Sons of Hippies, tracks from Warriors of the Light
“XXXTC”
Sons of Hippies is Katherine Kelly Canales (Guitars, effects, keyboards, vocals), Jonas Canales (Drums, synthesizer, vocals), and Michael Møk (bass). On an evening back in March, Katherine, Jonas, and I sat down at Whole Foods in Sarasota with beer and a tape recorder. This is Part Two of our conversation.
ON BALANCING THE POLITICAL AND THE ABSTRACT…
KK: For me, I’m lucky because it’s always abstract. It’s always wordplay based on the way the syllables sound within the context of the notes in the song. I never really quite plan out a song… people say, “Oh, maybe this song is about this, maybe this song is about that.” I guess my vocabulary has always been kind of aggressive, and I like those words, and by nature they’re political in many ways… [In “Spaceship Ride”] I wasn’t sure whether to print “See Bright Red” in the notes as “See” or “Sea” to begin with because that would be something else entirely. But I’m into that because what it does is it allows someone… it gives somebody complete freedom to judge and to understand the song as they understand the words that I’m saying, which basically have every meaning but totally, absolutely none at all. The intention is always abstract and often intentional.
JC: We play with [abstract and intentional] a lot. Even in a song you might have abstract words and a phrase that’s meaningful.
KK: Like “Given” [from the album]… Jonas named that song, and I was leaning more towards “Give-in” in the beginning. I really loved that, because we sort of know what the song is really about but it ended up being the other way. It could have gone either way.
JC: We like to play like that.
“Don’t Forget”
ON PLAYING LIVE VERSUS STUDIO RECORDING…
KK: It went through a cycle. We had to rehearse for months. We had to write these songs and rehearse for six to eight months before we were even comfortable playing live. I like to record, obviously. Playing out is awesome. Unfortunately, we live in a state where it’s difficult to do that.
I play through two amplifiers, so, there’s a lot of effect going on…one of them is an Epiphone, real vintage sounding, and another one’s a Portovox (?) like an old-school sixties Leslie speaker that rotates… it actually has two built-in switches, low and a high speed, it’s so cool. So, the guitar sound is pretty big live, but it certainly isn’t bass, but you’re not missing much. This record is so produced, and it’s so layered and augmented, that basically when we listen back to it we realized we have to get a bass player, but we want to.
JC: I guess this project is a challenge because we play so many instruments and we do so much stuff at once, which makes us always evolve.
KK: It’s like you’re being constantly pushed to master, and it’s getting easier and easier, but at first… with Nous Rapport it was so easy to perform. My role was like super narrow… I was in charge of guitar antics and performance and singing and barre chords. I still can’t look at the audience very much. It’s so bizarre because I’m so sick-scared that if I break the concentration that things will go to hell. There are loops going, there’s a synthesizer going, there are complicated rhythms and harmonies, but it’s cool.
We do all [the electronics] live too. I have a keyboard to my left but I don’t play while I play guitar. The keyboards you hear I’ll play either before or after, but (Jonas) plays synthesizer while he’s playing drums.
JC: Like I said, it’s always a challenge because there are two different worlds going on, and we’re working both sides of our brains, and it’s so amazing to exploit that. I have a micro-synthesizer and the drums of course and the vocals, so it’s cool to experiment.
ON THE SARASOTA MUSIC SCENE…
KK: I’ve been playing here since I was 14 years old. I was in a band called the Doses, and we were actually, I don’t know, I played shows that I never will with this band. Maybe it was a novelty, but the music was excellent. I mean, we were total disciples of the Pixies. The Sarasota music scene back then, which was awhile ago, was rockin’. It was so awesome. We had the most original bands here, and they were all full of integrity: Simon Said, Half-Inch Holiday, Blanket, Kelly Green (which was sort of older), and Topeo. I don’t think it’s reverse nostalgia, or nostalgia period. I just remember feeling… the music was really heavy and really brilliant, and everybody involved was … there was a community. There were so many places to play. We played at the State Theater in St. Pete, all over Florida. We played at Barbarella’s in Orlando. We played at Rosie’s Lounge in Miami when we were fourteen. It was so cool.
MH: Is it important for you to be a part of a local music scene?
KK: We embrace it.
MH: What’s the responsibility of the local musician to the local music scene and vice versa?
KK: Do anything you can for it.
JC: Create a community, help each other, not be assholes to each other. There’s no competition whatsoever.
KK: I don’t think we have to leave [Sarasota] for good though, to be honest with you. I really don’t. I’m not saying that I don’t want to. I’ll do whatever it takes, but I moved back here because I feel comfortable here. I didn’t produce … I lived in Boston for eight years. I produced music for two years. It was so difficult to even exist. So when I came back here I was like… ahhh..
