The Big Up Festival is right around the corner and it’s time to start mapping out your festival game-plan so you don’t miss all of the awesome acts The Big Up has in store. I had the opportunity to ask one of The Big Up’s recent additions to the already stellar lineup Eskmo, or Brendan Angelides. If you had the opportunity to catch Eskmo at Camp Bisco, you know you are in for a serious treat at his late night set at the Space Ball City Tent.
Jennifer Wilson: Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got started in the music industry?
Brendan Angelides: I’m from the east coast of the US originally. I started playing music with bands in high school and then slowly started working on solo projects with cheap electronic gear. Flash forward a number of years and with a series of singles on vinyl, I ended up signing with Ninja Tune to release the latest batch of music.
JW: Can you tell us a story about a day in your life?
BA: Nothing too fancy really. I do my morning ritual, take care of simple tasks and work on music. I always mix in hiking, meditating and (just as of recent) practicing Kenpo.
JW: How would you describe your music to someone who had never heard it before?
BA: I’m not sure really, but I could say melodic Earth and Water music.
JW: Your musical technique seems to cross many different genres and styles. What goes into your process of creating a new song or album?
BA: Honest reflection of what is going on in my life and growth process. It can come from a variety of places, but as long as it’s authentic it is always the best route to take. Sometimes lyrics, sometimes melodies, sometimes it can be a cool recording I got at a train station.
JW: You released a collaborative project with Amon Tobin, what was it like working with such an influential composer and producer?
BA: Humbling and encouraging. I value his integrity and person a large amount. He is one of the best out there.
JW: What do you want The Big Up goers to expect from your performance and how will it differ from what they may have seen at CampBisco?
BA: Each set has a ton of improvised elements, live singing and happy accidents. I’m sure it will be its own experience. If anyone wants to bring me sound effects, go for it.
JW: What advice would you give to other artists at The Big Up festival who have less experience playing live than you?
BA: Be patient, stay focused and authentic; and breathe
With The Big Up Festival just days away, I had the great opportunity of compiling a list of questions for Maff Scott of The Egg to answer before they take stage in Claverack, New York on Saturday August 10th. The Egg is an extremely influential and talented British electronic band formed in the early 1990’s and they have toured all over Europe as well as Australia and Brazil. It is truly a pleasure for Upstate New York to be able to experience such amazing music at a festival so close to home.
Jenni Wilson: Can you tell us a little about each individual in the band and how you all met and got started in the music industry?
Maff Scott: Well there’s myself (Maff) and Ned. Ned started getting better at the piano and I picked up the drums. We started jamming at home, using saucepan lids and a pedal that we made by attaching a rubber band to a marching band big drum (it only worked once and then fell apart.) We’ve played with a few others over the years. We used Ben Cullum’s (a great house producer and song writer) bass lines to play electronically. We also wrote and toured a bit with Matt White who we met through Pete Doherty (whom we wrote the song “For Lovers” with). Drew is playing guitar with us mostly; he’s done quite a few tours now and co-written stuff (something to do) and he’s great. Most musicians we generally meet through mutual friends. We also tend to meet a lot of people through the West London scene. We met Sophie Barker (Zero7) whom we’ve done lots of UK gigs, and even a recent gig with Mick Jones (The Clash) and Greg Hunter (Killing Joke, The Orb). We’ve done lots of recent production for a new release with him, and used his parts for a tune “Psyfunk” in the set. He’s on tour elsewhere but we will try to connect if we can. We also met a great trumpet player, Richard Wendel, while playing in Costa Rica. We jammed with him… and it was brilliant. He runs a great jazz club (The Bitter End) in NYC so we’ll be having him do some crazy trumpet at the Webster Hall show.
JW: Can you tell us a story about a day in the band’s life?
MS: Erm, well there was the time we were driving to Cleveland, famous for Spinal Tap’s scene where they get lost on the way to the stage (“Hello Cleveland”) – We’d overloaded the van’s alternator with all of our UK converters, laptops and phone chargers. The final straw was putting ‘Spinal Tap’ on the DVD player. We drew too much power and snapped the dynamo off which busted the van. We were stuck in a ‘Bennys’ for the night and missed the show. Ironic that it was Cleveland and Spinal Tap. How we laughed.
JW: What goes into your process of creating a new song or album?
MS: Years of hell and stress! Sitting up late playing with electronic bits and bobs. Sometimes it’s a loop or a chord structure Ned has created which we can jam on and take the parts into rehearsal and make an arrangement. Of course, it changed when we play it live for a while. We’ve been known to stay up for days on one tune. Sometimes in hotel rooms or soundchecks or instead of actually rehearsing for a gig: we are VERY undisciplined.
JW: What are the biggest obstacles for a band and what is the hardest part about working in the music industry?
MS: Errr.. getting paid! It’s hard to get people to buy stuff when so much is given away. But we’re happy to give away live recordings. The hardest part is keeping the excitement levels up. Web stuff is hard because everyone is competing for your fans attention using the same tool.
JW:What are some of your pet peeves when performing?
MS: Time! We always run out of time and don’t get to play the entire set, and the best tunes are at the end. We’re also really warmed up by then and so is the crowd. Maybe we’re too ambitious with set lists thinking we can do it. The best gigs we’ve done are the ones that have no time limit. The tunes have the time to develop without stopping to squeeze the next one in.
JW: How do you feel about online music sharing and how has it changed for you as a band since your start?
MS: We don’t mind sharing a few live shows and all, but as for albums, well, it’s hard to get paid for sales if people are downloading them for free. Sure it gets your attention to a bigger reach, but if everyone does that then it doesn’t really make you stand out as ‘the band who gives stuff away’ – Even though everyone expects it nowadays. The emphasis is now on live shows I guess. We’ve definitely found people who’d never heard of us elsewhere so in measure it’s a great thing (as long as you hold something back).
JW: How was your experience playing a festival as huge as Glastonbury?
