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shielddrake · 5 years ago

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The Monomyth in Video Games (AKA My Longest Rambling Ever)

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

A person who comes from humble beginnings is called to go on an adventure to accomplish something great. He (it’s usually he) may either jump at the call or initially refuse it, but finally goes with the help of a mentor figure. He meets various amazing people and faces a myriad of challenges to achieve his ultimate goal. He confronts the main obstacle, overcomes it, and is rewarded for it. He returns to his home a wiser person, and bestows upon his fellow people the lessons he has learned, to the benefit of all. The End.

Anyone know this? Anyone? Yup, that is a short, short, very short and simplified version of the monomyth, also known as The Hero’s Journey, a narrative device observed by many people but popularized by Joseph Campbell. It has been studied and used by storytellers of various media, ranging from oral tales to books to movies to, yes, video games.

It is one of the most common narrative devices out there, if not possibly the most common, at least historically. I’m sure a lot of us were exposed to Greek myths such as The Odyssey in school (at least, in America we are). JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has many of the steps in the early parts of the story, before drifting in other directions once the fellowship separates. Each individual Harry Potter book has its own cycle of The Hero’s Journey. Every. Single. One. Star Wars is still a popular franchise (the more recent criticisms aside) and George Lucas has admitted repeatedly he used the monomyth as inspiration while he was writing the scripts for the original trilogy. So even if you are not intimately familiar with The Hero’s Journey in detail, high chances are you’ve been exposed to it simply through consuming various media.

That’s not to say that using this narrative device is always intentional. I would find it incredibly surprising if Hiromu Arakawa or Hajime Isayama were purposely trying to include monomyth steps in their creation of Fullmetal Alchemist and Attack on Titan, respectfully, or that the creators of the 2019 anime version of Dororo meant to put Hyakkimaru through the paces of The Hero’s Journey, but sure enough, all these have some aspects of the monomyth in them!

Does this mean a story, whether it’s a novel, TV show, movie or video game, has to possess all these steps in order to be considered using the monomyth? No, definitely not. On the contrary, it would actually be a good thing for stories to not require use of all these steps. Telling a story by just crossing items off from a list is bound to create a rather stale experience. What I’m saying is simply that stories will borrow aspects of The Hero’s Journey to make the story compelling. The same goes for order and magnitude. The monomyth is usually presented in seventeen steps, but I don’t feel like they necessarily have to show up in the story in the listed order, nor do the steps have to take up equal amounts of the story-telling experience. Steps four through ten usually are the longest, while the last five or so tend to be rather short.

So, in my apparently endless determination to apply the same techniques used in literary theory and film theory to video games, I would like to go over a couple of video games and how they do or do not apply the various steps of the monomyth. I will go over four video games, noting whether each step is present, how much it adds to the story by its presence or absence, and how well the game represents the step.

I’ve decided to review Final Fantasy VII (because its remake it coming out relatively soon), Dragon Age Inquisition (for another RPG, but not made in Japan), Bioshock (to show this isn’t just an RPG thing), and Psychonauts (because I’ve still got Psychonauts on the mind from my last post). I will also be comparing this to the monomyth found in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone, The Lord of the Rings, and the Star Wars Original Trilogy.

There will be spoilers for these movies and games, on the off chance that anyone who hasn’t seen or played them doesn’t want them ruined. Do I need to keep putting spoiler warnings on older games? Or for the books/movies? Although I’m also kind of writing this with the idea that you have at least a passing knowledge of these movies, books and games…Oh well, just to be safe: Spoilers Ahead!

This is a really, really long one, so beware. Readers may want to take this in phases.

Let us begin.

1.) The Call to Adventure

First, there needs to be a little backstory established. The hero’s journey usually begins in the home of the main protagonist, more often than not showing the protagonist’s life in its everyday normalcy, which is often put in a negative light, ranging from boring to outright dangerous.

The hero will generally come from rather small beginnings, which is probably why orphans are a common origin story. Luke is an orphan who lives with his aunt and uncle, oblivious to the fact that his father is Darth Vader. Harry Potter is very much the same, living with a borderline abusive family who force him to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs. Frodo is also an orphan taken in by Bilbo, his second cousin (hobbit family trees are confusing). Please note that this does not preclude a hero from learning a parent is alive later in the story (looking at you, Luke).

In addition to this, the hero is rarely someone with much power, authority or money. Being a moisture farmer on Tatooine is apparently not the most noble of professions (though on a desert planet I’m a bit surprised by this), and the Dursleys appear to be middle class at best. Bilbo and Frodo are wealthy by hobbit standards and seem to be higher on the social hierarchy in The Shire, but remember that hobbits mostly reside in the Shire and immediately surrounding areas, so they aren’t considered to be important players in the world of men or elves. They are small both in stature and in society.

For our chosen video games, it’s a little bit up to interpretation of the word “orphan” and what the player decides, but the humble beginnings idea still applies. Cloud from Final Fantasy VII (FFVII) is half-orphaned at a young age when his father dies, but doesn’t become a full orphan until he’s a teenager, when his mother dies during the Nibelheim Incident. We only see this in a flashback, and adult Cloud is a full orphan by the start of the game. By this point, Cloud has fallen from a SOLDIER First Class to a mercenary. So he’s rebelling against the more powerful people in Midgar, or at least is being paid to do so.

The Inquisitor of Dragon Age Inquisition (DAI) may or may not have living parents, depending on origin and player choice. A human Inquisitor probably has living parents, but it’s a bit debatable if an elf, dwarf or Qunari Inquisitor does. At the beginning of the game the Inquisitor loses any prestige they may or may not have had (especially the human noble), and a Carta dwarf, Dalish elf, and Vashoth Qunari don’t have much in terms of power or rank in Thedas anyway. Whatever the case, the Inquisitor ends up being just a simple prisoner for the early prologue part of the story, before being raised up to the Herald of Andraste and eventually to Inquisitor.

Jack from Bioshock is an interesting case. He’s sold by his biological mother, “raised” by Dr. Suchong and Brigid Tenenbaum, and later smuggled out of Rapture to live with adoptive “parents.” He is also an outsider in that he is kind of an unknown factor, given his upbringing, so by the time Jack arrives in Rapture at the start of the game, he is basically nothing but another body that happens to be there. Without Atlas directing him, it is very possible he could have just become another splicer, the crazed and deformed human remnants of Rapture’s human population. Either way, he doesn’t have much in terms of money, power or authority by the start of the game.

Raz from Psychonauts doesn’t fit the orphan archetype, as he clearly has a rather large family, but he is estranged from his father at the very least. We don’t know his relationship with the rest of his family, but perhaps we’ll see more of that in the sequel. Raz definitely fits the humble beginnings archetype though, seeing as a circus performer profession is looked down upon, especially if you ask Kitty or Franke.

The Call to Adventure itself can come in many forms, either through circumstance, a person begging for help, the hero learning about their origin they previously didn’t know, the hero’s own desire for a better life, and so forth. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” Yeah, that one is pretty clear. Harry Potter gets his letter to Hogwarts delivered by Hagrid, and Gandalf says that Frodo must deliver The One Ring to Rivendell (although in the book Frodo takes a few months just thinking about it before actually leaving the Shire).

For Cloud, the call really comes from both Barret and Tifa, with Barret paying him to help destroy the Mako Reactors, and Tifa pretty much calling in the promise Cloud apparently made to protect her during their childhood. The Inquisitor is basically blackmailed into working with Cassandra and Leliana to rebuild the Inquisition to close the Breach, which the player can either go along with willingly or unwillingly.

Jack…doesn’t exactly have a call to adventure so much as he’s thrown into the adventure by way of mental conditioning and circumstance. The player doesn’t really get how the plane he’s riding crashed and why he ended up in Rapture until later in the game, but he’s basically told by Atlas/Fontaine what to do to help him save his (Atlas’) family. And things just go from there. For Raz, he receives a pamphlet for Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, and being a psychic himself Raz decides to run away from the circus (in an inversion of the normal run away to the circus trope) to attend the camp. I would still like to know who it was that gave Raz that pamphlet to begin with. I’ve heard a lot of different theories. What do you guys think?

2.) The Refusal of the Call

When the hero receives the Call to Adventure, in whatever form it comes in, the hero often refuses the call, saying he or she is not cut out for whatever the adventure calls for or they have something else more important to do. This can be saying you have to help your uncle on the moisture farm, saying you can’t possibly be a wizard, or trying to give The One Ring to the wizard who reveals the danger you’re in. The Refusal is of course short-lived and the hero goes along with the call anyway, otherwise there would ultimately be no plot, or at least a very, very boring one.

Cloud’s Refusal of the Call is short-lived but repeated. He tells Barret that Shinra sucking Mako from the planet isn’t his problem, tells Biggs he’s gone once the job is over, proclaims to the entire AVALANCHE group that he doesn’t care about the planet, and tells Tifa he’s going to let AVALANCHE deal with Shinra and that he’s no hero. It isn’t until Tifa reminds him of a promise he made to her that he actually sticks around the group. All this occurs in roughly the first half hour of the game.

In DAI, a Refusal of the Call is optional based on player choice. The Inquisitor can reject being the Herald of Andraste basically from the word go, with repeated rejections scattered about the entire game. Later, the player can refuse the idea of leading the Inquisition, including for race or religious reasons. All this doesn’t matter, however, as the game continues on with the player’s character being referred to as the Herald/Inquisitor anyway, so the refusal is kind of a moot point.

Bioshock and Psychonauts don’t really have any Refusals of the Call. Raz actually jumps at the chance of going on an adventure, away from the circus, away from his family, who he thinks doesn’t understand him. If anything, the refusal comes from his father, Augustus, who destroys the pamphlet for the camp and forces Raz to practice acrobatics instead. But Jack’s story is the most interesting to me in terms of the refusal, and anyone who has played through Bioshock knows why. Not only does Jack not refuse the call, but also he also literally cannot refuse it. His “Would You Kindly” mental conditioning keeps him from doing so, and I love that it is buried in the gameplay in a way that the player doesn’t even realize the mental conditioning is there until much later. Story and gameplay integrated!

3.) Supernatural Aid/Meeting the Mentor

I’ve seen this step be called alternatively both Supernatural Aid and Meeting the Mentor, depending on who is describing The Hero’s Journey. Campbell called it the former, while the more recent Christopher Vogel calls it the latter. Personally I think these should be separate steps, but they often have to do with one another in some way, so I guess they can go together.

The term “supernatural” is just vague enough that it can mean many things. It can mean magic, divine intervention, magic, genetic manipulation, magic, psychic abilities, magic, aliens, or Force magic, to name a few. Harry Potter and Fellowship of the Rings all have some form of magic (of course), while Star Wars has the Force. FFVII has magic, the ancient spiritual race of the Cetra, and, strangely enough, the alien invader Jenova. Psychonauts has psychics (again, of course). DAI has presumed divine intervention from the Jesus-like figure of Andraste, at least until the Inquisitor enters the Fade and learns it was actually Divine Justinia, who is basically the Dragon Age version of the Pope. The Plasmids that Jack uses throughout Bioshock is more scientific than magical, but it still serves the same function.

As for mentors, some of those are pretty obvious for the books/movies. Luke has Obi-Wan, Frodo has Gandalf, and Harry has Dumbledore. For our chosen video games, it’s a bit less clear. Cloud’s “mentors” might actually be his love interests Aerith and Tifa, depending on how far in the game the player is. Jack has both Atlas/Fontaine and Tenenbaum, for better or worse. Raz actually has several, which is no surprise considering summer camps have to have several camp counselors, but the two major ones are Sasha Nein and Ford Cruller, since those are the ones he spends the most time with and Raz clearly looks up to Sasha as his hero.

For the Inquisitor, that’s where it gets a bit muddy. It would seem like Cassandra starts as a mentor figure, giving the Herald advice and trying to direct them, but quickly takes a backseat once the player character becomes the Inquisitor proper. She doesn’t even show up at the war table anymore, whereas in Haven she does. Is Leliana a mentor? Kind of, but only in the sense that she acts as an advisor, roles that are also played by Cullen and Josephine. Solas? Well, he would like to think so, and you even get minor boosts in approval if you listen to him. Or you could ignore him entirely and piss him off. Andraste? Sure, if your Inquisitor is devout. It’s more up to the interpretation and choices of the player.

4.) Crossing the First Threshold

This is the step where the protagonist basically goes, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” (Yes, MGM’s Wizard of Oz also has its own Hero’s Journey!) It is the point of no return, where the hero finally decides to go with the Call to Adventure. It is also in this step that the hero first encounters some of the real world outside of his or her comfort zone. So, this is another step that is kind of more like two steps.

Our movies certainly have this two-part step. Luke decides to go with Obi-Wan to Alderaan after his aunt and uncle are killed by Imperial soldiers, and the cantina scene is his first real interaction with the tougher people that exist in the galaxy, including the skeptical Han Solo. Frodo (eventually) decides to take the One Ring to Rivendell, and The Prancing Pony in Bree exposes the hobbits to full-sized people for the first time, other than Gandalf. Harry Potter also has two, once at the Leaky Cauldron (pubs and inns seem to be a trend) leading to Diagon Alley and again on the Hogwarts Express.

Psychonauts has an obvious Crossing of the First Threshold: Raz enters Coach Oleander’s mind, the Basic Braining level, the first mind Raz ever enters…presumably. It’s possible he entered another mind before then, but it’s not likely.

Jack’s first sight of Rapture kind of acts as a first threshold, for both Jack as a character and for the player, but I also kind of like to think of it as the scene where Jack first sees a Big Daddy defend a Little Sister from a splicer. It gives a bit of foreshadowing that nothing is what it looks like down here, and Jack (and by extension, the player) should be careful about who he trusts. A Little Sister is not a small, innocent creature after all, because there is always a dangerous, hulking Big Daddy somewhere nearby. Atlas is not who he appears to be, and ultimately Jack isn’t either. Instead, they are both people wearing masks, one intentionally and the other completely obviously.

The first attempt at closing the Breach in DAI is a clear crossing, because it is from there that the Inquisition is reborn and the main character becomes the Herald of Andraste. Nothing is the same for the player’s character from that point on. The same goes for Cloud and the gang after the pillar holding up the upper plate over the Sector 7 slums collapses. Most of AVALANCHE’s members are killed and Aerith is captured. It’s not about saving the planet by this point. It’s about saving Aerith and getting revenge. Things just domino on from there.

5.) Belly of the Whale

This step coincides with the previous one. It is the final separation from everything the hero knows and moving into the unknown. Oftentimes it overlaps with a step called Loss of the Mentor, but it doesn’t have to. Consumption by a whale is optional, though use of a metaphorical whale is the more common approach.

Speaking of metaphorical whales, what’s a bigger one than the Death Star? The same place where Obi-Wan dies, leaving the last connection to anything Luke had to his previous life and the one who would help him step into the future. He’s aboard the Millennium Falcon with two other people, two droids and a Wookie, but in reality he’s completely alone.

Another such whale is Moria, the underground kingdom previously ruled by dwarves, but by the time of The Fellowship of the Ring, it is overrun by goblins, orcs, and the Balrog. The fellowship is swallowed by the earth and needs to get out. The price of that, however, is losing Gandalf. Another mentor lost. An even bigger whale is seen later in the books once Frodo and Sam reach Mordor itself, and they have to face even more challenges to get the One Ring to Mount Doom.

For Harry, the whale could be a couple of things. It could be Hogwarts itself, the Forbidden Forest, the Hogwarts Express, the forbidden room on the third floor, or perhaps the trapdoor under Fluffy and the passage underneath��Lots of options here. Now, the mentor figure for this book, Dumbledore, doesn’t leave Hogwarts until near the end of the story, and thankfully he doesn’t die, unlike the previous mentors who happen to be old, bearded, wizard men. He waits until book six to do that.

FFVII kind of has an opposite whale. On one hand, it could be argued that the Shinra, Inc. building could be the whale, and although it certainly could be, I think a more poignant one would be the greater world itself. Once Cloud and the gang escape from Shinra, they leave Midgar and head out into the world, and they don’t return to Midgar until the end of the game. This could also be considered a Crossing the First Threshold.

Again, DAI is about choice, but there are two events that are pretty big whales. The first is trying to recruit either the mages or the Templars to the Inquisition to close the Breach. Whether the player ends up facing Alexius in a dystopian future or fighting an Envy Demon for control in the Herald’s own mind, the main character ends up delving deep into a dangerous situation they have to climb out of. The second time is during the quest line to fight the possessed Gray Wardens and the Inquisitor ends up falling into the Fade. Quite a whale there, the Fade. A giant world that is only supposed to be accessible either to mages or in dreams. This is even more intense of an experience for a dwarf Inquisitor, since dwarves do not dream and cannot be mages in this universe.

Bioshock…well, besides the idea of Rapture itself being a whale (during the game’s opening scenes, we even see a whale swim between Rapture’s towers), I would consider the most likely place to be Rapture Central Control. It’s here that some of the most important game events happen, after all. Jack kills Andrew Ryan, there’s the reveal of Jack’s “Would You Kindly” mental conditioning, and Jack learns he’s actually Ryan’s illegitimate son. Not to mention learning that Atlas, who has been guiding Jack and the player throughout the game thus far, is actually Frank Fontaine, the big bad. He has actually been using Jack this whole time just to one-up Andrew Ryan in their little power struggle. And then Fontaine betrays Jack and sends security bots to kill him, leading to yet another loss of a mentor. That’s a lot to take in during such a short time.

Psychonauts doesn’t have a whale, but it does have a Hideous Hulking Lungfish. Raz has to do battle with her beneath Lake Oblongata, and then enter her mind so Raz can release her from Kochamara’s control. By then, Sasha and Milla have already been kidnapped, under the ruse of “Official Psychonauts Business,” and Ford Cruller is forced to remain in his underground lair near the psitanium so he doesn’t fall into one of his many personalities. So much for help there.

6.) The Road of Trials

The Road of Trials is the meat and potatoes of the story. It’s all the challenges the hero must overcome in order to reach the ultimate goal, whether it’s a big or little one. The challenges themselves may also be large or small, and according to Campbell often occur in groups of three. These challenges prepare the hero for the final encounter at the end of the story.

…Do I really need to go over these in detail for each movie and game I’m reviewing here? It’s basically the plot all the characters go through during the course of the story, ranging from battles, dungeons, travel, magic classes, camp activities, puzzles, and so forth. I’m not going to list each one here. This post is long enough as it is.