There seems to be this mini-burgeoning collective of maybe three to five bands. Harper Sublette, Villanova Junction, MeteorEYES [Shannon Fortner], This is an Adventure, Completely From Mountains, Cats in the Basement, Jesus Chrysler Super, and there’s a lot more I could mention, and it’s really weird stuff.
JC: We’ve got Skiffle.
KK: Skiffle, hell yeah. Skiffle is a six-foot-one fireman with a handlebar mustache like John Ringling, and he plays experimental bass with snare drums attached to his bass cabinet.
JC: And he also plays Game Boys.
KK: He plays Game Boys. Noise music, you know? He’s getting people together. He’s a personality, and he totally cares.
ON MAKING MUSIC, MAKING A LIFE…
JC: It’s everything all together. It’s life… it’s making a difference in writing another piece of rock and roll history and being able to do something for the music, do something for the people, for the world… and also going for major venues and just doing it.
KK: It starts with being able to pay for your life with your music. That’s where it starts. And it’s not extravagant, it’s just like, “Okay, I can send my rent home and my car payment or whatever…” and if that happens, then the possibilities that open up as far as creativity and inspiration are going to quadruple.
Sons of Hippies is Katherine Kelly Canales (Guitars, effects, keyboards, vocals), Jonas Canales (Drums, synthesizer, vocals), and Michael Møk (bass). On an evening back in March, Katherine, Jonas, and I sat down at Whole Foods in Sarasota with beer and a tape recorder. This is Part One of our conversation… tune in next Tuesday for Part Two.
ON HOW THEY GOT STARTED…
KK: It’s coming on a year, actually, in April, and he was really into like, “Let’s jam,” you know, “I get this vibe from you, we should really get together,” and I didn’t have time at all, and I was trying to promote my band [Nous Rapport], and all of a sudden when my band collapsed I had this sort-of small catalogue of solo material that I was really digging, and I was like, “I guess this is what I’m going to do now.” So I contacted him… I was in Boston at the time… the day I was thinking about it I thought, “I guess I’ll write to this guy Jonas,” and I checked my Myspace and there was this huge letter that he had written to me the same day, and it was so cool… so I thought, “this is a sign.” We started playing at my mom’s house for maybe a month-and-a-half? We played my material.
JC: Prior to that, though, there was an interesting point that I was recording with Third Society and at the first day we were recording, at the end of the day, I was looking for something to do and she was playing at Pastimes, her solo project. I went to see her and I just dug it so much, I was like “Dude, it’s amazing,” because for some reason when you played for Nous Rapport your vocals were like “ding” [high-pitched sound] and I’m like, “Dude, I dig that, I need those vocals,” you know what I’m saying? And that’s why I was always offering, “let’s jam.” I went to see her with her solo project and I was like, “that’s it, I dig it.” So then I sent the letter, and I went to see her again, right, at St. Pete? [Yeah] So I went to see two of her shows and I’m like “Dude,” I was creating so many drum beats for the songs already, so then we decided, “Let’s do it.”
KK: So then we got together doing my material… It was always a little funny putting drums to my stuff with the exception of maybe a few songs, probably because they’re totally just folk songs, you know? They maybe were able to be developed? He went out and bought a MicroKorg synthesizer, and the first day we wrote “Suntan,” which was the first song I’d ever written with someone else, and it was like, “What?” All of a sudden it was a band, and it was so cool because from then on it was like… The last solo song I wrote was “Cautionary Tale,’ which is the bonus track [on Warriors of the Light], and that’s why we included it because it’s sort of like the missing link.
JC: That’s the very first song, you know what I mean? This album is actually… it shows… it’s the story of our evolution up to this point because the songs are all in order, like they’ll go …
KK: There’s like two halves, there’s two eras… “Suntan,” “Get Down,” “Given,” and “Don’t Forget,” the ones we had on our initial demo, and then the other four are newer.
JC: So it represents chapters.
KK: It’s not in chronological order but it’s all there.
“Whatever We Spend” (from Warriors of the Light)
ON RECORDING THE ALBUM “WARRIORS OF THE LIGHT”…
KK: We recorded it in North Port with our friend Tom Klimchuck who was the guitarist in a band called Propane. They’re a hardcore band from New York. I met him through Nous Rapport. He’s just a kind, amazing, generous soul who basically said… he did our demo, hastily did our demo in maybe three days, and he went on tour with his band, and when he came back we were like, “We want you to do our album and we want to pay you this time,” and all that stuff, and we gave him peanuts [and bananas], and to his credit he didn’t care. We recorded the drum tracks in one weekend in December, the first week in December. He did most of them Saturday.
JC: No click track. We decided to keep it as natural as we can to preserve the energy and the artistic intention.
