balance it with other things, the bands I’m in have kind of taken precedence in my life in a way. There is always for them. The jobs we have to do from 9 to 5 is more to fund the things I want to do after work. I work so I that I can be in a band, otherwise I’d be a starving musician that couldn’t afford to go on tour and wouldn’t have a vehicle. It’s impossible otherwise, I’ve tried working with musicians like that and it just doesn’t work.

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Oct 19, 2015 at 5:49pm PDT

Support Winnipeg Band VAMPIRES!

Marielle McLeod: Vocals, violin, Accordion, Bells

Benjamin Dueck: Bass, Vocals

Genres:  Indie Rock/Emo Band

Mabel's Flight is a 5-piece Indie Rock from the suburbs of Winnipeg. These quirky and talented kids are definitely taking the scene by storm! Since their debut performance in January at the United Fiver, these 5 have left a lasting impression on the Winnipeg community. I was very excited to meet Marielle and Ben and was really caught off guard by how eloquent and knowledgeable they were about their music. They know exactly what they want and how they're going to take it! 

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Ashley: How long have you been playing?

Ben: We all grew up in the same area, and we have been playing together in various bands for four years. We all met in high school but Mabel’s flight has been [together] for about two years. We had our performance debut and the Uniter Fiver in January and that was the first time we had a show, we had only been jamming for a few months before then. Since then we have just been playing and recording

Marielle: and working on our EP.

Ashley: Where does the band name come from?

Marielle: It’s actually a somewhat interesting [story]. There is this show that Cam and I had gotten into called Gravity Falls and the band name came from one of the episodes where the characters break into this store. The character Mabel found these old bags of candy, ate them and got kind of high from them. She then imagined this thing that turned into this bird and then she started riding it.

Ben: Also no one in the world has that name so it’s really Google friendly. When you search ‘Mabel’s flight” you actually get us. That was a main thing too.

Ashley: So why did you decide to start playing together?

Ben: We come from a quiet suburban area and we didn’t see a lot of music around us. I think I read somewhere [that the area where we are from] has the oldest average age in all off Winnipeg. So obviously there are not that many young bands are happening there. To combat that we got together and we tried to create what we wanted in the area, which was a music scene. We are pretty much the only band,that I know of, that’s all from [that same area].  We didn’t see music around us so we wanted to create it.

Marielle: Also,I guess growing up listening to music we were all just drawn to [it] and that was something that was unique in the suburb we live in so we ended up bringing us together.

Ashley: What is a practice or jam session like with the rest of the band?

Ben: Well usually Cam – the front man – or Marielle will come with a demo of a song. Cam writes his music on an acoustic guitar and he will have his lyrics and a rough melody [ready]. He’ll bring those to the practice and we’ll work together as a band in arranging and composing the songs. Cam will play the demo and we’ll jam out ideas for a long time. We find that songs come naturally, you can ‘t force it. Sometimes songs will come in an hour and sometimes it will take weeks. There are things that separate the skeleton of a song to a full-fledged, developed idea that are very subtle. It’s not something you can pinpoint but when it works you just get it. It’s pretty much just a matter of doing things over and over again and trying new ideas.

Ashley: What is the most stressful part about being in a band?

Marielle: For me it’s the fear that the music won’t come out in the best way possible.

Ben: It’s hard to get your band to sound, especially when you’re recording and you don’t know what you’re doing, you usually sound when you’re playing. It’s hard to convey that message. Especially in Winnipeg considering how many good bands we have. When you first get into the scene it’s almost disheartening because there are so many good bands. I think it’s pretty saturated market in Winnipeg and it’s hard to stand out. It’s just a cultured city so for me [the most stressful part is] standing out.

Ashley: So what do you try to do is stand out?

Ben: We have a pretty diverse array of influences, we all listen to different music. Obviously we are influenced by our city bands like Yes We Mystic, Royal Canoe andGreek Riots, those are some of our favorite bands. We are an indie rock band mainly but Marielle is trained in a lot of different instruments like accordion, bells and violin.

Marielle: We do have this sound that sounds like other bands that people have heard of but there is also this mesh of different genres in our music too. Our keyboard player, he was really into pop music and I was really into baroque music so there are a lot of different colors of every different genre.

Ben: We aren’t trying to sound like another band, it’s all of our personalities coming through. Marielle with her instruments, Cam has his R&B, and then we have more of an intense punk and rock influenced rhythm section.

Marielle: I think part of it is really we end up writing relatively heart-felt songs. I almost feel like we are really talking musically, if that makes any sense.

Ashley: So does Cam do all the songwriting?

Ben: Most of it, Marielle writes some songs as well.

Ashley: So what is your songwriting process like?

Marielle: I tend to like layering a ton of different sounds in my music. Usually I’ll end up coming up with a melody and record it on my phone; but my phone is really crappy so it will end up really distorted and if you listen through it, it will have these overtones and like I will start to imagine different things [coming from it].

Ben: Cam and Marielle’s songs are very different. Marielle definitely has a composer mind so she’ll usually come with an idea with how the songs would sound and it’s just a manner of translating it to us; where as Cam comes will just the skeletons. He has a more earnest style of songwriting.

Marielle: Yeah, he’s really lyrical.

Ben: If you can’t play a song on an acoustic guitar and have it sound good, it’s probably not that strong of a song. We try to make sure the melody and the chords are strong before we layer things out.

Ashley: That’ s really interesting! It’s cool that you have two very different styles to work with! So then with the band, what accomplishments are you most proud of?

Ben: Well we just released our first EP on Bandcamp called Bedroom Fire and we had been working on that pretty much since we started and we finally [released it]. It took a long time but we are very proud of how that turned out. And the songs go over really well live. Out keyboard player’s dad has his own studio so we were very lucky.  We are hoping to do an official release this summer, but for now it’s up on Bandcamp where you can name your price and download it. We are so very proud of it.

Ashley: I wish I could do that, I’m kind of a chicken when it comes to sharing my music. What is performing your music like as a band?

Ben: We have a very interesting dynamic because we all just pretend we are in different bands. Cam is not your traditional, flamboyant singer. He’s understated and likes the songs to speak for themselves while he is off to the side. Our drummer and I are very energetic people so we have this hyped up staged presence. So our shows are trying to balance our personalities. I find with a lot of bands their songs are melodically good or lyrically strong but they don’t have a sense of momentum. We try to make it sound like our music is going somewhere.

Marielle: Yeah and keep it interesting. You don’t want to come up with a song that’s going to repeat exactly the same. You want it to have [and keep] someone’s attention on it.

Ben: We try not to talk very much live, we try to play as much as we can. We try to keep it fast paced because no one really wants to hear your sad self-indulgence unless you’re brilliant.

Ashley: What advice would you give to beginners who want to do the same thing as you and start a band?

Ben: Just focus on the music because that has to be the most important thing. You can only get so far on mediocre songs so practice as much as possible especially when you are in high school. When you get home at 3 o’clock and you have nothing to do for hours, practice as much as you can and make sure you play with as many people as possible. What sounds right will fall into place the more you play. So just put in the hours.

Marielle: and definitely keep an open mind. Accept ideas even if you come up with something that sounds like crap. Some of the simplest ideas I’ve come up with I find are the most successful.

Ben: Also there is this common misconception that success is a constant upward trajectory but it really ebbs and flows so working through the tough stuff and not breaking up too.

Marielle: Be interested in yourself. Don’t try to be interesting for other people because if you don’t love your work it’s going to be hard for others to love your work. 

Ashley: How do you find people so you can play as much as possible?

Ben: We were really lucky to have the United Fiver to kind of get us in the right scene especially when you are a new band. [In the beginning] your image of the music scene seems like a really exclusive club but Winnipeg has this super open [community]. I think the main thing is even if you don’t have people to play with, just going to shows and start getting your name out there, people will start recognizing your face and come up and start talking to you. That’s what we did, we just went to shows and we talked to the bands after they played and asked them where they started and where they practice. That’s the main thing; just supporting the scene and it will come back to you if you do that. Being visible.

Ashley: Before a performance, what do you do when dealing with nerves?

Marielle: I have a pretty ridiculous imagination so when I’m practicing I’ll imagine the show and it’s weird because sometimes if I screw up while I’m practicing I’ll actually feel embarrassed.  On the show you know you just want to forget there are actually people there and just enjoy yourself.

Ben: Once you get up there, if you practice enough, it should come back to you in muscle memory.

Ashley: What is your favorite song to perform live?

Ben: My favorite song is the title track from our EP Bedroom Fire; it’s my favorite song. It’s the song we close our shows with and it’s six and a half minutes long and has two time changes in it. It’s probably our more Arcade Fire sounding song. It has this really simple chorus that anyone can sing along with. It’s very important to write a song that’s easy to sing for everybody, I think.

Marielle: For me, it’s a bit hard to choose. My favorite might actually be Playground because I did write it so I have a slightly different interpretation of it. It has chunks of my life that have inspired it. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s years within 5 minutes and I experience it all in such a short amount of time.

Ben: Yeah, Marielle’s songs have a very strong sense of imagery.

Ashley: How is it balancing this commitment to your band with everything else?

Ben: It’s hard sometimes, it always seems that things line up on the same day like school and work or practices. Even when you can’t get all your band members together, just trying to have consistent practices. Even if it’s just running over stuff you already know just keeps your polished and motivated. It’s really just time management. We try to set up at least a day or two a week so whoever can make it shows up and we work on songs. We also send stuff over the Internet, that’s a big thing, emailing each other demos because we can’t always be in the same place at once. We need to rely on the Internet.

Ashley: What’s the best advice you’ve heard since you started working in the music business?

Ben: Just remembering, music is at its heart is an emotional affair. I can’t remember who told me this but no matter how hard you practice, and I think this is something that music schools needs to teach you more, but you can be the best musician in the world and practice all day but it’s that emotion that connects people. You just need to focus on being conscious of what emotion your song is trying to convey because that is the universal part of the song that brings people together.  Just trusting your gut and that’s what makes it a great song.

Marielle: Definitely what Ben said, a huge part of the song is the meaning. You can have a song that’s well written and people want to buy and like it, but when you hear a song that really does have a meaning in it it is really a feeling within.

Ben: The thing that separates a good some from a great song is the emotion. We aren’t the best players in the world but we pour our hearts into it and I feel that really comes across.

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Aug 14, 2015 at 10:57am PDT

Support Winnipeg Band Mabel's Flight!

Photo Credit: Janine Kropla

Instruments: Banjo, Guitar and Vocals

Genres: Bluegrass instrumentation with no boundaries (influences: Blues, Folk, Hip hop and Spoken word)                                                                             

Matt and I met and shared a delicious lunch and an ice cream sandwich at the Degrees restaurant in the University of Manitoba. While we ate, Matt shared his knowledge of the Winnipeg music business and some really great advice and stories that I know are really going to stick with me through my own musical career. I’m also really happy to share that The Crooked Brothers very recently released their album into Germany Austria and Switzerland with the record label The Instrument Village! Way to go guys! 

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Ashley: How long have you been playing your instruments?

Matt: I started taking guitar when I was in grade 4 and probably [only started to ] like playing the guitar in about grade 6. It took about 2 years to stick. Once I could start making noise in the basement with some buddies, it didn’t just feel like studying or working. It was like recess, I guess. The banjo, I don’t know, I think I started at the end of high school. I borrowed a banjo from my friend Devon and still haven’t returned the thing. I keep trying to give it back to him but it’s complicated. He just says “you just keep it” and I’m like “uh, okay” but it’s been years!

Ashley: I guess its okay then; he must not miss it?

Matt: Yeah, it’s like - is this mine? It doesn’t feel like mine so I treat it [well].

Ashley: In terms of practicing, how hard do you push yourself?

Matt: Lately it’s been happening without pushing. I’ve been teaching guitar lately and just getting into the mindset of constantly breaking down things that you do as a musician. Breaking down technique and dismantling things into their smaller pieces, then talking about practice, technique, goals and sharing all these things with students and conversing about them; it just has my mind in the place that’s got myself doing the same thing, in my spare time. Teaching has made me sharper as a player than ever trying to get some kind of rehearsal schedule for myself. I’m not very good with schedules; I’ve never been able to stick to one. It’s like a dream of mine to have a schedule but I don’t know how people do it. It’s nice that I created these conditions that invite [practicing] and it happens regularly.

Ashley: I guess if you can teach it, you must really know it.

Matt: I think everyone can be a teacher if they not only know what they’re teaching but how to teach it. I don’t feel like I’m an incredible guitar player, I feel like I have a million things that I would want to learn but I also feel like that I am very confident with what I do know and my ability to convey how I got there. Anybody that would like to do what I can do, I’m very happy to share and talk about how to achieve it, what makes the difference between a bad sound when you strum and a good sound when you strum. It’s fun talking about it. I think there are teachers at all levels, you do have to know what you’re doing but you don’t have to know everything. Knowing how to teach is just as important as knowing the instrument itself.

Ashley: Who inspires you and your songwriting? What do you listen to?

Matt: I really like honest people so when I say that, people who come to mind are Bill Callahan from Smog. He’s very eloquent and beautiful and sort of off center. Beautiful stark songs that are kind of about incredibly deep things that he paints from a strange angle. It’s really cool. I also really liked listening to Haden when I was really young. He’s sort of blazed the way for me that you can say sensitive things in a song and [still] have it be strong. A strong person, especially in terms of male figures, being so strongly sensitive like that; especially with incredibly heavy dark and angry music is really inspiring; so in terms of songwriting, things like that. I also like with both of those writers they linguistically put a lot of weight on the actual lyrics so the music fits to the words. If there is an extra line, or extra syllable, or an extra sentence the form of the music with shift to accommodate the language because there is an importance put on the lyrics and it has to be said this way. You get this sense that it has to be said this particular way because it might have the most truths, you can see it the most ways or something. It’s most beautiful like this and I’m not going to change the words to fit the song I’m going to change the song to fit the words. I really like that and I feel I’m drawn to the [importance of] lyrics over music idea.

Ashley: With the band, what accomplishments are you most proud of?

Matt: Seeing the world. Totally getting to bridge the gaps between friends and me I never knew I would make in places like Belgium, Germany and Poland. All over Canada, we have been to every providence and territory except for Labrador. We’re going to do it, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Photo Credit: Janine Kropla

Yeah, just the accumulative accomplishment of just continuing to do it over and over again. Watching it grow to this beautiful thing that I’m kind of just along for the ride in some ways. We work very hard and have worked very hard and now things kind of have their own wheels. We can feel things starts to pick up and just manifest in the form of knowing I’m going to be on tour in the fall next year. Being able to project that far into the future in my life. It’s the band that’s doing that for me and it’s my job. To be self-employed and to grow that ourselves, to have done so much work and to have been flexible to change and allow our relationships with each other to morph and to move along and be flexible enough for the band to carry through all that is incredible. The accomplishment really is treating each other like a family first and for most so when is comes down to it, it’s a long lasting never ending relationship that has just gotten richer and richer and richer.

Ashley: So when you’re traveling and doing your touring, what’s stressful or what are things that is a challenge for you when you are touring?

Matt: They are definitely there. It’s an interesting lifestyle that I think truck drivers know and traveling strippers know.

Ashley: That’s a thing? Traveling Strippers? I didn't know they needed to travel.

Matt: Absolutely, all kinds of performers travel. It’s a way to work every night. Any kind of act that benefits from having a new audience every night and space between shows to let excitement grow for coming back benefits from constantly being on the move. The entertainment business by its nature has to move to stay alive. Just the interesting routine you have to develop on the move to remain grounded and sane. Your life is basically traveling an average of 100 kilometers an hour. Let’s say you’re driving 6 hours a day, which is a lot, but that’s 25% of your time.  You spend your whole life 25 kilometers faster than someone who is just walking to work. You’re just moving and so trying to find the sense of home when the physical place is not part of your reality is always changing so it’s hard to keep grounded. You’re living in a tiny car with everybody and other people have their own quirks. You just live in very tight quarters for most of the time. Sleep together, eat together, work together, drive together, wake together, eat together, and share a shower. Everything is scheduled and you’re all tethered.

Photo Credit: Janine Kropla

You’re traveling, which is amazing! You feel like “Oh my god I’m in Paris, France!” But unless it’s a day off, which happens once a week, you can’t go see something. It’s an awesome way to travel but it’s also not as free as you might think. You’re tethered to the car, you need to get somewhere for sound check, you’ve got a few hours to eat, you play the show then you need to get to where you’re sleeping and when you get up in the morning you might have a little time but you’ll still need to get into the car because you’re driving hours to the next place to get to sound check and that’s kind of the routine. Finding a sense of balance on the go, if you can’t do that you won’t last. A lot of people burn out traveling or touring because you get homesick.