7.) The Meeting with the Goddess

This step involves the hero meeting with another character who helps them in some way, whether it’s as part of the hero’s group, by giving an item that is helpful, or just giving good advice. More often than not, this character is one of high ranking: an actual goddess, a princess, a queen, or something of that sort. She may or may not be a love interest, and more modernly she may not be a “she” at all…our examples here though do happen to be female, but I’m just saying this doesn’t have to be the case.

Star Wars is obvious. Luke meets Leia, the Princess of Alderaan who hides the plans to destroy the Death Star in R2D2, first in her hologram and then in person aboard the Death Star itself. Frodo meets Galadriel in Lothlorien, where she allows him (and Sam, in the books) to glimpse into the Mirror of Galadriel to see the possible future of the Shire should his quest fail. She also provides him the phial containing the light of Earendil’s star, which is vital to fighting off Shelob later on. I wouldn��t exactly say Harry Potter has a goddess to meet, but I like to think it’s supposed to be Hermione, since she knows so much and often is the only one who actually knows what’s going on.

Let’s see. FFVII has Aerith, whose big “gift” to the story is giving her life while she prays for Holy to stop Sephiroth’s Meteor. Bioshock has Brigid Tenenbaum, who assists Jack throughout the game if he spares the Little Sisters, and removes part of his mental conditioning so Jack can resist Fontaine. Milla is one of Raz’s teachers at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, teaching him the Levitation ability, which is arguably the most useful ability in the game.

As for DAI, there are plenty of characters that can play the role of the goddess, but I would argue the most important one might be Morrigan. She tells the Inquisitor about the eluvians and theorizes Corypheus is searching for one as a means to reach the Fade. Although she ends up being wrong, Morrigan also is a candidate for drinking from the Well of Sorrows, and if she does she helps the Inquisitor by fighting the red lyrium dragon during the final battle with Corypheus.

8.) Woman as Temptress

Here’s another misleading title. The Woman as Temptress originates back from Campbell’s research of Greek myths, where the hero is enticed by a female figure: Circe, Calypso, the Sirens, and so on. Today, the “woman” is really just anything that tries to drive the hero away from the path of his journey. This can be power, money, promises, or threats, for some other examples. It can still be a person, but lately that hasn’t been the case.

There is always the temptation of the Dark Side of the Force, although Luke doesn’t really encounter this in full force until The Empire Strikes Back. The One Ring is the temptation itself, and it actually does succeed, since Frodo doesn’t throw the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom. It isn’t destroyed until Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger, reclaims the Ring, and falls into the Crack of Doom while doing a happy jig. Voldemort tries (very briefly) to get Harry to join him and hand over the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone at the end of the book (it’s a bit longer in the movie) but that doesn’t last very long.

There’s not exactly a temptation in FFVII, although I guess Jenova manipulating Cloud into bringing the Black Material to Sephiroth at the North Crater is the closest thing. I feel that goes more into the manipulation category than temptation though, but it still functions in a similar way. Bioshock has the temptation of harvesting the Little Sisters to receive more ADAM from them, and thus allowing Jack to obtain more abilities. This can be really appealing from a gameplay perspective, and results in the bad ending of the game if you kill every Little Sister. Alternatively, Tenenbaum compensates you if you spare the Little Sisters, so it’s not the end of the world to resist the temptation.

…Raz doesn’t have a temptation to stop trying to become a Psychonaut. At all. Oleander never convinces him, Loboto doesn’t convince him (their interaction is actually incredibly small in the main game), none of the other campers dissuade him, and he faces all the obstacles in all the different minds with determination. The closest thing I can think of is Lili, who really just tries to give him a realistic view that the Psychonauts are not as important as they once were. I guess the “making out” scene kind of fits here, since Raz is clearing distracted by the idea of kissing Lili and doesn’t pay any attention to what she’s saying immediately after. Linda interrupting them puts an end to that though.

As for DAI…yeah, I have trouble with this one. There really isn’t anything that tempts the Inquisitor in a way that distracts them from the danger at hand. Romance doesn’t do it, power doesn’t do it, money doesn’t do it, blood magic doesn’t do it, demons don’t do it…Yeah, I’ve got nothing. Readers, please help me with this, if possible!

9.) Atonement with the Father

This is the step most people know even if they don’t know the concept of the Hero’s Journey itself, because it is such a common trope used in all kinds of story telling. This can be a father or father figure, and honestly it’s not unusual for this to be replaced by a brother in video games, and less commonly with another relative. This step may or may not be related to the next step, Apotheosis, depending on if the “father” is the source of the main conflict, but it is still one of the major obstacles the hero must overcome. Another thing to note that this step does not have to involve the death of the “father” either.

Let’s face it: Star Wars is one of those films that normalized the father-son conflict dynamic in movies. Sure, it existed before then, but it became a huge thing after the iconic scene between Luke and Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. The conflict doesn’t come to a head until The Return of the Jedi, when Vader finally redeems himself by killing Palpatine and saving Luke’s life, giving his own in the process.

That being said, it’s interesting that the other two movies we’re looking at have more distant aspects of the Atonement with the Father step. It’s not Frodo who has to deal with his father’s displeasure, but Faramir. Is there anything worse than hearing your father admit that he wishes you had died and your older brother had lived? Denethor doesn’t appear to care about Faramir until he appears to have died. This is less apparent in the book, but it’s still there.

Harry Potter has the same thing. Obviously since Harry doesn’t have a living father, it’s kind of hard for him to have a conflict with him. I guess there’s kind of atonement with Severus Snape in the last book, but you have to really, really squint to make it that relationship one of a father-figure and son. …No, that doesn’t work for our purposes. There are issues with fathers with other characters, like Ron, Neville and Draco, but those relationships aren’t really elaborated on until later in the series.

Video games often follow a similar pattern. Conflict with a father or father figure is incredibly common. Raz and Jack both have big issues with their dads, although Raz’s resolution is obviously more positive than Jack’s. Raz actually does atone with his dad, right before the final battle with a giant two-headed father monster in Raz and Oleander’s combined mental world. (If you don’t know Psychonauts, it makes sense in context, I promise.) Jack meanwhile…kills his biological father, although perhaps not willingly considering his mental conditioning. Andrew Ryan is a pretty terrible human being though, so maybe Jack/the player would have wanted to kill him anyway. Maybe.

It should also be no surprise that the father issue doesn’t have to surround the main character, especially since being an orphan is a common backstory, as mentioned in the Call to Adventure step above. The Inquisitor doesn’t really have issues with his/her father, presuming the player thinks the father is still alive, but Dorian certainly takes umbrage with his father trying to use blood magic to change his sexuality. It’s up to the player to either encourage or discourage Dorian from reconciling with his father, so this step is up in the air in that regard.

Another similar conflict that occurs in DAI that isn’t with a father is between Morrigan and Flemeth, although I would hesitate to consider it”atonement,” especially if Morrigan is the one who drinks from the Well of Sorrows, thus tying her to Flemeth’s command. Of course, with Flemeth out of the picture and Solas taking over, I wonder how that connection stands now.

The father conflict is also not related to the main character in FFVII. Red XIII, aka Nanaki, has issues with believing his father, Seto, abandoned his mother and his tribe during an attack by the Gi tribe. In truth, Seto actually sacrificed himself to prevent a backdoor invasion, turning to stone after being hit by several petrifying arrows. Once Red learns the truth about this, he proclaims that his father was a hero and he will protect his home, Cosmo Canyon, just like he did.

And that’s not even getting into all the father issues present in the other Final Fantasy games, plus others in FFVII. Maybe I’ll do another post about that topic another time.

10.) Apotheosis

This is the point the quest has been leading up to. The final challenge. The final battle. The final countdown. The hero takes all they have learned over the course of their journey and applies it to this final challenge. If there’s a main villain of the story, this is the time where the hero confronts them.

This is pretty self-explanatory. Luke Skywalker trusts in the Force, which allows him to blow up the Death Star. Harry Potter decides he wants to obtain the Philosopher’s Stone, but not use it, and that’s what allows him to receive it from the Mirror of Erised. And Frodo has to throw the One Ring into the Crack of Doom to defeat Sauron. That last one is interesting in that Frodo technically fails to do this final task, which is not something we historically see in Hero’s Journeys, but such a failure is becoming more common.

Applying this step to video games feels a bit like cheating considering that a large majority of them have a final boss battle of some kind, and our four games are no exception. Most of the resolution of the main character’s stories coincides with the defeat of the final boss. Jack’s story ends when he is able to reverse his mental conditioning (with Tenenbaum’s help) and he defeats Fontaine, and the Inquisitor’s conflict with Corypheus ends, of course, with Corypheus’ death. The Trespasser DLC for DAI adds more conflict involving what happens after and what the Inquisitor is going to do about their Mark that is slowly killing them, but I feel that’s another story, so it’s beyond The Hero’s Journey of the main game.

However, despite having final boss battles, I feel that Psychonauts and FFVII also have an Apotheosis step in terms of the characters themselves. Raz has to defeat the two-headed mental amalgamation of his and Oleander’s fathers, but he is able to do so because his real father breaks into his mental world and lends Raz his power so he can fight the monster. That reconciliation is more important to Raz’s story than beating the monster. Honestly, Raz probably wouldn’t have agreed to use his father’s strength if they hadn’t reconciled literally just prior to the final fight.

Cloud’s Apotheosis really has to do with coming to terms with his false memories. He never actually joined SOLDIER, instead becoming a grunt in the Midgar army. He was experimented on after the Nibelheim Incident, escaped with Zack, and basically imprinted Zack’s life, experiences, mannerisms and skills after Zack was killed right in front of him. Cloud and Tifa have to sift through Cloud’s memories to figure out what really happened during the Nibelheim Incident, thus returning Cloud to his normal self. Essentially, Cloud has to realize that he is not as strong of a person as he previously believed, and that there’s nothing wrong with being weak. What you have to be is true to yourself. That’s more important than being strong.

11.) The Ultimate Boon

So if the Apotheosis is the final challenge of the journey, then the Ultimate Boon is the reward for overcoming it. This can be material or not, and likewise may or may not be what the hero initially set out to receive or accomplish. The boon can be large (such as saving the world) or small (earning a medal), and it can be public (again, saving the world) or personal (winning a love interest’s heart).

Harry and Frodo both set out to accomplish a task, preventing the Philosopher’s Stone being stolen and destroying the One Ring, respectively, although Harry’s realization that he must do this thing is later on in the story compared to Frodo. They both succeed and are both rewarded. Harry and his friends are basically handed the House Cup at the end of the school year for thwarting Voldemort’s plan, and Frodo and the fellowship save the world, and more importantly for Frodo, save the Shire.

However, Frodo does end up having to leave the Shire and go into the east due to the wounds he acquired throughout the journey as well as the strain of carrying the Ring. In a way, he is rewarded for his journey, but also punished because he didn’t actually accomplish the task he set out to do. He ends up leaving the Shire, his home, which he wanted to save to begin with.

Luke is kind of the same way. He doesn’t set out necessarily to find his father and bring him back to the light. His Call to Adventure had to do with going to Alderaan with Obi-Wan to help Leia, and he is rewarded with a medal at the end of A New Hope for destroying the Death Star. However, his boon really has to do with reconciling with Vader, a conflict that doesn’t begin until The Empire Strikes back, later in his Hero’s Journey. However, this is just a good example of how the boon does not necessarily have to relate to the call.

The boons for both FFVII and DAI are saving the world. It’s good for the world to not be destroyed, after all. Raz’s boon is a bit more personal: He is allowed to join the Psychonauts, which he set out to do, but his relationship with his father is also significantly improved now that the two of them understand one another better.

For Jack, he saves Rapture…sort of. If the events of Bioshock 2 indicate anything, it’s that things really haven’t gotten better for Rapture following Fontaine’s defeat. However, presuming that the player spared the Little Sisters and gets the good ending of the game, Jack returns to the surface world with the cured Little Sisters, who essentially become his daughters. In the words of Brigid Tenenbaum, “In the end, what was your reward? You never said. But I think I know…a family.”

Jack is given the short end of the stick in terms of family and future. His parents are not his real parents, his biological father Andrew Ryan didn’t want him, his mother sold him to Tenenbaum and Suchong as an embryo, and he has no control over himself or his own destiny. Considering it turns out everything Jack knew about himself and his family is a lie, a real family is the best thing he could have received. Jack basically has nothing at the beginning of the game, so the fact that he is able to still build a life for himself and the former Little Sisters is a great reward. Of course, this is thrown out of the window if the player harvests the Little Sisters and gets the bad or neutral endings, so there you go.

12.) Refusal of the Return

We’ve reached the point where the hero has accomplished the goal he/she has set out to do, has received their reward, and now has to go back to normal life that was left behind at the beginning of the story. What? The hero doesn’t want to return to normal life? They prefer the world they’re in now? Yeah, in a strange reversal of the Refusal of the Call, the hero no longer wants to return to their previous life, having earned the boon and learned the lessons they have.

Can anyone really blame Harry Potter for not wanting to return to his aunt and uncle’s house once the school year end? Yeah, let’s go back to the house where he’s treated horribly, has a literal hand-me-down bedroom, and is not allowed to perform any of the magic he has grown to love. Plus his owl is forced to stay in her cage the whole summer. That sounds great! Let’s do that.

Frodo, on the other hand, does return to his normal life in the Shire, but later has to leave because of his wounds and from carrying the One Ring (see The Ultimate Boon step above). It’s not so much that he refuses to return, but rather he is forced to leave again. Luke is kind of the same way. He doesn’t really refuse to return to his family and their moisture farm, it’s that he can’t return to it, because that has been destroyed. His previous life can no longer be. Even if we stretch the timeline to the end of The Return of the Jedi, Luke never goes back to just being a moisture farmer.

Psychonauts only has a half-hearted refusal. At the end of the game, Raz acts like he’s going to go back to the circus, but only for a moment. Once the opportunity to go on another rescue mission comes up, Raz turns to nonverbally ask his father if he can go. It’s more like he’s asking for permission to not return rather than refusing outright.

The Inquisitor of DAI doesn’t return to their previous world either. The life of running the Inquisition doesn’t end when Corypheus is defeated. It continues on until the Trespasser DLC, which even at the end of that the Inquisitor continues their adventure to stop Solas from basically destroying the world in a few years. I’m actually pretty eager to see how the Inquisitor fits in the next Dragon Age game, although the developers have given a 2022 release date, last time I checked.

For Bioshock, Jack really does not refuse to return, symbolically indicated by him leaving Rapture and returning to the surface world. Regardless of whether he brings the cured Little Sisters to the surface to have a normal life or he becomes the splicers’ new leader and brings them to the surface to destroy mankind, he peaces out of Rapture at the first opportunity he has. There’s no refusal to return on Jack’s part at all.

FFVII…okay, I’m again having trouble with this step. Cloud doesn’t really act like he refuses to go back to his previous life. His previous life is actually up in the air, with all his messed up memories and near lack of anything connecting him to his past, either as himself or with his false memories as an ex-SOLDIER. The only person really connecting him to his life before the story is Tifa, and I’m not going to get into the shipping wars about whether he should be with her or the now dead Aerith. That’s a different post. Regardless, by the end of the game, Cloud is more interested in moving forward than going back.

13.) The Magic Flight

In the process of returning to normal life, the hero will often have to flee from some kind of danger. This happens after the hero has received the boon, but before they are able to bring it to the people. If there’s a bad guy that needs to defeating or a task that needs accomplishing, this step often takes place immediately after. Actual flying is not required, but don’t be surprised if it does. The Magic Flight frequently merges with the next two steps, Rescue from Without and The Crossing of the Return Threshold.

Let’s see. Luke escapes the Death Star on a shuttle with his father’s body. Frodo and Sam fly with the Eagles back to safety as Mount Doom is erupting. Harry is knocked unconscious and rescued by Dumbledore from the room containing the Mirror of Erised. Whew. Managed to keep that short.

DAI doesn’t really have this step, because again, the story keeps going even after Corypheus’ end. However, I could argue there are other parts of the game that have a Magic Flight, such as escaping from the dystopian future after defeating Alexius or escaping the Fade after fighting the Fear Demon. These events just don’t happen at the end of the game. FFVII also only kind of has this step too, in the form of the Highwind bringing the party out of the North Crater following the defeat of Safer Sephiroth.

Raz has to escape from his own mind, which is intertwined with Oleander’s in the last stage of the game, and his brain has to be detangled in order to return to his normal self. He’s not really conscious for the process though, so the player doesn’t really see it. As for Jack, this step is really kind of merged with the next two, so we’ll get to those.

14.) Rescue from Without

During the course of the Magic Flight, the hero will be unable to escape the danger they are trying to flee from on their own. Someone (or multiple people) will need to come in and rescue the hero. This is especially true if the hero is injured or weakened in some way, particularly after a rough final battle with the big bad.

As stated before, this one often overlaps with the previous one and the next one. Vader saves Luke from Palpatine’s Force Lightning. The Eagles rescue Frodo and Sam from the erupting Mount Doom. Harry rescued from the attack from Voldemort/Quirrell by Dumbledore and brought to the Hospital Wing for treatment. Yeah, that sounds about the same as before.

The closest thing the Inquisitor comes to being rescued from without, at least at the end of the game, is with the red lyrium dragon, where either a dragon-shifted Morrigan (if she drank from the Well of Sorrows) or the Guardian of Mythal (if the Inquisitor did). However, the red lyrium dragon defeats either Morrigan or the Guardian, and the Inquisitor and the party have to fight it anyway. So it’s an attempted but ultimately unsuccessful rescue.

Raz is rescued by his dad, Augustus, from his own brain, and I imagine Cruller, Sasha and Milla all played a role in separating Raz’s brain from Oleander’s and rebraining him, even though this isn’t shown on screen. Several Little Sisters stab Fontaine to death with their ADAM-collecting syringe, saving Jack from his final blow. It’s a wonderfully satisfying scene and I absolutely love it. FFVII has a rescue of sorts in that Aerith has to basically make the Lifestream rise up to help her Holy spell stop Meteor from destroying the planet. How she manages to do this from beyond the grave is never explicitly explained. It must just be a Cetra thing.

15.) The Crossing of the Return Threshold

So, this step is the final of the triumvirate of the return steps. The hero actually returns to their normal life or their previous home, and distributes the boon they have received upon the rest of the world. This is basically anything that happens after the climax of the story. Exposition explaining what exactly has happened may or may not be included.

