Hi Taylor, thanks for chatting with us! How is life now that your debut album, Homeroom Breakfast is out in the world?

Hello! Yes, having that out in the world has been real nice. It’s always a good feeling to finish a project, ya know, and this is my first time having physical copies of my music so I’m super stoked about that aspect! An amazing artist/pal named Nora Einbender-Luks did the art and it’s so cool to have kind of created something with someone else.

Your Bandcamp page says the album was written and recorded in both Brooklyn and San Francisco. Was there a reason for this split? And what’s your recording process like?

My last semester of college was in Brooklyn and that was the same time I started working on this album – so the first few tracks I wrote and recorded were done in my apartment there, and the rest were recorded in my apartment in San Francisco once I moved back after school.
I kind of write or at least add to songs as I’m recording, so the recording process for me is a lot of trial and error and is so much fun. I often have just the basic structure of a song when I go to record because I mostly hear new parts as I’m listening back to it rather than while I’m playing or writing it.. I use garageband, a borrowed mic + interface from my friend Rose or my iphone built in mic, and whatever instruments I can get my hands on. Luckily I have lived with/know a lot of musicians so I’ve been able to use a lot of other peoples stuff and it’s been great!

Who/what would you cite as your main influences?

Woah! I love thinking about this. My brother Travis Vick and my friend Rose Droll are for sure my main influences. They both are incredible musicians, performers, people. Also my brother got me into really good music at a young age so I’m really grateful for that. I’ve always had a strong connection to Rose’s music and now we’re friends and are each other’s #1 fans so it’s really rad and powerful – both Travis and Rose inspire the heck out of me!

I feel like a lot of people immediately put artists in your genre into a sad/lonely box without much thought, so I’m going to ask you outright – Do you consider your songs sad and lonely?

I don’t think so. I think because I’m not sad or lonely, I can’t consider them as that even though others might (which is fine). My songs might have glimpses of sadness or whatever, which is because the best outlet for me if I’m sad is to write a song or a lyric or something. So I understand why people might think that. But yeah, I think other feelings than sadness can be felt when listening to a song that might be deemed as sad so I try not to write off an artist as being sad/lonely because sometimes connecting over something sad can feel really good… if that makes sense.

The album has been released on cassette with Mt. Home Arts. How do you feel about releasing it with them and how did the relationship come about?

Mt. Home Arts is so awesome and great! Releasing an album with them has been so cool, I feel very lucky and happy to have had the opportunity. I emailed for a long time with Tim Woulfe, one of the founders of Apollonian Sound (who has since merged with Mt. Home Arts!) about releasing my music with them, we ended up doing a few shows together on the east coast last month and I got to release my album on their label. It all feels very good. They are great people.

Your debut release was self-produced and released. Do you have any advice or sage wisdom for other people young or old who are thinking about grabbing a guitar and recording something at home?

Oh man! Some of the best advice I’ve heard and think I also read once on an Alex G AMA was to make music that you want to hear. I would also say to not think that you’re limited because you’re recording at home or by yourself. I still don’t know much at all about recording or mixing, but that’s what makes experimenting so fun. You can do whatever you want and can create this audible, invisible thing, it’s so awesome. Experiment and share what you’re excited about with someone, or everyone. Do what feels good.

Finally, what 4 or 5 bands/artists have you been listening to recently? They can be brand new or a hundred years old, whatever you’re into.

I’m recently very into Andy Shauf’s albums The Party and The Bearer of Bad News. Also Diners’ album Three. WHY? is probably my favorite band ever so I’m still always listening to them and also to Elliott Smith for forever.

Homeroom Breakfast is out now on a beautifully packaged cassette via Mt. Home Arts and is available to download via the Boy Scouts Bandcamp page.