At first it’s all excitement, you aren’t even thinking about [being homesick]. That challenge starts to creep up you when you do it longer and longer and longer. It becomes an integral part of your lifestyle. You’ll tour for three months or even half of a year at a time and it becomes part of you. At first your screaming and having a good time out the window, and then it’s still so exciting but you relax into that fast pace-ness; then the issues kind of creeps on you.

Ashley: So, how do you deal with your nerves before a performance?

Matt: I used to throw up before the show and at the time that felt like dealing with it. It wouldn’t be this gross, disgusting, heaving, wretch or anything; it would just be that my stomach was upset and I would [need] to go gag in the toilet or in the bathroom or out back in the bush. Over time you relax and start to see it less about yourself. It dissolves a little bit and you aren’t so concerned about what people think about you. I think that’s really what the nerves are; it’s [the feeling of] being uncomfortable. You feel watched and you’re watching yourself and there is some kind of nervousness about doing [well] or doing badly. There is some kind of weight that you put on [yourself to make sure you are] doing it properly. But if you just relax about it, just doing it is doing it properly.  The less you draw attention to yourself and the more you draw attention to the song [the better]. By focusing on that instead of yourself, your nerves slip away. I think that’s a practice among itself.  Performing a song well, I think that means getting out of [the music’s] way so that you aren’t sitting there thinking to yourself while you’re singing the song. If you think about yourself while you’re singing, it shows. It’s really visible when someone is self-conscious on stage. It’s a sign that they’re watching themselves in the same way I’m watching them.

But someone who appears confident it’s not because they think so highly of themselves, I mean that exists I suppose, but people I’m drawn to are the people I think aren’t caught up with themselves. They’re singing about what they are singing about and there is no room for anything else. They are so fully engrossed in the song and sounds, the words, the meanings and maybe even the moments of the song leaving the stage and sharing it with that many people. Having a good conversation.

Rarely do I find myself in that state the entire night, but if you can get there even for a little bit that’s kind of the thing [as to why] I’m addicted to playing music. That feeling of nothing else matters.

Ashley: What does the name The Crooked Brothers come from?

Matt: There is a book by William Kennedy called Iron Weed and it’s a book about a man who kind of fucks everything up. In the opening scene he is traveling to a cemetery, he’s gotten some work there and nearby his mother and father are rolling around in their graves speaking with one another. They’ve been long ago buried. The Dad is picking the roots from the grass and the dandelions that have been growing above him, drying them out in his pocket and then smoking them in his little pipe underground. The mother is doing something similar like crocheting. There’s sort of this deep sadness, he has these dark ghosts follow him around and he’s of the world of the living and the dead, there is a thin gauze between the two for him. [At one point] he drops his young child, he basically drops his baby and the baby dies. The description of the baby is that, I think [the baby’s] name was Gerald, he says “Oh little Gerald’s all crooked, why is Gerald all crooked?” I’ve never heard the word ‘crooked’ used so darkly and I had just been walking around trying to name this band forever.

I love the idea of people who sing sweet melodies like siblings like Roger Roger. They are twins who sing like honey, their vocals are impeccable. In country music, families and siblings [singing together] is a common thing. I had it in my mind the idea of playing a family; the idea of making my own family. I kept thing “The something family” and when I read that book the word just slipped into that blank spot and I couldn’t get it out of my head.

Ashley: What is your songwriting process?

Matt: I wish I had one. [laughs] it would be so much easier [laughs again]. I’ve been thinking about this alot lately actually because I want one so bad. We had been talking earlier about how I’m bad with schedules. I’m just bad with structure, I don’t naturally create it for myself.

I really focus on words, so a sentence will get in my mouth and head and it will just tattoo itself there. Looping and looping and looping and kind of driving me crazy so I’ll say it out loud until a second line kind of spills out.

For the song Blackbird in the snow I had the words “I don’t know why I’ve though of you” for forever. I would just keep saying it over and over and it was driving me insane. There was something so true about it, it’s nice to say and it means something but what does it even mean? What the hell was I talking about?

Photo Credit: Janine Kropla

I think from there I can split off and investigate myself and interview that frame of mind and be like “who is you and why don’t I know why I wouldn’t think of you?” Just ask all these questions and pursue the idea or just keep repeating the line again until another idea came along that felt equally fit in that place and naturally spills out. Once I’ve got a few lines, I think the melody comes from me trying to say it the way it sounds the most true or the most honest. I [might say] the sentence “I don’t know why I thought of you.” instead of “I don’t know why I thought of you.” I think for me the melody is very much related to natural speech and wanting to have a conversation with an idea. I sing something honestly and then the melody develops there and later on I’ll put chords in.

It’s like the song is there and I’m just searching in the dark. The more practice I do as a player and by learning other people’s songs the more readily I can discover and sweep away all the unnecessary things. I can quickly discover the elements that have asked me to be brought out, to sweep the dust away.

Ashley: So when you’ve finished a song how do you bring it to the band, what is the process of introducing it? Do you sing the lyrics and melody and they make their own arrangements or are you very particular of what everyone should be playing?

Matt: If you have an idea, it’s really helpful to convey that to people. If you are hearing something, say so.  “I’m hearing a mandolin play here, can you make this happen?” Sometimes you’ll just be like “okay this is what I’ve got, everybody do something” and then you feel it out. It kind of just depends on each song. I love working with people that I love and trust and love their playing enough that I am not just directing everybody all the time. Which is one way to do it, it makes great music.

I think putting yourself in the situation where you are playing music with people who love what they’re doing and you love how they play for other things [is a great idea]. You learn the song in it’s skeleton form and play it and play it and play it until it gels and it becomes it’s own thing. And if you were to play it with someone else, it could take up some other life. If you take this thing you always do with the song and try to get different people to do the same thing, it’s going to fail every time because no one can recreate something. It’s nice to be able to relax about that, let the song breathe as it’s own with whoever is playing.

Ashley: What is a practice session with the entire band?

Matt: Specifically a rehearsal would be when we have some kind of goal in mind.  That might be a big show or doing a small show but we haven’t played together in a little bit, or like a tour or we are going into the studio. There is some kind of goal ahead of us. We have predetermined this material, any number of songs. If we are going on tour we’ll pick 35 songs, we’ve chosen the band that’s going to be on tour with us and we get together with those chosen people. We hire all kinds of players depending on what kind of show we want to put on or what kind of tour we want to have. Ideally I would like to run all the songs twice a day for a few days but usually it’s just once one evening or afternoon. We’ll run all the songs once and then go over any problem spots. Any new material we’ll do it to make sure we iron all the wrinkles out. It’s very much a rehearsal where already know their parts there is not a lot of jamming and figuring [this out]. We might have a new player who might be figuring the song out for themselves but that’s about as much “jamming”  that would happen.

A jam session would be totally different where we would just throw things at each other and play unfinished songs together; we get goofy and play things we would never play on stage. That’s probably the biggest difference: is playing things we would never do in a public setting or aren’t ready to share.

Ashley: How often do you guys jam?

Matt: Less lately because Jesse’s living about three and a half or four hours away from us. I’ve been jamming with other people a lot so that’s helped with actually jamming and loose playing. When we’re together on the road, or together just before a tour for a show, it can happen. We are usually very intentional when booking that time because but sometimes it’s nice to just play. 

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Aug 2, 2015 at 10:11pm PDT

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Thank you for taking the time to read this interview with the very talented and wonderful Matt Foster! He is a really really cool dude! If you want to see more interviews like this check out the links below! If you want to be one of the first to know when the next Winnipeg Music Project entry will be posted, follow me on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook! 

Photo Credit: Megan Steen

Genres: Acoustic, Classical, Folk, Roots, Singer-Songwriter

Instruments: Instrumentals, Classical violin, Guitar and Voice 

Raine and I met outside the cozy Thom Bargen coffee shop. It felt like we were having more of a hear-felt conversation rather than myself simply interviewing her. Raine was super friendly and easy to talk and listen to about the music industry and her journey so far. Congrats to her and all her achievements so far! I can't wait to see what more wonderful opportunities come her way~!

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Ashley: How long have you been playing?

Raine: I started playing violin as a young child, it’s been twenty something years.

Ashley: And why did you decide to perform?

Raine: It’s really hard not to perform. It’s just something in the blueprint of my life that this is something that I do. It’s so hard to not perform.

Ashley: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

Photo Credit: Hillarie Tasche

Raine: The thing I’m the most proud of is how hard I have worked. I am proud of how I’ve prioritized art and music making in my life because that was the thing that was hard. It was a challenging, scary thing to do, to make it my main focus in life. To put my time where my mouth is. That is what I’m most proud of and that has lead to opportunities that I am so happy to have like going with Manitoba Music to perform music in the Ontario Conference last fall; and all of the work and the opportunities leading to the album release [which was] a really joyful, successful experience. This summer I’m touring all over the place and playing in a lot of festival, which is my absolute favorite.

Ashley: What advice do you have for beginners who are nervous to start sharing their own music?

Raine: I think it’s important to be clear about what you want and then to make a plan. I think the best thing to do is seek the advice and seek the counsel of people who have done this before you. I’ve had a ton of meetings with artists over the last few years and have learned so much and have benefited also from the community. I would say find people that you admire, ask them about [anything]. This community [we have] is really helpful.

Ashley: And how do you approach them, these people?

Raine: I always offer to buy them lunch and always write down everything they say and they take it seriously.

Ashley: But how do you find them?

Raine: Just ask [around]! All they can say is yes and no.

Ashley: How do you balance your music with your other obligations like work?

Raine: A lot of my work is music based so that is good and complimentary to my music. I have achieved balance by reducing my other work’s hours so I can spend more time in the music business. That is one thing, to work less.

Ashley: Does it make it harder?

Raine: Well, financially it makes it harder to work with but there is more time which is much more valuable.  Time is the most valuable thing. I also used to always make lists. I have a bed time so won’t just work constantly around the clock [laughs].

Ashley: So how do you handle the nerves before performances?

Raine: Preparation before a performance. I make sure I’m really prepared. I’ll practice a lot and I practice all the aspects of the show especially for a really important show. All the on/offs, all the things I’m going to say and when I’m going to say it. I craft that and that helps with the nerves. I also think the more I perform the less nervous I am, [the process becomes more fluid]. Just practicing performing is it’s own treatment for nerves.

Ashley: What are you practicing? Are you playing through the songs? Technique?

Raine: I’m practicing anything that needs work. So on any given day it could be any of those things.

Ashley: And what is your songwriting process?

Raine: Sometimes different ways but usually it’s a first line that comes. Melody is often apart of that early process, too. I guess it happens it’s own ways. I sometimes feel a song is it’s own thing already and it depends on what I pick it up by first or what end is poking through the sand first.

Ashley: Are you one of those people that can write an entire song at once, or are you one of those people that takes pieces from a year ago and piece them together?

Raine: I feel that I’m more a collector of bits and they find their way together. In my experience it kind of feels like that.  An accurate description of my process is that I gather pieces together and I feel like a responsibility as an artist to do that when I see those pieces. It often is a process until I find a match together with the bits and I can feel it and often it takes a long time. Sometimes it’s quick and sometimes it’s possible to usher that process along. I was at the Manitoba Songwriting retreat in March 2015 and we wrote a song a day; it’s possible. It’s a different process though.

Photo Credit: Megan Steen

Ashley: Is it harder? I don’t know it if I could do that.

Raine: It’s not that it was harder the process was very different. It was fun. It’s good practice to just make choices faster.

Ashley: How do you choose the feeling to come across in your song? How do you choose your emotion?

Raine: That part happens by itself. That is a pre-existing bit and it usually makes itself obvious in the beginning.

Ashley: Is it like a self-conscious thing or are you naturally picking that mood or feeling?

Raine: You know, I don’t think I can actually describe it. I think that is the crux of the thing. It’s the feeling that it is. It’s the place that where the song lives so I don’t think I decide that, it just happens. I think that just is the thing.

Ashley: So this album you just released, why did you decide to make this album?

Raine: Why did I decide to make this album? Because it’s a step on the way that to the life that I want to lead and it felt right and good to do it.

Ashley: What’s the best advice you’ve received as artist or as a musician that you just take with you?

Raine: The best advice I’ve received is [something] someone said to me very matter-of-fact ‘do not be strayed from you course.’ To me it means do not be swayed from what you love, it is important. I think it speaks to me [because we live in a culture where] art is valued a lot less that [how much I value it] in my heart and it can be hard to live like that. But do not be swayed because it is important.​

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jul 30, 2015 at 12:30pm PDT

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Genres: Indie Folk

Instruments: Banjo, Mandolin, Steel Guitar, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar and Organ

Daniel is a really really cool dude. He had a really refreshing look on making music that I really enjoyed listening to the first and second time (when I was transcribing the interview). Please enjoy! 

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Ashley: What start Red Moon Road? 

Daniel: The initiative was a two-way partnership between my friend Daniel and I. We are both Daniels and we were both drummers. At the very beginning he was drumming in a country band and I was playing drums in a metal band with my brothers. We had both come off tour when he invited me to go to the lake with him. His friend had a cabin at the time and we went out for a sail. We tipped the sailboat in the middle of beginning of November, so it was pretty late in the season, and it was a bit of a crisis but we managed to get through it all. All four of us figured if we could survive an ordeal like that, we could probably spend time in a band together and it hasn’t let us down since.

Ashley: Where does the name come from?

Daniel: The name has very humble origins. When we first decided to start recording, before we played any shows, Daniel and I and the singer at the time were recording in a friend’s house in one the suburbs of Winnipeg off Lagimodiere. If you search you Red moon Road on Google the first thing that comes up is the street, Road Moon Road, and then it’s us. That’s actually where we got the name, nothing more glorious than that. We needed a name, we walked out of the studio, looked up there was a sign: a road sign.

Ashley: What is a practice session like with the whole band?

Daniel: Like a rehearsal?

Ashley: Yeah

Daniel: There are two different types of rehearsals. We are all professional musicians and we have an understanding of what an efficient rehearsal means. When we are rehearsing for a show or specific event that’s coming up, we have repertoire that we’re been working on for the last four years so a lot of those songs don’t need that much polish.

Often we will bring in a new song or two or five for a particular show we when we rehearse, we’ll get together and decide which songs [to play], figure out what keys are good to sing and play in and then we’ll go home and practice them on our own and the next time we come together. It’s expected that everything have their parts figured out. In the first three times [when we play them] through, generally we have to figured out what kind of tempo and feel that we want. That way it gives us the time and chance to make little mistakes on our own and without frustrating others. And when it comes together it still has that electric energy.

The other kind of rehearsal is when we are writing songs. When we are putting together the material that we haven’t really finished yet, often we’ll play through a portion of the song or idea or something and when we get to the end of it, we’ll see where your ear takes you or your fingers take you. There is a lot of speculation, lots of trying things over, lots of repetition. Lots of encouragement, we’re a very encouraging group.

Ashley: Do you ever start one song and finish it in one session? Or do you find you’ll usually have to come back to it later?

Daniel: Sometimes, if it all comes out in one shot, then that’s always ideal because you spend a lot less time on it and it feels a little more inspired. But more often than not it’s good to know when you’re beating a dead horse and when to walk away from something when it’s just frustrating you and you’re not being very productive. It’s a combination of both.

Ashley: So who inspires the music? Like, who do you all listen to that you feel really influences the sound?

Daniel: I can only speak for myself, really. But we do share a lot common interests. We all came to folk music a little later in life; Sheena grew up singing gospel and loves R&B music. She loathes admitting it but she’s a big Mariah Carey fan, she loves all the ballad songstresses. She takes a lot of cues from them. But also some real blues singers. Daniel is a really big fan of the Beatles so a lot of his writing is informed from that new wave of British pop from the 60s and 70s. I’d say my bass influences, in terms of folk music, are the folk greats like James Taylor and Neil Young, the gamut. Also Joanie Mitchell, of course. I also listen to a lot of metal whenever I’m driving or at home, I’ll usually listen to it.

Ashley: [Metal], that’s like the same as folk.