Luke returns to the rest of the characters on Endor to celebrate the destruction of the second Death Star, bringing the teachings of the light side of the Force with him. Harry Potter boards the Hogwarts Express to return to the Muggle world. And the hobbits all return to the Shire, although in the books they have to deal with Saruman and the Scouring of the Shire once there.

For Psychonauts, there’s kind of a Return Threshold, but only if you stretch it, and not in the sense that returns Raz to his normal life. Quite the opposite actually. Raz and the gang levitate into the Psychonauts jet that just happens to show up from the ground. Hmm, didn’t Raz say he suspected that Cruller had a jet hiding in his lab somewhere? Oh look! More setup and payoff!

Finally, we come to Jack. After defeating Fontaine, he is finally able to take a bathysphere to the surface again. The player sees this almost immediately after defeating Fontaine, and it occurs regardless of whether the player gets the good or bad ending.

As stated in the Refusal of the Return step, neither DAI nor FFVII really have Crossing of the Return Threshold. FFVII just sort of ends and DAI doesn’t show the Inquisitor returning to their home origins, either in the game proper or in the DLC.

16.) Master of Two Worlds

This step is no so much of a step, but rather a final result of the hero’s journey. It is closely related to the next step, Freedom to Live. We see the hero basically in their final form, having achieved what they set out to do, whether that was the original intention or not. The hero is able to live in both their old and new worlds.

In our chosen movies, Luke is really the only one who is the Master of Two Worlds. He recognizes the darkness that exists in him, but he can overcome it. Frodo, on the other hand, literally can’t become Master of Two Worlds due to his experiences. He has to leave one world (the Shire) permanently for the east.

Harry…really has to compartmentalize his wizard and Muggle experiences, but that has more to do with his family not being willing to accept that magic is a part of him. Obviously his aunt and uncle do not care for his boon (magic) that he brings with him, forbidding him from using it, even without the Statute of Secrecy in place. He can’t really master both worlds in that regard, not until the last book and he reconciles with Dudley. (I’m really annoyed they cut that from the final release of the movies. That badly needed to be shown.) Harry does become a master of two worlds, the living and the dead, in the last book, but we’re looking at the first book alone, and this step isn’t really possible for him due to his circumstances.

Now I have to admit, the only game (on our list anyway) that has this step is probably Psychonauts. Cloud steps away from his false life as an ex-SOLDIER when he admits that it was all in his head, choosing instead to continue to live as himself. Jack either returns to the surface with the Little Sisters and stays there (in the good ending) or becomes the master of Rapture and new leader of the splicers, rejecting his previous life. And The Inquisitor, well, I guess you could say they become the master of both the real world and the Fade, especially since he/she gets progressively better at controlling the Anchor and closing Fade rifts. However, they he/she still remains in the real world as the Inquisitor, until the events of Trespasser at least. These three games have the main character choosing one world over another, so it’s hard to pin them down as “masters” of two.

Psychonauts, however, shows Raz accepts both parts of his life, as an acrobat and as a Psychonaut. This is illustrated excellently during the last platforming part of the game, during Meat Circus, with the rising water and Raz needing to keep up with his mental image of his dad. He uses both his acrobatic skills and his psychic powers to reach the top of the area. And as stated previously, Raz gains his father’s blessing before running off on another mission. Raz succeeds at being a Master of Two Worlds, and this kid is only ten!

17.) Freedom to Live

A follow up of the previous step, Freedom to Live is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Having mastered both worlds, the hero is allowed to live, as he or she wants, without worrying about any more conflicts…until the story sequel at least. This is the happy ending of the story, presuming the story has a happy ending.

All of our protagonists, both movie and video game, manage this step in one way or another. Luke no longer has the threat of the Sith looming over him, and he can be at peace knowing he helped to redeem his father (and, for now, I’m going to ignore the stuff that happens in the New Trilogy, because that starts up a whole new set of the monomyth). Harry is given the opportunity to go back to Hogwarts for more schooling, and even though his Muggle family disapproves, he knows who he is now and has answers for things he couldn’t explain before. Overall, the end of the first Harry Potter book gives him a new lot in life, and the series continues on with that from there.

And Frodo. Poor Frodo. Perhaps it’s hard to say he has “freedom” to live since he does end up leaving the Shire, but considering that his goal was to save the Shire (and by extension, all of Middle Earth), he succeeds. Frodo had to leave his home, but the other hobbits, including Sam, his closest companion, were able to live without a care. It’s a sacrifice, but one Frodo seems content to make.

As for the video games we’re looking at, well, now Raz has the freedom to pursue his dream of being a Psychonaut without worrying about it alienating his family, his father in particular. Cloud is able to put the past behind him and move forward as his own person, rather than trying to live up to a standard he forced himself to before. The Inquisitor has challenges ahead to be sure, but without the threat of Corypheus breathing down their neck, they have a bright future to look forward to (at least until Solas decides to tear down the Veil, but we’ll have to wait for Dragon Age 4 to see how that turns out). And finally, Jack finally has answers to any questions he had about his life, and with his mental conditioning removed, he is finally allowed to choose his own fate, whether as a despotic leader of the splicers or as a father to the cured Little Sisters.

So there you go. The Hero’s Journey in a bunch of movies and video games. As I said at the beginning of this extensive diatribe, the monomyth is not the only way to tell a story well, and it certainly is not mandatory to make a story good. However, whether intentional or not, parts of the monomyth somehow find their way into the stories we share in our various media. It’s worth looking at for any kind of story, if only to analyze how the presence or absence of the monomyth affects the story, for better or worse. And yes, video games can be a great form of story telling, if developers take the time to create it and players take the time to experience it.

Okay. This post has gone on long enough. To anyone who managed to make it all the way here, thank you for your patience and commitment to reading my ramblings.

#video games #video game analysis #movie analysis #monomyth #hero's journey #spoilers #writing #storytelling

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listenherereviews · 8 years ago

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Interviews

The Fontaines (SXSW interview:)

Traveling to Austin, Texas to perform at SXSW for the first time, Los Angeles band The Fontaines are a group that have plenty of potential. Releasing two new singles “Evaporate” and “Vacant” recently, fans get a taste of their unique sound, which they label “nu-wop.” Speaking to siblings Hank and Charlotte Fontaine and members of their backing band Chrystian Kaplan (drums) and Daniel Zuker (bass) at Houndstooth Coffee in downtown Austin, the band told us what they think of one of the music industry’s most well-known conferences and festivals, opinions on Austin, their inspirations, and more.

Hank began the interview by saying, “this is our first time in Austin playing SXSW, and it’s been a good trip. We’ve had some good barbeque. We went to this place called Le Barbeque, which was pretty good. We’ve played with a lot of cool bands and we played with a lot of our friends yesterday.” As for what they think of Austin, “it’s beautiful,” Hank says. “It’s kind of like LA.” Charlotte, Hanks sister interjects by saying, “we don’t have anything like 6th street.” “Austin is a lot more supportive of upcoming music,” says Zuker. “For LA, it’s become this whole pay to play scene.”

When asked how the band got started performing together, Zuker says, “Hank and I had a mutual friend and we were trying to set up the group, and I asked my friend Albie if he knew any bass players.” “Not even!” Hank says. “I asked my friend Albie if he could play bass for us, and he was like, I would, but I can’t, so try this guy. I was referred to Hank by our friend Anthony who is in another band.”

As for how they found their style, the group has been described as taking after Southern California surf band The Beach Boys, though Hank insists that the band is losing that part of their style by saying, “we always hear different things from different people. They will say ‘oh, this is funk, or this is indie, which I like since you can’t pin it down.” Charlotte says, “for me it’s always about what I’ve been listening to or what I heard growing up. I like a lot of female singers from the 50’s, 60’s, so Brenda Lee or Peggy Lee, and then going more modern I like Amy Winehouse. Just strong female voices.” Hank names his influences by saying, “I listen to stuff that happened before I was too young to know about music, like Sonic Youth and Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana. I started listening to those bands and seeing what they listened to, and that was like Sam Cooke, The Cars, stuff like that.”

Since their songs can’t be pigeonholed into any genre, Hank tells us they have been writing more pop inspired songs lately, saying, “there’s a lot of freedom in the restrictions of writing pop songs, but I would love to do an acoustic album someday.”

Releasing their new single “Evaporate,” the response Charlotte says, “has been amazing actually. It’s been our fastest growing song on Spotify, and there is a Huffington Post article about it. It’s been really fun because it’s kind of a new direction for us as a band. It’s a bit poppier but it’s been a lot of fun performing it live for the first time at SXSW.” When discussing how Spotify and other streaming platforms have helped them as a small band, Charlotte says, “our most diehard fans have actually come from the internet. They’ve been following us on Instagram, Twitter, or on Spotify or YouTube, which I find interesting especially from LA, you can play a lot of shows and play to a lot of the same crowds, so it’s nice to be able to reach people that you would never have the opportunity to unless you are touring the world.”

As for if they have any plans to release more new music (they released their EP ii last year,) Charlotte says that they have a few more singles coming out (they dropped their latest single “Vacant” several weeks ago) and that they have a full album’s length of songs that they want to put out this year.

The Academic (SXSW interview:)

Formed in 2013 in Mullingar, Ireland, an hour outside of Dublin, a young band called The Academic turned heads at SXSW in Austin, Texas just a few weeks ago. With songs such as “Mixtape 2003” and “Different” off their most recent EP Loose Friends which dropped in 2015, Listen Here Reviews caught up with the entire band to talk about their beginnings, playing SXSW (it was their first!) and what’s coming up after SXSW.

Meeting at the Austin Convention Center after doing a radio interview with Kansas City Radio, the band states that it was a good warm up to the day, as they had just flown in to town the night before. On their first official morning at SXSW, lead guitarist Craig Fitzgerald states that the band went to BD Riley’s for breakfast and spent some time on 6th Street, saying, “we found out that we are actually playing at BD Riley’s tomorrow. It’s our first time in Austin, so we’re just getting the vibe down.”

Getting their name from the novel The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger, Fitzgerald gives details about their beginnings, by saying, “we were always playing in school together from a younger age, and then when we hit around 18, we said that we would get more focused on the band and original songs, so we started troubleshooting a lot of names over the years, and The Catcher In The Rye had the words ‘the academic’ in the first few pages, and it made it to the shortlist. It stuck and it made sense as we were all in school together.”

If fans search the band on Youtube, they will come across their cover of Taylor Swift’s hit track “Style,” though The Academic does go acoustic for their version. Performing it for the first time on Ireland’s National Public Radio (RTE,) drummer Dean Gavin gives details about that performance, saying “We had just dropped our very first single and it started to do well, and they said, ‘we want to come in and do this song, we want you to do a cover that’s in the Top 40 at the moment.’ “We thought that song was good and her record 1989 was coming out, and it came together last minute.”

Discussing their home town of Mullingar (where One Direction’s Niall Horan is originally from,) Stephen Murtagh, the bands bassist, says that “there’s not a huge scene like there would be in Dublin.” Fitzgerald interjects by saying “you kind of have to go to Dublin, and that’s where we got a lot of our breaks, but also Cork City is another great place to go and gig, but it’s not a massive country so it’s easy to get around. There’s only so many shows you can play in Mullingar because its tiny.” Gavin continues, “It’s only got 20,000 people, but it’s definitely more musical. The outlying towns, they aren’t as musical, but for some reason Mullingar just loves music.”

While they each had varied musical beginnings, the group now have shared musical tastes, leading to the question of how they got to open for the Pixies at Live at The Marquee music festival in Cork, Ireland in 2014. Guitarist Matt Murtagh (Stephen’s brother) told the story by saying, “I remember when I was 14, my cousin gave me a CD of their greatest hits and I became a big fan. That’s the biggest support slot we’ve ever done, and when we found out we were supporting the Pixies, it was totally crazy. I don’t know if we were expecting to meet them or anything, but we did get to hang out with them and it was a mind-blowing experience for us, since it was the first time we had ever met and played with a big act. It was 8,000 people as well which was by the biggest show we had ever done.”

As for what’s coming up after SXSW, the band got to enjoy a few days off at home before heading off to start a UK tour beginning tomorrow at Kasbah in Coventry, UK where the band will play new songs. To wrap up the interview, they gave details on new music, with Fitzgerald saying “I don’t know if we would get in trouble by giving a description, but it’s pretty much the same sound. It’s fun, young, and indie.”

The 4onthefloor (SXSW interview:)

Forming in 2009 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, The 4onthefloor writes all their songs in 4/4 time, with every member of the group playing a bass drum during live performances. Releasing their last record All In in 2015, the group has become known throughout their home state and the rest of the country as a band with soul and authenticity. Hoping to secure a record deal with a label that understands and breathes their passion for music at SXSW (South By Southwest,) a music festival and conference in Austin, Texas, happening next week, Listen Here Reviews sat down with front man Gabriel Douglas to chat about music, the late Minnesota teen and osteosarcoma patient Zach Sobiech, their favorite part about performing at SXSW, and how they write songs.

Starting out his musical journey by “assaulting everything he could find with rhythm”, Douglas described his passion and influences as the following, “The old-fashioned, countryside deliverance of rock’n’roll through a multitude of sources via old records, AM & FM bands on the radio waves, and countless broadcast renditions of oldies brought music to the forefront of a young mind. I started assaulting everything I knew (mostly trees and fallen branches) with rhythm. Although I was ways away from learning any sort of traditional drums, I got a saxophone – an alto saxophone – which lead to the wanting of more notes at the same time. Which lead to an old Sears acoustic guitar that had been hiding unassumingly under our family’s stairs. The action on it was atrocious, it only had a few sheets with cowboy chords with it, and the internet was still young enough that even finding tabs was looking for a needle in a haystack. It was perfect. It was a start.”

With Minneapolis having a thriving music scene, influence can be found throughout the entire state, with the group feeling so inspired by their Mid-Western roots that they named their fourth record Spirit of Minneapolis (2013) as a tribute to their home state. Moving the conversation towards home town inspiration, Douglas talks about not only the states frigid winters, but also the warm spring saying, “Where you live, where you reside, and what you call home will always have an influence on what you do for a living if you let it.” Elaborating further, he says that “until it has come around again, I don’t remember the joy of the first snowfall until the skies unleash the army of those beautiful snowflakes. Changes that you can always believe are coming, but when they arrive, it is anew all over again. It brings a resilience, a stoicness, to my songwriting process that is ingrained in generations of hard-working North Country men and women. Minnesota brings community and the joy of brotherhood to a primary spot at the table of priorities and I hope that is encapsulated in our songs as well.”

Perhaps another question on fans minds is the influence of late Stillwater, Minnesota teen Zach Sobiech on The 4onthefloor. In 2013, the group got a chance to perform with Sobiech in Minneapolis at The Varsity Theatre for a performance of his hit single “Clouds,” a track describing his journey as a cancer patient. Raising funds for osteosarcoma research, which Sobiech eventually passed from in May of that year, Douglas says that it was a pivotal moment in not only their professional lives, but their personal lives as well. “Zach lives in every single step I take as a musician. On every stage that The 4onthefloor gets the honor and joy to grace, he still is part of our performance. Knowing Zach is a beautiful connection I do not take for granted. The youthful, jubilant energy that he created through everything else; his hunger for living is not lost on any of us. We are happy to a part of his legacy (albeit a small, tiny morsel of the rock’n’roll part.)”

Heading into more technical matters, Douglas hashed out details of their unique stage set up, as it has raised questions to how The 4onthefloor write songs, and while their strict policy of only writing songs in 4/4 time did not get discussed in depth, Douglas did explain the creative process of songwriting. “We draw on our experiences traveling and sharing the merriment of rock’n’roll for songs. We get songs from the people we surround ourselves with and the people who come barreling through the doors of our lives. And the people who get thrown out the windows of our lives. We hope to one day find a song similar to “Came in Through the Bathroom Window” but currently none of our processes have conjured such a topic, such a Cocker-esque sequence, such a song.”

With SXSW just around the corner, Douglas divulged about the bands favorite parts of the festival, considering that The 4onthefloor has performed at the event over the past several years. Saying that the band enjoys tacos, Douglas says “Favorite parts: rock’n’roll and tacos. Other parts that we adore: downtempo, classic country, the class reunion of all of our tour mates from tours gone by, rooftop hangs, seedy club hangs, quarter-riddled arcade hangs, how’d-we-get-into-this-sewer-and-how-do-we-get-out hangs, and tacos.”

Among other plans at the festival is the hope that the group will score a major record deal when the festival is finished. Douglas says of the ambitious task, “We are hoping to get a major label contract from SXSW. We hope the label is ready for a road-worn, road-ready pack of musicians that are as hungry as the day they gasped their first breath. We hope the label is ready for a band that puts the show and the songs at the forefront, but a band that will not stare at its shoes. We welcome the community of patrons at any establishment that has taken the time from their lives to listen to our music, to learn our music, or to recite our music with us.”

“We hope the label doesn’t attempt to give some ridiculous advance, we don’t need it. We need their PR machine, we need their prestige, we need to be on the road with other like-minded musicians, traversing this nation and this globe. We hope the label understands that we will not be ready to tour the moon in 2017, but any year coming up, we are ready to circle back around and talk about lunar tours. We are hoping for a label that believes in our music, in rock’n’roll, and in sharing joy, as much as The 4onthefloor does.”

The ambition and heart that The 4onthefloor possesses will not be lost on anyone listening and with another year of SXSW about to be in the books, there is hope that The 4onthefloor have no trouble securing what they most desire.

Yarin Glam

Growing up in the small town of Arad, Israel, roughly an hour and a half from Tel Aviv, up and coming pop vocalist Yarin Glam never imagined that she would have success on the other side of the world in Los Angeles, California, where she now lives. Releasing her latest single “Mr. Calvin Klein,” which has received warm reviews in Israel, America and Italy, Listen Here Reviews chatted with Glam through e-mail to talk about her music, her new single, finding success in America, and what’s coming up next.

When speaking about her influences, Glam says “To be honest, I have so many. But to name a few, I love Lana Del Ray, Lorde, Beyoncé, Alessia Cara, Drake, and Lady Gaga.” While speaking with Glam, it’s clear that she wants to make upbeat music, which is popular in Israel, as the country has a large electronic music scene, though she mentions that pop music is not well loved.

Spending most of her life in Israel, the Middle East’s most stable country has had an obvious effect on Glam, with her stating “It’s home. Israel shaped me as a person, and as an artist. It’s who I am, and it motivated me to bring something new to the music world. I want to inspire people that come from diversity to dream big and never give up.”