MS: We’ve done it a few times now. It’s like a city that never sleeps and you don’t know who you’ll reach. There are massively long walks everywhere and it is sort of split up into villages really… mad crazy villages where everyone is the village nutter. There have also been some crazy muddy years, but that makes a comic bonding effect with everyone. We can all look at each other and laugh. This year was fun.. like another world. You feel weird going back to reality sometimes.
JW: What do you want Big Up goers to expect for your performance musically/visually?
MS: We have video triggers and a synced up set of dance music and electronics with lots of different styles and live musicians. Basically Moog baselines, an influence of deep house, but mostly eclectic house vibe: guitars, vocoders, a bit of ambient bleeps, crunched up this and that… I think they’ll like it.
JW: What advice would you give to other artists at The Big Up festival who have less experience?
MS: Less experience is good! New bands have hunger and faith and blind optimism. That’s all you need! Generally, be good at what you do and don’t piss anyone off. Everyone’s ‘good’ in a way, depending on what music you like, so someone not liking you as people will have far more effect on your next booking than how good you are. Criticizing other bands doesn’t make your band better either. It’s a backfiring effect. I’m sure they’ll all know this. I don’t want to patronize but I personally don’t bother with covers. It’s easy to think your music is so different that no one will get it, but that’s the reason they’ll notice you. Being yourself is always original, because we’re all different. So be yourself! I’ve often forgotten that. Anyway we’re crap at other people’s music and we can only do our own.
Make sure you don’t miss these guys at the Space Ball City Tent on August 10th.
With The Big Up Festival just a few weeks away, I had the pleasure of conducting an interview with The Big Up artist, DJ Harrison Waxenberg of Horizon Wireless, to talk about his upcoming set at the festival.
Jenni Wilson: Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got started in the music industry? Tell us a story about a day in your life.
Harrison Waxenberg: Okay well I’m 5′ 8″ on a good day, I’m prone to mania induced encounters with inter-dimensional energies and beings. I’ve piloted real spaceships, and even crash landed one once! Oh, and I have dimples… which from what I understand is a common and endearing physical attribute amongst Libras. When I met George Clinton he asked me if I was an alien.
I started playing piano, clarinet, and saxophone when I was younger, and began playing drums in different bands when I was in middle school and continued all the way up through my senior year of college until I moved on from the drama that comes with playing with too many other strong personalities. Simultaneously, I had been experimenting with programs like FL Studio and Garageband as well, kind of unaware that an “electronic music” scene was developing, or even had existed. So on my 22nd birthday my dad got me an APC40 and Ableton (he knew I was about to hang it up with my band) and I just kind of ran with that.
I guess I first decided I was really going to go for it when I was at Summerdance in 2009 I believe. I was in a drum circle with Michael Travis and some of the guys from Lotus, and I got to lead for a bit. After that, some old black guy with a lot of soul slapped me on the back and was like “you got it dude!” and poured some wine in my mouth and I was all like, “ok cool I can do this!”
JW: How would you describe your music to someone who had never heard it before?
HW: I guess I would say that I like to take a lot of sub-alien tech funk and psychedelic break-beat grooves, and blend them with some minimal house and trance elements, all the while sprinkling in some pop culture elements throughout.
JW: What are your biggest musical and non-musical influences?
HW: My biggest musical influence is probably my dad, I don’t think I’d be playing music if it weren’t for him. My biggest non musical influence is realignment of the Andromeda and Milky Way schism. Oh, and love too, although I think that could be considered a musical influence.
JW: What goes into your process of creating a new song or album?
HW: Well I used to play my productions out when I first got Ableton (actually my first show doing that, and even using the moniker Horizon Wireless was at the first edition of TheBig Up), but over time my computer started not being able to handle anything so I began to do mash-ups and remixes for a while. Through this I discovered a fun way to mix over 5-6 channels simultaneously and blend infinite sounds and samples to create new things on the fly all the time, and that’s kind of what I became known for. I do like to tell a story with every set, and nothing really goes into what we do that doesn’t have some sort of meaning or relevance to the overall Horizon story. I just got a new computer though and my drummer is finishing up production school so we’ll see what the end of 2013 holds in terms of an EP. There have been many producers I admire who have reached out to me about coming on board with it and that is very humbling.
JW: How do you feel about DJs you use novelties/masks on stage, such as Deadmau5 with his mask, Destroid and their costumes, etc…
HW: We all wear masks. Everyone.
JW: What would you say is the hardest part of being a musical artist today?
HW: I’m not sure, everything is very accessible today like it never was before. I suppose the hardest part would be coming to terms with the divide between what you thought the music industry would be like when you first decided you wanted to be a part of it, and what it actually is today. As soon as you accept the changes that have been made, and see the community for what it truly is, you start to realize how much better it is as a network of artists, friends, and music lovers, and you become grateful for any little amount of success you have at all.
JW: You play a majority of your shows in New York, are you originally from here?
HW: I was born in Florida, lived in Indiana and Maryland for a bit, and then moved to New York. I live on Long Island so the city is a pretty good place to play… I hear if you make it there you can make it anywhere!
JW: You played this years Camp Bisco which is a pretty big fest. How was your experience playing a festival that size?
HW: I’ve been going to Camp since 8, managed a stage there for 10 and 11 and closed out the festival at 11 and 12. It’s always a pretty fun time, and that’s where I would be going anyway so it’s a blessing to be able to play there and be exposed to a lot of new fans each year.
JW: What do you want attendees to The Big Up to expect from your performance and how will it differ from what they may have seen at Camp?
HW: Well at The Big Up I’m playing with my live drummer, Monty from Digital Frontier, and these sets are always a lot different then solo sets like the ones I do at Camp (Bisco). It’s also the anniversary of Horizon Wireless and the theme is Star Trek/Star Wars so it’s very fitting. I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited for a set than this one (which I find myself saying a lot, but it’s always true, ha ha), so I think anyone who comes out to it is going to be very glad they did.
JW: What advice would you give to other artists at The Big Up festival?