Daniel: Well yeah, I’d have to say that blue grass is just metal on acoustic instruments. It’s the same speed and virtuosity. A lot of the parts that I write are melodic and try to include as much melodic diversity as possible. I’d say that’s a pretty big influence in my writing.

Ashley: What accomplishments are you most proud of, with the band or individually?

Daniel: Well, I’d say the band is one of my greatest accomplishments. We’ve come a long way in the past four years. We’ve toured a lot recently. I think [another big] accomplishment is the fact that we’re still such a solid team and are evolving as people and as a business people as well as artists and all [we are all moving] in the same direction. I think maintaining a friendship throughout that and in between all the business has it’s challenging but is extremely rewarding. We just came back from a 2-month European tour and that’s sort of the most stand-out thing in my mind in terms of accomplishments. Yeah, playing a few sold out shows in the UK, getting a chance to see Paris and touring through Switzerland was also amazing.

That would be [one of] the biggest accomplishment, for now. It’s only the first of many tours out there, I think.

Ashley: What’s your favorite song to perform live?

Daniel: Does it have to be one of our own or can it be any song?

Ashley: It can be anything!

Daniel: Sheena is a trained jazz vocalist. We haven’t really been doing it on the stage, but we’ve done it at jams and after hours. She does this amazing version of At Last jazz standard that she just rips to pieces. It’s so amazing. That woman has so much soul it’s great. I just get to color in between the lines, I guess. That song. I feel we do a really good version of that.

Ashley: Are you guys going to share that with the world at some point?

Daniel: We should definitely record it.

Ashley: I would love to hear that.

Daniel: There will come a time. Maybe it will be a radio spot, it might not be something we put out ourselves. It’s gotta happen though, I’ll let you know.

Ashley: Yes please, I would love to hear that! Do you have advice for beginners who want to start making their music and sharing it?

Daniel: Um, I think the best piece of advice I can give is: just do it. You can spend so much time in speculation and wondering what you should or should not do. But there is no substitute for experience in both performance and in creation. If you’re someone who is inspired and already creating music, then great you’re already doing it. But if you feel like you need to share it, it’s just a matter of making connections, good connections, and going out and seeing shows. Make connections with people on stage and finding out how to get on that same stage. More than anything this business is about who know and how you know them. It’s important to be congenial and polite but also a fun human being. But just getting out there and doing it is the most important thing.

Also, don’t be afraid of criticism. Especially, be wary of compliments. Don’t always accept them for what they are because often when you’re first starting people are excited to hear you play and they’re going to say that they loved the experience. It’s going to be great but just don’t let it get to your head. No matter how good you are, you can always get better. The real advice you should be looking for is people who aren’t afraid to criticize it for what it is. That way you can take or leave it but at least you know it’s coming from a place of a true experience. That’s the most helpful thing that you can get. Compliments are nice now and again but seek criticism and then you will grow. Also, always play with people that are better than you.

Ashley: What do you do to help deal with nerves before a performance?

Daniel: Um, I don’t get really get nervous.

Ashley: Well, how about when you first started when you were first figuring out your sound? I’m sure you were nervous.

Daniel: I don’t know, I might have skipped that somehow. When I was young I did a lot of improv theatre so I was used to the stage from a very young age. I was also eased into it in a very supportive community. I’ve always felt really comfortable up there. That’s not to say that if an extremely good act is following us I won’t feel nervous. I’ll want to put on the best possible show. I just try to take a moment before I step on stage. Just take a deep breath and appreciate the moment for what it is. The people that are out there, the fact that they decided to see you perform and that you’re going to entertain all of them, they’re attention is in you’re hands for the next how many minutes and it’s up to you to be prepared ahead of time and be ready. You can craft the experience for them. I guess I don’t see it as something scary and more of an opportunity to make something exciting not just the audience but for you as well. There is a connection between the audience and the performer where that spark happens. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re going to knock them out.

Ashley: You mentioned how you just came back from this huge tour, what was the most stressful part about touring?

Daniel: Figuring out where accommodations are going to be that same night. Trying to have an itinerary that makes sense. Make sure you have enough time to get from your lodging, or your hotel or wherever you are sleeping, to the stage and a way to get from the stage to the hotel. But then, the most stressful thing is making sure that you’re instruments are all ready to go. There are so many variable when you aren’t in a controlled environment. There is only so much you can do to prepare ahead of time. Be as anal as you can be, cross every ‘T’ and dot every ‘I’.

Don’t be married to any one particular way that things should be because often things are going to change and you’ll just have to roll with it. The thing that stresses me out though is broken instruments; irreplaceable pieces of your tool kit. Accidents can happen and I was just so worried. If something like that breaks when you are over seas and there is no way to replace it, it costs so much money and it stresses me out. There is no remedy for that.

Ashley: Just a few tears and you move on.​

Daniel: Yeah, or just being careful and preventing it from happening in the first place. Ugh, even thinking out about it makes me squirmy.​ 

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jul 16, 2015 at 9:58am PDT

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Genre(s): Folk pop, alternative folk, pop

Instrument(s): Guitar, drums, piano, and violin

Micah Visser is a solo artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. With a few scrappy EPs under his belt and a full length cassette released in April, he is both restless and meticulous; determined to perfect his brand of sleepy alt folk. Heavily inspired by legendary folk singers and infused with modern pop and indie rock influences, he keeps lyrics at the forefront of his music while ensuring melody is never buried. (--manitoba music)

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Ashley: Do you use violin in your music?

Micah: In my last album when I first started recording, I almost completely based it off violin. I haven’t really been playing [violin] as much lately because I’ve gotten so busy with [songwriting] and guitar. I’ve been moving away from the violin a bit because I don’t rely as heavily on it now that I’m better at other instruments. It’s definitely something I’m still open to incorporate in the future; I just need to find good places to do it [in the music].

Ashley: Awesome, that’s so cool. I don’t know very many people who are really good at violin.

Micah: Yeah, that’s because it’s like so hard to get good at it.

Ashley: I’m told the first seven years are the hardest and eventually everything falls into place.

Micah: Yeah it’s exactly that. My mom said when I was learning the violin at the age of seven, everyone always told her it would take so long before it sounded good. I honestly don’t know why I kept doing it for as long as I did. It might be because I didn’t realize it sounded bad, but I’m not sure.

Ashley: What made you decide to do music?

Micah: It was always something I was really passionate with. Again with the violin, but before that I’ve always loved music. It just sort of happened because I always ended up picking up anything [musical] around me and that sort of accumulated eventually into what I’m doing today which is writing my own songs, playing most of the instruments, bringing them to a band and playing them live. I guess there was never really a moment I decided to do it. It always just seemed like a natural progression of what I was interested [in] at the time. You could say when I decided to not go back to school in the fall and do [music] full time, that could be the moment I decided to do music, but it’s always [felt like] a natural progression.

Ashley: Who inspires you musically? Who do you listen to that really influences you music?

Micah: When I was writing the last album, I was very inspired by Elliot Smith and Sharon Ban Etten and more traditional folk singers; but, lately it’s been that 80s new wave music. So I don’t know, it’s always kind of evolving. I really like all kinds of music. There are lots of pop music influences in my music as well, like catchy verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure. I don’t know, really everything influences me.

Ashley: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

Micah: I think the last album I did Okay Night, all the albums I put out before then had just been stuff I kind of had been messing around with in my bedroom, playing and then eventually releasing by throwing it out on the internet. [I didn’t have] much thought about how it all fit together. But Okay Night, was the first album where I actually decided to sit down and record the songs once, then rewrite lyrics so they all fit together thematically, and finally rerecord them all. Some of them I rerecorded them multiple times. It was a huge amount of work. I probably spent ten times the amount [of work I had] spent on my last two albums combined. It was just a massive amount of work and it’s a pretty small album; it’s only nine tracks and a half an hour long. It’s probably the thing I’m most proud of because it took so much work and now when I listen to it all the way through I can appreciate it as a good self contained piece of work that I can set aside now and move on from.

Ashley: What were some struggles of creating a releasing your EPs and now cassette?

Micah:  [When the music starts] getting inside your head. Since I’m the one that’s writing all the instrumentation and playing all the parts, at least for my previous albums. I don’t think I’m going to do that again for my next album; but for my previous albums I was so, I don’t even know how to explain it; I just get locked into a mode where I really needed to finish these songs and I’d be thinking about them all the time and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. It’s almost like it swallows you because you are so exhausted. And that can be a real struggle of getting outside of that box and making something good. Often the best ideas I have are the ones I kind of just get [out of no where and] then put them on paper and stick to them. Overthinking it can really kill good ideas.

Ashley: Why did you make the decision to record your most recent music on a cassette rather than a CD?

Micah: I did CDs for the last album, and it was nice. But I realized the only people who were actually buying them were people who wanted to support me anyway and just give me money to keep making music. I figured if people are doing that, and no body really uses CDS anymore - if someone is going to listen to it they are going to listen to it on the iPod or their computer. I released it on cassette to give people that tangible representation of the album if they wanted it. Also if they wanted to support me they can buy a cassette and have a novelty item. The EP is free online anyway so if people really want my music, they can get it there.

Ashley: How do you deal with nerves before a performance?

Micah: It just gets better, generally. It’s just going to happen and you get up on stage and it goes away eventually. The more shows I play, the less nervous I get, but I guess I don’t really have a real way of dealing with them at this point. During the day before the show, I’ll take it easy. I’ll make sure I’ll have lots of time to get into a relaxed mode before the show. I like making sure everything is set up, like making sure my strings are new on my guitar, that all my pedals are all in the right place. Stuff like that. Playing with the band helps too because they are a bunch of people that help me out with the nerves. I don’t really have any tricks, it’s just something that you get used to and you cope with and eventually they start not being there.

Ashley: How do you balance music with any other obligations you might have (work, school, etc.)

Micah: It’s nice because right now I have a steady job during the daytime so my nights are always free. I have a consistent schedule which really helps me scheduling things because I know how everything is going to fit together and I can do that as far in advance as possible. It’s mostly just a matter of making things work. Sometimes I’m out playing a show until 2 am and then I need to be at work for 8 o’clock. Which sucks sometimes but it’s just a matter of prioritizing and making sure you have the time to do both.

Ashley: What is your songwriting process like?

Micah: Generally, I let the songs write themselves and then go back and make sure it’s the way I want it to be.

Ashley: What does that mean?

Micah: Everything I’ve released up until this point was basically written by me in my bedroom with my guitar. I would just play and make sounds while playing chords that evoke a certain emotion to me. I would try to make the sounds of the words I’m saying, fit the sounds I’m making with my guitar. The more I do that, the more it sounds like real words and then I can start attach words to those sounds. Then I’ll go back to make sure the lyrics make sense with a specific theme that I’d like to write about.

So, I start with guitar and melody and then I just kind of let everything build around each other, as much as I can. After that I’ll start hearing the rest of the instrumentation in my head. I’ll have drums and guitar parts, then I’ll write the rest of the guitar parts and whatever else I need like bass, keyboard.

Ashley: What advice do you have for beginners?

Micah: I’d say just work really hard. Just do stuff as much as you possibly can, all the time and always think about how you can be improving. I think I might have been a bad beginner in some ways because I didn’t share things with people for a very, very, very long time. I was super shy about everything. I probably wouldn’t recommend that for people because if you are shaping yourself into something that is good, it’s good to have criticism. That’s something that’s helped me improve a lot too. I am a lot more open to criticism than originally because I’m more confident in the work I’m making. A lot of the time people think that it’s easier than it actually is when ultimately it’s just putting in the time and writing and writing and writing and writing until something is finally good. Well then, you aren’t a beginner anymore.

Ashley: You were saying how for live performances you have to hire a band. How do you do that? What is the process for that?

Micah: I’ve gotten really lucky with my band because they were just a bunch of people I knew. They were friends that I met in different places and it all kind of just came together at the right time. I knew I wanted to play with a band for way longer than before when I first started releasing music. I wanted to play with a band, but I also knew I wanted to sound good so I needed people who would be able to [play my music] well. Around the time I was recording Okay Night, I knew the songs absolutely 100% needed a band if they were to be represented well live. So I started asking around to a few people who I knew were good musicians and we had a few good practices. Then I agreed to a show that I said I would do with the band before we had even practiced once so we just practiced like crazy before and it turned out really well. Since then I’ve had to replaced a couple people because they left for vacation or for the summer, but I’ve just gotten really lucky with people who were excited about the project and who were also extremely talented musicians who really helped the music come out better then if I was by myself.

Ashley: And when you are showing the band the music, do you only show you’re your part and let them improvise their own parts or are your very specific with what they need to do?

Micah: I have very specific instructions because I am writing all the parts and because when I was bringing everyone in on this all the songs for Okay Night were pretty much written. Basically it was “Here is exactly how to play the part, you can improvise if you want to, but the songs basically need to sound like this.” I don’t really like doing that because I feel like I’m stifling other people’s creativity but –

Ashley:  -but it is your music

Micah: Exactly, and that’s what it boils down to and that’s why I again got really lucky with the people I’m playing with. They are really creative and they offer great ideas and really great input and we have really great practices - all brainstorming new ideas on how to make the songs better - but ultimately they are people that are okay with the fact that I originally wrote the music and I get the final say. So yeah, my band is good.

Ashley: We kind of talked about it before but what is the most stressful part of being a professional solo musician?

Micah: You’re doing every aspect of a band alone, essentially. I’ve talked to people who are in bands and they have this really awesome [system] where they all designate whose doing what. They have somebody who takes the place of a manager, and they all designate all their specific roles. When you’re by yourself you are doing everything and your accountable for the same responsibilities that each band member would be responsible for. If you aren’t well rehearsed and something fucks up, it’s completely on you. It’s your name on the posters at the end of the day. That’s probably the most stressful part, you have a lot of responsibilities and you have to deal with it if something goes wrong. It’s your fault even if it isn’t directly you fault. You need to be crazy proactive about everything, organized and on top of everything all the time or things can go terribly wrong.

Ashley: What are your future plans, where would you like to see your project going?

Micah: Actually I was filling out grant applications the other day; which was really good for me because it was the first time I had written out my plan on paper. Basically at this point [my plan is to] just go to tour, and keep writing the new music we are making now. It is quite a bit different [than our most recent sound], it’s a lot more pop sounding, I use more synthesizers and I have more fun with it now. It works better for live performances and I’m really excited to see where that goes. As soon as I have songs that I feel good with, we are going to go into the studio and record them. I’m organizing a tour but it’s still in the early stages of planning and I need to figure out how I’m going to pull it off. So far, everything with my music has been falling that natural progression of opportunities coming up and I’ll take them and then I look for [more] opportunities and I find them and take them.​ 

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jul 9, 2015 at 6:00pm PDT

Support Winnipeg musician Micah Visser!

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Instruments: Voice and piano

Genres: Soul, Urban and Pop

Flo and I met back in December 2014 when we were both performing at a Holiday Party. It was one of the first times I ever performed solo and was really nervous. Flo did an excellent job calming me down and encouraging me. (Her performance was also absolutely stunning, by the way.) I knew she would be a great choice to ask to interview because she would have great advice and feedback about the music industry. Her bright and energetic personality was amazing to watch and listen to as she passionately talked about her musical experiences. You can tell this girl absolutely adores music. 

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Ashley: What made you decide to do music?

Flo: For me, it was the one thing that felt right. I felt this fullness, this connection. It not only felt right, it felt good. Everything else I tried and looked into, when I was looking into different careers and fields, nothing felt like really and truly me. [Music] felt like a great fit for me because it was effortless. I loved it.

A: How long have you been professionally singing?

F: This sounds hilarious but I always joke around when I “came out of the closet” with music; because I was definitely more of a closet singer. Growing up, myself and my sisters and my cousins all loved to sing. I always believed because of the way I grew up that the arts like dance, drawing, writing stories anything artistic was a hobby. It’s not something viable.

Now that I look back on it, I was naturally always artistically driven. My sisters and I sang since when were like who knows. I have a memory of the three of us being buckled up in the back of my dad’s car and the radio would be on and we would be singing and I remember him turning around and being like “How?! Who taught you guys that?” We just sang, we just imitated what we heard on the radio and we still sing all the time.