KK: Basically, Tom built Jonas a drum room. It was so cool. It’s his garage, but it’s very professional, his microphones are state of the art. Anyway, we took the drums out and little by little over the next two full months (two full months it took, ‘cause we’re so… we can’t do music full-time yet, so we just squoze it in…sometimes more [than a couple of nights a week], sometimes less]
JC: Lots of late nights, you know? Little sleep.
KK: So then I went back and I played guitar live to his tracks, but obviously we scrapped it all, and then I overdubbed my guitars. We ran the live send through three amps at one time that were all in one room being mic’ed: the rotating speaker, my Epiphone, and his Marshall JCM 800, which is why the sound is so full because there’s three amplifiers going. And he obviously automates them to hear different ones at each time. So we did that and he put the bass down, and little by little each track we completed, obviously then vocals and some really unique instruments.
JC: Just having somebody that has twenty-plus years of experience in music and has traveled the world many times, played in front of so many people and knows music, his knowledge… it’s amazing. His ears, they’re dead-on. He can hear… the guy’s amazing. So having that…
KK: But it was also at the same time very laid-back and so comfortable and relaxed.
JC: The other thing of course having this amazing project that we’re both so proud of. It’s the first time… it’s a very unique and fresh experience for both of us. We love this project so much that being able to have that and do that…
KK: But let’s just point out: what [Jonas] sings, he writes, and what I sing, I write. I don’t write lyrics for him and he doesn’t write lyrics for me.
JC: It’s collaboration, a total collaboration in everything. We’re so lucky to have this energy going on, and we cultivated that energy, and we’re so lucky to have that. That’s all it is. It’s about energy, it’s about what it feels like. There is this trance we enter every time we play that things flow for you. Many times, 90% of the time, she thinks something and I play that, and she says, “That’s exactly what I wanted.” Now, we don’t even say that anymore because it’s so normal.
ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE SONS OF HIPPIES…
KK: So people were like, “So, are you a jam band?” Sometimes. And other people were like, “Man, your band name is stupid.” And we’re like, “We don’t care.” It’s completely full of meaning, but what it really should convey is an attitude, not a musical style. It’s a carry-over of maybe things that people were interested in that should be universals yet seemingly aren’t anymore, like kinship, peace, awesome music, being together. That’s what the band name means. It doesn’t necessarily resonate like that with people, but the people who get it totally get it, and that’s all that matters. We do put some psychedelic things…
JC: There’s a vibe.
KK: It’s not like fucking Donovan or Jimi Hendrix… and what I hope is… that word “hippie” doesn’t exist much anymore with people, yet hippies are EVERYWHERE. Our name is telling people it’s cool to be this way, to maybe call yourself that within this re-interpretive context of carrying over those ideas and concepts, but the fashion is different, the sounds are different, but the ideology is completely the same.
JC: We’ve been through so many generations in rock and roll after that, and we carry all of that in our skin too. There’s all the punk, the weird new-wave synth stuff… because we’re hippies in essence and state of mind instead of being just a poseur.
M: Do you guys go see a lot of other bands around town?
R: I go as much as possible.
J: When my wallet allows me.
R: It’s a little tough now, but you have to make the best of it. When there is a chance, when there’s a free show, that’s great, but it sucks that, you know, you want to support the band as well.
E: I was living next door to Digital 3, and I just happened to be walking down the street. I saw, like, “Oh, look. They have burgers and stuff.” They were barbequing. I was a neighbor, you know, and walked over and was like, “Hey, you guys are cooking… are you watching the Super Bowl?” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, come on in, hang out.” So, Ryan was there and we just jammed, and Ryan tossed me a couple of albums from his older bands, and I thought it was great. I loved the singing and the energy was there. I really thought it was great.
J: It’s funny thinking about it now, but the one day [Ryan] called me, he was at work. He talks really quiet when he’s at work, like [whisper], “Hey man…you want to come over and jam sometime, just play the drums or something?” I was like, “Okay.” When we did it, and I remember the first time myself, I was like, “Where is this going to go?” The second time something happened again, and the next thing we were just high-fiving each other every time.
R: [The band’s name comes from] the Hendrix song. He played it at Woodstock. It was his last song and it closed the festival. If you really listen to the song, it kind of was a gap, a total… it made me think about nothing whatsoever. You were just listening to that song. I thought it was so beautiful, just the name. It stood for something so beautiful, especially when he played it… I think it was the closing act for the whole festival. It was so significant because it was all about peace, love, music, and it would make sense if we did have that name and we were about that.
J: and not in the tree-hugging hippie way, but that is the essence of who we are as humans. I think to invoke that, I think we need that. It’s sad when it’s the hippies that are stereotyped as the only ones that love. That’s the way it should be anyways. You should never be too busy to stop and greet somebody, you know? You should never be too busy to greet somebody. Today I saw another guy literally get out of his car and kick another car because he was so pissed off that they stopped short. It should never go that far.