HW: No matter what time you’re playing at or in front of how many people, this is a very important festival. I did my first Horizon show there as a thirty minute set break between Ultraviolet Hippopotamus and Consider the Source in front of probably thirty people at like five o’clock on a Thursday in a barn, and now three years later I’m closing out the woods with a Zonrise. It’s a huge platform, especially for artists that are just starting to get some decent exposure, so give it your all.
You can catch Horizon Wireless Saturday August 10th at The Big Up Festival in Claverack, New York. If you catch Horizon Wireless August 3rd at the Santos Party House in NY, NY you will be automatically entered to win tickets to The Big Up Festival.
No more waiting, the fans were ready for Hollywood Undeadto take over, to bring the party to the stage. The mixed animated chatter died once the lights dimmed and a purple and white hue brightened the stage. An ominous introduction filled the eager ears of the fans, when all of the sudden the opening notes for “Undead” began to bounce off the walls of The Fillmore.
All of Hollywood Undead came out with their masks; Charlie Scene wore black matte spectacles with a gray bandana that read CHARLIE SCENE; J-Dog wore a white mask with gas filters on the cheek and red glowing burned eyes; Johnny 3 Tears wore a mosaic mask with a 3 on the left side of his face as well as a butterfly pattern on the right side; Da Kurlzz had on a white mask with two different sides, the left, sad with the mouth open, and the right, burnt and evil, both features with great wrinkles; Funny Man wore a black cloth mask with a silver pattern on it, in the style of Mexican masked wrestlers Lucha Libre; and finally, Danny, a gold mask with strict features and a Latin cross made from the casings from bullets. The crowd lost it as soon as they began to perform the first song; some even began to crowd surf. Next song to play was “Tendencies”, the fans continuing to sing along whole-heartedly, and the band members pointing to a few of them and dancing around to the beat of the song. Following was “Been to Hell” then the band took of their masks to continue performing the next song, their current single, “Dead Bite”. Through the speedy setlist, the band played their classic songs including, “Up in Smoke”, “Kill Everyone”, and “City”. Very catchy tunes indeed and the vibe they created on the stage was definitely indescribable, one had to have been there to experience the party they had on stage. The fans danced along to the beat and rhythm of the songs “California” and “From the Ground”, as the crowd sang along to the killer lyrics Hollywood Undead was throwing at them.
Oh, but the party does not end there, they continued with more of their fantastic classics, “Delish”, “Comin’ In Hot”, as well as the ridiculously cheery song, “Bullet”, and a song they dedicated to the troops, “Paradise Lost”. After the performance of “Another Way Out”, they carried on with “Young” to which their original backdrop of the cursive HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD on top of a white fading to gray background was suddenly dropped and revealed a black and white vertical striped backdrop with the band’s symbol, a dove carrying a grenade on each of the black stripes.
Subsequent to the performance of “Hear Me Now”, the lights shut off and the band exited the stage, then the overhead lights began to turn on, causing the fans to chant for an encore. Then someone in the speakers above announced that the band was finished for the evening, and subsequently encouraged the fans to chant “everywhere I go”. As the fans continued to chant, the opening notes to “Everywhere I Go” played, causing the fans to cheer out with excitement as the band stepped out from the shadows to finish their set. The grand finale was “We Are”, to which Johnny 3 Tears had to stop it after singing the beginning chorus because he admitted to messing up, then the band started the song from the beginning and continued to play without any further flaws. They left the fans wanting more and in a crazed hype.
Overall, Hollywood Undead knows how to bring the party to the stage and they brought the undead to life. Prior to the beginning of the evening, Upstate Metal’s Kate Drexel had the opportunity to interview Johnny 3 Tears, which can be seen below. Be sure to check the band’s Facebook page to see if the party will be coming to a town near you, this is a band you will not want to miss out on.
The excited mixed chatter from the concertgoers died down as soon as the overhead lights dimmed, hinting it was All Hail the Yeti’s time to rock the stage. The music playing above quietly turned into a swamp-sounding ambience, the lights shined blue, red, and a forest like green to set the heavy mood. One by one, the band members emerged from the shadows, Connor Garritty (vocals), Craw NeQuent (guitar), Nick Diltz (bass), and Steve White (drums). As soon as the band started to perform their first song, “Deep Creek”, Garritty unleashed an almighty, bone-chilling scream, one that would make the neck hairs stand up. Following was “When the Sky Falls” filled with intense beats provided by White, Garritty’s screams intensifying, and Craw released his killer guitar skills. By the third song, “Suicide Woods”, the crowd definitely got into the band enough to heighten their head banging. The band continued with the last few heavy songs “After the Great Fire”, “Bloodguilt” and “The Art of Mourning”.
Hearing their set brought Upstate Metal’s Kate Drexel back to when she interviewed Nick Diltz and Craw NeQuent on March 30th, when the band opened for In This Moment at Upstate Concert Hall, during sound check. To say the least, it ended up being an entertaining interview. “The band used to be called just ‘Yeti’, there was just the single word for a long time and we ended up having to change it a couple years ago ‘cause of some legal issues, there was another band called ‘Yeti’. So All Hail the Yeti was sort of like our battle cry anyway, we had it on a lot of our promotional stuff and all our URLs were ‘/AllHailTheYeti’ so it was kind of a pretty natural change,” said Diltz when asked about the history of the band name. He then proceeded to explain that a yeti is the Himalayan Nepalese term for “bigfoot.” “The singer and I are like real enthusiasts of all that kind of stuff…cryptozoology and bigfoot and all that kind of folklore and stuff and also we thought it fit the sound, just kind of heavy, slow moving, crushing kind of persona,” he continued. “Backwoods,” chimed in NeQuent. “Yeah, backwoods…mythical, larger than life all of that stuff we feel like applies to the sound and the band also.”