I used to love dancing. I watched those shows like ‘So you think you can dance?’, I love it. Singing, dancing and I still have my old sketchbook. I love writing stories. All the stuff came so naturally to me. Nonetheless, it was something I tried to repress or throw in the closet or under the bed and not open it up. I thought if I would sing it would be in a choir or in the shower or in the car. But it wasn’t until 2003 or 2004 where I got to the point where I said “enough!” Be you. Be real. You cannot live the life other people want you to lead because at the end of the day if you’re miserable it’s you that you have to account for. So in 2003 or 2004 I promised myself that I was going to take steps and cross paths with people, figuring out what I can do to actually take it seriously and pursue it. Since then it’s been a journey.

A: Whom do you listen to? Who inspires you musically?

F: Okay, if I have to narrow it down my favorite are the American R&B songstresses or soul divas. Everybody from Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Mary J. Blige, Whitney Houston, Brandy, Monica and who am I missing? There are so many. John Legend, I was just setting off all these females but also Stevie wonder. My favorite are definitely the rhythm and blues and soul. That’s my language. That’s what makes my heart beat. There are many more, but those are the main ones.

A: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

F: If I’m going to be real and sum it all up. I’m happy that I decided to take that leap and pursue music. It was a scary thing for me. But it’s changed my life and I’m happy I did it.

At one point I’ve wrote a list of venues that I’ve dreamt of performing on. Stages that I dreamed of gracing, and would you believe it, about a year ago I looked at that list again, and I got goose bumps. I’ve done it! Things like that, it’s just crazy. I don’t want to sound like I’m tooting my own horn or bragging. I view myself as a regular girl-next-door, a regular person. But some crazy things have happened to me on this journey that wouldn’t have happened if I had not pursued this. I love Lauryn Hill, and getting the opportunity to open for her at the concert hall or getting the opportunity to perform at the Burton Cummings theatre. There was a benefit concert at the MTS Centre and singing on that stage was insane.

If I told Flo from the past that these things will happen I would have laughed at Flo from the future and said “Come on, let’s be real.”

Those things have given me the faith and the boldness to be like “okay if these things can happen, the sky’s the limit. All things are possible.” Sometimes when I have those down days or down moments. I think to myself, “don’t forget what has happened before. Hold on to your faith, keep on looking forward because the best is yet to come.”

Don’t get into those pity party moments because we all go through those up and downs when we have our vision in mind and we know [it’s] going to be our Mount Everest or our large goal. Sometimes when we look that big goal and it’s so much greater than you, so larger than life and you wonder how you’re going to get there. Baby steps. Which is why when I look at myself and where I’m at, I think “Oh my gosh, this is going to take forever” I need to remind myself that it’s step by step and bit by bit. From where I started to where I am now, things have happened and more is to come.

A: How do you deal with nerves before a performance?

F: Well, I actually heard something that I will never forget that I tell other performers too. I think I as watching an interview on E talk or something. They were saying the greatest performers like Cher, Adele, Madonna get nervous before shows.

Adele, actually, when she had just released her album 21 she was saying how she got so nervous that before a few shows she would projectile vomit. She had a story where she was in Germany on her balcony and she was so nervous that she ended up puking on a fan. From her perspective she’s thinking, “What if I’m not good enough? What if I disappoint all these people who have come to see me?” I was shocked, I couldn’t believe Adele felt the same way.

What really got me was that other than these legends still feeling nervous; I think it was either Cher or Madonna, one of them said that it’s good to feel nervous, like an Olympic athlete before their big feat because that nervousness gets converted into adrenaline. A lot of times, when you have the best killer performance, it’s that adrenaline surging through your veins and arteries.

On top of that, what I got from the show that I’ll never forget, when you stop getting nervous get worried. It means you don’t care anymore, right? And sometimes maybe for smaller performances, where my heart might not be in it, I do okay. From my perspective and from what I know I can do, if I lack lustre and feel that’s it’s a mediocre performance I know I can do better. I find the performances where I’m nervous, and I HATE that nervous feeling, I HATE that feeling where, forget butterflies, BATS are in your stomach and you feel like you are going to puke and you are overthinking. I find those performances that I care so much that I want to do well. That nervousness, as soon as you hit the stage becomes adrenaline and you just kill it.

I don’t like those pre-jitters. But from what I hear everyone; actors, comedians, dancers, professional athletes, they all go through it. It probably won’t go away but that’s okay because it’s normal.

A: How do you balance music with any other obligations you might have?

F: I think it’s a constant juggle. I think there are few people who have mastered the art of balance. They need to teach the rest of us. Some months or some days I’m better than others. It’s definitely a struggle. I’ve heard so many stories and I know there are artists where their careers are so successful but their family lives are just brutal; that really get’s my heart because I want to learn from their mistakes. There are some people who have won Grammies, American music awards, Junos and are constantly touring but they’ve had two or three divorces. Or they will feel like crap because they look in their sons or daughters eyes and they are never there for their soccer games or tucking them in at night. Or even their friends who only get to see them on TV but never in person.

Garth Brooks took a hiatus from his career because he wanted to raise his daughters and wanted to be a dad. He ‘s not just a recording artist; he’s a dad too. I really respect that because I feel that’s important. At the end of the day when you are celebrating your accomplishments with your music, you don’t want to be celebrating them alone.

Success in life isn’t about having a successful career but having a successful family and friends. One thing that I have been hearing lately that really resounds in my spirit is that family and relationships are the most important thing in life. Again, I’ve heard so many stories of successful people who are rich but they are so miserable and so lonely. At the end of the day let’s say, not to be morbid but at your funeral you don’t want one or five people there, not that it’s a popularity contest but you want to know that you’ve impacted and touched the lives of many people through relationships.

For me, I want to try my best to balance. Sometimes, if that means that certain aspects of my music career are going to be sacrificed, at the end of the day I want to sleep well at night knowing that I didn’t mess up when the time comes [something like] marriage or kids because I was so 100% focused on my music career. So to be honest, it’s something I want to master. Balance is so healthy and important. But it’s something that I’m continuing to learn more of and try to be very conscious about. 

A: What is your songwriting process?

F:  I learned that there are so many different types of artists but I find that artists fall into different pools. There are some people who are constantly multi-tasking. When they are on touring a specific album, they are writing their next album. They are finding bits and pieces of time while they are performing to record.

Some artists do things specifically in seasons. That’s me, I’m one of those people. I’m all or nothing. I have a season where I just focus on songwriting and after that, it’s the season of taking the songs and start recording them. After that I focus on marketing and pushing that album, then touring and so on and so forth.

For me, I have learned that I’m a melodically driven person by far. Melodies come to me like out of the blue. I can be in the shower, where it predominantly happens which is the most annoying thing in the world because you’re sopping wet.

I’ve tested it where I’ll finish my shower before getting out and recording the idea as soon and I’ve either forgotten it or it’s changed. I can be driving or at the mall and ideas will just come to me. Thank goodness for our cell phones with voice memos.

It’s great for me to collaborate. Knowing my strengths and weaknesses, it’s great to collaborate with people who are lyrically driven. I’ve met people; it’s funny how things connect naturally, who are opposite of me where lyrics come naturally to them but not melodies. I find that it works best to work people [who are like that.]

Not to say that lyrics don’t come to be, because they do, but I find melodies come to me so much easier. I used to start with chords, melodies and then a couple words will come to my minds or a concept or idea then plug it in and then morph the chords around the melody.

Yeah, melodies are out of my wazoo. It’s at the point where I’ve got tons of melodic ideas and I need to start putting some words to some of them.

As the Beatles did with Paul McCartney and John Lennon, I think it was Let It Be. They started by just saying “Green Eggs and Ham” and they had the melody. Also John Legend said he does [that for] the songs he writes. For All Of Me, maybe the first thing in his mind was the word ‘roses’. He would just sing with the chords he had “roses and roses” until sentences or more concepts came to him.

I’ve found that helps sometimes, I’ll be at the piano and I’ll have a chord progression, then all of a sudden some words will come and I’ll put other words together with other stupid words. Something eventually comes out. For me always start with the melody or chord progression.

A: What advice do you have for beginner singers?

F: Follow your heart. Never sell out and be true to who you are. I love what Sam Smith said at the Grammys. He was trying to form himself to what he felt what the world’s view of the male pop artist. He was trying to lose weight, sing a certain way and he got to a certain point where he was like “screw this.” He was exhausted because he would sing a certain way, create a certain image and would go knocking on the doors of labels and people and everyone was ignoring him and not paying attention. He got to the point where he was so tired of it and just started being himself. If people like it great and if not, they don’t. He was who he was and the rest is history.

Be true to who you are. Soak in as much as you can. Learn from those who want to teach you or go to workshops. Forget just music. Some of the most brilliant minds. have all said that the foolish one is a person who feels that they know it all, but we are all still learning. Learning is so important.

Keep the vision in sight, never stop keeping it clear. Don’t let other people pop it or break it down. Be careful who you share it will because some people who want to tear it down. It’s ridiculous but some people do. Work hard and keep really good people around you. Keep your eyes on the prize and your nose to the grindstone. That’s one of my favorite sayings. Surround yourself with people who are good and people who are stronger in certain areas than you. That’s how you grow. You become more like the people you surround yourself in. There is just so much to say, but that’s the closest I can get to summarizing it all.

A: So you sing and perform, how do you approach people to join your band for performances?

F: The same way as making Facebook or twitter contacts. Initially, when I started off with putting the band together I was a little nervous because what if they didn’t want to join. When I see a musician that inspires me or who is freaking amazing, I’m like “What the heck do I have to lose?” I’ll go up to them and give them my email or maybe if they are into social media I’ll Facebook or tweet them. Telling them “I would love to work with you, let me know if you are interested. Give me a call.”

Of course, it happens where people are busy with a ton of other bands. Or some people, and I’ve told them “Much respect, thank you for your honesty” they will be like “Look Flo, we aren’t really into the R&B soul thing, I’m definitely more country or folk or rock musician.”

I’d rather someone tell me they aren’t feeling it because I’ve worked with musicians who are so good for certain genres or styles of music but it doesn’t blend well with the genres I’m doing. Or someone is playing with me but there heart is not in it. You can totally tell the difference between someone who is passionate and who loves what they are doing with you and someone who doesn’t. I love working with musicians who have their heart in it and will be like “heck yeah, let’s do this.”  Just test it out and just don’t take it personally if it doesn’t work out.

A: What is the most stressful part of being a professional musician?

F: I’d have to say unlike people we know who have the 9-5 or 8-4 job; it’s instability. As people say, it is one in a million who get to that real spot of success. But then again, success is what we define as success. [For] Some people success is being able book coffee shops across the country or continent. [For] Some people success is being able to book venues the like the West End Cultural Centre. Other people, success is selling out arenas or stadium or concert galls and getting nominated for Junos or Grammys.

I guess there are some dry spells. There are periods where it’s quieter with gigs and you have bills and stuff. I’d have to say for me, the instability and for somebody who is a little Type A who likes to have things planned out. The spontaneity can be cool but other times it can be like “crap” how do you plan your life when there are surprises that pop out.

For myself and my goals, as I mentioned, my definition of success is big and out there and so keeping my eyes on the prize is sometimes hard. Meaning I do know what I want but perseverance and persistence and staying on this road [can be challenging] because I know some people who are so talented but got tired and exhausted and sick of [it]. Continuing to have faith in what I believe and to make it and get to the end of the road is the end goal.

The instability with the little surprises that come along and holding onto that dream and knowing it may seem invisible to a lot of other people but understanding it will come. Those two things are the most stressful.

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jul 2, 2015 at 10:02am PDT

Support Winnipeg musician Flo!

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Genre(s): Indie Alternative Pop

Instrument(s): Bass Guitar, Guitar, Keyboard, Voice

Sandy from Indicator Indicator, originally from the band Quinzy, talks about the struggles of leaving one band and feeling the need to keep making music. He talks about the stresses of starting out and touring and talks about his decision to join the label Pipe and Hat. His was really interesting to listen to and I really enjoyed the way he understood each experience meant to him and what he took away from it all.

With me still not really used to meeting and interviewing band members, I was really nervous about meeting Sandy. I had heard great things about Indicator Indicator from a couple of my co-workers but hadn’t met them before the interview. I had volunteered at Sc Mira’s Album release on June 11 (which was an amazing show by the way) and got to see Indicator Indicator perform as one of the opening bands. They all had an excellent stage presence that really pumped the audience in a great way and the music was vivacious. You could really tell the crowd adored them. 

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Ashley: What started Indicator Indicator?

Sandy: Well, Quinzy was just starting to wind down a little bit. We spent a long time with Quinzy, doing the four-piece pop rock band thing, a little more mainstream. We spent a lot of years trucking away, swinging for the fences with labels, things like that, and it started to weigh us down a little bit. But we’re best friends - we didn’t want to stop, and so we just put it away for a little bit.

But I’ve got the sickness worse than anyone else, I think, so I just couldn’t stop. I write, and songs just kept coming. My first love, since I was 15 or 16, has been home recording. So I kind of wanted to get back to where I started, which was these home recording projects. Not even thinking about how you would play them live, or what the point of it was. Just to make music for the sake of making music. That’s what the first Indicator Indicator EP was. [It was] me playing at home on my computer, recording all of the instruments myself. A little labor of love.

Then it was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award and things were going really well with it, and I wanted to take things further. But I wanted to do something different from a 4-piece rock band because I had just done that, and was a little bored with it.

So, I recruited a friend of mine, Matthew Harder, and we did it as a duet, striving to make as much noise as possible. We couldn’t quite play these rich pop tunes with just the two of us so we did a lot of digital vocal harmonies and looping and a bit of electronic sequencing. And things like that that were totally out of our comfort zone because we were just musicians, not necessarily technology-oriented people.

In fact, Matt is a folk player - blue grass, primarily - so we really pushed ourselves outside of our comfort zone. We spent a couple years doing the two piece thing, and did a little touring - it was really cool and fun. Then as the next recording started to happen, it was getting bigger with more live drums and real bass guitar, and I was starting to inch back to making it a band. I took this long circular route back to a 4-piece band!  But this time we’re using a lot less traditional electric guitar, more synth, more fake instruments and other stuff like that. Just blending organic with inorganic.

What I love about pop is that it’s like a mockingbird.  These birds are known to grab all the other bird songs they hear and blend them into their own collage. It doesn’t care about genres, it will just take what it wants out of everything. So, if you like a hi-hat tone from this hip-hop song, grab it. If you like heavy synth, use that. It doesn’t have a lot of parameters, and I like that. 

Ashley: Where does the name come from?

Sandy: It was a song title for about 10 years. I like song titles; I have notebooks full of them. For some reason its kind of where I start a lot of the time. So I had this song title that I really liked - I had read about a bird called the greater African honeyguide, the genus is “indicator” and the species is “indicator”. It somehow knows where honeycombs are trapped in trees, but can’t get to them, so it co-evolved with nearby tribes of humans, and would lead them to where the trees were and where the combs were trapped. The humans would crack them open and they would all get to share the honey.

I though it was the coolest nature story, plus I loved it as a name, but I could never find a song that was really good enough for [it]. Then when I was starting this new project I was like “oh good, I’ve got the perfect name waiting in the wing.”

Ashley: What is a practice session like with the whole band?

Sandy: I get to play with a lot of guys who have a lot of band experience, so we don’t have much patience for watching each other practice anymore. There are high expectations that everyone knows what they are doing, and so more we’re just tweaking and selecting who is playing what part, and making more “production” decisions than actually “can you play this guitar line”.

I tend to think with production in mind as I write, and maybe 1 in 10 songs I could just play on an acoustic guitar and have it make sense. I guess I could write more of those types of songs, but that’s not really where I lean. I like parts; I like having a bass line that’s distinctive to the song. When there are all these moving parts in a song and there are only four of you to play them, it’s more about who is doing what at what time, and making sure we’re representing the song correctly. If someone were coming in [and listening to this] cold, would they be able to understand it?

So it’s more about a “producer” mindset than “instrumentalist”.  I don’t want just a guitar player, or just a drummer. I want people who can do whatever. And so we’re just four producers trying to make something cool.

Ashley: So when you are writing music, do you think of every part? How do you bring that to the band?

Sandy: Usually I record it all and then say, “here’s what we’re playing.” Although this is the first recording that the other guys are really deeply involved. We’re getting ready to release a mini-LP, (it’s a little bigger than an EP, so I’m calling it a mini-LP), and one of the songs is called No Anthem, which is the first single, and I had it fully produced [to sound] kind of cool. But when I brought it to the band it just wasn’t working. So it got deconstructed and became something totally different and now it’s very much a band arrangement.