E: When I’m playing, when I’m doing a rhythm, it’s like this build-up, and when I go into the solo during practice but especially on stage, when I go into that solo and I just start flying – and it could go anywhere. I practice every aspect of music all the time, but when I go into that solo I want it to be spontaneous and just to come out of nowhere, and obviously studying theory helps that for it to be cohesive. But when I go into the solos, I go to another place. I tap into another state of consciousness. It’s not direct channeling, but I really feel like I tap into the universal song. I do tap into that stuff when I’m playing, and I feel like there’s magic going on, and I do achieve a higher state of consciousness. When I’m onstage, I’m usually concentrating on the keyboard, but I’ll look at the crowd and I achieve this other state.
R: You can reach those kind of levels without even playing music but with surfing. You talk to a bunch of surfers and it’s the same thing.
J: With the recording of the CD, what made it so interesting, is that nobody was in the studio at all when we recorded it. Ryan had to plug in, and I sat behind the drums and we had soundboarding and a sheet around the drum set, and there were no lyrics, I couldn’t hear the lyrics. Ryan plugged in and I could only hear him, and we recorded the drums. After that, separately, the guitar was recorded, the organ and stuff, and that’s what was so cool, because he [Erin] would do things… each time it was a new solo.
E: to me, on a couple of the songs, I got it on the first take, and then, I think… I don’t think I did more than three takes for each one. When I was doing the solos, it was highly inspiring, and it was really inspiring when we were doing the sessions. I could definitely see myself producing a variety, a diversity of solos, hour upon hour, I can just crank them out. There have been times that I’ve sat at the piano or keyboard at home over the past ten years just playing for three hours and only stopping to get a drink of water or go to the bathroom or something, you know? I really feel that when I’m playing that I tap into something else. Music brings you to another level of reality and it comes from the universe. It’s just an amazing thing. I just feel really happy that I’m able to play, you know?
M: When you guys play out, do you extend solos? Do you extend what you have on the CD?
J: In my opinion, [the CD] is a lot more primitive. Although that’s complex in terms of what we play, our stage sound is a lot different. And I like that about us. Sometimes I get a little nervous … Erin will just say, “Yeah, we’re going…” and I’m like, “Okay.” You know, you have to have that trust.
R: It’s all about connection onstage.
J: Nobody tries to lead anybody. And then Erin will pick up the organ and drop it. and it’s like this thunderous thing.
M: Do you ever get mad at [Erin] for going on too long?
J: No, never.
R: Sometimes he gets mad at me for going on too long.
E: No, Ryan’s awesome.
M: People tell me you have a reputation for having you stuff together. What does that mean, that you have your shit together as a band?
J: I think they mean the communication on stage.
R: Yeah, that and the experience. I’ve been in a couple of bands before, and I know what to expect from other people and what they want, you know? You don’t want to go to a live show and just see a couple of people, a bunch of jackasses just strumming away and that’s about it. You want a show. It’s entertainment. That’s what it is. I think when people say that we’ve got our shit together, hopefully they are right.
M: You think they are talking about your live show then?
R: I would assume so. We haven’t really handed out too many CDs. I wish we could.
M: Is the CD for sale at your shows and somewhere else too?
J: I have to say that I don’t think we really push our product, you know? Somebody will ask, “Do you have a CD?” And we’ll say, “Yeah, here you go.”
M: Sometimes it feels wrong to push your product. Like you have to be salesmen or something.
J: I think that takes away from what we’re…
R: You have to naturally love what you do, and if you’re not in that realm, it’s just pointless.
M: Tell me about the songwriting. Who does the songwriting?
J: Primarily us and Ryan. One time we had this really shitty little place in a shack of a recording studio for a while and I remember trying to gather up with Ryan, like, “What’s going on?” and he’s like, “No, shut up, shut up!” He picks up this guitar and he’s like, “I was driving here man, I’m going to lose it!” Then he’ll get a riff or something and that’ll kick off. But, by all means, Erin will be like, “No, no, no…” Or I’ll be like, “You know, I think that needs… you know, let’s do this.” And the next thing you know, it’s like, “OK, there we go.” And that’s it.
E: Ryan primarily writes all the songs, which are wicked awesome songs. A lot of times what will happen we as a whole will democratically come to a conclusion, an ending, or maybe we’ll work out a transition in some sort of inverse way. But primarily he writes the songs, and he’s really good at it. I write songs too, and I’ve been writing them… I don’t have a ton of songs, but I’ve been writing songs since I was a kid, really. I’ve been writing goods songs since, say, 1995. We haven’t really … we need to practice more and integrate.