The description of the band’s sound that Diltz and NeQuent provided can be heard throughout the set as well as the band’s influences including Waylon Jennings, Jerry Reed, Robert Johnson, Dimes, Zakk Wylde, BB King, John Lee Hooker, Down, Crowbar, and many more. “I think that one of the greatest things about this band is that we all have kind of an eclectic musical taste; we’re all kind of different in what we listen to. We listen to so many different things, like there are so many metal bands that they listen to just metal and they live that metal life and they wear metal t-shirts and they go to metal shows…we’re just, I feel like we’re kind of…we just go so much further beyond that with our influences.” As for what their music reflects about the band, the answer to that question was briefly interrupted by banging drums. “Someone’s banging on the door let me go answer it…Hold on a minute!” shouted Craw. A moment of laughter was shared between the three before Nick proceeded to answer. “It’s the reason why I play metal, it’s so much more of the fact that I like it, obviously there’s more to my lifestyle than just making metal music but I choose to make metal because it’s fun, there’s something about it, just that energy, that pounding rush that you get from making it and the crowd response from the fan base so it’s…it’s such a unique style, it lets you get so much energy, you get to be all aggressive,” said Diltz. “It’s not formulated, we don’t go inside the studio and go ‘ok, we’re gonna sound just like this.’ It is what it is, whatever you feel that day. If you’re pissed off, cool…” added NeQuent. Before the next question could escape Drexel, the heavy banging of the drums commenced yet again. “I’ll be right there, girl! Shit!” shouted Craw, causing all three to bust out with laughter.
Apparently, this tour with Hollywood Undead wasn’t All Hail the Yeti’s first cycle with them; previously, they did a Canadian tour with the rap/metal band. “We’re actually surprised at the fans, how they reacted to us because they’re kind of a metal hip-hop band, or whatever you wanna call them but their audiences go from like literally ten years old to the parents to everywhere in between, but honestly by the second or third song, you know, hitting the gas, everybody started moshing so it’s pretty damn cool to see that,” said Nick before the guitar riffs from the tech crew began to interfere with the interview plus the heavy banging of the drums. “I don’t know if you can hear us now! There’s a little bit of construction going on! It’s Van Halen, they’re fixing my yard!” yelled Craw over the noise. “Goddammit Eddie!” Both Drexel and Diltz got into a pretty big laughing fit before she could ask the last question as well as her favorite one: what does music mean to you? “Everything. I was born living and breathing and feeling music and from an early age, I was always just like this is something I need to do, it speaks to me and I understand it. Not everybody gets to do this and so I shouldn’t take it for granted. We’re all here for the same reason, we’re hear to make music because we love it and because this is something we’ve always dreamed of.” As for Craw’s response: “Absolutely everything! Sacrifice and adaptation are two words that I live by, because you have to sacrifice everything to do this and you have to adapt to whatever comes your way, and I’ve been doing this for a little while now and I love what I do. You have to love it.”
Be sure to check out All Hail the Yeti’s self-titled album, available for digital download and check their Facebook for upcoming tour dates. This band can put on one HELL of a show.
The crowd was still hyped from the performance that All Hail the Yeti put on for them but they were in for a treat as Minneapolis’s very own 3 Pill Morning was ready to hit the stage. The venue darkened once again and the music quieted as the band’s electronic-sounding introduction took its place, and one by one, the band members made their presence known; Jeff Stebbins, Ryan Welch (guitar), Ryan Lee (bass/vocals), and Trent Laugerman (drums), all wearing suits in support of their debut record released last year, Black Tie Love Affair. “It’s actually a lyric in one of our songs called ‘Skin’ and we pulled that out and we liked the Black Tie Love Affair concept and that’s even kind of come even further to our stage show and us wearing suits on stage and all that kind of stuff, so it’s become what this whole album is about and it’s been really cool,” explained Stebbins to Upstate Metal’s Kate Drexel, when asked about the album title.
The band began to play their first song from the set, the one that really set the mood right, “Revolution”, followed by “Nothings Real”. The fans sang along to the lyrics passionately, some having a look on their faces as though they can relate to them. Earlier in the evening, Stebbins mentioned that the inspirations used to write the album were based on life experiences, “you know, stuff you see day in to day out, ranging from relationship stuff to stuff you see other people doing that drives you crazy to that sort of call to action kind of things, you know, life, just living.” The next to play was the band’s current killer single, “I Want That for You”; the crowd bounced to the beat and mouthed the words in an excited manner. “They evolve singing lyrics into a cell phone or typing some stuff out, a guitar riff or whatever just pops into the top of our heads. It really varies on every song. The cool part about it is you’ll never know where it’s going to come from or how you got there but it gets there eventually,” explained Stebbins when asked about the evolution of their song ideas. Subsequently the band played “Take Control” to which Stebbins encouraged the crowd to wave their arms from side to side, then “Rain” and the band’s first single, “Loser” played next. “We played a lot of amazing ones, you know, right now, I’d have to say The Fillmore in Detroit…it’s got some really cool architecture to it, a really awesome room. Same thing with the House of Blues in Boston, just massive, really cool vibe there. Those two are definitely at the top of my list,” said Jeff, explaining his favorite venues and why. The band’s vibe was through the roof, just absolutely intense and incredible; Lee and Welch rocking out hard to their bass and guitar, Laugerman beating the drums with such fierceness and Stebbins, filled with such energy, jumping as high as gravity allowed him.
The last song on their set was “Skin”, and Jeff shared his answer to Drexel’s last question as well as her favorite: what does music mean to you?: “It’s changed so much over the years; I mean music to begin with was just a way that I could find a link to what I was going through and somebody I had written a song about and being able to sing about it and express myself about it. Now music has become more an opportunity to make a living and a career and something that’s a part of me every single day, you know, it’s what I do now, instead of being able to experience it as a listener or something like that. To begin with, it’s just what helps shape who you are and helps you get through those tough times or celebrate the good times, too, so it does a lot of different things for different emotions and experiences.”
All in all, the band can put on a killer performance with such high energy. Be sure to check their Facebook to see when they hit a town near you. Black Tie Love Affair is available for digital download. If you want a good time, go see this band, they certainly know how to put on a show!