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“No One Knows That You’re Lost is an album inspired by the Norwegian coast and a human interior, by tight itching doubts and wide open spaces. Here, fragility, strength and beauty become one and the same, parts of a landscape in constant flux yet remaining fundamentally unchanged”

Tina very kindly agreed to write a guest post for our ‘Lit Links‘ series (part of the Quiet, Constant Friends project), where artists and writers create a playlist of songs based around a book of their choice. Arm yourself with headphones and have a read below.

Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding
by Tina Refsnes

I’ve never felt comfortable with answering questions that ask for «the best» or «your all time favourite» as I just feel there’s too much good and different material in the world to hold them up against each other like that. So, I’ll say that one of my favourite books that I enjoyed immensely reading is one called The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It’s set in an American College and with baseball as the back-drop, and it’s one of those slow books with great meaning but without the drama. It deals with the big hopes that young people usually have to life, with self doubt in performance, and with the social difficulties or shyness that young people sometimes struggle with. But, in a very down to earth way since, at least the main character, is so un-academic. I also imagined this suburban North-American setting for it: Long, wide streets with tall leaf trees on both sides of it. Really big and old campus buildings, and maybe since the characters were so alone in their minds I kept picturing everything as with never that many people around.

Tracklisting:

1. Jenny Come Home- Andy Shauf
   2. Gather, Form and Fly – Megafaun
   3. Own Side – Caitlin Rose
   4. Casimir Pulaski Day – Sufjan Stevens
   5. Easy – Laura Marling
   6. Blue Train – Emmy Lou Harris, Linds Ronstadt and Dolly Parton
   7. Out of the Woodwork – Courtney Barnett
   8. Big Black Road – Thousands
   9. That Knot Unties? – David Karsten Daniels
   10. Mr. Rodriguez – Rayland Baxter
   11. We Are Fine – Sharon Van Etten
   12. Horizons – The Staves
   13. Archie, Marry Me – Alvvays
   14. Friends – 22-20s
   15. Poison Oak – Bright Eyes

The post Lit Links: Tina Refsnes appeared first on Various Small Flames.

On a related note, things are gradually getting busier for us in other areas – Liam works full-time and I’ve gone back to school – so the old two posts a day routine might not be maintained too often any more. That said, in an effort to keep things ticking over, we’re going to introduce a new ‘Flash Review’ feature where we cover albums in less words than we would otherwise use. It’s not ideal but a short piece is better than no piece. There’ll still be a good smattering of the usual style too.

Tracklisting:

1. Birthstone (Reprise) – Pet Cemetery
   2. Vice – Roundheels
   3. Forever – Boosegumps
   4. So Long – Heavy Boots
   5. Long Walk To All Sorts of Place – Fanpage
   6. Feathers & Leaves – Ocean Floor
   7. Down Predator Souvenirs – Lejsovka & Freund
   8. Vacation – Florist
   9. 2. – Old Earth
   10. Never Good Enough – Eerie Summer
   11. EZ River – Wilder Maker
   12. Thumbs – Claire Cottrill
   13. If I Were A Portal – Evening Hymns
   14. Jenny Come Home – Andy Shauf
   15. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   16. The Flood – Mike Pace & the Child Actors
   17. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
   18. Nancy Kerrigan – Frog
   19. Kaleidoscope – Arbes
   20. The Book of Love – ARMS

The post October Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The new album is due out in the new year but ANTI- have released a new song to keep you occupied in the meantime. ‘Jenny Come Home’ is something of a departure from his previous records, employing warmer, more upbeat sound to produce a jaunty, 70s-flavoured blend of folk and rock. The lyrics however are at odds with the buoyant tone, a story of infidelity unearthed, told from the perspective of the guilty party.

“You got back home about a quarter to four
and when you opened the door
you saw a pair of shoes you’d never seen before.
You came upstairs and we were scrambled so
she tried to make for the door.
I swear you packed all your things and were gone before she.
Jenny come home to me”

You can pick up The Bearer of Bad News and other past releases on the Andy Shaf Bandcamp, if you missed them the first time around. Otherwise keep your ears to the ground for more news on the new record.