M: I was going to ask you if you practice.
J: One thing that bothered Ryan … he was in a band at one point that didn’t [practice]. So maybe that reflects the comment that we have our shit together. I think it has a lot to do with the communication. We read each other a lot, and I think we really feed off of each other. If Ryan does something like this [gestures], I know he’s going to change real quick, or if Erin’s going to change because he’s shifting like this, and that’s maybe where we stop and play just right. That comes from practice.
E: These two guys have introduced me to many new types of music that I never listened to before. I never heard the Misfits, surprisingly, before I met Ryan and Julian. I love punk. The type of music that these guys listen to and the style of music of Ryan’s songwriting has really pushed me to become a better musician and pushed me to become a better soloist. You kind of have to find your role.
M: When you are playing a different kind of music than what you are used to, you have to figure out what you are doing. You don’t always have to drive what the music sounds like. You can be a part of it, and you can find your place in it. I mean, who wants to be in a band in which you are competing with other people for time or attention or sound?
R: That’s where the ego comes in.
J: That’s why we don’t want to be a band that just comes on and plays without practicing.
M: The listener knows that something is not right.
E: The songs we’ve played … and we’ve played some covers, they’ve just opened my mind to a lot of possibilities. I’ve learned a lot of songs that were brand new to me in a short period of time. It really transformed my playing on top of what I already knew before. It’s been a really positive and excellent learning experience for me. We need to sit down and the more we practice… we need to practice intensively. When I graduate from college we’re going to have a lot more time to do that.
M: But then you’ve got to get a job and everything.
E: I don’t think we’ve really integrated the style of playing that I have used in the past. Me and my dad have written a lot of music together. My dad just has a boatload of material. Our stuff is more heavy-metal oriented, and when I say heavy metal I mean Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest. I like Jean-Luc Ponty the violinist a lot. Cosmic Messenger is a great album. All that stuff… we’ve got a very… before this [band], I was playing heavy metal piano, per se, and I think that it’s been extremely positive to not integrate that up to this point. But that’s not to say that that’s all that I play is heavy metal, because jazz and classical… I’ll just come up with stuff that you don’t even know what category it is.
M: It’s hard to imagine heavy metal piano, in a way.
E: And that’s the thing. I try to be on the cutting edge of heavy-metal piano, such as the term may be expressed. But me and my dad play a lot of drums and piano, so I wrote a lot of songs. We haven’t really integrated my previous style with that, but I think that’s good because it’s pushed me as a musician.
M: is that a future direction you want to explore?
E: I think we’re going to keep on with the way that we’re keeping on. We’re going to keep on keeping on with the style that we’ve got, and I feel that I have a lot of inspirations and ideas, but what you have to be careful of is … it’s hard to explain, but the way the song sounds, like you’ll have a song like an Iggy Pop-type song, you know, it sounds like a little bit between, say, Iggy Pop and the Doors, you don’t want to throw in, you know, an abrupt timing change that’s going to make it sound like Black Sabbath all of a sudden or people are going to … it can’t be so abrupt. It needs to be integrated smoothly.
M: Because then you are getting more progressive. You are jarring somebody out of…
E: I don’t really understand the meaning of progressive that much. There’s so many different subcategories of you know, say, techno, metal, rock and roll.
M: I think something’s progressive if it … there’s a lot of music that comes out now… people call it progressive punk or progressive rock. When I listen to it, it’s got all the punk and heavy metal… like someone will be screaming, and it’s obviously got a very hard, very heavy guitar texture to it, but it will basically be in my mind like, section – section – section – section that rhythmically varies from section to section, and doesn’t have the form… it’s more a sort of formal thing in my mind. It’s not a traditional… Iggy Pop or Black Sabbath, they’re still within a traditional song structure, in my mind.
J: That’s what sort of annoys me is when people don’t want to listen to something different, and it’s like, “Really?” If it pertains to you and you feel it, then listen to it. It doesn’t matter what genre it is. I don’t really like the Grateful Dead too much, but I watched a thing on CNN, and the drummer, he started a program where they went to the Amazon and Deep Africa and recorded music there that would have never been recorded, and I thought that was really awesome. That showed me that it really doesn’t matter what music… music is music.
E: I’d love to tour the world, you know, playing at amphitheaters and stadiums. That’s the dream for me. The stage is magical. It’s a magical thing because it’s the audience, really, and when you tune in to the audience’s vibes and where they are vibing, you can tell the audience is digging it.
J: I think we’re very audience-driven, and that’s why we put on certain shows the way we do. But I know we played our first show in Orlando, and there were maybe fifteen people there. Yeah, we played like we did, but we didn’t get the stand-up and cheer kind of thing. They clapped and we got a really good response and positive feedback, and that was awesome. But we all got off and were like, “Uhhhh,” because we didn’t get what we normally expect. Even though they appreciated the music and they said it was good, but it was like, “Really?” I don’t think any of us ever gets off the stage and says, “Oh, let’s go run a mile.” It’s like, “Let’s go get a beer,” you know?