Spotlight on this small metal band from Central California who gives off a certain indescribable vibe to their music. Ladies and gents, I give you Half8n! “It is a play on the phrase Half Eaten. The spelling is reflective of the age of technology. Shortened words and slang so to speak. Quietly, in the dark, the other half has been eaten, consumed by the world and by what has been created for us and by us. Reflecting the behaviors of the people within the world with our music. Half of me/us has already been eaten away, the other half that’s left here in this shell is the half that I/we keep for ourselves,” explained the band via email to Upstate Metal’s Kate Drexel. The band consists of Dalton Whitman (lead vocals, guitar), Eric Avila (guitar, backing vocals), James Ruiz (bass), and Justin Casselman (drums).
Bands such as System of a Down, Alice in Chains, Tool, Pantera, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, and Primus influence Half8n. “These are just some of the bands that influence our sound. What influences the topics, or subjects we touch on vary from: life, current events, love, sadness, the list goes on. There are so many emotions, and feelings, and things happening in the world, that we have influences coming from every direction. Having four separate band members, with their own lives, trials, and tribulations, gives us that much more to go off of.” When asked if the band had the opportunity to collaborate with another band, who would it be, they answered that it was a hard question to answer, but they ended up choosing Tool. “Every band has their own heros, but if we have to pick one, we agree it would be Tool. Tool – because the underground scene is still so original and pure. Fans are still about the music not the look or amount of money spent on advertising and costumes. All that aside, we believe that Tool could teach us a lot. Not just from a musical point of view, but a spiritual point of view as well.”
The topic then turned to their music, about the evolving of their song ideas. “Dalton usually comes to practice with a general idea for a song, it’s usually a catchy hook, or a basic melody. Then as the four of us come together, and put our own mark on it, the catchy hook or basic melody evolves into an entire song,” they explained. “And it doesn’t always stop evolving when we’ve recorded, mixed and mastered it. Some completed song will be shelved even after mastering is complete simply because we feel like the song has not finished evolving. Some of our current songs are actually excerpts from a handful of our unpublished songs. Proving that we are not in control of the evolution of any one song, and we do not decide when it is complete. The pen is doing all the writing and we are simply holding onto the pen.” The band then individually answered Drexel’s favorite question; what does music mean to you? To Dalton, “Music is a chance to create”; Eric: “Music is a voice, a voice to be heard by everyone”; Justin: “Music to me, is perfection”; and James: “Music is our battle cry.”
Be sure to follow the band on Twitter (@half8n), and check their music out on reverbnation.
“The Art of Dying comes from a longer sentence: ‘the art of dying is my life to live’,” explains Jonny Hetherington, frontman of Canadian rock band, Art of Dying, to Upstate Metal’s Kate Drexel, over their lengthy Skype interview. “And it was a real late night, kind of drunken conversation that kind of came to that exact sentence, ‘The art of dying is my life to live.’ But it kind of became just, between the members of the band, just became our motto, our theme of how we live, recognizing that life is precious and your time here is kind of limited or unpredictable at least so that’s it, that’s the band name.”
Media Credit – Travis Shinn
Formed in the streets of Vancouver, BC by Jonny and the band’s guitarist, Greg Bradley, over the years this band has grown in many ways since the beginning in 2004, making band member changes along the way. Originally, the band started with Jonny, Greg, Chris Witoski (guitarist from 2005 till 2008), Matt Rhode (bassist from 2005 till 2008), and Flavio Cirillo (drummer from 2005 till 2008). In 2008, Hetherington and Bradley met their current drummer, Jeff Brown, then the rest of the current members made their way into the band, Tavis Stanley (guitar), and Cale Gontier (bass). When asked about how the band met, Hetherington recounted the details of the formation. “Greg and I met in Vancouver, I actually just moved out here and I pretty much sucked at playing guitar and singing at the same time. So I decided the best thing to do was to play on the street a lot so I would go down to Gramble Street or a couple of little spots that I had in town and I would just sit there and play my heart out all day long and all night long sometimes. One night, some dudes were walking by and they were starting a band and heard my voice and kind of…I guess they followed my voice for a couple of blocks because I was singing pretty loud. And next thing you know, that was Greg, and the next thing you know, we never parted ways since, it was like we decided to start a band right away. After a few years, we met Jeffy, who’s also in Vancouver, a drummer here, who was in a different band just a couple of doors down from us, in our jam space, and when the time was right, we just knew that after having Jeffy out once, we knew he was our guy. Then he had ties to Cale and Tavis who were living in Toronto, which is like…I don’t know…2,000 miles away. But he’s from Ontario, so he knew Cale and Tavis and we were heading out there for Canadian Music Week, which is a festival they have every year. And the timing was just perfect, we all hooked up, the five of us literally had a couple of beers together and we got along like we had been friends our whole lives, and the timing was right in our band to have them come in and the timing was right in the band they were playing with, to step away, so it was just perfect, that was about five years ago now.” He then chuckled and added, “I always joke that it was love at first beer, I guess.”
Since 2007, the band has released a total of three albums; their self-titled debut, Vices and Virtues (2011), and an acoustic compilation Let the Fire Burn (2012), featuring songs from their sophomore album, “Completely” and “Get Thru This”. The band definitely has a unique sound, as some fans put it, “a mix of Breaking Benjamin and Three Days Grace”, particularly because of Hetherington’s voice. Of course, according to Jonny, various artists, going as far back as Led Zeppelin, broadly influence the band. “I know Tavis and Greg both hold the highest regard for those guys, I’m learning the Zeppelin catalog myself now a little bit, so I’m just kind of…I have saved that for this part of my life, which is kind of cool to be going through that,” explained Jonny. “But the thing that changed music for me the most was really the grunge years. Just when I heard Pearl Jam and Nirvana and Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots and Alice in Chains for the first time and Tool for the first time. A Perfect Circle, all that kind of stuff in the 90s just really resonated with me and the passion they were singing with and how good the bands were, the instrumentation, everyone seemed really great with what they did, it was a very real time in music… It was such a real movement, the closest thing our generation has to the 60s movement or whatever. So I feel really fortunate to be a part of that era and just to have grown up a little bit with those bands as an influence, because we try to follow the same rules in our music and if it’s not real, then we move on from it. So we try to be as real as we can in our recordings and as real as we can on stage, and what you see is what you get in an Art of Dying show. It’s really important to us to wave that flag of ‘we’re real people, making real music’.” Well, their fan base has grown greatly over the years, and these dedicated fans call themselves, Die Hards. On Facebook, Jonny created a group for the fan club called The Die Hards (Official Fan Club for Art of Dying), where the fellow fans post pictures of themselves with the band and/or pictures with videos from live shows, as well as their favorite lyrics, personal stories of discovering the band, and questions. This is a very successful way for the Die Hards to connect with each other and possibly meet each other at nearby shows. Since the creation of the group, the members of the club have become very close with one another.