When talking about “Mr. Calvin Klein” and its universal appeal with women, as everyone wants to find their perfect man, Glam gave details about the inspiration behind the track, saying “I had the biggest crush on this boy from my high school who I couldn’t stop thinking about. He looked as if he came straight out of a Calvin Klein commercial. It’s been really great to see how people from all ages in Israel, America, and even in Italy have responded to my music. They’ve given me so much love and support! It shows how music can reach anyone. I guess it means lots of people around the world have their own ‘Mr. Calvin Klein’”.

While good working relationships are a crucial part of success in the music business, Glam also gave details about her relationship with her producer Swagga Bob, how she met him, and how he has helped her throughout her time in America. “I met Swagga Bob about a year ago at IHOP, and it’s been all good vibes ever since. “Swagga is like family, we’ve grown extremely close. It’s been awesome working with him. He teaches me a lot about music, and the industry in general. When in the studio, we can be serious and focused, or we crack a lot of jokes, or both. He’s one of my closest friends, and even more than that, a great mentor to have in my corner!”

To wrap up the conversation, Glam will be hard at work releasing two EP’s this year, with one of them already being released, titled Now or Never, with Glam saying “My first EP is very special to me. I feel it’s my first chance to share my love for music with the world. It might sound a little ‘all over the place’ which is me experimenting with my sound. I feel I grew a lot as an artist while working on it.” With that said, she kept her second body of work shrouded in mystery, telling Listen Here Reviews, “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

Wherever Glam ends up, we hope to see her on stage soon performing all over the world and giving everyone a taste of their very own “Calvin Klein.”

The Funeral Portrait

Releasing their record A Moment of Silence in December, Atlanta act The Funeral Portrait has been moving up the ladder as a group to watch, and with new music that will get people talking, Listen Here Reviews was eager to chat with the group about the new songs, touring, and what’s coming next. Speaking with front man Lee Jennings through e-mail, he gave us the history of the group, how they wrote Silence, and the bands that they most like to tour with along with their favorite cities to perform in.

New to the music scene, it may be surprising that the group started off as a pop-rock band named Comoscope with Jennings saying, “After about two years of playing shows and releasing a record under that name we decided it was time for a change and started working on the songs for our first EP, [The Dearly Departed] as The Funeral Portrait. We then submitted our songs to Revival Recordings and they loved them and wanted to help us release the EP.”

After listening to the group’s music, it becomes apparent immediately that the group has varied musical influences. Jennings, who comes from a musical theater background, naturally incorporates that feel into the band’s music, despite their more edgy tone, while drummer Steve Danzey brings in more of an old heavy metal vibe to the bands songs, though Jennings states that each member also listens to more recent material, particularly “emo-rock from the 2002-2008″ period.

In 2015, fresh on to the music scene, Alternative Press named The Funeral Portrait one of the top bands of the year. While that’s an accomplishment for any act, Jennings recalls the story of finding out the big news by saying “It was kind of scary actually… we were such a small band, so fresh and new and to already have to live up to that name is kind of weird! In 2016, we just spent the year recording the record and touring as much as we can, so hopefully we will have lived up to that grace!”

The Funeral Portrait recently made Alternative Press headlines again when the magazine’s website premiered clips from the groups new album A Moment of Silence. With each track sounding varied and different with each clip, Jennings provided details of the recording process, saying that they tend to deviate away from the normal process of ‘getting in a room and jamming.’ “Steve, our drummer, sits down and writes most of the instrumentals then Juergie Landstrom, our other guitar player, comes up most of the lyrics and then we demo out everything at my recording studio. This being our first full length record we really wanted the songs to be super strong and have great parts, so we worked morning, day, and night, to make sure every song sounded the way we wanted before ever going into the bigger studio with our producer to record the record.”

While touring is a normal part of life for The Funeral Portrait, to close out the interview, Jennings gave details about what is coming up next while also naming who the group enjoys touring with most, with Jennings saying, “Alesana are always fun dudes to tour with! Same with the guys in Islander. Both bands are just made up of genuinely nice guys! I know we always love playing Buffalo, NY as well as New York City and Anaheim, California. A place we haven’t played but would like to is Seattle, Washington… we were supposed to play there on this last run with Famous Last Words but the show got canceled because of a snow storm.”

A Moment of Silence is out now.

Marcus Alan Ward

Releasing his debut album Last Night I Grew Tentacles in 2014 on his own label Long Division Records, Cleveland, Ohio soul singer Marcus Alan Ward has a great career shaping up ahead of him. After checking out his latest video for his latest single “Little Sunshine,” we set up an interview with him to discuss his influences, who he would most like to sing a duet with, and more. Our conversation is below.

Kicking off our chat, we began by asking Marcus which bands he is influenced by, due to his soulful and anarchic voice. The answers he gave us were a bit surprising. “Growing up my favorites were The Mars Volta, The Killers, The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, Marvin Gaye, Bjork, TV On the Radio, and James Brown. That’s just to name a few. I still listen to these artists today regularly.”

While solo records pop up all the time, there is very rarely a solo record released where musicians do everything themselves, though in Ward’s case his music is a true solo venture. Telling us that he began playing music in fifth grade by picking up the clarinet, he tells us that “I play electric guitar, bass guitar, piano, vocals, and do drum programming and production as well. On the records I write, produce, and perform everything myself.”

With such a soulful feel, each song that Ward puts out sounds like he is creatively in control, and by doing every aspect of his albums alone, he continually pushes himself to make great music, and so far, he has risen to the challenge. Starting to take music seriously as a teenager, Ward told us about his days taking over guitar and backing vocals in plenty of bands, while exploring his next steps by experimenting with computerized sounds, and eventually discovering a happy medium by doing a hybrid of both musical outlets.

We think it worked out pretty well. With such a large responsibility to fill every time he releases an LP, we asked about who he dreams of recording with, with Ward telling Listen Here Reviews, that his dream would be to sing with Bjork, “as she’s the queen.”

Rooting his music in science fiction, we ended the interview by wanting to know more about the response to his latest album Tentacles and the writing behind it, with Ward telling us “I think it really opened people’s minds up locally and regionally to what could be done. I mean it’s an electronic, alt rock, soul concept album rooted in science fiction, space exploration, and quantum physics, created by a young black male. So I think it was a good look. I’m in a different place musically now, but I think it did well in showing people that I can’t really be tied to any one genre.”

While he may be in a different place musically, Tentacles illustrates that Ward does not want to be pigeonholed into one genre while also compelling his audience to listen further and dive deeper into his releases.

Continental Recording Studio

The recording studio has had a long history in the music business. It is a place where musicians go could and record their creative ideas and put out their songs on an album for their fans to hear. For decades, the studio was the only place where musicians could record, though over the past decade or so, the concept of the studio has become more personal. Now, musicians have the freedom to record out of their bedrooms with programs such as Garageband or Reason. For the music fans that want to take an old-fashioned approach to recording music, studios are still there to meet their needs.

One of those studios is Continental Recording Studio based in Long Island, New York situated very close to the Big Apple by way of the subway, who opened their doors in 2008. Speaking to brothers Mike and Matt Gevaza about their joint business of recording music for a living, they are determined to turn a dying part of the music industry into a thriving one, and we were interested to know more about not only their business, but also their musical history and what drives them to help musicians be creative.

Kicking off our discussion with Matt about how the brothers began playing music and recording, he began our discussion by telling us “Our path to getting into recording began in the early 2000’s while playing in high school rock bands. Mike was always technically inclined and early on in our music career he took the initiative to record us. After getting a few sessions and mixes under his belt with some basic recording gear and cheap dynamic mics, word started to spread of his engineering skills. By 2008 we were in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and still recording our own music in our rehearsal space. Eventually other bands heard what we were doing and wanted to work with us and once again word spread. What started out as a bunch of 15-year-old kids experimenting with sound eventually blossomed into Continental Recording Studio.”

Both siblings had a strong musical education that started when they were both very young, beginning with the guitar and bass, taught by local guitar God Larry Logeman. The brothers credit Logeman with teaching them everything they know about guitar, eventually giving the brothers enough knowledge to start performing in front of a crowd with Mike adding “among our earliest performances was in an 8th grade play performing as The Beatles, at a local bar in 2001, and at a local ska venue around the same time. We were fortunate enough to play at CBGB’s many times between 2002-2006.” In total, the siblings have been playing music for 20 years, while they have dabbled in piano, synths, and drums alongside their main instruments.

The experience of playing one of New York City’s most historic venues, eventually led to a new path behind the recording desk and with the opening of Continental Recording Studio. Asking how the brothers picked the location of the studio, Mike tells Listen Here Reviews that it was about making the studio to musicians who utilized public transportation heavily. “We chose Long Island City for many reasons. LIC is accessible through the E, G, 7, and M trains at Court Square, the N, and Q trains at Queens Plaza, and in close proximity to the 59th street bridge and midtown tunnel. Its central location makes it ideal for musicians who access us via public transportation. Aside from being located so close to Manhattan and Brooklyn, Long Island City is also a thriving neighborhood and there is a lot of great art, culture, and food in the area.”

Set in a vibrant area, we know that New York City musicians are looking to get their songs out to the world in the best way possible, which led us to asking Mike and Matt about their approach to recording, with the brothers telling us that they treat each client as if they were The Beatles recording at Abbey Road. With a meticulous attention to detail and getting each recording just right, the brothers work as if they were working on a piece of artwork by telling us “We’re guided by the spirit of doing what each individual recording calls for, and we aim for a balance between experimentation and using tried and true methods. While we use digital as a recording medium, our recordings run through all analog signal paths. One of the main things we stress is getting the sound and performance right at the source. We try to avoid fixing things in the mix where possible, and we are deliberate in our microphone placement and gear choice. Throughout the tracking, mixing, and mastering process we listen with a very attentive and focused ear and don’t leave sonic issues unaddressed.”

To wrap up our discussion, we asked Mike and Matt about any upcoming projects they will be working on for the remainder of 2016. Wanting to consistently challenge the artists that they work with, Mike and Matt are currently working on a series called Uncomfortable Covers, where they invite an artist to come in to to record a song outside of their genre, with Mike excitedly saying that “It is a fun way to challenge artists and create some really cool unexpected covers. Our affiliate label, Electric Giant Productions, also has a few releases on the way. We’re putting out Tory Hanna and the Pondsiders debut album Learning to Share on August 26th, Brett Ferguson’s album Let Go in the fall, and John Severin and the Quiet 1’s self-titled release later this year. Be on the lookout for those in the near future!

With plenty of upcoming projects in the works, Continental Recording Studio is in for the long haul as the future of the music industry is changing rapidly. With creativity flowing in and out of studio, Mike and Matt Gevaza will make sure that the concept of the recording studio stays breathing for a long time to come.

A Boy Named John

Starting in 2014, Parsippany, New Jersey rock band A Boy Named John formed over a mutual love of music and friendship. With the release of their new album So We Live | So We Die, Listen Here Reviews spoke to the band about their formation, their inspirational high school teacher John SanGiovanni, live performances, and what’s coming next for the band. To start the discussion, we decided to start things off with a subject that is close to the band member’s hearts – their high school music teacher. Josh Lustig, who plays guitar, spoke fondly of his former teacher, telling us “John SanGiovanni, or as we call him, Sange, was one of the main reasons that we got started as a band, namely because he encouraged us to get started by donating almost two grand worth of vocal equipment to us, for free. He was great to have in class as well because he made his students look forward to playing music. A few months ago, we performed at his retirement party to a room full of our old teachers and administrators. It was a very humbling and gratifying experience. It should also be noted, that John SanGiovanni was not only a great teacher, but he was the perfect representation of all of the great teachers that we had throughout our schooling, especially in music.”

While SanGiovanni was certainly an inspiration, he also encouraged the band to keep going, and as they polished their work ethic, the DIY group also had to start doing everything themselves. Starting bands which is similar to starting a startup, takes a dedicated group of people to make bands successful, something that was rooted in A Boy Named John early on. Noticing their persistent efforts to the get the group up and running, we wanted to know if they had any advice for upcoming acts or individual musicians who are doing everything themselves. They had some important tips that aspiring musicians should take note of. Vocalist Christian Singh added the following, “The biggest advice I would say is to keep good communication between everyone in the band. Don’t go MIA, be active within the group, help each other out. Have someone designated to answer emails, to book shows, to make phone calls etc. To this day we are continuously improving our methods of communication, aiming to operate as efficiently as possible in those regards.”

Moving away from the business of music, we wanted to discuss the very thing that got the band here in the first place, their music. Releasing their album just a short while ago, we wanted to hear what inspired the band to write the songs on the LP and the storyline behind the record. They offered the following explanation, “the general meaning behind So We Live | So We Die as a whole is basically how we as a society, live life as a routine (living and dying) and how we need to break that routine, open our eyes on the bigger issues in this fucked up world and do something about it to break this cycle and stand up for ourselves and each other. The writing process was pretty awesome for the album. We all collaborated pretty evenly in terms of lyrics and music. These songs were written based on issues going on in this world that, for the lack of better words, really pissed us off and we wanted the world to know and open up their eyes. Hopefully the listeners will be inspired to make some positive change!”

In the early days of social media, music fans had sites such as Myspace that allowed members to discover bands and musician from every corner of the world, become their friend, and keep up with their latest happenings. After a few years of extreme popularity, Myspace was side swept by Facebook who is currently the face of social media, leaving Myspace to lag behind. After a much needed faceclift, the former social media giant revamped its website to dedicate itself entirely to music. Occasionally, you will hear a band that is streaming music on Myspace, and A Boy Named John is one of them. Caught off guard to see where the band is allowing a first listen for their fans, we decided to them to ask why they chose the platform.

“If you’re looking in terms of the generic, cluttered, complain-about-everything social media Platforms, then yes Myspace does trail behind Facebook. That’s because Myspace has shifted its gears away from the “life’s a box full of chocolates” way of doing things and put all its efforts toward one beautiful thing: MUSIC! It’s an entirely different animal these days. If someone is on Myspace, they are there for the music and nothing else. A genuinely sweet community of music passioneers (yes I made that word up and yes you can use it.) We support this 100% and we’re very happy with the results received from working with them.”

While the band is still largely unknown, we wanted the guys to give us a little taste of their live performance and what the set list looks like for shows. Drummer Dean Mulligan jumped in for this question telling us, “They can definitely expect to participate in a high energy show. We establish a bi-directional connection between us and the crowd that intensifies throughout the set. We really aim to make the entire room feel something. “We’re in this together and we’ll come out the other side together.”

“As for the set list, we try our best to tailor it to the vibes we receive from the people in the room. It all depends on the type of show and the expected audience. It’s also not unusual for us to throw in some covers for people being introduced to our music for the first time. Collectively, our favorite songs to play are “I See, Said The Blindman” and “The Irony of a Birdhouse” which we often close with due to their high and climactic energy. So for those who have yet to see us, you can expect a high intensity show with a feeling of connectivity and belonging.”

Guitarist Jack Lips wrapped up our interview by telling us that the band will be releasing a music video for their latest single “Gentleman” and that they will be doing an East Coast tour in the future as well as possible tour out west.

Wherever the band will end up next is unknown, but their future is an exciting one and we can’t wait to follow along on the amazing ride with A Boy Named John.

Lisa Loeb

Lisa Loeb is one of pop music’s most recognizable artists. Getting her big break in 1994 when her song “Stay (I Missed You)” made it onto the soundtrack for the romantic-comedy Reality Bites, it was the first time that Lisa had achieved such visibility with her music. Her good friend and actor Ethan Hawke had passed the track on to Ben Stiller who was directing the film, which then kicked off Lisa’s career, leading to the release of several albums as well as venturing into children’s music.

Today see’s the release of Loeb’s new 7” record, with the songs “3,2,1 Let Go” and “The Disappointing Pancake,” with the latter being a fan favorite among adults and kids alike, released on her kid’s album Camp Lisa. Gearing up for the release, Lisa spoke to Listen Here Reviews about the record, as well as what inspires her to write music, her current tour, and her interest in writing music for children.

We started off the interview with Lisa by asking about the beginnings of her career and making her way onto the soundtrack of Reality Bites. Asking about her friendship with Ethan Hawke, she tells us “I’d been friends with Ethan for a while before he passed the song along to Ben Stiller, who put the song in the movie and soundtrack. Ethan and I were part of a very creative group of pro-active friends who made music, wrote plays, books, acted in films and theater- all kinds of things. We really had a great support system, which felt like a continuation of the same support system I had at Brown University. When the song got into the film, it was the biggest thing that had happened in my professional music career. I’d had songs on smaller labels complications and some record company interest, but this was the most visible.”

While Lisa has maintained her popularity among adult music fans, she made the shift to performing music for children in 2003, with the release of Catch the Moon, collaborating with her college friend and music partner Elizabeth Mitchell. Since then, Lisa has written songs that have appeared on the Noggin TV network, and contributed to the children’s album A World of Happiness, with the single “In The Details.” Interested to know why she made this shift in music, she told us that “I had an opportunity to make a record and I decided to make a kids record at that time. I love writing music for kids because I visit other parts of my brain and creativity and storytelling that I don’t in my grownup music.”

Inspired by kids albums such as Free to Be You and Me and Really Rosie, which were both released in the 70’s and 80’s, Lisa tells us that she enjoys these records due to them being “entertaining for the grownups too with their wit, heart and cleverness,” something that she hopes to get across in her music when adults are listening.

Wanting to know the details about her latest release, we asked her to tell us about the 7” inch, letting us know that “this is an awesome exclusive way to get a super cool title song I wrote for a film starring Nia Vardallos, (Helicopter Mom,) and one of my most popular kids’ songs about a pancake who turns out to be not so disappointing after all. This is something I would have loved to own when I was a kid. You can listen to it over and over again and it’ll sound great on vinyl! The artwork is super cool too.”

Of course, promoting a release is a must for any artist and Lisa was excited to tell us a bit about her upcoming plans to perform for her fans in Canada, along with what they can expect to see from her if they have never watched her perform live. “I’ll play my songs, you know, from the radio, album tracks selected from all of my albums, some new songs, some kids’ songs too. You can probably make a request during the show too. I always like to play some requests. I’ll most likely tell some stories and maybe hear from the audience as well.”