E: I’m really happy to be a part of the scene here. This is actually my first band, other than the band that I had with me and my dad, which was just a duo. But I’ve done recording in the past. I’ve been recording since I was sixteen or seventeen, just you know tapes. We went to a studio once in Vermont. … There are a ton of bands out there that have great organ, you know. Brian Auger, I was just recently introduced to. A lot of stuff like that. But I always had a fascination for the Hammond organ and vintage keyboards, which a lot of keyboardists probably have a fascination with that. I bought a Hammond organ I found on Craig’s List. It’s from between 1968 and 1974. It’s actually a Spinet, not a B3, but it’s got a sound all its own. The quality of the Hammond instrument is above and beyond any other synthesizer I’ve ever played. Synths are great because they give you a great variety. You get your strings and your techno stuff. I haven’t played one of the top of the line organ synths because they don’t have them at Sam Ash. They don’t have them around. It’s 280 pounds. It’s oak, actually. It’s full hardwood, solid oak. It’s got a tone wheel and a Leslie with a plate reverb system. It’s all vintage. The sound is really great. It’s really warm. I find that with the synths, they can be kind of detached and cyborg-like, machine-like. While the sampling is great – and I think there are a lot of sampling engineers that really work hard at these things, they get it – you can’t get those subtle variations. You can’t get every volume setting. You can’t get that natural distortion blasting through speakers of all different varieties. It would take a million years. I really prefer the vintage sound. I think that synthesizers have come a long ways.
J: It takes all three of us to pick it up. if there’s a stage that’s waist-high, all of a sudden there’s a commotion and there’s this big thing and it’s slammed on stage, you know? And everybody’s like, “What’s going on?”
E: People see it and they do a double-take. But these guys are so patient and conscientious. I told them a million times, night after night, snapping muscles, getting minor muscle tears all over the place, bruises. The thing has a lot of battle scars already.
J: $75 we paid for it.
R: No, it was $80.
E: If I had a lot of money to throw around, I think I’d make an organ warehouse for repairing and stuff like that. The organ recovery zone. It’s heavy as hell, and it’s huge, and people see it and they’re like, “Wow!” So many people come up to me and say, “Wow! What is that!” A lot of times, we’ll get there a little bit early, and we’ll sitting against a brick wall in a hallway, and people will be walking by and say, “Whoa! What’s that!” and we’re like, “I have no idea!”
J: There are a lot of hills to climb for us to get a show, but it’s not necessarily a problem. Growing up with music I was always inspired, and I love to be inspired in a positive way. I want to be inspiring in a positive aspect. If we can be something that inspires in a positive aspect, the more to inspire, that’s where I want to reach.
R: As long as it has enough money for you to get out on the road and eat some food and be happy, that’s all I care about. That’s all I want to do, just tour, go to places, perform, have fun. I’m not pushing it to happen. I’m just being. We don’t want to carry that ego around, like, “Oh, we want to make a lot of money.” It’s not about that at all.
E: We’re thinking about touring sometime, like hopefully this summer or in the near future. I’m ready for the next level, definitely.
J: We feed off of the energy that’s out there, so the more the better. I always wanted to be like the Oliver Twist story, you know? Like you start out in rags…
R: [The recording] probably took us, say, two months. We compacted everything. We had days where we had other shit to do. There was probably a day when I stood in the recording studio for eighteen hours straight, just wanting to get shit done and get it out there, because we had a CD release party coming up so we wanted to be finished with it. We made a time limit for ourselves. Surprisingly, I don’t like rushing into anything, but I was very surprised that it came out the way it did. It wasn’t very sloppy, which is what I thought it would be. It felt a little sloppy at times. We were recording from a digital program, so as much as it was new school in the sense of recording arts, it’s better to bring some natural stuff into that recording, so that’s what we tried to do.
M: Lots of ambient sounds on the CD.
R: I like the ocean. I think we all have some sort of connection with the ocean, as corny as that sounds. It’s on the aspect of the psychedelic that we like to bring out. We like to bring out the sounds.
J: Music makes pictures, you know. What picture does this make to you?
E: To me, it’s a connection to nature, to natural rhythms, it flows.
R: It was something different rather than just song – stop – song – stop.
J: and the CD cases are recycled cardboard, right?
R: [Harper Sublette] plays Mandolin on “Outside Intermission” and “Pirate Grace O’Malley.” I’m very grateful to have her name on that piece of shit. [laughs] She’s very awesome, very, very talented.