As for touring, the band is very tour hungry. They have featured in various hard rock and heavy metal festivals throughout the country including the 1st and 2nd annual Avalanche Tours in 2011 and 2012, both tours headlined by Stone Sour and Shinedown. They were also a part of the 2011 tour of Rockstar’s Uproar Festival, headlined by Avenged Sevenfold. As for other festivals, they performed at Rock on the Range, Carolina Rebellion and the 48 Hours Fest, all in 2011. Art of Dying has been known to tour with Disturbed and Three Days Grace. Currently, they are on the road with Saving Abel, part of a beneficial acoustic tour called Rock4Revival. When asked about the band’s favorite part about touring, the enthusiasm in Jonny’s voice was evident. “Touring, you know, I always feel like it’s our home. We all have our homes, obviously at home, but it just feels like for us the road is…as soon as we get home, we want to get back out again, so fun. It’s a little sad because a lot of the bands we’ve toured with don’t feel the same way. A lot of the bands are dying to get home and…I guess the more bands I meet, the more I realize that true friendships within bands are pretty rare, and I think a lot of people on Facebook and Twitter ask me stuff like, ‘I’m starting a band, what should I do? Give me some advice!’ My first advice is always to make sure you’re doing it with people you really like and people you really love and hopefully it’s with your friends because it’s truly how you’re going to make it or get by or survive, the support of true friendship. If it’s just a common, ‘We want to start a band, but we barely know each other…’ I don’t know! It could last too but at the same time, I just think the friendship part is very important so to me. Being on the road is just about embracing that time as a musician, as a performer and as a friend, and just really…whether it’s writing a song unexpectedly at 9 in the morning on the tour bus or whether it’s that perfect moment on stage, that night, it’s all a real good time for us.”
Out of the three albums, the band has a total of six singles with catchy yet powerful lyrics and tones. These singles include “Get Through This” from their debut record, yet another version was released in 2011 from Vices and Virtues, “Get Thru This” along with “Die Trying”, the very first song from that album. In 2012, from the same album, “Sorry” and “Raining”, and this year, “I Will Be There”. These profound songs manage to touch the Die Hards’ hearts and those songs remain to play a big part in their lives. After Drexel asked about song ideas and their evolution, Jonny recalled how he had coincidentally wrote a song that morning. “So this is actually typical in some ways for me, I woke up this morning, and I was dreaming. In my dream, I was writing a song, which is kind of weird, but this actually happens to me all the time now. I’ll either be on stage in the dream or I’ll be writing in my dream or I’ll just be humming a melody in my dream or something and that’ll wake me up, and when I wake up, I try to force myself to get up and go work on the song. Because if you’re lazy and just sometimes like, ‘Fuck! I just want to go back to sleep!’ then you totally miss your chance because it’s gone. So like this morning, it was way too early to get up but I just forced myself to get up. I pressed ‘record’ on my voice recorder, and hummed the melody from the dream and then grabbed my guitar and started working on the melody for about an hour. Then I kind of made some coffee and set the guitar down for a bit, and I like to let the musical ideas kind of mix up a little bit in my head for a bit and then I sat down with my guitar again and kind of found…I don’t know what the word is but it just all of the sudden clicks. The ‘Oh yeah, there is where it has to go!’ and it feels good and it feels right so you just follow that and then about three hours later, I got some lyrics now and I’ve got what I really think is a strong chorus and the whole thing, just…I got the verse, pre-chorus, and the chorus, and I know the bridges, I’m going to finish that as soon as this interview is done,” said Jonny, both he and Drexel shared a hearty laugh. “It’s just like that are really, really fun ‘cause the song kind of comes really easily. I know this one is coming that way. Sometimes there’s a song that sits around for three years and it’s hard to finish it because it’s not an easy one, but yeah, that’s generally how it works, and if I don’t write lyrics, or if I get busy and if I don’t have time to finish the words, I’ll usually do that later…I love Cuban cigars, so I’ll just light up a two or three hour cigar and just finish all the words to a song or two. Actually, recently too, there’s this really awesome friend of mine in Vancouver that lent me his store at night. He owns an amazing coffee shop, but it closes at night so he lent me that place to go finish songs, so I’ve been doing that a lot recently, and it’s just great to be in this dark, closed coffee shop, alone with my ideas and I’ve been able to write lyrics for two songs a night when I do that, so yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
While talking about their songs, Drexel was eager to find out the story behind “Raining”, one of her favorite Art of Dying singles, featuring the former frontman of Three Days Grace, Adam Gontier. “That one’s weird, the lyrics for that one found me, and I think it’s all about fears and coming to terms with the fact that we’re all a little bit crazy, and we’re all a little bit messed up inside at times. Sometimes I feel like I have the best life on the planet, I’m in a rock band, I’m having fun, I have people in my life that are brilliant, and I love them, and so I often think, ‘Wow, I’m the luckiest guy in the world’. But then there are days when I feel like complete shit and just things inside are not right, and I hate those days, but I think I wrote ‘Raining’ to kind of say to myself that we’re all that way, and it’s ok and we’re all kind of…you know, it’s raining inside for all of us at different times and it’s ok. So it’s kind of like that comfort in numbers or something, just realizing that it’s a normal part of life.” Kate admitted that on rough days, she finds herself having the song on repeat at times, to help her get through them. “That’s actually how Adam Gontier wound up singing on it with us, he’s Cale’s cousin, and so we always bounced ideas off of him and stuff, just as a friend, and he always came back saying that song was his favorite in our group of songs that we were going to make the record with, so we just asked him if he wanted to sing on it, and he said yes, so I think that song runs deep for people, including Adam.”