But for the most part they come fully fleshed, though. I did that a lot with Quinzy too. As soon as I get into a song, I can’t really let it rest until it’s finished in my head.

Ashley: I can’t produce music.

Sandy: You should try, it’s easy.

Ashley: I have tried, it’s too hard for me.

Sandy: The world we live in, every low-entry Macbook has Garage Band; which is an amazing recording tool and let’s you multi-track as much as you want. You can dick around, and no one needs to hear it. You just chisel away at it. Sometimes you can be recording something, a full song even and the only thing you like about it is this little guitar part, so then take that and build around it.

I think it’s a great tool and it’s obviously revolutionized music. People are making laptop rock. People are making full music all on their own and they don’t know how to play a single instrument. It’s lusher and more innovative than any 4-piece folk rock band you’ll ever here, again because they’ve got no parameters.

Ashley: I guess I can give it a shot. So who inspires your music?

Sandy: Bands that mess around a lot in the studio.  And people who can write songs. But that’s almost beside the point. Too me, it’s how can they make it interesting, different, cool. Subvert what may be a great melody. I find that stuff inspiring, and I’m often scared that I’m maybe not pushing myself enough to do that.

But also, modern pop. I love modern pop. With Tegan and Sara, when they just jumped straight into top 40 synth-pop recently… I thought that was a really cool move. And I know they took a lot of slack for it; but I think their songs are just so beautiful and air-tight, so unnatural-sounding, but so moving. It cannot be recreated. It’s an art onto itself. It’s unnatural. It’s an impressionistic painting or something. All kinds of pop nowadays, the amount of creativity involved is just staggering, the amount of love these engineers and producers are putting into it. Put headphones on and it’s a magical world, it’s great. And pop never gets credit for it. It’s seen as disposable, and maybe it is. The songs don’t actually “mean” anything, but they are staggeringly beautiful. Like that new Selena Gomez song; I mean, who likes Selena Gomez? But that song is so good when it comes on the radio.

We can’t do that modern pop thing, quite. I don’t have the skills, but maybe I would if I could.

Ashley: You mentioned a little earlier that you start with songwriting titles, but what exactly is your songwriting process?

Sandy: Sometimes titles. More often than not I’m sitting at the piano. It’s almost always at a piano. Once in awhile I’ll try to come from a more production-based place. I’ll get a really nice feel or beat or something like that and just improvise over it. I usually have email drafts of lyrics all over the place and when one melody comes out I’ll sort through the lyrics and see if anything goes with that; in terms of feel, or if it actually fits with the melody.

So it’s pretty rare that I just sit at the piano and pop something out all at once. Maybe a verse melody comes along, then I think about other chorus melodies I have laying around, and see if they fit. Look around at the lyrics I have, or see if there is a title I want to start with, and it slowly comes together.

But it can happen suddenly once in awhile. Our new record starts with a waltz called Instant to Instant, and that feels like the last time I just sat down at piano and was like, “Oh, here’s a song. Oh, and the lyrics came too, how nice!”.  I walked away that afternoon feeling all good about myself. But it’s usually a more painful process than that.

I try to be really ruthless with songs. My personal belief is that everyone can write melodies. Everyone can. When we’re whistling in the street, when we’re singing in the shower. People are creative. Every single person. I think the craft of it, or the hard part, is in he editing. Knowing what’s good and what is not, and being able to cobble it into something that both makes sense on first listen, and yet is not quite what people would expect.

Ashley: With Indicator Indicator, what accomplishments are you most proud of?

Sandy: Little moments. Like back when it was just Matthew and I doing a two-piece, when we were in Toronto for a little festival - it was our first time on the road, and we were still working out a lot of kinks. (Actually we never really got through all the kinks, we kind of just moved on). But it was particularly tricky in that first little go, to the point where two thirds of the shows were miserable. This piece of gear broke, I didn’t do this right, this looped sucked.

We had one of those shows, and it was a showcase where we were supposed to be judged, and it was a terrible show. I was like “Oh my god, I’m too old to have terrible shows like this.” We went home, had a beer and kind of licked our wounds because we actually had another show that night. We did eight or nine shows in six days, I think. So we had to pack everything up again and go do another show and THAT one we crushed. The idea that we just got right back up and put the first one in the rear view mirror, and then got a win. It’s those tiny moments that I love and will never get tired of. Because it should always be hard, it should always be SO hard so when you get those little victories it feels so good.

It’s a double edged sword, I’m always kind of proud of the product, but I’m never satisfied with it, I’m never really happy with it. I like the records that I’ve made, I like the recordings, I like the recordings Quinzy made. But I don’t listen to them, I would never listen to them, I would only hear the things I would want to change now. Similarly, I look back at shows and see the banter that I didn’t like, or the missed notes. So, the details are almost always painful, but there is a more general pride simply in that I get to be in a band. It’s the coolest thing in the world and I still love it.

I love it as a concept, but every actual moment of it seems frustrating and hard and soul-sucking [laughs]. But it’s who I am and I have to do it.

Ashley: What is you favorite song to perform?

Sandy: I think it’s the song called Back into the fire. It’s the last song on the first EP, and in retrospect it touches on the time that Quinzy was going for major label deals, and we got kind of close, but all around us we could just see that this model we were chasing was dying. That it doesn’t work anymore. It’s all going to be totally different soon so when it ended, it felt like I was escaping a burning building. But then I realized “Nope, I’m going back in. Here we go.”

It’s a simple song that just felt kind of pure coming out, and the feel of it works with the lyrical vibe. And I feel it every time we play it, almost every single time. It’s a slow, boring ballad and maybe we shouldn’t be doing it all the time, but I love it and it’s important to me. It’s one of those rare victories that I don’t always feel in songs.

Ashley: How do you deal with nerves before performing?

Sandy: [Points to beer] For the record, I just pointed to my beer. [laughs] No, I generally don’t get too nervous. What’s funny is that I’ll usually have nerves the day before. Or even the day of, but as soon as I’m setting up, that’s where the experience comes in. “Oh I’ve done this before, I’ve done this a million times. I know this.” This process of getting ready, strapping on your guitar, checking on your gear, tapping on your mic, it just puts you in this zone like, “I know how to do this”.

I used to have worse nerves, and you just have to barge through it. There is no easy way around it. Really, you should always have some nerves. If it’s just dead to you, that’s not a good thing. You have to feel some kind of apprehension that it’s not going to work, that you’re always on the knife’s edge, and you have to accept it for what it is. Yet, you need to realize that the stakes are not that high. I mean, you cannot play the worst rock and rock show ever played. You can’t. And what’s so important to you won’t be that important to the audience. That’s sort of sad and sort of cynical, but it’s the truth. All you can do it make them feel that this is as important as it is to you. The worse case scenario is not that they’re going to hate it, it’s that they’re not going to care. If you can kind of realize that without letting it take away your steam, you can put it in a proper context. I mean, this isn’t Doctors without Borders. It’s standing there trying to entertain people, and it’s been done a million times before you and will be done a million times after you. So just do you’re best.

That’s no answer for you at all, I’m sorry.

Or, I guess the answer is doing it again and again and again because you have to. That’s the only way.

Ashley: What is the most stressful thing about touring?

“...it should always be hard, it should always be SO hard so when you get those little victories it feels so good.”

— Sandy Taronno

Sandy: Money. It’s expensive, and being away from home is hard. I have a two-year-old son and it’s not easy to be away and realize he’s growing up without you, and that life just goes on. I know a few musicians for who [touring is] their primary source of income, but it’s very rare. For the most part, even the most creatively successful musicians have another job somewhere. They have to. Which means you need to leave that behind when you tour, and if you have a family you need to leave them behind too. There’s just so much selfishness that it can feel pretty bad. So, when you come to a place and play for no one, you wonder “why am I leaving everyone for this?” Yet, if you want to be in a band you have to do it. It’s a sacrifice, but really it’s a selfish sacrifice. And if you think too much about it, that’s what makes it hard. So, you just need to not think so hard about it at the time, and be very careful in the touring that you choose to do, and make sure each trip is the right move. That it’s appropriate, and it’s worth the investments. You have to do it for a very good reason.

Ashley: How did you get signed to your label?

Sandy: When Indicator Indicator started, I knew I wanted to release as much as I could on my own. I’ve always liked the do-it-yourself approach. I’m a very hands-on kind of guy. I even ran our own promotion campaign for the first record because I wanted to see what it was like. And I just like learning and seeing all the different sides of the industry.

Anyway, I was really happy doing it all myself and seeing how far I could get, but cracks were starting to show and I was hitting some walls. I wasn’t doing a very good job over here, or the music was suffering over there. And there were just these walls you hit – some things you just can’t do on your own. It’s not a matter of will, it’s that you just can’t do it. I came to the realization that I should probably team up with someone to relieve some stress and get opportunities that I can’t get on my own.

So I reached out to Pipe & Hat just because I wanted someone local that I could talk with in person everyday if I wanted to, and I felt like they’re hungry. Like, they have these large ambitions so in a way I can unload that feeling a little bit. Let them feel the fire and hunger so I can focus a bit more on perfecting my own little world.

These guys seemed to fit the bill, so I reached out to them and we right away got along beautifully and formed a fast friendship. I’ve been really impressed with what they’ve done so far and the level of professionalism that they’ve brought. They’re challenging us to raise our game, and that pressure feels damn good.

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jun 18, 2015 at 3:21pm PDT

Support Winnipeg Band Indicator Indicator!

If you like this post, please hit the like and share button below! Please reach out to me via Twitter or my contact page! I would love to hear anything you have to say! Really, anything. I'm lonely. Also I now have a new Facebook page that will let you know when each post is posted! I would really appreciate if you could like it! Thank you!

Genre(s): Neo-Soul influenced by Jazz, Hip-Hop, Folk and experimental

Gaby's Instrument(s): Lead Guitar, Percussion

Selci's Instrument(s): Singer, electronics, guitar

I first met Gaby at the Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba. We were both in the same chorus so I felt good about contacting her to interview her and Sapphire Empire. I had seen Selci on campus but hadn't had the opportunity to formally introduce myself. Gaby, Selci and I got together at the Hollow Reed and over some delicious tea and snacks, that I can’t remember the names of, we talked about Sapphire Empire. These girls must be on the same wavelength. They were so much fun to interview because they were constantly finishing each other’s sentences.

I love how this interview focused a lot on how to make a big band work. I've never experienced performing in a band and I had never asked any other the other artists I interviewed who were in bands what it was like.

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Ashley: What started Sapphire Empire? Where did it come from?

Gaby: Well we met and started jamming together and it worked magically somehow.

Selci: Yeah, we met somehow. Apparently she used to see me on the bus but I didn’t see her.

Gaby: We also both go to the same faculty.

Selci: We met at a show and it was like “Oh I think I know you from choir”. Then we were like “let’s jam” and then we jammed and it was like ♪♫La la la, this is awesome! ♪♫ and still now every time we jam it’s like ♪♫La la la, this is awesome♪♫.

Gaby: We’re just good musical partners now somehow randomly comrades.

Ashley: So how did the whole band get together?

Gaby: Well we write the music primarily and then we have a lot of different members. We went through a few bass players and drummers. We ended up getting together with some people from the faculty of music. So our drummer Ben kidd, our keyboard player Anatol Rennie, our trumpet players Decarlo Jackson and Emily Kidd. They all go to the faculty of music. Our bass player is this little wunderkin, he’s this little 20 year-old who we met and he’s so good and wonderful. He doesn’t go to school with but we just love him so much.

Selci: He’s been in the band the longest and we love him dearly. His name is Lucas Redekop. We’ve had the group with all of us for about a year and a bit. It’s been a great band and it’s been super jamming, really great. And everyone is super down, so it’s nice! [laughs]

Ashley: How did you approach them? Did you know them first?

Gaby: We picked them out little by little we were like “Hey you know drums, you’re in the faculty, and I kind of know you; let’s jam.” And just like that.

Selci: and when we started jamming everyone realized how good it was. Everyone is a unit now. It’s really nice.

Ashley: What happens during these jam sessions?

Selci: I think if we just want to write music, sometimes we’ll just open jam and jam it out. That’s not an entire rehearsal though. Sometimes we will jam for a bit to get the juices flowing and then practice the songs that need work. Sometimes we will end up re-writing sections or change people’s parts.

Gaby: Basically it’s three things:

1. Someone has something that they would like to bring in that is incomplete and we will all work it.
2. One it will be completely random and open and don’t really know what we’re doing.
3. We’re fixing things or rehearsing. Making sure everything is tight if we have a show coming up.

Ashley: Is someone just playing and then someone else just joins in?

Gaby: Yeah they could yell out “this is in A minor and I’m going from First to Fifth to First” or Lucas will play a bass line and others will be like “ooh, what can I do with that.”

Selci: Even when we write the songs, we write the shell of the song but we aren’t writing every bass line or the drum charts. We bring it to the band and everyone adds their own artistic flavor and help complete it.

Ashley: Where does the name Sapphire Empire come from?

Selci: We were just brainstorming names for a show-

Gaby: No what happened was, we got a phone call for the very first show we were going to play and the woman who was printing the posters called and left a message saying “Hey, I’ll be printing the posters in an hour. Can you call me back with your band name?”

Selci: We were like “Uhhh”. This is when we had just been jamming for a few weeks and we were like “I don’t know.” We wanted something epic. I think somehow we were looking into names of different stones, we were searching books and sapphire came up which resonates a lot with me because it was my birth stone and I’ve been into it my whole life.

Gaby: and I thought it was funny that it was related to Sapphos which is the Greek island where they send all the lesbians and I thought it would be funny if people thought we were lesbians.

Selci: And empire rhymes with [sapphire]. It resonated with both of us and some people after even approached us saying, “oh that’s kind of like Sapphos” and we were like “oh cool, that’s good.” We’re pretty girl power.

Ashley:  What other bands or musicians inspires your music?

Selci: Erykah Badu and Amy Winehouse have really inspired my singing. Me personally, I’ve been listening to a lot of freak folk like Regina Spektor, Coco Rosie. Oh! Also MadLib.

Gaby: Nina Simone

Selci: Yeah for sure, she’s classic.

Gaby: She’s badass. She’s cool.

Selci: We probably listened to the same folk music when we were younger and then now we’ve transitioned into a lot more soul.

Gaby: Totally. I’d say I’m actually still into some kind of Jazz. If I had to name the top people that are really influential to me are Nina Simone, Charles Mingus, Q-Tip and Neil Young. 

Ashley: What is your songwriting process?

Selci: Different often. We are the most productive when Gabi and I get together on our own time and bring in little riffs that we’ve thought of or stuff that we’ve written on our own time. We then get together, mishmash parts, add stuff and then bring it to the band.  Sometimes we’ll do songwriting with the band but since there are six of us and it ends up being like “this is not going anywhere.”

Gaby: For me, the whole song just happens and I’ll write it out. Like the song High Fructose Corn Syrup I just wrote in one go. I didn’t write the words for it or anything so I brought it to Selci and she finished it.

Selci: Then we brought it to the band and refined the whole thing.

Gaby: So either the whole tunes comes out and then I give it to them to complete it or if I have little pieces of stuff I’ll come and meet Selci and we’ll sew them together.

Selci: Sometimes she’ll have a riff and I’ll have a riff and when we don’t know what to do with them, suddenly we’ll realize they work and we’ll smush them together and it will be this Frankenstein song.

Gaby: but they don’t sound like Frankenstein songs.

Selci: No, they don’t! It works!

Gaby: Yeah, it’s weird.

Ashley: I’ve never written a song with someone else so I don’t know how to bounce ideas off someone.

Selci: It can be tricky breaking that barrier. Starting out as “Do you think this is okay?” and eventually being like “I don’t care if you like this or not, I’m just going to play it.” Sometimes we really like what the other person wrote.

Gaby: You just need to be comfortable. I write some really weird stuff and I’ll feel it’s too personal or it’s too much about really personal things that I’m sensitive about.

Selci: But’s that’s what people want to hear. The truth. The honesty.

Gaby: You should do it; it’s an interesting experience.

Ashley: With the band, what accomplishments are you most proud of?

Selci: Our EP release!

Gaby: That’s true, that was great!

Selci: We released an EP in the spring and I think it’s a really early sound. We recorded the first 5 tunes that Gaby and I first wrote together and recorded them over the year. We did it pretty casually because we had been in school full time and it was hard. We got together, released it and we had a really really nice EP release. We’re not necessarily promoting the crap out of it but we now have something to show and to listen to and to reflect on. Now we are going to move forward and we are currently working on a new sound and a new album.