She also shared her love for her Canadian fans saying “I’m always on tour. I’ll be up in Canada in July for four shows. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been to Canada, other than visiting my brother-in-law’s family in Ottawa. I love my Canadian fans- they really connect with humor and heart and so I connect with them.”

To wrap up our discussion, we asked Lisa about her upcoming plans which included heading back Los Angeles to finish up the recording of her upcoming kid’s album Feel What U Feel, which will be released in the fall, and of course, more touring.

To see all of Lisa’s upcoming tour dates (including dates for the US), check out Lisa’s website here. You can listen to her new EP and purchase it over at Bandcamp.

The Downtown Fiction

Releasing their new EP Alligator Tears in February, Virginia power-pop band The Downtown Fiction have accomplished quite a bit in their almost ten years as a band. Forming in high school in 2008, members Cameron Leahy, guitar and vocals, and former drummer Eric Jones, came together to form The Downtown Fiction, and soon after began posting demos to their MySpace page, a popular method of getting noticed by the music industry back in the early days of social media. Upon the release of their latest effort, we sat down with Cameron to discuss the record, the bands songwriting process, and their upcoming plans.

We opened our discussion by asking about the band’s start and asked Cameron if he ever felt that the group could potentially make it as far as they have, with him telling us “we have been so fortunate to emerge at the time we did, with so many resources and means by which to reach people. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to get what I create out there. I just wanted to make music and I guess part of me kept saying, you’re doing this one way or another.” While it has become easier for a musician to “make it” in the digital age, The Downtown Fiction rose to becoming well-known in the pop punk and indie music scenes pretty quickly, as the band got a spot in Alternative Press, one of music’s most well-known magazines, which labeled the group as a band you need to know in 2010, only two years after they formed.

Since then, the group’s sound has changed and evolved, and we became interested to know just how much the band has changed since the beginning of their career, with Cameron telling us that they are at the point where the group can break their own rules, while also getting back to who The Downtown Fiction are at their core. “I think we’re continually modifying the constraints we want to work within. Those walls are always being reigned in or pushed out in some way or another. I don’t think we consciously make these rules, but over time I think you start to get a better gauge of what’s integral to your musical DNA and that’s something you’re sort of just putting on like a character.”

When asked about the writing process behind Alligator Tears, which Cameron self-produced, he tells Listen Here Reviews about the creative freedom and path the band took with the release, saying “I had the opportunity to focus more seriously on demoing the songs at my home studio and take the time to experiment with facets of the arrangement that I would have left more undefined until later. But this time the songs took form pretty early on and once we re-tracked the bass and drums live, it really began sounding like the record. It was a great experience because self-producing really allowed for some creative freedom time-wise to push the limits of how much punch we could fit into one moment. There were some sleepless nights but I think that’s what’s at the heart of Alligator Tears, this feeling of pouring all of yourself into what you’re doing.”

After talking about the creative process, we wanted to know if there were any songs on the EP that hold a special place in Cameron’s heart with him telling us that “it’s probably “Hepburn Shades”—we just put out a video for the song. I think it became the closer because it has the ability to really take hold like a rock song would, but it’s also very reflective. It makes you want to sit back and think a little bit and that’s the sort of music I’d love to continue making.”

As for touring plans, the band cannot wait to perform the songs on Alligator Tears, with the members hoping to play for as many people as possible.

Tawnya Reynolds

Country artist Tawnya Reynolds always knew she wanted to be a star. Born and raised in New Mexico, Reynolds did not grow up in a musical town, leaving her no choice but to risk it all and move to the bright lights of Nashville. Though before moving to Music City, she set her sights on the Live Music Capital of the World, also known as Austin, Texas, to try her hand at what she calls a “more raw” music scene. Believing that she never truly fit in to the scene that Austin had to offer, she decided to go where country music blossoms, Tennessee’s capital and home of country music. While she says she has found the right city, that didn’t mean that Tawnya wouldn’t encounter some stumbles along the way, as she tried out for The Voice in 2012 and only made it to number thirty-two before being eliminated.

Now with a new album titled 8 Track, Tawyna is ready to embark on a new journey with new music that means the world to her, while hoping that the music will be loved by her fans as well. We sat down with Tawnya to discuss her new music and the path that got her to where she is today.

We started off our discussion talking about what has inspired Tawnya throughout her childhood. “As a little girl I was drawn to stylistic artists. Reba McEntire specifically, was the end all be all for me for years. That’s carried over into my adult life into a significantly deep respect for not only her musical sensibilities but her business savvy as well. Every artist dreams of that kind of longevity.” As for dreaming of moving to Tennessee, she tells us “moving to Nashville was always the goal. It was never a question…so I suppose mission accomplished.”

While the journey was never as cut and dry as some music stories may lead you to believe, Tawnya first tried out Texas to get her feet wet in the music business, in a city that’s not as harsh as Nashville, while telling us “as much as I love the city and everything it had to offer, Austin never seemed to truly fit me musically. I was so green, not even twenty-one at the time so I was really just trying to figure it all out. There’s no handbook in the music business. Everything is truly trial and error. I had so much to learn and was too caught up in surviving on my own to focus on the music properly.” Never finding a spot to fit into proved difficult, and while Nashville has provided Reynolds with experiencing her dream, she admits that “Nashville is somewhat vanilla. It doesn’t stray from the path of popularity,” making Tawnya’s songs a bit of a risk, as her music tends to stray from the commercial sounds of country, a style that Music City thrives on.

But risk taking is something that Reynolds does well, and wanting to explore more of this side of Tawnya’s story, we asked her about her time on The Voice back in 2012, where she would end of making it to number thirty-two in the competition before getting eliminated. When asked how to she got on the show while also describing the moment of her elimination, she offered the following explanation. “I was approached by Perry Howard of BMI to do an industry audition. It took some nudging from my husband but in retrospect, taking the opportunity was the right thing to do. Going home was a real moment. I never imagined I would be as emotionally invested as I was. You spend every moment with these people who become your friends and then out of nowhere you have to leave them. I was proud of portraying country music and myself the way I did so I wasn’t regretful. It took up over a year of my life from start to finish and then ended rather abruptly. One moment I was performing in front of sixteen million people, then not even sixteen hours later I was on a flight home. It was bittersweet but it honestly felt like the right time.”

Saddened but not defeated, Reynolds immediately began working on new music. While she is grateful that the fans have embraced her she admits that “this business can be fickle” and “that as far as the touring, the record and moving forward, that all has to come from me. I have to hit the pavement and make it work. The show gave me such an enormous platform and unimaginable exposure, but nothing was handed to me.”

To wrap up our conversation, we wanted to know what was coming up next for Tawnya surrounding 8 Track and beyond. “I always want to improve. I want to continue to be a better singer, a better guitar player, a better writer. I’m getting ready to hit the road and meet some new faces. This summer I will have the new music with me physically and otherwise. I just finished a duet with Radney Foster that will be on an upcoming Roger Miller Tribute release. I’m not shooting for perfection in any endeavor but I’d like to surprise myself somewhere along the way.”

While Tawnya certainly has had some difficult experiences along the way, she continues to impress us by the way she approaches music along with her relentless work ethic and with this in mind we know that 8 Track will find success in Nashville and elsewhere.

Safe, So Simple

Labeling themselves as a high energy band, Benson, Arizona group Safe, So Simple are certainly making a name for themselves throughout the music scene in Arizona and beyond. Releasing their new EP <em>Too Close to Closure </em>in March, the group is on a roll. Every song is immediately alluring, while also having the perfect sound for the younger generation- songs that bring together the sounds of EDM while using pop punk and metal to tie everything together, elements that we’ve heard in the recent pop punk songs of the last few years. With all of these elements in mind, the EP puts Safe, So Simple on the right track for achieving long term success. Curious to know more about their beginnings, career, and their songs, we chatted with the group to see what they had to tell us about what’s happened and what’s ahead.

Dereck Ausseresses, the groups drummer begins the interview by telling us, “Derrick [Fenn, guitar and vocals] and I were in a project together and we met Josh [Striffolino, the bands front man] through mutual friends who I used to be in a band with. We all discussed a project idea and made a decision to give it a shot,” adding that “collectively we share a lot of similar influences like Blink-182, Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, New Found Glory, Four Year Strong, and A Day to Remember.” As for their own individual backgrounds, each member began playing their current instruments in middle school and high school, with many of them playing other instruments before settling on their current choices, giving each member a varied musical background.

When listening to the EP, the, EDM, pop punk, and metal influences are obvious, with all three genres coming together seamlessly, with the band possessing a real sense of what makes their fans excited as well as what they want to hear from the band. With this in mind, we wanted to find out more about their songwriting process, the influences behind the release, and the creative process behind the record. Derek tells us, “Our songwriting has definitely evolved as we’ve gotten closer as a band. It used to be one of us had a song and then we fleshed it out. It’s a much more collaborative effort now. It definitely helps solidify our sound as a band as “the EP is primarily about finding a sense of closure. Whether it’s in the fulfillment of your dreams, relationships, or finding your purpose. Then it actually took on a whole new meaning during the writing and recording process. It took us seventeen months and three engineers to complete this EP. It was a process that at times we thought would be just easier to hang it up, but we trudged forward and worked for that sense of closure.”

Deciding to forge ahead, it’s a good thing the band decided not to call it a day, as Safe, So Simple is now trying out for a spot on the main stage at this summer’s Vans Warped Tour, one of America’s most renowned tours which stops in Phoenix in August, along with getting the chance to work with director Jeremy Tremp on their video for “Teeth Like Sharks.” Music fans may know Tremp’s name from working with fellow Grand Canyon state musician Luke Holland on his popular drum covers on YouTube. Seeing Tremp’s work beforehand got us curious about what the group’s experience was like working with Jeremy, the filming experience, and the storyline of the video. As it turns out, the filming behind the “Teeth Like Sharks” video was a simple one.

Filmed in Tremp’s home, the band is seen in a single shot going from room to room singing the track. Derek goes on to tell us that “Jeremy Tremp is the most professional individual we’ve worked with as a band. It being all one take, meant our blocking and timing had to be perfect. After a few solid hours of dry run’s, we mustered up three solid takes and picked the best one. No tricks or editing. All one crazy fun-filled shot!”

To tell us more about the process behind the shoot, Josh jumped in and told us a little bit more about the video with him saying that, “Jeremy had come up with the idea and then he and Derek began the initial blocking and ideas. Jeremy always maintains a very fluid and creative work atmosphere, so changes were happening on the fly. Everyone gave input and helped make it what you see today.”

As our conversation came to an end, we wanted to ask about the band’s possibility of playing Warped Tour. After telling us that it is up to a panel of judges whether or not the group will play, they tell us that it would be their first time performing on the Warped Tour. With a good chance of gaining hundreds of new fans from participating, we can’t think of a place better for the group to be than playing then on the main stage of one of today’s biggest and most influential platforms. For fans who are wondering when new music will be released, we certainly wanted to know about their upcoming plans for new music, with the group telling us that songs will drop after summer ends.

Check out the video for “Teeth Like Sharks” below.

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Audio Impulse

How did each of you get into music?

I know Freeman, our drummer, got into playing drums through Rock Band, but had been learning guitar and bass prior to that. The rest of us it just stemmed from a love of music, not just listening to it, but wanting to be a part of it, creating it. For the four us, not to be cliché, it isn’t just a hobby it’s a lifestyle. Music just resonating within us so deeply we had no choice, but to play and perform.

How did the band get started?

Audio Impulse was initially a started with Nate and Barry jamming together for fun. As they started to actually write out songs they decided they wanted to form a full band. It was then they reached out to Pat to fill out on bass and then we found Freeman in the deepest, darkest depths of the internet known as Craigslist. After Freeman joined Audio Impulse formed into the band it is today.

How did you come up with the name Audio Impulse?

After spending an embarrassing amount of time debating what the name should be we initially settled on “Arc Impulse” as a reference to our videogame nerdiness, but we came to find out the name was already being used by another band. After throwing around a few other ideas involving the words “audio” and “sonic” we settled into “Audio Impulse”.

How did you decide that “Straight Shot” should be a single for your current EP?

Well there’s the obvious it’s the title track might as well make it the first single, but that aside it was the first song we wrote when we began working on the EP process. It’s also the most emotionally charged and aggressive song on the EP, so we wanted to put that out there first to get it out of the way as we’ve taken a different approach with the material we’re writing currently that isn’t entirely indicative of that kind of emotion. Since we draw our inspiration for our songs from our own personal experiences it kind of begins a narrative, and “Straight Shot” is where the story begins. While it’s still a song we all love, take great pride in, and believe deserves to be out there it isn’t entirely where we’re at anymore, so the rest of the releases from the EP and the next couple releases will begin to work us into the next chapter of our lives and music.

What are your plans for promoting the EP?

We just held our release party for “Straight Shot” and had a great turnout. We have a few shows coming up in support of the EP, and we have a few more videos in the works to help push the EP. Overall we have a lot planned for 2016. We’re working on securing tour dates in the summer and fall as well, so make sure to swing by www.AudioImpulseMusic.com to stay up to date on that, as well as all things Audio Impulse.

How have fans responded to the songs that you have released so far?

“Straight Shot” has received really positive response since the release of the video getting 1000+ views on the Facebook feed, as well as another 16,000+ over on YouTube. We couldn’t be happier with the way that’s been received, but also just talking to fans at the release party who’ve caught the separate teaser “leaks” of each track all the tracks are getting their fair share of love. I think it just comes down to personal tastes in music. Each track is vastly different from the rest, but still have our unique sound to them. It’s interesting to hear the different reactions.

What is your songwriting process like?

Our songwriting process is generally pretty simple. We’re big fans of the old adage “keep it simple, stupid”. One of us will come into the rehearsal space with the idea for a riff, vocal melody, or drum beat, and we’ll start to work from there. We’ll start to hash out different parts, then take those parts, and work out a song structure and progression. Once we have that general framework in place we just polish our individual parts and work on making the song feel like it has a natural flow to it.

What was the process behind shooting the “Straight Shot” music video?

Again here we didn’t over complicate things. The premise behind the song “Straight Shot” is pretty simple. It’s a hard rocking “F*** you” break up song, so we decided to make a simple video for it. None of the bells, whistles, or the ricketa-racketa, just us rocking out.

What’s next for the band?

We have a lot planned for 2016. Like I mentioned we have a few more videos to work out to support “Straight Shot”, by the summer we have two more singles to release, we’re working on getting a tour together, and by the end of the year we’re looking to put out another recording. We’re also in competition to get onto Warped Tour this year. You can help us out by swinging by here (http://warped.amplifiertv.com/channel/Audio+Impulse) and checking out our videos. That’s all we currently have planned this year, so make sure you swing by the website to keep up on your Audio Impulse news and thanks for checking us out!

MC Lars

1.You just started your tour with Koo Koo Kangaroo. How has that been going?How did you guys end up going on tour together?This tour has been great! They are the most awesome kids’ dance / hip-hop/ comedy duo to ever come out of Minneapolis. We met on Warped and itfelt only natural hat we teamed up.2. Your EP The Laptop EP had a great style as well as themes. Your new albumZombie Dinosaur will be coming out in early November and I hear that bothreleases are similar in sound and lyrical themes. Can you tell us moreabout the record and what fans can expect from the new music?Thanks for your props on the EP! The new album has exciting guestappearances from Watsky, Kool Keith, Roger from Less than Jake and more! I’ve continued some of my stories form earlier works and the sonicaesthetic ranges from everything from crust punk to trap to ska. It’s mybest record I feel.3. I remember when The Laptop EP was released back in 2004. How do you thinkyour music has changed and what do you think keeps your fans coming backand listening to every album you release?Everything has moved to the Internet, physical media isn’t as present anda lot of the things I predicted on “Download This Song” came true, andstreaming has surpassed downloads. Things like Warped help me stay intouch with my fans and pre-order sites like Kickstarter helps fund thecreative process and give fans proprietary bonus goodies. There has neverbeen a better time to be an indie rapper.4. Are there any new songs on the upcoming release that you particularlyenjoy and how does this record differ from your previous albums?“Zombie T-Rex” is my favorite track because I’ve always wanted to do asong with Stza from Leftover Crack. This album is heavier musically andmore lyrical than other albums, while staying poppy and high energythroughout.5. What was the writing, recording, and producing process like for the newrecord?Intense! I spent over a year working on it and was able to higher some ofmy favorite engineers to produce the final product. Very pleased with theresults.6. After living in Los Angeles for a few years, you decided to move back tothe Bay Area. Being from the Bay Area myself, I know that they are hugedifferences between Southern and Northern California. Why did you decideto move back?The Bay Area is home. My time in LA was up and it was one to go back tomy roots. I love Venice Beach, but nothing beats San Francisco.7. What can fans expect from you when they see you perform on this tour?A high energy, upbeat, multimedia extravaganza! Come hang out! http://nerdcoretour.com8. Lastly, you just recently signed to Blacktop Records. How did you end upsigning with them?Ben had put out my friend Brendan from Wheatus’s cassette, so we thoughtit would be fun to collaborate on a cassette project. Availableeverywhere 11/6. Thanks for spreading the word!

Face Value

1. You guys just released your debut EP Growing Up Young. What was the recording process for the EP like?

Pretty awesome. We recorded, mixed, and mastered it at The Monster House in Waldorf, Maryland where we also stayed during the entire process. Mike Bridgett (the man behind The Monster House) took us in and let us live on the floor of his living room for a week and a half. Everyday we would wake up, watch Chopped on Netflix as we fixed breakfast, and then record music in his basement for hours upon hours. We had a blast recording G.U.Y and we hope you can hear it in every hit, riff, progression, burp, fart and chorus when you listen to it. Alec’s mom also made us some delicious baked Ziti and chicken dinners that we enjoyed on the first two nights. Each night we watched Netflix movies, ya know, the ones nobody has ever heard of that went straight to DVD. And we made friends with all of his roommates. It was like a sleep-away summer camp that we never wanted to end.

2. Do you guys have a favorite song off of the EP?

“If I had to pick a favorite, it’d be Members Only”, says Jeb. “It’s one of the first songs we ever wrote as the band we are today. I think it really captivates the kind of sound we’re going for and the lyrics are dark and very strong. They’re about the loss of a loved one and the guilt and hurt that comes along with it. It’s a song people can relate to, not when they’re up, but when they’re down and need it the most. And it’s just boppy and catchy as hell.”