Through all the madness of touring and recording, Hetherington admitted to not having a lot of downtime, trying to manage the band with various documents and preparations for upcoming tours, from work visas to union dues being paid. “I’m always trying to get through these crazy to-do lists of stuff. I don’t just play music in the band; I do a lot of the business in the band as well so I’m always just whittling away at different things on the list of what to get done…It gets a little crazy when you care about your band, you want everything to work all the time and I don’t know whether I’m a bit of a control freak or whether it’s just I care so much that I want things to work, just always busy with either music or band stuff or trying to cook some food.” However, there is one downtime activity that Jonny is very passionate about, cooking. On Facebook, Pintrest and Twitter, he tends to post recipes for fantastic looking dishes. “When I cook, I really love it. I put a lot of passion to that too because it is one of the things I enjoy, really good food and having a beer or wine or cocktail that goes with that food. I love the whole experience of mixology and dining and eating and cooking and I think that’s probably…it’s a necessity in life, you might as well enjoy it and make it a really fun moment every day.” A little chuckle escaped from him as he added, “Although this morning, I just had a fried egg sandwich and a pickle, so I guess that’s not much of a moment.”
As of mid-May, Art of Dying is on the Rock4Revival acoustic tour with Saving Abel, originally created by Kayla Riley, one of the DJs from Sirius XM Octane. It all started with a small benefit acoustic show, Rock 4 Recovery, in downtown New York at the Gramercy Theatre in January of this year. Bands included Smile Empty Soul, Hurt, Art of Dying, Adam Gontier, and Before the Curtain. Because of the show’s huge success, Riley wanted to continue this as a benefit tour. “They took the bands from that evening and split it up into two tours and Adam from Three Days Grace couldn’t do it, so they got Saving Abel to do it. So basically it’s just Saving Abel and a couple other bands, I know Hurt and Smile Empty Soul are doing one leg of the tour, we’re doing the other leg and it’s all acoustic, and we’ve only announced a few shows right now, but it’s going to be almost two months of touring, so it’s going to be really cool. So we’re going to be all over the place with our acoustic set and it’s a lot of fun for us to have those intimate, really lower volume but still really fun shows. So on our Facebook and our Twitter and our website, we will be announcing the shows over the next few days, so if you wanna know if it’s coming near your city, just find us online and we’ll be announcing stuff daily.”
Be sure to follow the band on their Twitter (@ArtofDying) and be on the look out for updates on their tour on Facebook. This is a band you will not want to miss out on!
In the past few months, a group on Facebook of Ominous Seapods Fans have had the benefit of having first listen to OS shows that were, for the first time since the original performance, transferred and uploaded to Archive.org. Thanks to Rich Lemire, Taper Wayne and a lot of patience, these recordings are now free for fans of the Seapods to download or stream at their leisure.
To get an idea of what went into this task – unearthing and uploading shows from 15-20 years ago, Publisher Pete Mason talked with Rich Lemire about the process, the history and technology behind these classic recordings of The Ominous Seapods.
Pete Mason: Take me back – you were clearly an early Seapods fan. What were the early shows like, especially as the fan base began to grow around the state?
Rich Lemire: The shows were always a lot of fun! From the very first time I met the guys, you could just tell that they were a lot of fun to hang with and while they were serious about their music, they were just as serious about having some fun! You could tell that they were having a great time playing together and finding their sound as a band.
The first year or two I saw them, I only caught them in Albany and Plattsburgh, so I couldn’t really comment on any other shows they were playing elsewhere. But they were either a bit on the intimate side like they were in Albany, when they were establishing themselves after they moved here, to totally rowdy affairs when they would return to Plattsburgh, their original stomping grounds in college.
PM: How many shows would you estimate you saw? How many would you estimate you taped?
RL: While the band was together and a touring unit, I would estimate I saw roughly 300 shows, most of them during the four year period I was working with them. I’d say roughly seventy-five percent of those shows I saw were taped.
PM: The tapes – currently, they are mostly from 1992 and a few from the later 1990s. Why did they only come to light now?
RL: Most of the Seapods shows I recorded and want to archive digitally are from late 1991 when I first saw the band, through the summer of 1997, with some random shows from 1998-2001 thrown in. It’s just time for them to be digitized and shared, you know? They’ve been sitting in tape racks the entire time, some I haven’t listened to in almost 20 years. Their conversion only came to light recently after a couple of conversations I had with their former sound engineer Marty, and TaperWayne who was Conehead Buddha’s archivist while they were together during the ‘90s and early ‘00s. Marty and I had a conversation during the setbreak of a Phish show at Madison Square Garden a little while back, about the band being on indefinite hiatus now that Dana is in Australia, and that it would be really great to preserve the recorded legacy of the band.
I had given thought to doing it for a quite a while beforehand, but it always came down having the time to deal with it. To create the digital files, it’s a real time process to play the audio cassettes and create the tracks digitally. And that’s where TaperWayne comes in!
I need to say that Wayne’s effort has really been the key to this project, and I’m thankful he is into the project as much as he is!! He’s totally psyched to help get the shows converted and added to the Live Music Archive, just to get them out there for people to hear. We’re old friends and he’s out in Wisconsin these days, so it’s just great to just keep in regular touch while working on it. We eventually want to convert and upload more shows down the road, from other bands I was seeing and recording, like Moon Boot Lover, God Street Wine, Shockra and a bunch of others in my archives from the ‘90s. It just made the most sense to start with the Ominous Seapods archives.