Gaby: I think we’re proud of the EP and I’m just really happy with everyone in the band and how we all get along and respect each other. We can go on tour and not kill each other.

Selci: That’s probably the biggest thing. Having such a unit.

Gaby: The people are committed and amazing people. They’re responsible and we all get along.

Selci: They’re all super conscious individuals.

Ashley: What is your favorite song to perform with the Band?

Selci: I don’t think I have one.

Gaby: I like playing the song called Bebop; because it’s about how much I hate school.

Selci: I was going to say that is my least favorite one because it’s really hard. It challenges me but I have to say these words so fast and I have to make it sound good somehow.

Gaby: That’s fine; we don’t have to have the same one.  I didn’t think we would.

Ashley: Do you have any advice for people who want to start a big band?

Selci: Just keep asking people to play with you and then don’t get discouraged when people don’t keep playing with you or you don’t want to keep playing with someone. Keep on going.

Gaby: Yeah, don’t get discouraged. We went through so many people.

Selci: People have their own agenda and it’s hard to find people who mesh with you. Ask as many people as you can. And keep asking after that.

Gaby: If you see a band and you think their guitar player is really great, as them to jam! It can feel really discouraging and I think some people are reading this interview are thinking “they just got lucky and find the perfect band?”  But man, we went through tons of people and it was really frustrating.

Selci: We had a drummer for a long time that Gabi didn’t jive with that I was really attached to him and we didn’t know what to do. We almost broke up at one point but then felt we had to just keep going.

Gaby: It seems like the biggest deal, but it’s not.

Selci: People will see us in our band and ask how we have such a great band.

Gaby: Well, we went through so many people. Don’t worry, we went through it too.

Selci: It’s all what you manifest too. If you’re like “ooh no one wants to play with me! The world’s going to end!” Well, no one is going to want to play with you. But it you’re like “okay! I’ve got to keep trying because this is what I want to do!” Manifest that energy and people are going to want to play with you because you’re not being a bum hole.  I know it can be hard to find people to jam with but you just have to keep on looking.

Ashley: Where would you recommend to look?

Selci: At shows!

Gaby: Go to shows! Check out the music scene!

Selci: Check out some bands. There are so many awesome people playing. The scene in Winnipeg is thriving. There’s really good venues. If you don’t know where shows are happening, just go to the handsome daughter on any random night. Go to the Goodwill on any random night. Go to the Park theatre any random night. If you don’t like the bands, check another night! They have all genres.

Gaby: Just ask. I’m pretty sure if anyone asked anyone in the band to jam, we would say yes. I mean if someone asked me to jam I’d probably say yeah.

Selci: People ask me to jam all the time and sometimes I have to say “sorry I don’t have time right now “ or sometimes I do. You’ll definitely have to put yourself out there. If you’re not willing to do that it’s going to be pretty damn hard to find someone to jam with.

Ashley: What kind of stressful situations or challenges have you’ve had with being in a band?

Selci: Well now that we are a solidified band and we aren’t dealing with a lot of turnover of people. So I guess just making sure everyone is happy.

Gaby: and everyone’s needs are being met.

Selci: and everyone is feeling okay and comfortable. Gaby and I have moved through a lot as a result of being in a band together. We went into this band barely knew each other and then ended up seeing each other constantly.  We come from really different backgrounds.

Like Gaby is a first generation Mexican chick and she has crazy pride. She has experienced many things in her life that I’ll never experience with regards to oppression and race. With me, I’m the epitome of the type of person that she, like, want to be when she was a kid because that was what seen as the ideal or something. So she has a lot of really intense issues that I encompass. A lot of my beliefs for a long time were non-intentionally ignorant but a little ignorant because of my upbringing. I’m not aware of what it’s like to be a racial minority. I’m not aware of what it’s like to be a first generation immigrant. So there’s tons of stigma that I had and that she had from the opposite side of the spectrum that we’ve had to move through together.  And now we’re both way better people and we ‘ve learned so much from each other. I even think that’s on a large scale but even with relationships with other members of the band and we had to navigate how they work as a person. We want to make sure everyone is comfortable because when you are sharing such a bond with someone like making music you have to be on the same page as him or her. You can’t make music with someone when you don’t feel like you are one the same conscious level as him or her. It doesn’t feel satisfying or something substantial.

Gaby: Yeah, I think at this point we are just trying to navigate relationships. Because being in a band for us is like being in a big family. We have the music thing happening, we’re pretty organized, and we have goals that we want to accomplish in terms of careers and financial success or whatever. But we are focusing on being feasibly a working long-term functioning band. So we have all these plans, which is the easy part because the hardest part is the relationships.

Selci: Just making sure everyone is good.

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jun 11, 2015 at 11:57am PDT

Support Winnipeg band Sapphire Empire!

If you like this post, please hit the like and share button below! Please reach out to me via Twitter or my contact page! I would love to hear anything you have to say! Really, anything. I'm lonely. Also I now have a new Facebook page that will let you know when each post is posted! I would really appreciate if you could like it! Thank you!

Instruments: Guitar, Voice, Piano, Bass

Genres: Folk, Roots, Singer/Songwriter

Slow Leaves is Winnipeg's Grant Davidson. His songs, genuine and honest, spare nothing in creating vivid images and heartfelt connections. His voice, warm and effortless, has been compared to the likes of Doug Paisley, Gene Clark and Brian Ferry. His latest release, 2014's Beauty is so Common, like a California country-folk record newly discovered in your parent's attic, blurs the line between new and old. With producer Rusty Matyas’ (Imaginary Cities) keen sense of pop harmony and arrangement supplying a modern vitality, the result is an album deceptive in its simplicity, rich in melody, and immediately classic. (--ManitobaMusic)

I'm so glad I had the opportunity to meet Grant. He talked about such really problems that every musician faces. I adore his music and getting to hear his music making process and his views on making music was a real treat; it taught me to appreciate it even more. I had such a great time even though we were both freezing together in the chilly wind while talking outside.

Before the interview, I just want you to watch a this video just to see how charming Grant is. I stumbled upon it while doing a little research before meeting him. (I can't help but chuckle every time he does something in the shots where he is wearing a turtleneck and drinking from his wine glass.)

Okay enough about me [ha, at least I think I'm clever] and how I felt talking with Grant and read the interview! I hope you enjoy! Please also check out Grant's social media pages! All listed at the end of the article! 

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Ashley: What’s your musical background and training?

Grant: I don’t really have much of one. When I was 15 I told my mom I wanted to learn guitar so she bought me a guitar and I took lessons for 2 years for classical guitar. I never really had any interest in theory; I just wanted to play like Jimmy Page. So I kind of quit and took it from there on my own; but it was pretty valuable because it taught me how to fingerpick which is something I do a lot of.

Ashley: Do you do any kind of practicing? How often do you push yourself?

Grant: I don’t do a lot of practicing. I just sit and grab an instrument and play around.  Sometimes a certain idea comes along or some sort of interesting melody on the guitar and if I can’t quite to do it, but I hear it, I’ll practice to be able to figure out how I want to play it. I’ll keep practicing it until it’s second nature so I can sing over it. But no, I don’t really practice. But that being said when I started guitar I practiced all time. Well, I wouldn’t use the word practice because I would play any minute I had at home. I would fall asleep playing it. Sounds cheesy, but I really just loved the guitar. I had always wanted to play it, so once I started it never felt like practicing. And I wouldn’t say I would work on specific things I just played.

Ashley: When writing your own music, what is your process?

Grant: There are a couple ways but primarily it comes from sitting around with the guitar and strumming or finger picking, singing melodies or random things. That’s how I’ve written almost every song. Sometimes nothing comes from it but once in awhile there is a certain melody or a hook or a line or some little thing that kind of sparks my interests and I’ll start building around it. Sometimes it becomes a song, sometimes it doesn’t. The inspiration could come from something I’ll hear from another song or another band. If it’s framed a certain way I hadn’t thought of before or just gets me excited, I’ll want to do something like that. It always starts the same way with my guitar, playing around with different ideas. For me, the music always comes first. Music with some kind of vocal melody and then I’ll write the lyrics.

Ashley: I’ve never been able to do that. I think of a melody I like then write a lyrical line that’s doesn’t quite fit and the only way to fix it is by changing the melody so I’ll get stuck. I’ve never done it successfully.

Grant: You don’t want to change the melody?

Ashley: Yeah

Grant: Then you just have to pick words that fit the melody. I run into that too, I’ve had big headaches that never actually turned into anything because I couldn’t get past a two-syllable line to finish a phrase. For example if the cadence of the song needs a word with the emphasis on the second syllable but I could only find words that emphasize the first syllable that rhymed. I couldn’t finish the song just based on that because I didn’t have the right cadence.

Ashley: Who inspires you musically? You mentioned you sometimes listened to other bands for songwriting ideas.

Grant: There are lots bands that I’ve loved over the years. I got into collecting music years ago when a friend of mine with a record player and a great record collection got me excited about records. This was 10 or 15 years ago, but it was a musical awakening because suddenly I would go digging through records and pick something that looked interesting. The scope of music that I was exposed to grew exponentially because I would find anything that sounded interesting to me like: 70s music, early German electronic, ambient records, all sorts of different jazz and everything else. Stuff I had never really explored too much before that. In high school my tastes were limited compared to what they are now. I could name all sorts of stuff, but often it comes from a certain record I fall in love with. It could be the songwriting, the production quality, the instrumentation, or the overall feel of it. I’ll have it in my head while I’m writing my own songs. I’m always consciously or subconsciously wanted [my music] to fit in the context of the accumulated records I love.

For me music is about the feeling. I mean that’s how it is for everyone, but I put much more emphasis on the feel than the technical prowess or dazzling people with my skill. I’m not a virtuoso. Music that feels the best to me could be two notes just repeated sparsely as long as there is a certain feel. I like music that makes me feel like I’m getting into a warm bath. That’s what I try to create generally with my music.

Ashley: What accomplishments are you most proud of, musically?

“My wife and I have had this philosophy of trying to do what we feel is most important and separating it as much as we can from money and making decisions not based on financial reasons.”

— Grant Davidson

Grant: I hope that the best things are yet to come for me. I kind of started looking at music more seriously and make it a primary occupation in the last couple of years so I’m not a spring chicken, but I’m not old. I have a 5-year-old son and a wife and it’s become more complicated. It’s hard to go on the road and right now there isn’t very much money in it so it’s been challenging. I’m coming to it late so in that respect I feel like I’m still doing a lot of the ground work of building before I can really hopefully reap some kind of benefits. I don’t meant financially, that would be nice too but you know what I mean.

For sure there are definitely some high water marks for me. This year I’ll be playing at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. I grew up going to that festival and most people or musicians who go daydream of some day of being up on that stage. That’s a pretty big [deal] for me. I also started touring, which was another big thing. I went from playing around town to going on the road, which is a whole other experience.

What I’m most proud of is taking that leap and quitting my job. It was with support and suggestion from my wife. We’ve been together for a long time and we go through these cycles of doing different jobs but always feeling like I’m rotting on the inside. Like I’m wasting some potential I would regret if I didn’t give it a proper chance to fulfill it and explore that part of me. It was a big decision: quitting my job and I’m really proud of doing it. It felt like a really big risk. It’s something I still struggle with, I have friends who have nice cars and who go on trips; but my wife and I have had this philosophy of trying to do what we feel is most important and separating it as much as we can from money and making decisions not based on financial reasons. Hopefully the opportunities get better and better.

Ashley: I think that’s the hardest thing, making the big leaps. I have the hardest time putting my music out there. I just can’t get past that fear of people hearing it.

 Grant:  There is no way of getting around that. Some people spend a lot of time building their craft and working on it before they put out anything. I guess there are kind of two ways.

Like with the YouTube thing, some people just throw it all out there from the beginning. Some people just have the personality that others catch on to. That’s not for me. In fact when I made my first record, I recorded it with my brother-in-law. It was a very low budget thing, solo singer-songwriter stuff. I was pretty proud of it at the time. We were making them one at a time just burning CD-Rs. It sounds bad so I don’t want anyone to hear it now. It’s no where to be found other than a few people who have it. I don’t like putting something out unless it really represents what I want it to. I think there is a risk if something’s not quite ready or if the ideas are only half-baked or if it’s just not there. I don’t know if there is a right answer for that but that’s how I’ve always felt. 

Back then there was no YouTube. 15 years ago, I was just playing songs for my friends late at night. I don’t know if I would have put stuff on YouTube then either, it’s hard to imagine. It’s the idea of releasing, like I’ve said, I’ve hidden that record from when I first started. 

Actually going back to your last question with what I’m most proud of, my last record I feel like I finally made a record I am really proud of. I put out something I could 100% back up because it felt like it was fully realized. All the other albums I made prior, I felt there were compromises in different ways and in varying degrees. That was my fourth record, and the first one has disappeared, a lost classic maybe [laughs]. That was pretty important to me to finally have something and it also goes to show how hard it is. You can’t stop there; you always need to move forward. It takes a long time to realize those things. At least, for me and for a lot of people it does. You have to start putting stuff out there. You want to be proud of it but who knows if you’ll be proud of it 5 or 10 years later. All that matters is that you are proud of it at the beginning and even that’s hard.

Ashley: You mentioned you had gone on tour, had you had your son at the time? What’s the challenge of having family and going on tour for a long period of time?

 Grant: Where there is are few. Number one, I’m basically a stay-at-home dad. I quit my job so I can stay home and take care of our son while my wife works full-time. It frees me up to work on music in the evenings. Going away means having to find some kind of childcare. That’s the tough part. I have our family chip in and it’s hard leaving feeling like you’re leaving a burden behind. Not my son, but putting that responsibility on other people. I can’t go on tour for a long time for that reason. It’s hard because some bands, especially if you get involved with labels, they want you to be touring a lot so it’s hard to get involved with that. 

The other real challenge would be financially. I wouldn’t say the money is pouring in on my end and especially the way music works for the first little while you are investing more that you are getting back. Everything is expensive like making records and applying for showcases. It’s a real financial hit when you have many moments where you’re like “Why am I doing this? Why don’t I get a reliable job?” 

Ashley: Once your son gets older will you try to go on longer tours?

 Grant: Yes for sure. He’s in kindergarten now and next year he’ll be in grade one.  He’ll be in school until three which helps alleviate the logistics of whose going to take care of him. Hopefully it will get easier that way, I don’t know. We will see.

Ashley: What advice would you give to beginners who are starting to perform or who want to get their music out there?

 Grant: I don’t know much advice other than you just have to perform. Performing in front of people is it’s own topic, an art in itself. Just like learning how to be good at piano or guitar or singing, you have to just start and practice. You have to do it a lot before things start getting easier and more polished. There really is no way around just starting out. You just have to keep doing it. Getting comfortable in front of a mic and knowing how to present yourself on a stage, there is really no short cut. Some people are naturally more comfortable but I think for most people it’s just a nerves thing. People get really nervous. You’ve got to start out in comfortable environments, in front of friends and family. People who won’t boo you off the stage, you just have to keep doing it.

Ashley: That’s what everyone keeps telling me, but I’ll need to hear it 100 more times before I start to believe it.

 Grant: Yeah when I first started playing guitar and I had all these songs. I was terrified of playing in front of people. I remember my sister and I would have these house parties, back with I was 15 or 16 and my friends would want to hear my music. I would take a select group of 5 or 6 people down into my room in the basement, and it’s funny thinking back to this, but I would have to have the lights off. I just didn’t want to see anyone’s faces. It’s so nerve wracking. That’s how I first started.

Ashley: Do you still do that?

Grant: No [laughs] I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable.

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jun 4, 2015 at 11:50am PDT

Support Winnipeg Musician Grant Davidson!

If you like this post, please hit the like and share button below! Please reach out to me via Twitter or my contact page! I would love to hear anything you have to say! Really, anything. I'm lonely. Also I now have a new Facebook page that will let you know when each post is posted! I would really appreciate if you could like it! Thank you!

Name: Lucas Roger

Instruments: Acoustic and Electric guitar, voice, a little bit of everything

Favorite genres/Music to play: Rock and roll, singer-songwriter, story-lead music, folk roots

Name: Madeleine Roger

Instruments: Guitar, piano, Mandolin, voice

Favorite Genres/Music to play: Rhythm instrumentation, singer-songwriter, folk roots

Roger Roger is a sibling folk/roots duo from Winnipeg, Canada. Twins Lucas and Madeleine Roger are both singer-songwriters who have joined forces, each playing guitar and shamelessly harmonizing all over each others' songs. The offspring of producer/engineer/musician Lloyd Peterson, the twins have a knack for songwriting that must have something to do with growing up in a recording studio. 