J: Man, we’re in Sarasota. We go to Pastimes in Gulf Gate, and how many bands [there] come through Philadelphia? How many come from the North, you know what I’m saying? And you don’t hear about it. There are musicians who come through Sarasota. You never hear about. That’s what makes me so frustrated. I wanted to make a blog, but I’m so computer-inept! I couldn’t keep it up, but I really wanted to go to shows and hear a band from Bradenton, hear a band from North Carolina that came through, and be like, “They played in Sarasota, and this band is awesome…. Why didn’t I read about it? Why didn’t we get to know about it? Let’s start a blog about that.”
The occasional Tuesday at 4GBs will be dedicated to local bands. All bands are local to SOMEWHERE, of course, but by this, I mean young, unsigned bands who just like to go out and make music.
Here’s an interview I did with a Sarasota band called Villanova Junction about six or seven months ago. I first emailed Ryan, the guitarist/singer/primary songwriter, and asked if I could get a copy of their CD. It arrived a few days later, and it’s been in rotation with me ever since.
Their lineup might have changed since then (I’ll be hearing more about this in a couple of days). Still, I thought this interview was worth reproducing in its entirety. Their self-titled album is really worth hearing. Contact the band directly on how to get a copy:
myspace.com/musicbyvillanovajunction
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MH: What does it mean to be from Sarasota? What kind of venues are around here?
Julian Leonard: I think it has to do with the slump of the music scene here, you know? I feel that in high school it was pretty peaked… a lot of exciting things. I felt like it went down on a slump, so to be in a band again now as it’s starting to rise, and hopefully even being a part of that rise, is kind of exciting, you know? To try to bring that all back.
M: How many years ago was high school? How old are you guys anyway?
J: 24.
Ryan O’Neill: 25.
Erin Johnson: I’m 28.
R: I think the scene in Sarasota, it kind of happened spontaneously, right? I mean, I think ’98 was really big. There was a band called No Solution, there was Super Tuesday, but they were more, like, new-school punk.
J: We weren’t really stuck in a scene but… punk rock, you know?
M: Would you say you are part of the punk rock scene?
J: That’s a problem that we are trying to … and a lot of the venues we played at, like we played in St. Pete at The Garage, and I don’t think we’re necessarily … we’re undefined, because… the owner there, he was very much into the punk rock scene, but he’ll play anything that he can, you know. Obviously he’s a venue guy, but he’s like, ‘I wanna put you guys in with…” because we played with a cover band, a 90s-rock cover band, and he was like, “We’ve gotta put you with … I just don’t know where to put you guys right now,” you know? Where is our little beat?
M: Here in Sarasota, there’s Pastimes and there’s Steel Can Alley. Is there anywhere else to play for your kind of music?
R: Sarasota Olive Oil has shows.
E: Digital 3 used to be really good. Digital 3 was good but they just relocated. They used to put on a lot of good shows.
M: Where was that?
E: It was on Central and Boulevard of the Arts. That was a good scene. Mainly it’s just Gulf Gate right now.
M: Maybe it’s good to have a centralized place where people know… it’s kind of like an Uptown / Downtown kind of thing where you have Downtown… that’s where the edgy/original stuff gets played. Whereas if you want to play here on Main Street or anywhere else, you have to play cover tunes.
R: Sometimes that’s the way to do it. If you want to play, like, a three-hour set, you make your money that way, you know? it’s a good business-side of things.
M: Tell me about your CD a little bit. What was cool about the recording of this? When did you record it?
J: How that was recorded was pretty damn cool, I think.
M: Was this the first recording by you guys as Villanova Junction?
J: Yeah, I mean if you don’t count laptop recordings.
M: Let’s go even further back. Somebody give me a history of how you guys got together.
E: We met at a Super Bowl party. Me and Ryan met at a Super Bowl party, which was hosted by a mutual friend. I don’t want to disclose at this point who that was… no, a really good guy. So we met there, and we introduced ourselves, and he found out I was a keyboard player and I found out he was a guitar player, and I was like, “Oh, that’s pretty interesting.”
R: I’ve been looking for, like, two years, for a good organ player, someone who plays good keys, and he was just kind of like, “Hey, how’s it going?” I didn’t even want to go out that night. I met Julian before I met Erin at a party, I think it was, and we decided to, you, “Let’s play some Misfits because Halloween’s coming up.” I think it was two or three years ago. “Halloween’s coming up… let’s play some Misfits.”
J: There’s no Misfits cover band in Sarasota, so we were joking around about that idea. There was a bassist and a guitarist and a singer.
M: So what year was that?
J: Halloween of ’06.