The post New music from Andy Shauf appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Hi Tyler, hope all is well in Edmonton? We’re pretty excited about the new EP here at Wake The Deaf. How did Violence come about?

Jon, Edmonton is just fine now. Winter descends upon the city, but the true cold has not yet struck, and I explore the river valley in comfort, enjoying the snow and frost.

Violence is a collection of country songs I worked on for a few months before I went to Grande Prairie in August to play at Landisfest, which is a little festival by La Glace Lake on a bit of farmland. I stayed with the families of my friends Ashton and Courtney, a lovely couple who play music as Goose Lake. We recorded my vocals and guitar for Violence live off the floor in a shed behind Ashton’s house, then overdubbed the organ and slide and harmonies in his basement. The whole process took 13 hours. It is the first time I have let someone else record one of my albums, but the three of us had a great musical chemistry, and we ruined a lot of good takes by laughing.

Place is very important to my recordings, and I struggle to think of a better memory this summer than spending time with my friends around Grande Prairie. If you listen closely, there are all sorts of indicators of where we were and how much we are enjoying ourselves.

I’m completely illiterate musically so this may be a naive questions but how much does instrumentation influence the writing? Have you ever found a particular sound which conveys a mood and written a song around that? Or is it much more tailored to already written the lyrics? I’m thinking of in particular of ‘Waxwing’ on Winter King, where the relentless repetition and gradual quickening really puts across a sense of desperation which supports the lyrics perfectly. I guess I’m asking if the words are the cause or effect on the sound of a song.

Pairing sound with the tone of my writing is always a bit of a challenge. Sometimes an idea finds a few homes before it feels right. In my performances, delivery is always subject to narrative. Winter King was the first album I recorded live. The vocals and guitar are the same track, the same single microphone. In a song like ‘Waxwing,’ the urgency and speed are essential to the story, but not planned as such.

We used a few more microphones on Violence, but the tracks are still live. I believe great art emerges from limitation – the bleed of my voice into my guitar track, the cramped shed, the timeframe. The limitations of our setting are very much a part of the story of this record.

How complete are the narratives when you write a song? Do you get a good line that you think would be effective and build up from there? Or do you have a clearly defined story which you then to condense into the much more abstract collection of couplets and so on?

There is always an overarching narrative at the core of the song, and certain lines and images stick out in that story. I think the perfect story provides enough detail that you share the images I had in mind, but you fill in the details.

That said, Violence is also an attempt to free myself from writing too abstractly. When I wrote Winter King, I focused on developing a strong poetic voice by digging into mythology and language that was very loaded with meaning. I write in a way that makes it is easy for me to hide behind suggestion and metaphor, but I think I can write most powerfully by expressing myself clearly.

What are the biggest influences on your song writing? I guess it will be a whole host of things (including personal experience) but is there a particular medium which provides you inspiration? Do you find what you are listening to or reading at the time has a noticeable effect on what you produce?

Robert Kroetsch, who I had the honour of meeting right before he passed, remains the biggest influence on my writing. Patrick Lane is another poet I really look up to. Mary Wood is a great poet here in Edmonton and we work on a lot of writing together. But folk music is about bringing your friends’ songs with you: I sing a lot of Zach Lucky’s songs, I sang one of Mike Tod’s songs in Calgary two weeks ago, I sneak a Jom Comyn song in once in a while when he is not looking. They all write about Canada in a way that is a little different than mine, but important and beautiful.

I get the impression that many of your songs are set in an older time, some sort of simpler age. Is this how you see it? Even if you don’t envisage the songs necessarily in the past, there is a definite isolation in your lyrics, a removal from the trappings of modern society. It’s a perfect way to capture feelings and emotions, signifying intimacy through simplicity. I was recently reading an interview with the filmmaker/writer Brit Marling and Susan Sarandon where they hypothesize that any real ‘classic’ love story these days has to be written in the past as there are no longer the traditional sorts of obstacles present in a contemporary romance (I guess especially in music as writing about neurotic people with complex anxieties and so on is difficult in the relatively succinct medium of a song). I was wondering whether you consciously thought in this way? Or does your style come naturally?