3. You were formally named Out To See. What prompted the name change?

We were going in a different direction. More mature sound, new members, etc. The band was changing and it was only right to change the name as well. Face Value defines us and what we stand for. We got the name from a band called “With The Punches”. They have a song called “Face Value” which talks about not letting physical things define you, saying, “..From the clothes you wear to the car you drive, the company you keep. They’re all just worthless commodities…”. To us, Face Value means to be yourself and to not let what you have or who you know define you. No one’s better than anyone else.

4. How did each of you choose your instruments? As individuals, who inspired you to play music?

Jeremiah: I was always hitting on things trying to make cool beats and sounds since I can remember. I always loved music and something in me just liked the drums the most. I got a book from the library and read all about Keith Moon and I’ve had sticks in my hand ever since.

Gray: I started playing drums at age 7 when I admired a band called Hanson (don’t judge me). When Park started playing guitar in 5th grade, I took it up, too. Park got our grandparents to buy us a Mark Hoppus Signature Bass and I began dabbling with that as well. The Mark Hoppus Bass is now decommissioned ever since Jeb dropped it in Alec’s driveway…I love you, Jeb.

Park: Me and Gray always liked Blink and Sum 41 back when we were too young to understand any of their fucked up lyrics. Enema of the State and All Killer No Filler were huge influences on us. In 5th grade, me and Gray saw “School of Rock” and it really made want to start playing guitar, especially since I was the same age as those kids. I started taking guitar lessons and playing Blink 182 songs and that’s really how I learned how to play guitar.

Alec: The desire to learn how to play guitar really stemmed from my father’s love for music. he was an 80’s hair metal headbanger, which may be frowned upon by the music elitists of the modern age, but nevertheless the genre was super uppity and catchy. With my interest in music growing, my dad decided to sign me up to take lessons in my quaint hometown of Kingsville, MD. Mr. Don, my instructor, taught me about every Beatles song ever written, which I slightly resented at the time, but later understood was a great basis to continue to self teach myself guitar on my cherry red Fender. Since then I have self taught and taken vocal lessons and started the band which I continue to play in, Face Value.

5. How was the most recent tour that you did over the summer? Were there any memorable moments or shows?

Our first tour could not have been a better time. Our friends in the band Something More asked us to hop on and the rest is history. I would say we had a bunch of memorable moments that will stay in hearts for years to come. In Indianapolis we saw “Inside Out” while Something More saw “Jurassic World”. In Peoria, an awesome band called Unamused Dave let us crash at their parents’ house (borderline mansion) and let us all shower and eat frozen pizzas, yum. In Knoxville, TN, some random local yocals let us sleep at their town home and gave us Panera bagels. Finally, in Charlotte, SC, we stayed at our friend’s place and hung out on the beach all day before our final show. Some shows were better than others but that’s life. We spent two nights sleeping in Walmart parking lots and the rest of the 9-day stretch we managed to sleep in somebody’s home. All in all, tour was one of the greatest experiences of our young, weird lives and we would do it again in a heartbeat.

6. You guys recently released a music video for the single “Car Door.” How did you come up with the plot for the video and what was it like to film it?

We worked with AHT Productions before with our music video for “Up Late” and they did such a great job with it that we went to them again for Car Door. I believe the only idea we gave them was “Naughty” and they came up with the rest and made it the masterpiece it is. It was awesome shooting it. We spent all day watching the actors and actresses (which were mainly just our friends) do their thing and shoot all the scenes and also got to do our small little scenes (Alec and Jeremiah gardening and Parker and Gray working at a liquor store). Then, we spent all night shooting the live band scene at a friends’ parents’ house. They only knew Gray and Parker, but were kind enough to let us, the film crew, and a handful of extras come make noise on their property. It was a great time and if you’re reading this definitely check it out! We couldn’t be happier with it. Big thanks to the Krach family for sure.

7. What can we expect to see or hear next from the band?

Other than show announcements in our hometown of Baltimore, Maryland and the surrounding area, expect new music (a new EP perhaps?) and new merch (T-shirts and stickers) in the somewhat immediate future! Be sure to find us on Facebook and follow us on all your favorite social media sites for pictures, videos, updates, and foolishness! Thanks for reading.

Ship Captain Crew

How did the band get started?Roger and Mike have been playing in bands since 2005, but Ship Captain Crew started in 2010 after some of us met outside of a show that was sold out. We started playing music together in bedrooms, basements and garages and immediately started playing shows around Chicago. We have been at it ever since then.You guys played at the Chicago date of Warped Tour recently. What was the experience like?It was an incredible experience for us as a band and personally. It was one of the largest dates of the tour for attendance, almost 20,000, so being able to perform for and meet a portion of all those people was absolutely a dream come true. Also for us, as music fans, being able to play on a stage across from some of our favorite bands like Senses Fail, The Wonder Years and PVRIS was truly inspiring. To be a part of Warped Tour and what it means to many people was everything we imagined it to be.Even though you guys only played the tour within the past week, has the response to your music grown? How has the response to your music progressed since you started performing together?Absolutely the response from people we meet has been phenomenal. Seeing a fan with your lyrics tattooed on their skin forever, or even meeting someone at a show down-state that caught your set at Warped Tour is a humbling and very unique experience. But that’s what we live for, and the response is always getting better the more opportunities we get to play for people.On your Facebook page, you posted a picture of a fan who got a tattoo in honor of the band. What was your reaction when you saw the tattoo? What was the particular story behind the design?It was something we never imagined would happen, so it was incredibly humbling to actually see in person. It was a little quote, ”I always leave some room to grow” from our song Notebooks, with a little potted plant sprouting underneath. The simplicity of it was most captivating as it really sums up the mantra of the whole song and the EP that it begins, House Of Mercury.Has playing Warped Tour changed anything for you guys in terms of what you want to achieve as a band going forward?I think everything we do as a band is always leading to a step in another direction. Playing Warped Tour may have been a small step in the grand scheme of things, but it was a big leap for our friends, family and fans that have known us from the start. So it was very rewarding to see how much that meant to them. I think the door has been opened for new opportunities as a result of playing, and what lies ahead is a little more clear now.What are your upcoming plans for new music and touring? We are currently working on a new EP, which you will be hearing more about very soon. In support of the new record, we will be playing around the Midwest and East Coast this Fall!

Zak Mahoney of Like Mike

How did you guys get started?

We started practicing in the summer of 2011. All of us had just graduated high school. Myself, Corey and Dan were in a different band together and were looking to take it on the road but we just couldn’t get it together with the other two people in our band. Nothing against those guys but it just seemed that their personal lives weren’t going to be flexible enough to do as much as we wanted to do anytime soon. Sometimes that’s how it is. I got a call from Corey one day asking if I wanted to sing in a pop punk band he was starting. It was meant to be a side project to our other band until we were able to really get that band going on tour. He contacted Billy and Edward who were in another local band at the time. We began practicing and things just clicked. The 5 of us got along, had similar goals and wanted to tour. Eventually this band became the main focus and we decided it was time to put our old band to rest.

For each of you, what are your musical backgrounds?

My favorite band is Knuckle Puck. Corey loves Such Gold. Billy’s all time favorite is My Chemical Romance. And Edward loves Four Year Strong and Set Your Goals.

Your music has had a great response within Atlanta. How does your music fit in with the culture of the city, particularly alongside its hip hop scene?

There’s a pretty strong pop punk scene in our area. A lot of bands have been forming that can fall within the genre. The scene we’re in and the hip hop scene are fairly separate in our area. To be honest, I couldn’t name a venue that primarily exists for hosting hip hop shows. We’ll have a rap artist on shows we play here and there but for the most the two scenes don’t intertwine too much.

What inspired you guys to shift the direction of your music after a few successful releases? How have your fans reacted to this change in style?

The music we write is simply inspired by whatever we’re listening to the most at the time. When we first started you’ll hear a lot of Set You Goals and Four Year Strong influence. We eventually shifted to have some influence by Taking Back Sunday and Senses Fail.

How has your success grown since performing at Warped Tour?

Playing Warped was an awesome experience. I don’t know if the one day that we played really kicked down any doors for us. But we’ve been touring a lot since then. It also kind of helped us learn more about how bands on a larger scale operate.

How is the writing/recording process going for the new music?

It’s going great. This time around has been a 100% team effort. We used to have Edward write something from home, upload the audio tracks in our google drive. Then I would go in and write a vocal part over whatever he had written. Then we would show up at practice and learn the song together. This time around, everything has just been jammed out together at practice. Somebody would jam out a really basic but catchy chord progression. Then the song would just build from there. As the songs became more solidified, I would put a vocal part over it.

What kind of sound can fans expect to hear this time around?

It’s going to be a mixture of how our old stuff sounded and how our more recent stuff has sounded. We really found a way to blend the two sounds together to create something that I feel is really cool and unique.

What do you hope to achieve with this new record?

I think the goal as with most bands is to have it catapult us to where we can be making enough money to pay our bills and quit our day jobs at home. I know all of us would very much like for our living to just be playing music together.

Approaching Troy:

1. You guys just released a new EP called Dear Sadie. It has a lot of influences from bands such as Taking Back Sunday, Hidden In Plain View, among others. Was there a reason for reviving this sound, especially since we haven’t heard that in a while?

There isn’t really a specific reason. We’re all 90’s kids and grew up in that early 2000’s scene. We lived through that Long Island Pop-punk Emo scene. It’s what inspired us to write songs in the first place. Those are the bands that got us through the adolescent hardships and teen drama. Every new up-n-coming artist had to be influenced by something before them, I like to think we do a good job incorporating it into our newer more modern take on the genre.

2. How did you guys meet since the band originally started as a solo project?

We actually all met through different ways. Some of us went to school together, and others met through “friends of friends” on social media.

3. What has the response been like to the new EP?

The response has been amazing! Not only have people been complimenting us on the musical direction we took with this EP, but also the work that our engineer Anthony Paganini did on the recording to bring out our performance and that sound we wanted. The best part about the response to this EP has been when we ask people their favorite song, we usually get a different response from person to person.

4. Do you have a favorite song off of Dear Sadie?

I think it’s pretty split among us as well. Some of us hold the title track “Dear Sadie” near and dear because of its lyrical composition as well as the use of different beat patterns, and then some of us think that “Here’s To Ohio” is the best song and most memorable off the album. It’s dark yet fun at the same time. We really think “This Victory” should be in a movie soundtrack or played for a sports event or video game. That would be cool don’t you think?

5. What was the process like writing and recording the EP?

The writing process was unique on this EP. There were songs that just came to us like “Here’s To Ohio” and “This Victory,” but then there were songs like “Dear Sadie” that if you were to hear the original demo of the song, you would have no idea that it’s even the same song. Some of the songs were more of a challenge to write because we really tried to go out of the box and give a new sound and feel to familiar styles.

6. How has opening for bands such as The Ataris, Hawthorne Heights, and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus changed the band? Obviously opening for these bands gives you exposure, but have you felt that opening for them has helped you achieved your goals as a group?

Well to start, opening for bands like that was surreal. Some of these bands like Hawthorne Heights we grew up listening to and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus was actually the first band our lead singer, Jake Salazar, saw live. As a band, these opportunities are all stepping stones on the road to our success. We always hoped we would open up for bands like these and when it finally happened it really helped us realize what we need to do to be ready for these opportunities. We’re definitely excited to see the momentum continue by having more shows with bigger bands like those to open for.

7. Is there a city, state, or country that you’ve always wanted to perform in, but haven’t gotten the chance?

We’ve been talking about the UK a lot lately. It would be unbelievably exciting if that could be accomplished within the next year or two. England just seems like it’s ready for something new. We’ve had a few plays here and there at a few stations in the UK and hopefully it’ll catch on soon over there. We’re confident it will. Asia is also on our bucket list and we really feel we’d be successful over there too.

8. How has Long Island’s musical history influenced Approaching Troy?

We fully appreciate the rich music history that has come from this amazing place they call Long Island. With that being said, our influences come from all over. Of course you can tell that our music is strongly influenced by bands like Bayside and Taking Back Sunday; both Long Island natives. Yet We’re not entirely sure we completely write based off those influences. We also are influenced by bands like Utah’s own, The Used, and Michigan’s Chiodos. Maybe it’s coincidental or maybe…it’s just something in the Long Island water we drink that keeps us close to our native influencers.

The Scandals:

1. How did you and the rest of the band get into punk rock?

I was given a Rancid and an Operation Ivy cd in the schoolyard by a good friend. I fell headfirst into it that moment. I think the rest of the band had similar experiences. There’s always a person in your life that points you in the right direction.

2. What inspired you to start a band?

I always wanted to play music but when I saw a local show in my hometown at 15 i knew that was it. I watched a punk band called No Say rip through a set in the park and I wanted to run right home and start writing the songs.

3. You guys have a European tour coming up that’s just around the corner. What has the response been to your music over there?

Europe has been great to us. Last years tour was our most successful tour at that moment and we’ve been beyond excited to get back. There’s something special here in terms of the excitement surrounding music and live shows. It’s something that I’m afraid is lacking a little bit back home.

4. Are there any cities that you are looking forward to playing? What do you notice the most about your overseas fans in response to your music and punk rock in general?

I don’t think there’s a city on this tour that we’re not looking forward to. Dublin and Brighton are high on the list as we’ve never been to the UK. We’re also stoked to return to Berlin, Prague, and Volkach. The biggest thing is the genuine interest to hear music that is new, and if they like it they show a great amount of support.

5. Do you guys have any shows that are memorable to you over the course of your career?

There’s been a few shows that stick out in my head. Our return home from Europe at The Court Tavern last year was great. We’ve had shows in Cedar Falls, Iowa that have become tales of legend amongst our group. I think we could all agree that Terminal 5 in NYC this past March with The Gaslight Anthem was surreal.

6. You guys have been around for awhile. Do you guys have any moments that stick out to you that are particularly memorable, either on tour or recording?

There’s definitely quite a few moments that stick out on tour, most of which I probably shouldn’t talk about. Anthony’s first tour with us was actually his first tour ever. It was with our buds in Let Me Run and we hazed him by stealing his toothbrush every night. He had no clue where they kept going and we’d keep seeing him trying to hide the fact that he was buying new ones at rest stops because he was embarrassed. At the last show Corey from LMR handed him all his tooth brushes on stage. Recording has always been a blast for me and we’ve had the opportunity to work with some great people.

7. What are some of your favorite songs to play live? Do you have a favorite song that you’ve written?

Right now our favorite songs to play live are our newest ones. We’re still figuring out some of the nuances that allow us to perfect the tracks so playing them live can be a lot of fun. I also enjoy playing Sean’s track “Sold on Merit” because I don’t have to worry too much about where I am on the stage. I’m not sure I can pick a favorite song that I’ve written. Each one holds a certain time and place for me. I guess if I had to pick one I’d go with a newer one called Lucky 7’s.

8. Is there a record or a band that you is feel is particularly influential to you as individual musicians or as a band?

I know for a fact that we all have very different opinions on this subject. I’ve had a lot of bands and records stay with me from the obvious choices like “…And Out Come the Wolves” to The Wallflower’s “Bringing Down the Horse.” I hold a band like One Man Army as a huge influence of mine as well as Lucero. I’m a sucker for great songwriters.

9. You guys just played Skate and Surf alongside some incredible bands. What were some of the highlights of the festival.

Skate and Surf was a blast. We got to catch our buds in Gates, see Beach Slang for the first time and I got to do a song with Gaslight to close the night. Way too much fun for one day. I’ve been listening to those Beach Slang EP’s in the van nonstop since then.

10. Lastly, what can we expect from the new music you are putting out this year?

I think you can expect the right step that we need to take. We put a lot of time and care into these songs and we really can’t wait to get them out there.

Victorian Halls:

Here is my interview with Mike and Jordan of Victorian Halls that happened during SXSW. Their new album Hyperalgesia comes out on May 19th on Victory Records. Best of luck with the album release guys!

Lauren: Can you guys introduce yourselves and tell us about what you both do in the band for anyone who doesn’t know who you guys are?

Mike: My name is Mike and I play the drums.

Jordan: I’m Jordan and I like to think of myself as the multi-instrumentalist that does a little bit of everything on stage, except play guitar, a little of percussion, but it’s mostly bass and vocals, and a little of synth here and there. Sprinkle it in…

Lauren: So, how did you guys form as a band?

Mike: Well, we formed quite a while ago. Jordan joined the band shortly after, and we were actually friends with some of the people in his band, and we had a member leave the band or whatever, and then it just so happened that right around that time Jordan’s band was having a falling out…

Jordan: Not a falling out, but we were calling it quits with our music, we’ve done this for so long, and we really didn’t want to play this style of music anymore, and let’s just throw in the towel…

Mike: Then we got a hold of Jordan a couple of days before their last show, and we went to go see him, and we absolutely loved him. Like, we fell in love with him. That was a couple of years ago, and since then it’s been like the core three of us, and we’ve just kind of stuck as a three piece since then. It’s much easier that way, traveling….

Jordan: Everything…

Mike: And it doesn’t smell as bad either. Don’t get me wrong, it smells terrible, but it doesn’t smell as bad if you had like four or five members…

Jordan: True, true.

Lauren: So how did you guys come up with the name Victorian Halls?

Mike: Uhhhh….I honestly don’t really know.

Jordan: I know the story behind it, just because I had to look it up, because I asked the guys when I first joined the band, but it ended up being this, um, but it ended up being this charity event for orphans, and it was around Christmas time so they were just giving a bunch of donated presents and gifts away to a bunch of orphans, and when the whole thing started, a bunch of the orphans just rushed the stage, and a bunch of them got trampled, and it was a tragic event. So I guess that was where the name Victorian Halls came from. It was at Victorian Halls.

Mike: Like, that was where the stage was.

Jordan: To my understanding, I mean I looked this up, so I’m pretty sure that’s it.

Mike: Its sounds like you guys are dark and morbid, something like that, so yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Jordan: Sick, I love kids.

Lauren: So how did you guys start playing your instruments and what inspired you to start playing music?

Mike: Me, personally, I would always listen to the radio as a kid, and I stole my brother’s punk CD’s, and he had a couple of hip hop CD’s that I would take from him and just listen to. Drums just kind of stuck out for me, and I actually went to a Black Hawks game as a kid, and anytime the Black Hawks would score a goal, there was like this marching drum line, and they would stand in the gates, start marching and going crazy. They would use the large drumsticks, and I just asked one of the guys for a pair of sticks, and he gave it to me, from there it just went crazy.