R: Then we just ventured off and did something else. We wanted to go more towards originals. I started cranking out some songs, and they all liked it. But we kept that same grasp of that old-school punk, like Iggy Pop, Misfits. So if we were to be classified as punk, it would be more in the sense of the old-school influence of those characters. But we ventured off and did our own thing. I guess that’s how we first started.
J: It’s funny because one night we sat around, just shooting the shit, and I hadn’t really known Erin too much, but he was like, “You know, I really like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.” And I was thinking, “Okay, I like those groups, but that’s weird,” you know? Ryan’s iPod, flipping through it, I saw bands that I’ve never heard before. So, us three together, it’s real interesting.
R: Hendrix, Cream…
M: There’s kind of a … I don’t know if it’s the organ or what, but there’s a Deep Purple-ish, Doors kind of vibe.
J: It’s weird to say what it is because all of us are so different.
M: You [Ryan] kind of sing in a low voice too…
E: Jon Lord of Deep Purple… Jon Lord is my favorite organ player. There are a lot of really good organ players out there: Jimmy Smith, of course, who Jon Lord was listening to, and, you know, Ray Manzarek is obviously unique and awesome and legendary. Jon Lord I used to listen to quite a bit, just his sound…
M: That distorted sound…
E: The distorted, overdriven organ is what I’ve always wanted.
J: He’s always looking for a pedal. He’s like, “Oh, this buddy of mine lent me this pedal.”
M: How do you get that sound? What’s your setup like?
E: Well, actually, basically, right now, I’m a senior in college. I go to Ringling, and I’m majoring in illustration, and right now I’m working on my senior thesis, and so I don’t have a lot of money. And actually, when I moved here from Vermont in 2005 to go to Ringling, I didn’t bring the bass amp that I normally play through, so I showed up with no amp and haven’t really gotten an amp since then. But what we do, and I think it sounds good – is I just plug directly from the jack on the organ just right into the PA and we just kind of mix the signals from there. The distortion that I get is a natural, mechanical thing, because it’s so loud. I’m trying to experiment with different sounds. I don’t want to completely emulate one player or another. All these influences are good, but I’m trying formulate my own sound. The natural distortion I get …
M: You obviously have a classical, jazz sort of background.
E: Well, basically I started taking piano lessons when I was nine. I took piano lessons for six months when I was nine. When I was eleven through thirteen I took piano lessons for a couple of years. It was your normal, traditional piano-teacher type of thing. So, I stopped doing that because she raised her rates. My dad’s a musician. He’s a guitar player and a bass player and a drummer. He’s been in tons and tons of bands long before I was born. When I was growing up he was playing in bands, playing bass, playing rhythm and lead guitar. He writes a lot of original material. He’s a wicked good player. He taught me how to improvise with other musicians, to read the flow, follow your drummer, follow your bass player, and the difference between… there’s a fine line between fine verses and playing too much, and just how to solo. Once I learned how to solo, you know, here we go into the solo and you just kind of take off, and that’s where a lot of the magic happens. I really enjoy playing the rhythm too.
R: We are only a three-piece, so he fills in that bass line.
M: You are only a three-piece?
J: As of right now.
M: You don’t have a bass player?
R: No, and that’s the trick.
M: So, do you [Erin] have to play bass with your left hand?
E: Yeah, I play the bass and I’m always working no matter where it is on the keyboard to improve my technique and improve every sound and just to make it really damn good. So I practice every day.
R: Since we don’t have a bass player, we’re kind of under the concept of the garage band, and I kind of like that idea that it’s something a little different rather than the same four or three piece kind of band. I think it’s interesting to see just an organ and just a guitar and just the drums connect … and onstage, I’m surprised that I don’t hear anybody shout out, “Where the fuck’s your bass player?” At the end they think, “Well, this is great.”
M: What’s the stage response like when you play out? Do you have a following that comes out and sees you everytime?
J: Here, mostly, yeah. And what’s really funny is once in awhile someone will have a camera and we’ll get to watch the video. I don’t really pay attention, but we’re sitting around watching it, and we’re like, “Wait, there’s people dancing.” And it’s really cool. I just never really got that idea, and it’s cool to see that people were dancing and getting into it.
E: Also, my grandfather’s a musician as well. He was in jazz and Dixieland bands during the Big Band era in Massachusetts. So I’m from a line of musicians. One thing about solos is: when I’m playing a solo, I don’t want to play it the same way every time. It might be a couple/few notes that lead into the solo, your hook that brings in the next part. Roger Glover [bass player of Deep Purple] said of Jon Lord that he was a Zen Archer soloist, that he would hit it the first or second time, but that his solos were always different. He never wanted to play the same thing. Part of that is that you can’t remember how to play it. I can sit down and learn technically how the exact solo goes for any given song, and I can memorize that stuff…
M: But why would you want to? You want to create something different every time.
E: It’s all about reaching into the ether and pulling out that …