I certainly value simplicity in my stories, the straight-forward expression of desire and love, a direct relationship between work and fulfillment. I agree: this is a removal from the trappings of modern society, although not necessarily a foray into the past. That interview is very interesting: my stories often reverse the ‘classic’ love story – my male characters are very vulnerable, their emotions and desires are on display, as prominent as their strength. And my female characters can be strong and demanding.

This album is a critique of western masculinity. I live in a place where masculinity often means taking up the most space, being the loudest, having the biggest truck. I think the working characters on this album, and the shift in the sound toward country music provide a critique of this masculinity, showcase a lifestyle in which work is constructive, not violent.

Brit Marling says in that interview, “the bravest thing you’re ever going to find is people deciding to be intimate with one another. I mean really intimate, not just sexually intimate.” What a fascinating and true statement. By making my characters vulnerable to each other, I think I create a strong sense of intimacy. And by displaying my own desires, not shrouding myself to the same extent behind the poetic voice, I make myself vulnerable, allow the possibility for intimacy between myself and the listener.

How difficult (or otherwise) is it to be successfully creative in modern society? I recently saw Evening Hymns play and Jonas Bonnetta was describing the making of their latest album where they basically isolated themselves in a cabin in the middle of winter for weeks. This sounds perfect but I couldn’t help wondering how people manage to do this sort of thing (not to mention month long tours and so on) around going to work and paying rent. Would you say study/employment limits your potential as a musician or a writer? Or are you glad to have something aside from music to fill your days?

I just saw Evening Hymns play here in Edmonton with Andy Shauf and Reuben and the Dark – what a great show. A packed Monday night at Wunderbar.

Art is a product of work. The creative spark and the hard work required to create art are very different processes. I am always thinking creatively, writing down lyrics as they come to me, humming melodies into my phone. But I make time to work on my art: I write daily poems, I schedule time alone to write with my guitar in hand, I practice with my band.

And as I have said, great art rises from limitation. The way the creative mind navigates obstacles either internal or external fascinates me. The constraints upon an artist – budget, time, talent – these are as much a part of art as the narrative or medium. I would rather make the most of what I have than make waste of excess.

Do you ever see yourself in a position to make a living through your art? Would you want to?

I love making music, and I will make music the rest of my life. But I want to do so in a way that is sustainable. I don’t know if music will ever provide my sole income. I don’t know if it can. There may be a point when I raise a family, buy a house, need health care: could music alone provide for me? I want to position myself so that I am still making music in 20 years, 50 years. I work full time at a university here in Edmonton and I tour on my vacations. It’s a balance that is working for me right now.

Finally, what are you listening to right now? Could you maybe give us 4 or 5 artists we should be hearing? It doesn’t matter if they formed thirty seconds or thirty years ago, whatever you are enjoying.

I listen to mostly Canadian artists: The Wooden Sky – I saw them perform at the Royal Alberta Museum recently. Fred Squire might be my favourite artist right now. Nick Everett and Mike Tod are on constant rotation lately.

And Barna Howard released a great self-titled record that I am enjoying very much. He’s from the USA, but let’s not hold it against him.

(Maythorn Live At St. Paul’s Fish Creek from Dylan Rhys Howard)

Thanks go to Tyler for putting so much time and effort into this, I think the result shows how much he though about this. Violence and Winter King are available from Tyler’s Bandcamp page. Make sure you check out the video above which is a beautiful short film by Dylan Rhys Howard and keep an eye on Cabin Songs, a new folky side of Old Ugly, that Tyler runs. I am told they will be releasing some lovely music in the new year. Also I’ve added links to all the acts he mentions in the interview so you can explore them at your leisure.

I hope you enjoy Tyler’s answers as much as I did.

The post Interview: Tyler Butler appeared first on Various Small Flames.