Jordan: Dreams were made…

Jordan: For me, my musical upcoming is like really weird, because no one in my family really plays music or anything, so I pretty listened to whatever my mom was listening to, and that was like Usher, R. Kelly, Shania Twain, a lot of New Jack swing, 90’s R&B. I didn’t dive into punk rock until I was in middle school. But prior to that, I really got into metal, and that was really weird, for all of you out there, I guess heavy metal is taboo for African Americans. But, I loved it. I think what made me want to pick up the bass, was that I really couldn’t distinguish it from music at all, like when I was younger you had CD players and cassette tapes and all that. So I couldn’t really, like, hear the bass, and I was like “where’s the bass in this?” like “where is the bass?”, “I don’t hear it.” And if I couldn’t hear it, was it even present at all?” I think that was really got me to play the bass, so I could make it come out, but then you know technology expanded and grew, you know innovation, and now bass is everywhere. But I still love it. I play guitar and drums too though, but they’re not my main thing. But yeah, mostly nu-metal, bands like Slipknot and Korn, Spice Girls is a big one. Spice Girls is HUGE for my musical influences, Usher, Michael Jackson, Prince, all over the board.

Lauren: So, a good mix of different things.

Jordan: Nothing super intricate, like I like jazz and gospel and all that, but I never practice it, but I feel like you don’t need that much when writing a song. So that’s it for me.

Lauren: It’s cool that you have all of those different influences.

Jordan: I just love music as a whole. You can find beauty in any genre that you listen to, you just have to wait for it and hear it. Because, you know, I don’t like everything, but I can find something, you know?

Lauren: You guys have a pretty interesting sound I took a listen to a few of your songs, so how did you find your sound?

Jordan: I feel like we’re still looking for it!

Mike: We’re still changing still, which is cool, you never get bored of playing one genre. Our debut album with Victory was kind of like one genre, but twelve different songs from that same genre and very similar style, and at the time, it was just kind of like…

Jordan: It reflects a lot on our older music, it was really aggressive, but we want to add more electronic elements in there. And for this new album, we kind of strayed away from that and just wrote songs. Not being genre specific, but if a song went a certain way, it was why can’t we just write it this way, instead of making it the way we usually would, with all of the electronics and all the thrash, and with the crazy high pitched aggressive vocals. We were like, “why don’t we write songs that we want to write?” Then we went in that direction. But our first album, I feel like it’s all over the place. Just a lot weird, unorthodox type music. But I really enjoy the direction we’re taking right now, and hopefully we’ll just keep evolving and playing different genres of music, and putting more of our musicianship out there, rather than just writing a song that anyone could play, I guess.

Jordan: We’re not saying that EVERYONE can play our songs. Because they are crazy and they have weird time changes, and genre switching stuff going on.

Mike: But, yeah, I like where we are right now.

Mike: Hopefully, that answered your question.

Jordan: I went off on a tangent there, but it’s my morning breath of air, to get everything I have to say out in the beginning of the day, and as the day goes on, I chill and then I just listen to people talk.

Lauren: So what was the process like when Victory signed you guys? Did they approach you, how did they find you?

Mike: We wrote a little EP, we wrote it ourselves, and we sent that out to several different labels, and Victory was one of the labels that got back to us, and we talked and we were on the same page, as far as what we wanted to do with distribution and touring and things like that.

Jordan: Just like the big picture of everything.

Mike: It was cool, because one of things that they asked us, was who do you guys want to be, and we were naming some smaller bands, and where do you want to be. Think bigger, and I don’t think we ever thought like that, until we started talking with them. They pushed some humongous bands, and it’s very inspiring to us. And it’s cool to think like something like that is possible. And you go to these concerts, and you never think that these people are larger than life. It is possible, and if they are one of the labels that can help us pursue that, and get to that level…

Jordan: Especially when you’re young, and I didn’t even realize that I was listening to a lot of bands who were on Victory, when I was in middle school, high school. Like Taking Back Sunday, Catch 22, Bayside, Between The Buried and Me. Those are just a few on our label that I just loved growing up.

Lauren: As a music fan myself, I always get a lot of the bands I like from the bands I listen to. Is there one particular band that you think everyone should check out, or know about…

Mike: Like, upcoming bands?

Lauren: Any band. Upcoming or known.

Jordan: It’s weird because I always have a favorite band in mind. At the moment its Earth, Wind, and Fire. It want to funk that will make you just want to get up and dance, Earth, Wind, and Fire.

Mike: I’ve had some of those on repeat for a 45 minute drive. Just funk in general, though is just amazing. They started off with like the pop punk thing, and went to indie rock, and then they went to grunge, and then they went super grunge.

Jordan: I would have to say that my favorite band is Brand New. They’ve evolved immensely over time. They did the pop punk thing and then they did indie rock, then they went grunge, and then they went super grunge.

Lauren: Have you listened to, I forget the name, I think his name is Simple Mind, he did a covers album of one of their records, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me.

Mike: They did a cover of the whole thing?

Lauren: The whole thing.

Jordan: No way! I have not heard this!

Lauren: He did a re-imagined version of that album.

Mike: That’s cool. We will definitely check that out.

Jordan: The Devil and God is like my favorite record of all time, then I’ll probably listen to it for like a year.

Lauren: So when you guys are out on the road, do you have any particular cities that you like, or cities that get a particularly good response?

Mike: Arizona. There’s a couple of cities in Arizona like Tempe…

Jordan: Scottsdale…they’ve really grabbed onto us, and it’s not like the geographical location of Arizona, it’s the people there, that are like really, really cool.

Mike: Their not really into a “scene”, their just into music and they absolutely love it, they really latched onto it, and any time we come through, they know about it immediately. We don’t even have to post the dates, like somehow they find out through the promoter and say “hey, I heard your coming through here, I’ve got a bunch of people coming.”

Jordan: So, that’s probably one of my favorite places. Like, they go out of their way to find places for us to stay, and I just think that that’s like so cool.

Jordan: Besides Chicago, of course. But you know, it’s a devil of its own. Got to be careful around those parts. Because music isn’t like huge in Chicago or anything, like we listen to a lot of music, but we don’t have a lot of up and coming artists coming out of Chicago, so it’s really hard to make your niche in the scene. Especially, there is like no scene.

Jordan: But yeah, Arizona’s cool. I really like Texas. I’ve been here to South By about four or five times, and every time I come down here, it’s like the best time. Everyone is so friendly, music is thriving, you meet a bunch of people, it’s really great. I also like New York. New York is just a little bit too crowded for my taste. But I like people, sometimes.

Mike: It’s an interesting group of people out in New York.

Jordan: Yeah, everyone’s just free in New York. Oh, and California too. California’s fun. But that’s also another beast of its own, because everyone’s different wherever you go. And you’re going to have those few that are like, really cool, and then you’ll have another set of people who aren’t into much of anything, except what they’re doing, and you just have to get past those people.

Mike: It’s all about support; you have to support each other, if you want to get somewhere. People see right through that stuff too.

Lauren: So, what’s next for guys in terms of albums, tours, things like that?

Jordan: Yes! All of that stuff!

Mike: We are releasing a new album on Victory Records called Hyperalgesia, it’s going to be out in May. I believe the 19th. After that, it’s heavy touring. Heavy everything. Just when you go out at your hardest, that’s when everything kind of comes together, and that’s what you get to enjoy. You to record and do all of this stuff, getting everything ready, and then touring is really the fun part. It’s what pays everything off. Touring is fun, that’s the easy part.

Jordan: There’s nothing I’d rather do than just tour. Just all the time. It gets hellacious after awhile, but after you really find your place, then I feel like touring is the place for me. I don’t like being in one place for a really long time, so I think that’s the way to go.

Mike: So, there’s a lot coming.

Jordan: Very soon. I can’t wait. We’ve had this record written for a year and a half, but we’ve just been going through and making all of these revisions, rewriting, and rerecording parts, and trying to make it the best possible album that we could. But, I’m really excited to see what comes next.

Mike: The songs have been around for a little while but they’ve changed drastically, at least like four or five times, like each song. We’re perfectionists when it comes to that.

Jordan: We like to do everything ourselves, whether it be videos or whatever. We always get help from friends, but we like to spark the idea a little bit, and then just get people to help us out. But we always want to have our vision in everything we do. I feel like its more close to home that way, a little bit more intimate, and people can relate. Like “oh these guys are actually doing something and they are doing it for themselves.” I think that’s cool. Maybe that will spark inspiration in someone, you never know.

Flannel Mouth:

I interviewed Flannel Mouth at SXSW back in March. They were nice guys and very fun to interview! Everyone check out their album when it comes out this summer.

Lauren: Could you introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about how the band got started?

Luke: Well together we’re Flannel Mouth, I’m Luke, and I sing and player guitar.

Ryan: I’m Ryan, and I sing and play bass, and some percussion.

Tyler: I’m Tyler, I play the drums, sing backup vocals, and I take a lot of Dayquil.

Lauren: You guys are from a small town in Illinois of only a thousand people. How has your hometown responded to your music?

Luke: From elsewhere, or from the hometown?

Lauren: From the hometown.

Luke: I think that they appreciate us and expect us to do good things; I don’t think they get the music as much in the hometown, and when we go out I feel like the reception is a lot better.

Tyler: It’s very rural, you have to drive through a lot of backcountry to get to it, and there’s a lot country music, people really like that, we have a little element of that, but for the most part we are the kids who are doing good. We’re kids making noise for a lot of people.

Luke: They still complain a lot about us practicing. I guess if there was a country band playing by us, I wouldn’t be super stoked about. It’s a wonderful hometown though, I love it.

Lauren: How did you guys get started?

Luke: We all went to school together. Me and Tyler were going since kindergarten basically, then Zach showed up, and then Ryan showed up. Zach’s the invisible guy right here.

Ryan: Zach’s not here but he plays lead guitar, backup vocals

Luke: Violin

Ryan: Trumpet, piano

Luke: He’s a wonderful guy

Tyler: Very soft spoken, for as much as he has to do.

Tyler: We’re all in the same graduating class, out of a class of 60 people, and we all just hung out and got along, and we were really good friends even before we started playing instruments, and then we started playing instruments and ten years later here we are, in Austin, Texas playing South By. So cool.

Lauren: For each of you individually, has playing music been something that you guys have always done or was it something that you picked up later?

Luke: I remember going to school and doing like the wheels on the bus, and I’ve always been into since then, always been a chorus kid. Tried to do the band thing, but I picked the oboe, but I wasn’t too good at the oboe. I’ve always been into music, me and him (points to Tyler) always dance to The Backstreet Boys. The music interests have changed, but you’ve got to stick with your roots.

Ryan: Me and brother, he was in band, I never picked up on anything, and then they asked me join, and I was like OK, and then I just started from there.

Tyler: We gave him a week

Luke: I didn’t like him when I asked him to join the band

Tyler: We were always very athletic and into sports and and just hanging out and being friends anyway.

Luke: Our sports were always really bad I think that that had to do with it.

Ryan: We were bad at it, so we just did something we were good at.

Tyler: Luke and I started a rock band, played guitar for awhile, and then we needed a drummer, so I was like, I’ll give it a shot, why not? It was freshman year in high school, and it just kind of grew from there, did jams bands, hanging out, and having a good time. Then we started taking it a little more seriously and then we met Mike (Abiuso) from SwitchBitch Records, and then he ending up signing us and recording us. Then he took us to Boston to record our first EP, and we didn’t get quiet a running start.

Luke: Since then it’s been hard work.

Tyler: We wanted to learn the ropes, it’s been an incredibly slow process but incredibly rewarding.

Lauren: What was the inspiration behind the name Flannel Mouth?

Luke: Well, we’ve been through a lot of names, with this one it was kind of like, we knew we wanted to go with something that was a little bit more Western, because we’ve got a little punkabilly feel to it, so we were looking up all types of Western terms, and Flannel Mouth is actually a term for someone with a sharp tongue. Like, someone like a lawyer, or something like that. So that’s what we were going for, I guess.

Ryan: Then we all sat down and tried to figure out names, and that’s what we came up with.

Tyler: It’s like cooking spaghetti, throw a bunch of names at the wall, and the ones that stick are the ones we went with.

Lauren: Do you remember any of the other names you came up with?

Luke: Iridescence, for a good part of it, and that was probably a good, like, year or so, and then we introduced Zach to the band.

Ryan: And then we were Two Chambers Each when Zach was in the band

Luke: That was when there was three of us.

Tyler: It was a six gun, we were called Two Chambers Each. A robber, pistol reference, not pistol, it was a revolver! Gotta know my guns, I’m in Texas right now. Then before that, it was Mafia of the Beloved, and Myers On Batalon, our respective last names, and I don’t think we ever even played out under that name, probably because it was terrible.

Luke: And then when we were coming up with Flannel Mouth, there was like a whole list. That was a very frustrating process. And because of this guy (points to Ryan), he was like “Nope, nope, that one’s no good.”

Tyler: It took Ryan a couple months to like anything we came up with.

Luke: Yeah, he still doesn’t like Flannel Mouth

Tyler: But, hey, we’re here. Deal with it.

Ryan: Now it’s stuck.

Luke: Like spaghetti

Lauren: What should fans expect from seeing you guys perform live if they’ve never seen you before?

Tyler: Well today a pool party, which is the coolest thing (laughs)

We took a lot of influence from Brand New, and like shoegaze, where we kind of just stood around and stared at ourselves playing, and it was more just atmosphere that we were involved in, but once we started playing out and seeing more bands, and just picking up on things here and there, we just decided that we were going to go completely out of the way, and try to be really cool, calm, and collected in person. But when we get on stage, we just lose ourselves and go crazy.

Ryan: It’s more, instead of it just being like, entertainment, it’s a performance, watching something happen, than listening to just music.

Tyler: If want to hear our music, buy the CD, if you want to see us live, come see us live. Because you don’t want to hear exactly what you’ve already been experiencing by yourself, and so we want to make sure that’s a big thing in our show.

Luke: I like to freak people out

Ryan: Scare ‘em right away

Luke: Have eyes in the back of our heads

Lauren: Do you guys have any moments on the road that particularly stand out?

Ryan: We have good moments and bad moments for sure.

Tyler: I have terrible moments for sure.

Luke: The moment that always sticks for me is the pee, I’m not gonna lie

Ryan: The pee!

Tyler: We don’t need to talk about that…

Tyler: We learned up wind back forest, where one of us tried to use the bathroom out of the back of the van while we were driving

Ryan: On the highway…

Tyler: Because we didn’t want to pull over. And I didn’t I needed to tell anybody that I needed to use the bathroom.

Luke: Well, Ryan was holding you.

Ryan: And covering myself.

Tyler: So what happened was the updraft from underneath the van comes off the trailer and pushes right back in and so luckily I’m not standing at 90 degrees. I was sideways and our merch guy….

Luke: I felt it, and I was like “ooohhhh.”

Tyler: I was thinking more along the lines of having no one show up to our show in Detroit except for three people, one wearing overalls, dancing and having a great time, and introducing us to his friends who were the other two people there. They ended up taking us in for the night, and we stayed up just listening to vinyl and talking about everything imaginable, until about 6 or 7 in the morning. And we finally fell asleep for a couple of hours, and watched Netflix all day, and they made us a meal. And what was one of our worst shows, turned into one of our best experiences as a touring band, it was pretty incredible.

Luke: All because of the people.

Tyler: We had an opportunity to play a different show in a different city, and we called the promoter and asked if it was going to be a good show, and he said yeah, and it wasn’t, and we were just beat. But everything just turned around immediately. It was incredible. Big shout out to Mike, and Laura, and Julius in Detroit, they’re fantastic.

Lauren: I know you guys are recording a new album. How has that been going and what has the process for that been like?

Ryan: Constant work.

Luke: It’s been going really well, I would say. I’m really excited, it’s going to be a pretty big departure from what we were doing.

Tyler: We went out to Boston and recorded songs in three and a half days for our EP, where as this time we took it upon ourselves to just buy all of the equipment, so it’s ours just to have now. We flew Mike of Switchbitch Records, to our hometown of Peoria, and we rented an office, and got everything up to par, recording standards, and we spent a whole with Mike just soundproofing different things, and trying different ideas.

Ryan: Different mics

Tyler: It took about four days to do all the drums, and it took more than the time it took to record Bull In your horns. Very, very particular about the sounds that are coming out of the amps and that sort of thing, and so far we are in our fifth week of recording now

Luke: We get to come back from here and record some.

Tyler: This is a working vacation for us for sure, but the sounds that are coming out are amazing. I didn’t know Luke could sing the way he does, I’m really, really impressed.

Luke: Thanks!

Tyler: It’s been different and it’s been rewarding. We are never opposed to trying new things

Ryan: and it will be amazing.

Tyler: It will blow the ears off of goats and the Mediterranean. So, if you’re not a goat in the Mediterranean you’ll be ok.

Lauren: Do you have a release date you are thinking about?

Luke: We are hoping to get it done by the time we go on tour in May. So it might be kind of close with the mixing and all that.

Ryan: The mastering…

Luke: But we’re going to try, going to try for May, and if not it will be June or July for sure.

Tyler: Definitely summer, early to mid summer. And we’re be touring lots of places, ideally Austin, Texas

Any names that you’ve thought of for it yet?

Luke: For the album?

Lauren: Yeah.

Luke: Yeah, we’ve actually got a name. It’s called The Prisoner’s Cinema

Tyler: It stems from the Iridescence days. Iridescence was supposed to be like a rainbow, and we started playing off the monochrome EP just to play off the color, and prisoners, I’m not even sure how we landed on that. But when you…. there’s an absence of light for a really long time, you start seeing hallucinations and all these different colors that you’ve never seen before, and they called it Prisoner’s Cinema, because a lot of time prisoners are subjected to no light whatsoever, and it just your mind playing tricks on you. We were trying to be very cinematic with Iridescence, and it’s easy enough to just call it the rainbow album or whatever, you know.

Luke: We should just called it Dark Side of The Moon

Ryan: Haha, yeah I know.

Tyler: Exactly, so we wanted to be as original as possible and Prisoner’s Cinema took on a different meaning where it became a story about a prisoner and a movie that’s kind of playing out in his own head, and kind of rationalizing the craziness that occurs. It’s got 12 songs, which we have coming out.

Tyler: That’s it in a nutshell. Very big big nutshell.

Lauren: I’m looking forward to hearing it. It was a pleasure chatting with you all. Thank you!

Synodik

Tell us how the band got started. Have you guys always been into heavy metal?