PM: How were these shows recorded, taped and transferred?
RL: The shows were recorded mostly by just taking a feed directly from the soundboard right to the tape deck. Some of the earlier shows I taped were audience recording and some of the very early stuff I posted from the archives was passed on to me by Eric Buecken, the band’s manager at the time, when he was stepping away from handling the band’s affairs.
The majority of the Ominous Seapods shows that I recorded were on Sony D5 or D6 cassette decks, some were recorded on a home cassette deck in instances where I was dealing with repairs on mine or another taper friend was borrowing it to run multiple decks at Grateful Dead or Phish shows they were hitting. Towards the end of recording them and for the most part taping regularly, I started dabbling in some DAT recording, either using either a Sony D3 or Sony D7.
All of my recordings that have been posted so far have been transferred by Wayne, using a deck he has that is specifically used for archiving purposes. From the cassette playback, he extracts the audio files from the cassettes and creates the digital files in .WAV format in a program called Audacity. From there, he does some clean up or normalization to the files as needed and converts them to FLAC files in a program called CDWave. FLAC is an acronym for Free Lossless Audio Codec. It’s a format much like an MP3 or WAV file, but it’s lossless, meaning that the audio is compressed without any loss in quality. From there, one of us uploads the FLAC files to the Live Music Archive or to etree if the band is not on the Archive.
PM: Are there any shows that have stand out among the shows you are sharing, or any shows that you have specific memories from?
RL: As you can probably imagine a lot of those nights 15-20 years ago are a total blur now, as some of them were a blur back then! Ha ha! We’re only two batches of tapes into the conversion project, so were really just getting started. So while I can’t say anything that we’ve done yet has really stood out for me personally, what has been cool with this project so far, at least to me, is to hear the progression that some of the older songs they played made as they continued to play them through the years, maturing as musicians and as a band. I am really looking forward to re-listening to some of the shows from 1994, which is when I felt the band really became the well-oiled machine they were. This was about a year after Ted joined the band. They had evolved into a really tight unit writing some great tunes and putting on some great rock shows! I hope people are really digging checking out these shows, as much as Wayne and I have been converting them. There’s much more to come!!
Here are the first batch of Ominous Seapods shows that have been released on Archive.org. We’ll update this list as more shows are uploaded.
Day two of Rock on the Range started off quietly, with a bright cloudy day and an empty stadium with the exception of the security in front of the barricade at the Monster Stage. Then the clock stroked 11 am, allowing the Rangers to enter the stadium, filling up the front of the barricade very quickly. Finally after 45 minutes of waiting impatiently, the outdoor music ended, hinting it was Pop Evil’s time to rock the stage. However, before the band arrived, the sponsors brought out the U.S. Army to salute the American Flag. Once they left, it was time to officially begin day two.
The first to enter the stage was Chachi Riot (drums), second, Matt DiRito (bass), followed by Nick Fueling (guitar) and Dave Grahs (guitar). The last to make an appearance was the one and only, Leigh Kakaty (lead vocals). Pop Evil started their set with their hit single from the 2008 record, Lipstick on the Mirror, “Hero”, and from their latest record, Onyx, “Deal with the Devil”. Despite the name, the band was anything but evil. “Pop Evil was kind of just derived from where we were from; we kind of never fit in. At the time the band was originating, a lot of Michigan bands were starting to blow up and do well; some of them were hardcore, some were more alternative, and nothing we were doing seemed to quite be ‘pop’ enough to be mainstream but we didn’t fit in with the metal bands because we weren’t hard enough, so we weren’t really evil,” said Chachi Riot to Upstate Metal’s Kate Drexel, later that day in the Media Tent, explaining the meaning behind the band’s name. “So the two kind of contradicted and we just labeled ourselves, like we were the ‘anti-pop’ but we were too ‘poppy’ to be evil so it just kind of stuck. We started rolling and got a following and though some of us hated it, once you label it at any amount of success, you stick with the name.”
After the performance of “Monster You Made” from their previous record, War of Angels, Pop Evil continued their majestic set with the song from their latest record, “Sick Sense”, showing the change in their music style. “We were carrying a lot of stereotypes like being a party band, being wild and fun which is fine but we’re ready to be taken seriously, so we kind of put a halt to that. We got really serious, we challenged ourselves, we worked hard, and it’s been a different ballgame,” Chachi explained to Drexel, when asked about inspirations used in the new record. “As far as musically, we’re five different individuals that really listen to different music, and you hear that in the song writing, because everyone in the band writes, so we have songs like ‘Sick Sense’, that carries more of a Nine Inch Nails vibe and you have ‘Silence and Scars’ has been referred kind of like The Pixies I heard earlier, and we’ve gotten a couple of songs that sounded like Rage Against the Machine, and those are three bands that have nothing in common, but somehow we have managed to make it work in one album, so I really like the diversity in the band and what we’re expressing. It’s fun,” he added excitedly.
The second to last song on their set was “Last Man Standing” and it was during that number when Kakaty did a different form of crowd surfing that took the Rangers by surprise, he walked on the hands of the fans, impersonating Iggy Pop. The final song was their dark, awe-inspiring single, “Trenches”, the song that strongly proved their determination of becoming the successful rock band that they have become. “‘Trenches’ is just like that for us, the whole album; it was like the perfect lyrical description of the album. And we felt like we’ve been waiting for so long to get out of the trenches and it’s just like we’ve been grinding and we’ve been working and we’re all from Michigan, which is not the most economically successful state, obviously, and everyone out there like in the Midwest, they get it and nothing is ever easy, nothing is ever handed out or free, and we’re just ready to work hard and overcome the obstacles,” explained Riot to Drexel about the story behind the song. To end it all, Leigh thanked the crowd for their continued outstanding support while DiRito smashed his bass guitar.
All in all, an excellent setlist, the whole band was very interactive with the Rangers, their performance was simply superlative. Be sure to check out their recent album, Onyx and to catch one of their shows. It is one band that you do not want to miss.