Before we started the interview, I had the great opportunity to hang out with Madeleine and Lucas over some tea as they shared stories of growing up together and how they got their adorable but temperamental cat "Turtle". I was able to hear the story of the unexpected birth of this charming duo and how their fun and enjoyable music came to be. This adorable and quirky pair are definitely some of the coolest performers in town.

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Ashley: You [Lucas] like rock and roll and you [Madeleine] like folk music?

Madeleine:  Oh I love rock too! In terms of playing, I’d love to be able to do something like thrash around, but that’s just not where I am right now. We grew up listening to a lot of rock music.

Lucas: The Who, Tom Petty (that’s a big one), the Hold Steady. It sounds nothing like our music, but we like it a lot. Deep purple, country-rock, Jayhawks, Canadian rock like Matt Mays and Joel Plaskett.

Madeleine: People who kind of walk the line between folk and rock. Ron Sexsmith is one of my favorites. I’m typically drawn to is singer-songwriter style music or people who are singing about stories. I ‘m really drawn to the lyrics and melodies.

Lucas: Even if it’s not a unique story; but the performer sings a normal topic in a really interesting, unique way. It’s always fun to hear a songwriter write like that. I think that’s what Ron Sexsmith does so well. He has really cool and interesting stories, like “Strawberry Blonde” and “Pretty Little Cemetery”; and then he has songs like “Clown in broad daylight” which is a song about a clown in broad daylight. You wouldn’t normally think of things like that but he just does it so well. That’s what I like in songwriters.

Madeleine: I think a lot of the art that I like, in many genres and aspects, has some kind of connection to human truth and there are many ways to access that kind of inspiration. I like it when someone puts their finger on something and an audience can listen to it or view it and think “I know exactly what that feels like” or things can just be amazing to listen to. If it’s something that sounds so incredible and imaginative that it’s a new way of hearing something.

Ashley: So you told me earlier you have been playing instruments since you were little, why did you decide to play together?

Lucas: At the time, we were both writing songs on the acoustic guitar. I had been playing in a rock-and-roll band that dissolved in a very healthy way. I took some time to enjoy writing songs on the acoustic guitar and singing them in the kitchen, waiting for the pasta to boil, and Madeleine would walk by and she would add a harmony line to the chorus. Then Madeline went away to the cottage by herself and wrote a bunch or really great songs and started playing them when she was waiting for her pasta to boil and I would hear her.

Madeleine: I would say it was almost accidental. When Lucas was in his rock back, I would hear them rehearsing in the basement and would be sitting at the top of the stairs singing along the entire time. They didn’t know and I probably actually didn’t want them to know that I was making up harmonizing tunes and blasting from my little haven in the kitchen. Then at some point, like Lucas said, I went out of town and started to write more. I had written a couple songs and I knew that I liked songwriting; but I didn’t really like the songs yet. So I thought maybe if I go somewhere and just focus on it for a while so I could figure out how to do it.

Lucas: Did some woodshedding.

Madeleine: Exactly. So when I came back, I remember being a little sneakier that Lucas said. I remember quietly playing the songs I had written in my bedroom. When I thought no one was home I would come down and play them in the living room. Lucas would come in and say “Hey whose song is that?” I would bashfully say, “Oh, it’s my song” and he would ask me to teach him. 

Lucas: In the winter, Madeleine works out at this ski hill and pretty much everyone who works there are musicians. They all like to get together and hang out.

Madeleine: The family that owns the resort is so wonderful and generous. They really have gathered this incredible community of artists around this resort and around that area. It brought together a lot of like-minded people.

Lucas: We had a chance to play some tunes out there. It was a lot of fun and then we started thinking we should see if we could play for the Young Performer’s Program at Folk Fest. I think that was the first things we tried to do together as a duo. We were going to need some demos, so we went on the computer and recorded some basic songs. It got to the point were we needed a name. It wasn’t a one day decision.

Madeleine: We maybe wouldn’t have realized it could work if we weren’t living together. We wanted to sing songs with other people and we were both here, so it just kind of made sense.

Ashley: So, how often do you guys practice your instruments, alone and together?

Lucas: Uh.. [laughs] Easy answer: not enough. I don’t spend a lot of time practicing to get better at the guitar. I probably should, I work all day on guitars and then go home and work on some guitars some more in my shop.

Madeleine: I think the nature of the work you do though has you noodling away on the guitar all day.

Lucas: Yeah, I guess so.

Madeleine: There you go, so you practice.

Lucas:  Yeah, you could say I practice 12 hours a day [laughs].

Madeleine: I also don’t spend much time sitting downtown to practice the instrument specifically. I try to play each instrument everyday, but most times, what seems to happen is when I sit down to try to learn a new song; I just deviate into songwriting. I can’t find myself actually focused on just the instruments for too long because I start to hear tidbits or lyrics and melodies in my head and I end up wanting to catch that. So I stop practicing and start songwriting. I’m starting to see songwriting as a practice in itself. I can happily spend four hours of an evening, just working on a song. And with the practice of songwriting, sometimes it resolves in nothing and sometimes it resolves in bad verses.

Lucas: That’s such a good thing though!

Madeleine: It’s so great! There’s a song you didn’t have to write.

Lucas: I find it so helpful to get past a song. Not to discard it completely or saying that’s awful. 

Madeleine: Just to be able to have the exercise. I’ve written a chorus and I don’t think a verse will come up and that’s okay. I can walk away from this and maybe something will come to me two months later. That’s been happening to me a lot lately. I have this book that collects all the lint and static and madness from my mind. I go through it periodically and see what’s in there from months ago. I might see something I’ll want to work on more. It’s amazing what can happen. I finished a song the other week that had been a couple chords and a couple lines that resurfaced from a year ago. 

Ashley: I’m glad I’m not the only one who has a crazy little book of music.

Madeleine: I would go absolutely mental if they were on just little scraps of paper or worse that I’d try to have my mind remember them. My phone is filled with little pieces too and I will often put them on paper. I always feel I have to catch that stuff. If I don’t it’s gone; which is okay too. 

Ashley: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

Lucas: Getting along?

Madeleine: Not killing each other. It’s amazing how we live together, we shared a womb, share an Instagram account, a bank account a house and a refrigerator and we don’t hate each other.

Lucas: Or we are really good at pretending! I think our greatest accomplishment is that we are setting a goal for something. Madeleine has been doing a lot of work in terms of preparing for the future and what we are working on. It was so much fun to play together in the Young Performer’s Program because we had been going to see performances there our whole lives and it was important for me to be on the other side of the microphone.

Madeleine: Even the other week, we had opened for Carly Dow’s CD release and played with the Crooked Brothers at the West End Cultural Centre. We had been going there since we were born. Our parents used to pack us up in snowsuits and blankets to haul us there two or three nights a week because our dad was often working or playing there. We would always be going there to see shows. We spent so much of our childhood falling asleep in that building. It was so exciting to play on the same stage where we watched so many of our favorite performers play. A whole bunch of our family and other Canadians musicians I’ve watched on that stage. It was pretty special to play that show with performers and artists that we really respect and love as human beings. It was so amazing.

Ashley: What advice do you have for beginners who are starting out who are nervous about getting out there?

Madeleine: The biggest thing I believe in is to go for it. There is nothing to gain from not trying. You have to just jump in.

Lucas: I would say the same thing. I wish I could tell myself that. I don’t open myself up much to playing with other people. I’m very reserved with how I play and write. I like to do it on my own. But, whenever I play with someone else I learn so much. Just have fun with it.

Madeline: Be nice to people!

Lucas: Write bad songs!

Madeleine: and get over it. Writing a song is an incredible thing. You took something that had nothing there and you turned it into something. That’s amazing! I also really believe it’s important to find other people who are your comrades; we can all help each other. People want to be touring, doing shows in town, recording, they want to be experience new instruments. They are all around us, we just need to find them and drink tea with them!

Ashley: How do you balance work and paying bills with your music.

Lucas: I don’t balance very well.

Ashley: How so?

Lucas: I put work at the top of the list and put everything else at an equal last place priority list. Lately I work eight hours a day and fix guitars then I come home and I work in the shop in our garage until 11:30pm. I’ll give myself time to eat and I can pay the bills; but I just shut everything off.

Madeleine: He’s also been doing fantastic things. Like he’s making me a new acoustic guitar. The guitar he plays is the first one he’s ever built. So we will both have instruments that’s he’s made. They will sound really great because they will have similar qualities.

Lucas: I’m working on making them complement each other well. I think it’s cool that madeleine and I just like making things. She draws, sews, makes kayak paddles, and whatever else she’s making.

Madeleine: And the moccasins I’m wearing!

Lucas: Yeah, it’s apart of who we are, so why not play on guitars I have made.

Madeleine: In terms of balancing, we are both trying to do a lot at once, sometimes it can be hard to focus, or figure out what we want to focus on. I’ve been having an easier time with it because I’m not working full-time. I’ve been able to put a lot of my efforts on navigating learning more about the music industry. I’m learning how to make grant applications, and what’s the best order or operations for releasing an album. That’s what I was talking about before with knowing other people in the industry.  Those people are so helpful. Every time I have a question, I feel like I have a couple people I can call up and ask about pieces of advice. Like booking a show or whatever the case may be.

Lucas: Madeleine is able to just tell me when something needs to be done. I’ll be doing something in the shop and she’ll come up to me and tell me that on Thursday we are going to the studio. If there isn’t a second party making that call, I won’t even be able to do it.

Madeleine: I’m making a lot of my work the administrative side of the music making process. I’ve actually found I quite enjoy it because it’s a lot of logistics and a puzzle needed to be put together. I’ve never really been okay planning two years in the future, Lucas can attest to this, I’m more of a traveler and a wanderer. I usually don’t stick around too often. It’s nice to have found something that I feel really solid and safe in planning two years in advance. This strange feeling of peace comes up when doing all this paperwork for planning, recording, releasing and marketing an album. I need to figure out audiences and what kind of playing we want to be doing for the next couple of years.

Ashley: What is your writing process?

Lucas: I hide away where no one can hear me and I don’t come out until it’s done. That’s probably a very basic answer. I often come up with the entire structure of the song on the guitar and then piece in words. I’ve only ever done the opposite once. I wrote the words down and then the music. It actually went really well so I maybe I should do that more often but; most of the time I hum along to a few chord progressions until something comes up.  I don’t co-write. Again, I’m very reserved. I don’t really do that.

Madeline: I love this question because it perfectly highlights the difference between Lucas and I. Lucas will write a song all at once or the same way every time, and always alone. Where as for more, it’s a choose your own adventure. I honestly have no set steadfast way of writing. Sometimes I write the lyrics first; sometimes I’ll write a melody and plug in the words later. Or I’ll be thinking about a topic a lot and I’ll decide to write a song about that story. One time I decided that I wanted to write a two-chord song and I sat down for a day. It really depends, I don think there are two songs that I’ve written that have been approached the same way. Maybe the first couple songs I wrote, but they were really directionless. I think I decided that I want to write a song and sat down at a guitar and plugged some meaningless words; but I quickly moved away from that to a completely scattered but intentional writing process. A couple times, I’ve had dreams where I’ll hear a song so I keep a journal beside my bed. There have been a couple times where I’ve gotten tidbits of songs from dreams and that’s really cool.  When that happens it feels like magic.

Ashley: What made you decide to make this upcoming album?

Madeleine: It’s time.

Lucas: It just came from looking forward to what we want; what we want to do. Like when we were talking earlier about the accomplishment of thinking of the future.

Madeleine: We have so many songs collectively. We have probably 50 finished songs between the two of us. That doesn’t include the bits and pieces that could turn into songs and those that are still brewing. When we play live we only play originals and we can play several sets of exclusively original songs. After most shows we have people coming up to us asking if we have an album for sale and we have to keep telling them no. We really want to start going on tour and see that it would be best to go with an album.

Lucas: Also venues want to see what kind of product you have. In terms of needing some kind of representation of what we are, we could have thrown up a couple microphones and done a demo but what we agreed upon was to make an album as best as it can possibly be. We realized this is the first one, and it we will be all over the place with ideas of what we want to do with it with how it should sound; but we want it to be done properly, in terms of how its produced and engineered and who else plays on it. We wanted all those aspects to be done professionally, not DIY. 

Madeleine: Even thought so much of what we do in the rest of our lives is DIY, we decided to take the opposite approach.

Lucas: we wanted to start with something we are proud of rather than worry that we don’t have representation online. We hear it all the time, people can’t find our music online. 

Madeleine: We made the conscious decision to not put music online until we have something we feel is really good quality, so the first time people hear our music, it’s something we are proud of and a true representation of our work.

Lucas: And until then, you can see us play live! 

Madeleine: Something else is, I want to make this first album so we can hurrying up and start making the second one. We have only been working on demos right now and it’s the most fun we have ever had. It’s so awesome.

Lucas: Recording is so great. We decided to, with our album, that we are going to have other people play with us. When we perform, we usually just have the two of us: two guitars and two voices. 

Madeleine: Believing that the art of recording is different than the art of performing live or song writing is a whole other entity. You have so many options available to you in a recording studio. It’s more opportunity to play with the songs you have created. Our songs have been growing and developing through the recording process, we have been changing things.

Lucas: When you hear it so many times, and you hear something you don’t like that you’re forced to fix it. It’s good to sit back and hear what you do. Although I’m very critical of myself when I record.

Madeleine: But who isn’t though?

Lucas: I just find doing vocal recordings to be so stressful because someone’s voice sounds slightly different then it does in their head. Or you’ll sing a take and you’ll think it sounds great but when you listen to it you’ll hear it wasn’t actually very good and you have so many things you need to fix and where to breathe and what to stress. 

Madeleine: We love that human quality of recordings though. We decided that we don’t want to make an immaculate album.

Lucas: That was another mutual decision.

Madeleine: We want to make an album that’s us: the real people. With all the flaws and all the moderate mis-chords that may occur.

Lucas: Maybe not so much mis-chords, but making a decision on vocal harmonies.  Some people want them to be bang on that it sounds great and match each other perfectly. There is a song we did the other night that with the feel of the song, even though the vocals didn’t line up it sounds kind of cool. It sounded like we were singing together than rounding off every corner and make it really comfortable. 

Madeleine: A lot of our favorite recordings, the older stuff, when the recording style was more analogue, you weren’t able to take as many takes as the digital world is able to offer. Those albums are filled with all kinds of things that now you wouldn’t often find. 

Those moments, where you hear something unintentional can turn into your favorite part of the song.  That’s the part you remember and you can picture the human in the room recording that part.

Ashley: Do you guys have any upcoming performances?

Lucas: We are playing at the Real Love Summer Festival, this summer in Gimli. It’s a good time.

Madeleine: We’ll be hosting some morning singer-songwriter workshops.

Lucas: some good friends of ours put on the festival and they do a really good job of making that happen; it’s a really cool thing. It’s good to be around people like that too, they said they were going to do something, and they did it. We are also performing at Folk Fest. We are doing the Young Performers again. 

Support Winnipeg Musicians Madeleine and Lucas Roger!

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jun 6, 2015 at 8:59am PDT

If you like this post, please hit the like and share button below! Please reach out to me via Twitter or my contact page! I would love to hear anything you have to say! Really, anything. I'm lonely. Also I now have a new Facebook page that will let you know when each post is posted! I would really appreciate if you could like it! Thank you!

Genre(s): Alternative, Folk, Indie, Pop

Instruments: Drums, Piano, Alto Sax, Guitar

I had never met Ty before this interview so I was really nervous meeting him. I realized right away that he is actually really cool and super easy to talk to! It didn't really feel like I was interviewing him, it was more like we were having a nice and friendly conversation. We actually lost a chunk of the recording, so I missed some really cool stories Ty shared with me; but I still learned so much from him. Check it out!

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Ashley: How often and how long do you practice as a band?

Ty: Practicing in a band is much different from practicing on your own. If we have a show coming up and we feel really comfortable with the set, we will just play through start to finish. If we notice there is something off, that’s a little funny. We stop and work at that part. We’ll try to break it down if it’s a rhythmic thing, make sure out harmonies are correct, that we can hear each other, or see some parts are overbearing. If we find a particular line that we keeping flubbing up, we will work on it. If we do have something coming up, the main thing is we practice out set and transitions to make sure there is no dead weight.  We practice for the stage.

