Tag Archives: rock

this is becoming almost a weekly feature, this week my mate matt answers some questions. here’s a bit about him and his band first.

matt, apart from being the best man at my wedding last year, is a musician living in montreal. he plays in a folk-influenced 3 piece cited as ‘one of montreal’s finest up-and-coming bands’ (meet you at the show) along with brothers marc and dan kiely. their band, the wind up radio sessions, are currently working on their second studio album after a year of gigging and the promotion of their first album, red brick house (which you can listen to on spotify).

me and matt have been friends for years. we used to play together in bands. covers, hardcore, folk, basically from age 13 onwards we covered the musical spectrum from end to end. matt took music further than me (due to his talent and ability, and my lack of) and from the very beginning it was obvious his interest was greater than most. due to the geographical barrier we mostly speak over email these days. he emailed me this interview after i’ve been pestering him to do it for a few weeks now.

what is your musical history? where did it all start for you?

i was 11 when i started. at first, i took classical lessons, went through the grades and at the same time taught myself the basics on electric guitar. learning classical turned out to be the best starting point, as it gave me an incentive to keep going. over the years, i’ve carried on playing and evolving as a musician. in the band, i’ve been able to work on playing bass, ukelele, keys and percussion. i still consider guitar to be my main instrument, but the idea is to get the fundamentals of a wider range of instruments and always keep things fresh.

how do you think you’ve evolved musically from when you first began playing?

my approach has definitely changed a lot. i used to be more perfectionist and more bothered about just learning songs i liked. over the years i realized it was more important to put my own stamp on the things i play. now it’s a continuation of that – finding my niche, so even if it’s a chord progression done a thousand times before, there’s at least some honesty at the core of it.

are you working on anything at the moment that you are particularly excited about?

currently we’re recording our next album, which I’m very excited about. we’ve done two full sessions at a friend’s studio here in montreal and we’ll have a few more sessions over the course of the next two to three months before the mixing and mastering process begins. it’s been over a year and a half since our debut, so I’m eager to get some new stuff out there.

aside from the new album, it’s worth saying that we’re 100% independent, so we’re excited about the challenge of getting the necessary exposure. as of now, our reach has been through web reviews, blogs, podcasts and some college-radio. hopefully we can work on getting more of this exposure and once the album drops do a proper cross-country tour, touch wood.

The Wind Up Radio Sessions – Chesterfields from Cameron Mitchell on Vimeo.

do you write separately to the band and how much different do you think that is?

on my own, i’m always trying to find a good hook or a melody that plays out well over a guitar-part. lyrics-wise, I tend not to write anything down and instead I rely on my memory. it takes a long time before I’m satisfied with my lyrics, and most the time the emphasis is on the sound of the words as opposed to telling a story. with the band, it works differently – in many ways, dan is the nucleus of the group as he brings a lot of the ideas and we work on structure collectively. ocassionally, me or marc have an idea that comes to fruition. we also have a couple of new tunes that have been written in equal parts.

as for preference, I honestly couldn’t say as each method has it’s own merits.

who’ve been your biggest influences musically or otherwise?

my biggest influences in music are people who write memorable songs and have unique voices – for me, it’s all about the voice. marc e. smith, tom waits, don van vliet, joanna newsom, bill callahan … the list goes on and on. i listen to and appreciate all styles and since moving to montreal have come to realize just how many talented musicians there are. outside of music, i’m influenced by meeting interesting people. i’m lucky that in my day-job i’m surrounded by a lot of like-minded, intelligent folk. also, playing in the band allows me to meet people from all over the place.

with the saturation of talent, across many creative fields, and the ease of self-publishing and promotion, what do you feel the impact on music and musicians has been? do you ever see a future with music being your sole income or are you happy working to supplement your creative outlet?

it’d be great to not worry about money but realistically it would take some kind of miracle to get to the point where i can say it provides my income. i actually consider us lucky enough to break even from the shows we play that we can at least pay for our jam-space and travel expenses without dipping into our own pockets. it’s also worth saying that even though canada is a small market, there are government grants available. we were lucky enough to get a small grant that paid for most of our first album to be recorded. we’ve recently applied for another grant, so fingers crossed.

in general though it’s safe to say that it’s always been an extremely tough business in terms of sustainability and probably even more so now when every band uses the internet to promote themselves and in many cases give away their music for free.

being internet savvy is pretty much essential for any band and we realize how important it is for almost everything we do – getting shows, networking, finding out about other bands. it’s true there seems to be a saturation of talent but it’s not a bad thing. it just means you have to try extra hard to carve out a niche, as well as accept the fact there’s a hundred other artists in your neighbourhood alone.

for me it’s actually exciting to focus on these things and discard the idea of being ‘successful’ in a monetary sense. it gives perspective and as long as we’re happy with what we’re creating, we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing.

links

you can find details about the wind ups at their site thewindupradiosessions.com on their facebook & myspace pages. they also occasionally update on twitter.