Matteo: The band is active since 2006, when was called Asylum and had a way different musical attitude than now. In fact the first demo, “Drown In Pain” was influenced by a mixture of death and thrash metal and in particular by bands like Morbid Angel or Nile. When the band changed the name in Synodik the musical attitude and the overall sound changed to go in a more technical and atmospheric/progressive direction so that has a lot of modern influences but still keeping its roots into 90’s styled death metal. Our first album “Sequences For a New Matrix” showed the first step of where the new band’s sound was going, and the latest EP “A Matter Of Perception” pushed up what Sequences already did before. Our new EP represents in the best way possible what the band wants to do musically, to be free from pre-settled rules and to explore as much soundscapes as possible. Synodik is freedom, Synodik is the universe of sounds that we are talking about in our songs. We all grew up with a strong passion in Death and Extreme Metal and everyone of us has got its favorite bands but our basic influences kinda disappears when we are in composition mode, we want to sound like ourselves and not like our musical mentors, we don’t want to give us limits in what we do and of course we want to amaze and thrill the listener and even ourselves

Where did the name Synodik come from?

Leandro: We were searching for a new band name to replace the old “Asylum” monicker, and the new one had to match with our new wave of inspiration focused on fringe science, introspection and physics of the deepest structures of reality; “synodic” indicates the period of a body to rotate once, in relation to the planet, star or whatever to which is orbiting around. It’s an harmonic motion that perfectly describes the beauty of the universe’s order at a macroscopic sight, in extreme contrast to what happens in reality at a microscopic level, where quantum mechanics describe a strange “non-sense” world very hard to understand for us.

Matteo: When we entered in studio to record “Sequences For A New Matrix” we felt necessary for us to change name because the band identity deeply changed and so the lyrical aspect and the concept within the music needed a much more appropriate name. We looked to the name change as a new era for the band and a cut to the near past. Literally Synodik is the “sinodic month”, the time the Moon takes to re-align its position with the Sun and the Earth after a complete revolution motion around our planet. The “sinodic” term derives from the latin “synodicum” and then from the greek “synodikòs”, a further derivation of “synodos” that means “reunion” so “sinodic” resembles the reunion or the conjunction between two planets or two stars.

How has the Italian music scene responded to you? Is heavy metal a popular genre in Italy?

Giacomo: Absolutely yes, in Italy there are tons of amazing bands in heavy and extreme metal. Several famous acts started to come out of our country actually back from the late 70’s to the mid 80’s and throughout the whole 90’s like Strana Officina, Vanexa, Necrodeath, Extrema, Bulldozer, Mortuary Drape, Cripple Bastards, Sadist, Electrocution, Antropofagus, Detestor, Sacradis, Spite Extreme Wing, Abysmal Grief, Rhapsody, Lacuna Coil and many more. Also, during the last years Italy has seen the birth of some of the finest extreme bands around such as Fleshgod Apocalypse, Hour Of Penance, The Modern Age Slavery, Nero Di Marte, Hideous Divinity and many others so summing up the whole Italian metal scene, nowadays as in the past, is more than prosperous. In consequence of the high and various musical proposal each subgenre has its own strong fanbase, and so the number of people that listens to our music kinda raised up after our “sound change” because the death metal roots kept with us the die hard old school metalheads, while the newer generations liked our more modern influences.

Your new EP A Matter of Perception features only three songs with two of them clocking in at over seven minutes long. Was there a reason for why you decided to include only these three songs at that length?

Leandro: All Synodik’s songs are built with no rules or standard “policies” about length, refrein’s repetitions ecc. Every song evolves independently; I like to describe the process of creating a Synodik song comparing it to the stream of the scenes in a film: every scene (we can call it “riff” in music) is linked to an emotion, and while listening to the song you can follow and bring those emotions into your inner core, enjoying all the different moods and visions that stem from the dynamic evolution of the track.

How have your fans responded to A Matter of Perception?

Leandro: The feedback is very good, in particular compared to the former album we see that numerous people appreciate the new chosen path, because I think that this Ep is perceived as a step forward for the band in creating a more personal sound.

What were some of your influences while writing the EP?

Leandro: The main influence in writing these songs was the fascination that the themes regarding the limits of human perception generates in me. The role of humans in their particular way of perceiving the Universe in its deep complexity, in contrast to its apparent macroscopic simplicity, is a true passion for me! From a musical point of view currently I’m really into atmospheric/progressive metal bands like Fallujah for example, despite I’m listening to soundtracks and cinematic stuff in an increasingly way, as well as more “traditional” extreme metal acts like Decapitated. I’m also a great fan of Muse!

What is next for Synodik?

Leandro: We’ve just got a new drummer, Emanuele Giannoni, and we are finally ready to hit the stage again after a forced break due to the decision by our previous drummer Edoardo to leave the band. We feel stronger than ever and we are building up new songs for the next album, that will be another step forward in the band growth!

Giacomo: To promote our music even more, to grow up even stronger in our musical path to find a more personal and unique identity and of course to express ourselves as much as possible in our favourite environment: the stage! Come and headbang with us! \m/

Jeremy & The Harlequins, interview with front man Jeremy Fury

1. First off, I just want to say that I loved the album, particularly the sound of the record.

Was there anything in particular that made you go completely analog with the recording,

or have you guys always enjoyed albums that were recorded this way?

Well, thank you. To get our sound, recording analog to tape is not only important, but a necessity. I don’t mean that in a pretentious sounding way. If we had done it digitally, it would be a totally different record. It’s not only because of the sound that analog gear has, but also in it’s limitations. It’s way more difficult to “correct” the recording. The limitations become an asset and the imperfections make the end result more perfect. As a music listener and fan, I wouldn’t say I only enjoy analog music, but when it comes to rock ‘n’ roll, I tend to prefer the sound that analog recordings have.

2. The record has a very old timey feel to it. Did the group set out to have more of an older sound, or did it evolve into that?

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t intentional. It was somewhat reactionary to where music is at right now. The electronic thing is so massive right now and we’re not that. We don’t want to be that. Our goal is simply to make great songs and play them as stripped down as possible with guitars, bass and drums.

3. Jeremy, in your biography on Facebook it says that you started the band after taking out lyrics that you had written over the past few years. How long have you been writing

(lyrics or otherwise?)

Yeah, not only lyrics, but songs. Some of the tunes have been circulating for years, demoed in various ways. It wasn’t until a couple years ago did I finally find the right people to play them with. As for writing lyrics, I’ve been writing for years. I’ve been playing in bands and touring for years. I think the first song I wrote when I was seven or eight. I wrote it with my mom and it was called ‘Mr. Miller’s Caterpillar.’

4. For everyone in the band, what is your musical background? Are your influences

reflected in the music you are playing with Jeremy & The Harlequins or are your tastes

totally different?

I think everyone found a common chord in this band, but everyone does have other influences and tastes. Patrick has played in Jamaican reggae bands in the past, and while it might seem far off, the guitar lines from reggae are very similar to what you might hear in ’50’s rock ‘n’ roll. Craig loves classic pop rock, but maybe has a soft spot for British rock, everything from the Invasion era to the Oasis/Blur Brit pop wave. Stevie and I grew up listening to a lot of the same stuff, not only early rock ‘n’ roll, but also really influenced by early ’70’s glam like Sparks, Mott the Hoople and T-Rex.

5. Ambition seems to be a huge part of your band. What made you want to perform in front of an audience one week after forming? What was the response like?

We were there and we were asked to do it, so we did it. We were excited to play because it had been awhile since any of us had been on stage. Plus, we were excited about the music.

The response was good. It was funny because a few people asked how long we had been together and when we told them that was the first time we ever played together, they thought we were lying and being jerks.

Actually, one of the other funny things about that night is at that time we hadn’t yet chosen our band name. I wanted to call it Jeremy and The Harlequins, but we hadn’t really decided on it. So the host of the evening, just prior to us taking the stage, asked me what we were called. I told him Jeremy and The Harlequins. And that was that.

6. You guys recently made it in the Wall Street Journal after the paper premiered “You’re My Halo.” How have things been going for the band since appearing in the paper?

Good. We’re definitely getting more press and more people interested. Our biggest goal is to show more people what we’re doing. That’s the best thing about press, to have other enthusiastic people, like yourself, let people in the world know about us.

7. While looking at your Facebook and press photos, even your appearance indicates that your music fits in with an older era. Is there a particular band or musician you are trying to emulate with the way you guys look?

I wouldn’t say that. I think it’s more that we’re representing the idea of classic America. In the past six or seven years in this country it’s been cool to see more people in this country making things again. Not only music and art and movies, but everything from chocolate to cars to beer to clothing. That’s what the world fell in love with in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and I think the world is ready to fall in love with that America again.

8. How has your hometown of Toledo responded to your music?

I’m not sure. We all live in New York now so I’m somewhat disconnected. We have played in Toledo a few times over the past 18 months and it seems the response is pretty positive.

9. What is next for Jeremy & The Harlequins?

We will be putting out music videos for the songs ‘You’re My Halo’ and ‘Some Days.’ Also, one of our older tunes is going to be in the season finale of the show ‘Shameless’ with William H. Macy. Besides that, more shows. Oh, and we are recording some new stuff right now that we hope to put out by the end of the year.

You can listen to “You’re My Halo” below.

Mike Smagula: Co-writer and creator of children’s show The Shagoolies. He was also the bassist of the band The Number #12 Looks Like You.

Most of you guys have been in music for a long time. What made you want to transition from musicians to creators of a kids’ puppet show?

It actually came pretty naturally. From playing and touring in the #12 Looks Like You with Jesse, we would always be talking about funny episodes of cartoons or Pixar movies. After the band, we started getting together and just working on ideas that we thought would make great kids shows. Then we quickly reached out to Mat about adding his insight to everything. Mat’s way of thinking matches up perfectly with ours. Then we would get in touch with Eric to see what he could bring to the project. Eric’s personality was perfect for bringing The Shagoolies’ main character to life.

Did you all come up with the idea for the show as a group or did one of you bring up the idea?

Jesse had the original idea that eventually became The Shagoolies. He wanted a show about a photographer that traveled. When he came to me with the idea, I immediately wanted to incorporate puppets. Together we came up with some rough ideas of the different characters and story and then went to Mat for the art and he gave us how these characters and this new world would look.

Take us through the process of creating each episode. When writing each episode do you all throw out ideas as a team or do you each bring ideas to the table individually?

It’s always a mixture of both individual and a team effort. At first we all come up with separate ideas of what the overall episode is about. Once we like that topic, we start to think about different scenes within the episode. Finally, we start to put together the dialog. I think all of us always want to have certain jokes or scenes that we really like in each episode, so we figure out a way to get those all in.

Was a puppet show something that you’ve always wanted to do, or was it a more recent idea?

Personally, I have always wanted to do a puppet show. I been a huge fan of Jim Henson since I can remember. I wore out the VHS tapes for both the Muppets Take Manhattan and Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. It didn’t take much convincing Jesse to make The Shagoolies into a puppet show, and Mat was immediately on board with what we were doing too. We believe there is a certain magic that a live action puppet can bring, instead of just using animation.

All of you are working with an impressive group of television veterans such as Cory Cavin as well as writers who have written for well known children’s shows and channels. How did you get all of these people on board?

We have been very lucky that we already knew various creative people – artists, musicians, writers, comedians – many of which were friends, or friends of friends. Often when sharing our concept, somebody would be excited to connect us to someone else they knew. That’s how we linked up with most of the crew on the pilot.

What do you want kids to take away from The Shagoolies?

We want kids to take away a sense of passion and fun that comes with exploring the world around you. The show is about getting out there and seeing the amazing things that might be taken for granted. For adults, seeing someone ride a bike or riding on a bus might not seem like a big deal, but to a kid (and a Shagoolie) this is something new and exciting!

Note: The Shagoolies show has a Kickstarter to fund the shooting of six webisodes.The fund has six days left for fundraising, with $3,455 raised of a $150,000 goal.

Dirty Loops: Interview with bassist Henrik Linder

For the readers of Listen Here Reviews who don’t know your story, tell us how you made the transition from a studio band to a touring band. Which setting do you enjoy playing in the most?

It’s was kind of natural transition. We did an album and when it was released we started touring. Both of them are a lot of fun. It’s a good thing for us to go in between them as we all like to change things all the times.

In your biography, you mention that you chose the songs you covered on Youtube because you knew you could do something different with them. Do you consider yourselves fans of the music that you cover, or are you more of a casual listener of those artists?

-I guess we’re more casual listeners. Some songs we liked better than others. But we think all of the songs are well written pop songs.

How did each of you individually get started playing your instruments? Are your families musical or was music something you picked up on your own?

All out families are full time musicians or hobby musicians. So there’s always been role models and people who’s been supporting us from back home.

What is your songwriting process like?

We always start out with the melody and back that up with very simple chords. Then we try to get a vision of the arrangement/production and after that we add the extra everything.

Have the artists that you’ve covered on Youtube been influential to you when writing your own original music or were your musical inspirations for writing the album completely different?

For the melodies absolutely. I don’t believe there’s an accident those songs became suck huge hits. For arrangements though we have other sources for inspiration.

For each of you, what was your first musical memory?

Henrik: I guess dancing to just a gigolo by david lee Roth as a baby. I saw videos of it. I was a way better dancer back then.

Aron: the sting records my mom used to play at home.

Jonah: my moms choir lessons. I started singing before I could talk.

What is Sweden’s music scene like? Is there one particular genre that is popular or is there a mix of styles that people enjoy listening too?

There’s a big mix. Especially since streaming services get available. But the Eurovision Song Contest dominates the Swedish charts.

What are some of the differences between touring in Europe and here in the US? As this is your first US tour, how is everything going so far?

It’s our first nightliner tour. Which is a way more comfortable way of traveling compared to all the airport stuff we’re used to. Its our first U.S. tour as well. A big difference is the climate that you could go from snow to sunshine from one day to another. Tour has been a lot of fun. And it’s been great meeting all the people at the shows. Hope to do it again!!

What’s next for Dirty Loops?

More touring next year and writing new material. We constantly need to develop.

The bands debut album Loopified is out now.

If you want to hear what Dirty Loops sound like, you can check out their video for the single “Hit Me” below.

Dylan Sneed

Growing up, what were some of your musical influences? Is there a particular artist that has influenced you more than others?

My strongest musical influences have been my guitar teachers. I’ve studied with three main teachers for a cumulative amount of about 10 years, so I’ve logged some hours with these guys. Their impact is immeasurable, because it’s on a foundational level. They taught me how to think about music, and so they’ve influenced the way I listen to everything, indeed how I see the world. You could say they influence the way I’m influenced. If I had to pick a couple of artists, I’d say Paul Simon and Townes Van Zandt.

Have you always played music or was it something you picked up later on?

Our church sang accapella all the time, so I started singing at an early age. I took piano lessons around age 8 or 9, but I didn’t like to practice. I kick myself for that now. I started learning guitar at 15, and it was a hit from the get go. There was no doubt. Songs started coming a year or two later.

Moving from the corporate world in Dallas, TX to Hartsville, SC to pursue music is quite a difference. What inspired you to make this change and how has it changed you?

I actually started to pursue music at a younger age. I grew up in Austin, and had a band there in high school, then several bands in college, and continued playing and touring after college when I moved to Dallas. The best explanation I can offer for leaving a town like Austin and eventually landing in a town like Hartsville while pursuing music the whole time is this: there’s something in my DNA that is attracted to swimming upstream.

How has moving to a small town impacted your music? Obviously, Hartsville is not LA, New York, Nashville, or even Austin. Why did you decide to relocate to South Carolina instead of one of the major music cities?

I won’t claim that I’ve “been there, done that,” just because I grew up in Austin, but I do believe that I’ve been imbued with some of that Live-Music-Capital-Of-The-World spirit. It’s something you can take with you and share with others, and that’s what I try to do wherever I go. I’ve started a couple of concert series in Hartsville, and I host an open mic. We’ve already attracted musicians from around the world to our little town, and events like the open mic are cultivating the kind of audience you might expect in Nashville, NYC, LA, or Austin, minus the smug hipster vibe (There are tons of cool people in all those towns, of course, but sometimes the too-cool-for-school vibe can be a little much. It happens.). It’s so rewarding to witness that moment of discovery in people’s eyes when they realize the inherent value of live music. To answer your first question, I feel that the combination of living in a small town and traveling the world keeps me grounded, and this hopefully keeps my music honest. I know that Hartsville is not the center of the universe. New York isn’t, either. People are living lives of great significance all over the place, even if nobody’s watching. And as for why I moved, I always like to cite Coelho’s The Alchemist and say “I was just following my Personal Legend.”

As an artist where do you want be in five years?

I want to be more honest. I want to be easier on myself. I want to still be hungry.

How was your last European tour? When finding homes to play at, what is the process like? How have music fans in Europe responded to your music? Has it been the same or better than in the United States?

My last Euro tour was great. Everything on the booking end was done for me, so I basically just showed up and played. In that way, it was better than many of my domestic tours. But you could argue that all those tours had to happen before the first trip to Europe. Finding house concert hosts can be difficult, but in my experience you end up finding two kinds of people: those who host one concert, have a good time, and move on with their lives; and those who can’t get enough of it. So it’s worth the work in seeking out hosts, because in many cases you end up finding lifelong supporters of your music. The folks in the Netherlands responded much the same as the Americans I’ve played for. They speak English just as well, so there’s no real barrier there.

Do you plan to have your organization Artsville expand throughout SC and beyond, or do you envision having it be just a local organization?

Great question! If I had to pick between local and global, I’d pick global. I think the message of Artsville is something valuable to people all over the world. I printed over 1,000 black and white bumper stickers with the simple phrase, “try new things.” and I’ve handed them out to just about anybody I run into. It’s a message I think we could stand to see more of, no matter where we live.

If a major record label wanted to sign you, would you take the offer or do you see yourself going with an independent label, or doing things completely on your own?

It all depends on the deal. I’d want to surround myself with smart people that care about me and consult them before I made a decision like that. The most important question to ask in that situation is “Do these people believe in me?” True supporters are those that trust you, even when your art begins to evolve.

What advice do you have for aspiring musicians who want to have professional careers in music, as well as those who are thinking about making a career switch to playing music full time?

A few things. Measure twice, cut once. Sound good, and keep going. Be yourself. Those are the best pieces of advice for aspiring professional musicians I’ve ever heard.

Interviews was originally published on Listen Here Reviews

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