A: Who inspires you musically?

T: Everybody. Mostly. My dad was a big influence because he was always playing when I was little. He was in a funk/R&B/blues band so I grew up on a lot of Motown,  Marvin Gaye and Wilson Pickett. They played a lot of 80s and 90s so a lot of funk and rhythm sensibilities that I picked up early on translated well into soloing and grooves. Later on when I was learning piano, I got into classical and rock piano like Elton John. Also lots of classical rock, alt. pop, blues for soloing, and jazz because I was in jazz band in middle school. 

A: What kind of music did you learn for each instrument you played?

T: In terms of piano, when I was taking lessons at my neighbors, it would have been a lot of pop stuff from all over the place while using early technique books and stuff like that. The first time I focused on classical music was my grade 5 Royal Conservatory of Music exam for the high school credit. I also wanted to make sure I had something in my back pocket for teaching, and grade 5 seemed like a good benchmark. I ‘ve always had classical training but started jazz band in school. I also did a little jazz on the guitar for a little bit on the drums. In band class I was playing tenor and alto sax also upright.

A: What got the band Sc Mira together?

T: Well it started with the singer Sadie and I. I was a producer for a couple of her first acoustic folk songs and then we started writing together. A year and a half ago we were started as a duo, but decided we wanted it to be a full band. 

A: So then, what accomplishments are you most proud of?

T: Teaching little kids. I teach at a unique place, where at the end of the year instead of a concert or recital; we put all the kids into small bands. We then have five weeks of them rehearsing together on the same song. When you have these 6 year old on stage completely on their own, playing a rock or blues song, I guess it’s not my own accomplishment, but when I see them on the stage the feeling is so neat.

A: What do you like most about being a musician?

T: The biggest reason I like being a musician is because I’m good at it.  I mean that sounds arrogant but I feel that’s fair to say. For a lot of things that people do, if you’re good at something you generally follow that path. I’m good at it and I like it. It’s an artistic challenge. It’s logical challenge with pattern forming; mathematics, science and art components. It makes people happy and you get to share that with them. You go on stage and let go, play characters if you want. Open up and tell stories. As lame as it sounds, you reach for the stars. You get to travel or tour and play with other people. I love how you get to connect with others that are not a necessarily normal [way to communication with others], like talking. It’s kind of like an extra level of interacting with people. No one really knows why he or she makes music. I think I’m just making excuses as to why I make music [laughs].

A: What advice would you give to beginners who are just starting out?

T: Suck it up, [laughs] in the nicest way possible! For me, I still get extremely nervous. Not as much in the last year or so, but I would be terrified about doing any kind of performing with other people. I still get nervous. I don’t know how I got through it all those years or what kept me going; but there is always going to be some kind of nerves with showing something so personal to other people.  It takes guts to get out there. It’s not something everyone deals with on a daily basis. It’s not like your forced to go and play songs with everyone from the day you are born - like talking and walking. It’s still interesting that we don’t really understand why we connect to others with music so much.

To come out and say “ Hey I play music” and sharing such an intimate part of your like can be daunting. So to get over it, just close your eyes and jump off the cliff. Baptism by fire is the absolute best option for me. Some of the biggest things I’ve have to overcome, like when I played at the MTS Centre, that was the absolutely terrifying. If I had sat back and thought about it like “oh no I can’t do this, I’m going to mess up” I would have started doubting myself and throwing all of these things in the air that hadn’t been there before. I just closed my eyes, closed my ears, shut up and went out and did it. When I finished, the adrenaline and the feeling of accomplishment were amazing and there are very few things that match that feeling. On the flip side and you do go and make a mistake or embarrass yourself, which I have don’t countless of times, it will freak you out for a bit but it gives you really good incentive to never to that again.

Trust your gut. Trust your talent. Don’t listen to the voices in your head, just listen to the feelings; because that’s what music is. It’s feeling not thinking.

A: How do you balance music with your other obligations?

T: I’ve managed to turn music into my obligation. For example, being able to teach music as a job. I also do composing and songwriting or I produce and mix for bands, TV shows and movies; so that fits in really well. It’s difficult. But, the more I focus, the more it’s easier to become apart of my work and school life. It’s definitely a juggling act. You’ll find yourself  saying “I really want to work on this right now but I have an exam tomorrow” and it’s unfortunate. I could be 100% invested in music but it would make life very difficult at the moment. 

A: What is your common and successful songwriting process?

T: I would say there are three main ways I personally go about it:

1.     Someone needs a song. You sit down and say. “Okay I need to come up with something.“ It’s not very inspirational; but the music will be good! The music sensibility will still be there, but you’re being told to write something. The producer will tell me  “I need this, I need that” and I work on something and send it to them. They’ll tell me what they like and what they don’t and I’ll keeping working on it until it’s completed. That’s the least creative way. It’s still fun, it’s just a different kind of challenge. You’re trying to work to someone else’s schedule.

2.     The second way to compose is in a group, where I might start with some kind of melody or structure and sit down at the rest of the group saying “here I have this, I don’t know where it’s going. “ I’ll play something, they’ll play something; they’ll sing something, I’ll sing something.” We’ll sit together and work on a tune or two. It might take a day or a week; but the entire band works together. It’s really interesting because you get everyone’s different ideas. It’s like sculpting a weird sculpture with everyone brining his or her own chisel. It’s a very interesting process. A good team-building project.

3.     The last way to compose is the most personal way. It’s 100% just myself. I’ll hear a tidbit of a song and immediately have cogs turning in my head and out of nowhere I’ll coming up with a melody. Sometimes it can be quick, other times it will take forever. Many items it just clicks: BOOM, there it is. You’ll get an idea and sit down with it. Just keeping at it and building on it. Lots of times that will be without any instruments in front of me.  When I have something I like, I’ll run to an instrument to try it out. I’ll even try to record it to make sure I don’t forget it. I usually don’t but it’s a good safety net. The third option is the way I write most of my own personal stuff. 

A: Anything you are currently working on that you would like to share? Upcoming performances?

T: Nothing until the EP or Album release. We are releasing it at the West End Cultural Centre in June. Once we finish that show, we are going on the road for three weeks. We have a big tour across Canada and the United States planned. 

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on May 22, 2015 at 6:00pm PDT

Support Winnipeg Band Sc Mira!

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Solo and collaborative pianist Indra Egan has been studying music for 16 years, including training as a soprano and violinist. She holds her A.R.C.T. in Piano Performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music and recently completed her first year of her Bachelor of Music at the University of Manitoba, where she studies piano with David Moroz and voice with Robert MacLaren and Monica Huisman. She has performed piano concertos by Haydn and Schumann respectively as a guest soloist with the Prince George Symphony Orchestra, where she was the Chamber Music Series pianist for the 2013-14 season and first violinist for two seasons. In her home province of BC, she organized a series of 8 concerts called Indra and Friends that raised $15 000 for 7 different Canadian charities. She also taught piano and violin for nearly 10 years; her students have been accepted to Bachelor of Music programs across Western Canada, including University of Victoria and Mount Royal University. 

Indra has collaborated with a variety of artists, including lyric tenor Robert MacLaren and American violinist Elizabeth Pitcairn. Indra, who enjoys music of all styles and genres, is very passionate about contemporary music and has premiered works by multiple Canadian composers. Most recently, she won the University of Manitoba Concerto Competition, and will be performing a concerto as a guest soloist with the University of Manitoba Symphony Orchestra in their 2015-16 season.

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I had a great time talking to the talented Indra Egan a couple weeks ago. I was surprised how much I learned from her from a half-an-hour conversation. This girl is wise beyond her years. 

Instruments: Piano, Soprano, and Violinist

Genres: Classical solo and collaborative opera

Ashley: How long have you been playing piano and violin, and singing?

Indra: I have been playing piano since I was 4 years old. I started violin when I was 5 and didn’t actually start voice lessons until I was 18. Voice was a huge learning curve for me because the way you approach music from a vocal perspective is so different from a pianist, or really as any instrumentalist. It’s so much more linear and more organic. Instruments can be really intuitive but the voice, because you can’t see it, you need to internalize it.  It’s such a different way to approach music that I started incorporated that into my playing piano.

A: How hard do you push yourself, how often do you practice?

I: I practice everyday. I try to do at least 2 to 3 hours a day; which I would consider a light day of practice. Ideally I like to practice 4 or 5 hours each day of piano but it doesn’t always workout with school and courses.  The biggest struggle I’m finding with practice is balancing solo and collaborative music. I’m finding myself being drawn more and more to collaborative music and wanting to practice it more; but I do need a strong solo base. That’s why I’m here at the university to study solo piano for the next four years.

I try to spread it out [my practice sessions] through out the day though. I have experienced injuries and after coming back from that I have started taking a close look at my technique and strengthening my muscles. I stay at school for an hour or two between practice sessions in order to maintain a healthy practice regiment. 

A: When you are practicing, what are you focusing on?

I: I generally use my repertoire to work on my technique, so I don’t do a lot of scales or exercises. I did a lot of that when I was younger and I had a great teacher back in BC, where I’m originally from, and I am really fortunate to have a great technical base. I rarely practice by playing my pieces over and over at the full speed. I take each piece apart and study them. I will never forget the time I took 4 hours working on 12 bars. I don’t do that very often, that is an extreme case.

For example I will take something like a difficult sixteenth note passage and play it in seven different rhythms, different volume levels and accents. Even when I have a particular sound in mind, I like to play around with other sounds and colors because I feel it’s really close-minded to have only one idea for the song.

A: I’m always interested to hear other musicians tell me they too spend a lot of time on one section. It can be discouraging coming to a university with all these extremely talent musicians and forget they need to practice just as much as I do.

I: Yeah, I think a lot of the time we worry that the rest of the piece is going to be neglected if we are only working on one part. I find that if we are nervous about a piece that we are not quite prepared for. It’s usually one or two specific spots that worry us; not every single note of the piece. Once you take that fear out, like “I don’t have to worry about this part when I get to it”, suddenly the piece isn’t about worrying that one page of the song and you can pay attention the entire piece and it keeps you stable.

We also have a tendency to start at the beginning of a piece, which gets it to be really good on its own. I’ve begun starting on the last page of the music I’m working on.

One song I’m working on right now is a Chopin Nocturne, which always tends to get more difficult as the piece goes one. I always want to start at the beginning because it’s so beautiful and there is so much to do with it musically. But the last page is not as strong as the first; and so I work backwards.

A: So who would you say inspires you musically?

I: Definitely, the teachers that I’ve had. I’ve been really fortunate to study with really high caliber teachers. Even though I lived in a relatively isolated area, I always would find myself traveling far for lessons.

When I was 4, I would have to be driven for an hour to and an hour back from lessons. I remember getting really carsick. When I was 9 I had to travel 3 and a half hours for lessons. I got to access really great musicians, I would say especially Lori Elder, and of course the wonderful faculty at the university of Manitoba. I try to, whenever I get a chance, go see the performances from the faculty. It’s really inspiring to see all of these musicians with such intention and clear artistic vision that I see on the stage.

I am hugely inspired by the human voice; ultimately, it's what all instruments do their best to imitate. So with that approach to music, I guess it's only natural that many of my biggest influences are singers. Classically, I am a crazy fan of Joyce DiDonato. I love the warm and human quality of her voice, and she is truly an artist who inspires me both on and off stage. I fell in love with Maria Callas at a very young age - she's someone who's not known for a "perfect" or "pretty" voice, but who tells a story, and I connected to that immediately. My biggest piano inspiration is undoubtedly Martha Argerich. She plays with such raw passion, as though there's always a fire under her belly. Outside of the classical genre, I would say my most influential artists have been Carole King, Billy Joel, Radiohead, and Lady Gaga.

A: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

I: I would have to say number one is getting back into music. That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.  Initially I wanted to do voice, instead of the piano; which everything thought was really strange since I never had any vocal training. I was in university and I knew that I wanted to do music. I felt at the time that voice school was what was missing, what I really wanted to do. I thought that if it was piano I would have figured it out when I was playing piano.

I did a ton of stuff that scared me when I went after voice. I assumed going in with a musical background would help me, and in a lot a ways it did, but it actually hurt me too. I kept trying to place all of the notes on a mental keyboard. Just the way you think of singing in classical sense is so different than how you see it on the piano. You have your chest voice, your mid voice and your head voice. You’ll have notes that are high in your mid voice that are low in your head voice, and so being able to conceptualize that the note is going to feel really high when they actually aren’t was so different.

I remember the first time I stood in front of a group of people; I was terrified - which was a new feeling for me because I don’t get nervous when I’m playing piano in most settings. I usually get excited.

A: How do you not get nervous?

I: I rarely get nervous. I’ll get maybe adrenaline but not nervous because I’m so focused. I remember that first vocal performance. It wasn’t a complete disaster but it wasn’t even close to what I had practiced at all. It was after two months of vocal training and I was doing a music festival with grade 10 repertoire. I just couldn’t handle how my body was no longer doing what I wanted to because I was so nervous. 

A: You had only in to 2 months of training and you were doing grade 10 material?

I: Yes, I took grade 10 right from the beginning. I had been accompanying vocal music for a while and had been singing on my own time for some time. I ‘d also taken French and German in high school. It was the first time being nervous while I sang and that was a really great experience as a teacher for all my students who get nervous so I can understand better.

A: With everything you’ve learned and everything you know now, what advice would to give to beginners who maybe want to take the same steps as you to move away for school or start performing.

I: Well I would say, do things that scare you. Perform as much as you can. That doesn’t mean start off perform a million times a week; taking as many opportunities as you can. within a reasonable amount. Don’t shy away from it. I do things because I’m not sure I can do it. That’s the philosophy I use as an artist, I don’t know how well it will work for other people, but I constantly challenging myself. That constant thrill of not knowing if I can do it is what pushes me.

When I came to this university it was scary.  I had never been this far across Canada. I came here all by myself and had to book my own hotel all by myself.  I actually never auditioned for someone that I didn’t know before because I’m from a small town.

The one of the most important things you can do is things that scare the hell out of you. Because first of all you learn that you can actually do things that scare you and it keeps you on your toes and it gives you that drive to keep going.

Expose yourself to more genres than just the one want to to do. I listen to a ton of music that’s not classical; because I think at the end of the day, music is about communication. Classical is not the only way to communicate. It’s one of my favorite but its definitely not the only way.

I love listening to pop song and thinking to myself “Oh this is the pop equivalent of this lied” because you realize that it’s the same story just being communicated in very different ways. I get performance tips from watching people like Bruno mars because he knows how to perform. Madonna knows how to make it that no one is watching anyone but her.

I think that’s really important to be aware of and actively pay attention to other genres; to be always open-minded. If I wasn’t I would still be trying to get into a voice program. I feel so much more at home in the piano program.

I guess the last thing I would say is a musician; no everyone gets a ton of people telling him or her what he or she should or shouldn’t do with their lives. Whether it’s good-natured advice or people saying, “Man you’re making a huge a mistake” or even people saying, “yes, this is what you should do”. Every once in awhile take a step back and listen to what your gut is telling you. We get so much advice and so many people making our lives their business and we have to live with it. If you trust yourself off stage, you’re going to trust yourself on stage. 

A: How do you balance your music with you other obligations?

I: It’s definitely tricky, there is no doubt about it. I don’t get as much sleep as I should. Like I mentioned before, I need to take breaks in between practice sessions so I’ll take the time to go for a run, do homework, or any kind of paperwork or emails. I think it’s really important that I make sure that I relax at the end of the day or just eat something when no one is talking to me. It’s really important to not just go to sleep. Take a little bit of a breather.  It’s important that as a musician, we go out and experience other things not related to music; like going to the forks or dating that one person.

Music is about emotion. Music is about life. Music is about people; so if we don’t experience those things how are we going to communicate them? The more life experience we have to bring to our music the more we have to offer as musicians. 

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on May 12, 2015 at 5:46pm PDT

Support Winnipeg Musician Indra Egan!

If you like this post, please hit the like and share button below! Please reach out to me via Twitter or my contact page! I would love to hear anything you have to say! Really, anything. I'm lonely. Also I now have a new Facebook page that will let you know when each post is posted! I would really appreciate if you could like it! Thank you!