featured artist

Kylee Swenson: vocals/guitar
Earl Otsuka: guitar
Anthony Gordon: bass/bass synth
Ryan Manley: keyboards
Christopher Lautz: drums/backing vocals

What:
Pop songs that bridge the gap between electronic and organic sounds.

Where:
San Francisco, CA

Featured song:
"Swingset Chain"
from It's Yours to Keep (2005, Jackpine Social Club)
Listen: [ mp3 | preview via iTunes ]

It's about my best friend Kari Reardon, who I met when I was five and she was a one-year-old baby. Since she was old enough to talk, we've been inseparable. Then I moved to California, and she graduated high school and went to college in Chicago. Finally, after eight years of missing my right arm, so to speak, she moved to San Francisco. But I knew it would be short-lived. I guess I could sense that something would draw her back to our hometown in Minnesota. And I was right; I played the demo of that song for Kari just a week before she moved back home, and we both cried. So it was a painful but cathartic thing for me to write "Swingset Chain."

As for the chords of the song, I was inspired by a song my late friend Keith Krate wrote when I was in a band with him. I took a couple of the chords and wrote a different structure using them. Keith died of a heroin overdose a few years ago, but a little bit of him lives on in this song.

"Swingset Chain" is one of our older songs — we wrote it when we were still really novices at recording. Until now, with our second full-length album that we're in the midst of recording, we'd never worked with producers before. So we rerecorded "Swingset Chain" like three or four times, just trying to get it to sound the way we heard it in our heads. Now, with the help of the Rondo Brothers, we're getting help with the sonic side of things (and no, we're not rerecording this song again; time to move on). But "Swingset Chain" will always be meaningful to me, even if we never perfected it sonically.

– Kylee Swenson, vocals/guitar, Loquat

What have you learned about the music business?

Try to work with people you like. Most musicians have a sixth sense about who is and isn't a shady character in this business. Trust those instincts, and develop working relationships with people you can count on.

Also keep in mind that venues are in business to make money, so don't over-promise what you can't deliver. The support of the clubs is crucial to developing bands, so treat them respectfully and look at your gigs as partnerships with the venues. Promote your shows by doing interviews and radio spots and keep and maintain your own mailing lists. If you can consistently deliver an audience to a club, the clubs will reward your efforts with better bookings and more input over lineups. Booking great lineups is the key to making a great evening, so stay on top of which other bands would complement an evening with your band.

Finally, treat everyone involved in the process with respect. Everyone from the sound engineer to the opening acts to the music press to the booking agents to the bartenders are in it together, and they all deserve your respect for their time and efforts in making the show happen.

What kinds of non-music skills do musicians need?

In my opinion, learning these three basic things will make your life as a musician much more rewarding and enjoyable in the long run.

One: Get organized. Manage your money wisely, manage your mailing list wisely, and manage your booking commitments wisely. If you can keep those three things organized, you'll book and play better shows and hopefully have enough money to cover merch costs and recording fees, and be able to get the band to and from the gig.

Two: Learn some basic diplomacy. Being in a band means managing the expectations of your bandmates, booking agents, sound guys (and gals), and everyone else involved in the process. It's easy to get mad when there's a miscommunication about when you're supposed to play or how much you're supposed to get paid. Being calm and offering fair solutions to problems will usually get you a lot farther than yelling or pouting and saying "it's not fair."

Three: Learn to communicate properly. You can avoid most problems on the road by communicating your needs and expectations clearly upfront. If you have a booking with a club, get your set time and fee in writing. If you're putting out a record with a label, make sure you understand all the aspects of the recording contract. If another musician in your band seems uncertain about a gig offer or a recording deal or even a practice time, ask them to tell you what's on their mind. Don't be shy about asking questions. A lot of miscommunications are caused by people not asking the right questions upfront, so speak up.

What's the best thing about being in a band?

Making music, naturally. All this business stuff is important for staying in the game, but your art is the reason you do all those things in the first place. The pure creative joy of musical expression is really what all this is about. Having a CD in your hands that you're proud of and watching an audience enjoy your music from the stage are feelings that are impossible to describe to people who haven't been there.

What's your current favorite music gear?

We've used Pro Tools for years; it's been part of our creative process since our first recording. Kylee seems to enjoy her pink Gretsch Sparkle Jet quite a bit. I think it looks and sounds lovely. I recently got a Fender Jaguar Bass, which I'm using on the album that we're working on now. It's a brand-new model, and it has tons of controls on it, so there's actually a little learning curve to getting the sound you want out of it, but now I've mastered that, it offers a ton of options for tone, which is cool.

Earl plays a Howard Roberts Gibson and a Hamer Newport Pro. Both are hollow-body guitars that sound nice next to Kylee's solid Gretsch. Our keyboardist Ryan uses mainly a Roland Fantom and Korg MS2000, but he's been experimenting with some new soft synths on the new record. And Christopher plays Premier drums and uses a Roland synth drum unit for his electronic sounds.

– Anthony Gordon: bass/bass synth, Loquat

Loquat, It's Yours to Keep (2005, Jackpine Social Club)

   

Posted May 2007

Send to del.icio.us  |