Instruments: Drums, Bass, Guitar, Keyboard, Voice (and some flute)

Genres: Danceable Lap Pop, LoFi Silly Songs, New Wave, Acid Jazz, Grunge and More

Joel Klaverkamp is the mastermind behind the varying styles of beefdonut. After a short and sweet introduction and interview, I could immediately tell he is a relaxed and laid back dude. His musical CV is all across the map when it comes to genres and musical styles so the best thing you can do it check out his soundcloud and hear them for yourself. I promise you won’t be disappointed! 

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Ashley: Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

Joel: I’ve played for a long time in the Winnipeg music scene. I played bass in Skingerbreadman and bass in The Hummers. I also played keyboard in Drums and Wires and I played guitar and everything with beefdonut which is sort of just me and my songwriting. I also play drums for people like A La Mode and Boats.

Ashley: So where did the name come from?

Joel: I worked at HMV a long time ago and I worked with a friend of mine who brought donuts from sears and they tasted like they were deep fried in oil that had deep fried beef so it had this disgusting flavor to it. We started calling them ‘beef donuts’ and later on I thought it would be a pretty good name so I took it.

Ashley: How often are you practicing your instruments? 

Joel: The correct answer is not often enough, but it also ebbs and flows. Lately I’ve been practicing drums a lot more because A La Mode was preparing for Real Love summer fest and a show at the Handsome Daughter. It all depends on which gig is coming on. I am mostly practicing for shows three times a week.

Ashley: What is a practice or jam session like with the band?

Joel: It depends on the project, if its very collaborative it’s very magical. I try to respect that magic and allow it to happen and that’s one of the main reasons I play. If it’s not collaborative, if it’s someone else saying theses are the parts or if I’m saying these are the parts it tends to be not as magical and a bit more technical. You have to actually figure out their vision or you have to try to communicate your vision [to others] so it’s less just “letting it happen.”

Ashley: And with beefdonut, how do you perform your music? Do you do it solo or do you book musicians?

Joel: It depends, we played at Graffiti Gallery and it was a whole new line up. I got flute synth parts, electric guitar, backing vocals and percussion, synth and drums and it’s got a bigger band and dance focus. The last record I did was very grunge rock themed where there are very little dynamics. It was a four piece [set-up]. Before that I have done performances alone with laptops but I don’t really like that; I’ve also had guitar loops solo shows where I’ve had a guitar loop pedal and play. It can be whatever. I’ve also done a lot of recording for sound track work mostly for modern dance shows so a lot of the times I’ll be live mixing that while the show is going so the sections all match up with each other. It really depends.

Ashley: What is the most stressful part about being a musician?

Joel: I’m really easy going and relaxed in general so there really isn’t anything that stresses me out about music that I can think of. For me, that’s the fun part.

Ashley: Then who inspires your music?

Joel: That changes a lot. Currently I’m really inspired by Goat and Thee Oh Sees although if I had to pick, in the past I would have said Bjork or Prince. But now I would have to say James Murphy. The stuff he makes is just perfect in my mind. If you were to break it down into actual quantifiable metrics, thearrangement of the song, the tones of the instruments, the lyrics, the melodies and everything about what he does is matched in my DNA for music.

Ashley: So then what is your songwriting process?

Joel: I don’t have one. Nope, I just sit down and let them come out. I don’t think of them as coming from me.

Ashley: Is it what’s in the your head and you put it out there? 

Joel: Yes the music will usually come to me, usually on the bus, and I’ll write down the words I’ll hear. I’ll try to keep the melody in my head until I’m near an instrument and try to figure it out. Usually by then it’s somewhat changed or I don’t get it exactly right.

Ashley: Would you say your music is more lyrically or melody based?

Joel: Oh definitely not lyrically based. Although a lot of times the music will start with one lyric or one phrase that comes into my head and it will have a melody attached to it already and I’ll just build on that.

Ashley: What accomplishments with beefdonut are you most proud of?

Joel: I recently won an award for ‘Best Music for a Short Film’ that was in a film festival. The film is called Alice and Kevin; it’s a really touching movie, really well done. It’s about a mom and her son and the son has I believe its cerebral palsy; basically he has special needs and she lives on a reserve with him and she’s not getting the same level of health care that she would get if she lived in the city. She’s filed a human rights claim and she’s just found out she has cancer and has a limited amount of time to live. She feels that if she’s gone then he’s not going to get the proper care to live without her. It’s a very powerful story and it’s true. It’s a documentary. I didn’t even know it was in festivals and I got a check in the mail and it said ‘Best Music’ from the Nanaimo Arts Council.

Although that said, that would be for beefdonut. For other projects I’ve been in, I’ve been doing [music] for a long time but playing at Folk Fest with The Hummers in 2007 was probably the highlights. We went on we were supposed to play for maybe an hour long set but we ended up playing from 3:00am to sunrise. There were just thousands and thousands of people, it was a lot of fun.

Ashley: What’s your favorite song to perform?

Joel: My favorite song to perform is Signs of Seasons. I also really like performing with Robo Jam; which is a band I play drums in. We have a lead vocalist/dancer and a keyboard player and we use prerecorded loops and a software that generates music and it’s a lot of fun. It’s very theatrical and we all dress up like robots. It’s a high-energy band and the crowd reaction is pretty good.

Ashley: How do you balance with your other obligations?

Joel: I don’t do anything else. I work and I have a family and I have music. I’ve never seen an episode of Breaking Bad and I miss out on all those pop culture references. I work with a lot of people who reference shows that I’ll never get around to watching. I probably won’t see anything until I’m 70 and I’m in my hospital bed and I have nothing else to do but watch them. Hopefully I’ll be mentally fit to understand them.

Ashley: Since you’ve started working with people, what’s the best advice you’ve heard since you started as a musician that has stuck with you and helped you with your music career?

Joel: [I would say] I try to be, as much as I can, a person in the music scene. The music community in Winnipeg is pretty wonderful and pretty open. Anyone can get in there, just start going to shows and you can start being [one of those people] that are part of the community. For me, I try to go to as many local shows as I can, listen to their stuff in the car and the Internet radio. For me everything it gears towards that. What I’m talk about is just support. I try to support the music scene as much as I can in confidence that it will be reciprocated. The people who come out to see me play are the people I go out and see play.

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Sep 24, 2015 at 11:15am PDT

Support Winnipeg Musician beefdonut!

Instruments: Guitar and Voice

Genres: Pop, R&B

Infusing soul into vocals with jazzy chords into a pop song structure, Maxine has a ton of feelings to share and uses music as a way to express herself and connect with other people. Her honesty in her music leaves a relatable feeling that tells you she’s singing her message from the heart. Maxine and I hung out on her balcony and chatted as she did her makeup for work later that night. It was a lot of fun spending a relaxing afternoon with her in the warm summer air. She talked about all her hard work on her upcoming single and experience as a songwriter and performer.

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Ashley: How long have you been playing?

Maxine: Well [I’ve been] singing always. When I was really little, like four or five years old, my parents would have me sing in church all the time. I would go up [on stage] and do solos in my little church dress and hats with no fear. As I grew a little bit older and grew very shy. I was very academically focused and did really good in high school. [Music] was this secret love of mine. I only started playing guitar when I was 18, a friend of mine got me a guitar because he believed in me and knew I had this secret love for singing. From then on I started writing with a guitar and then I went to college I finally admitted to myself that [music] is what I wanted to do with my life and have been pursuing it ever since then.

Ashley: How often are you playing or practicing at home?

Maxine: Practicing? I find that at this point I am so busy gigging, I have a lot of things that just keep me up to practice. I find that I’m not practicing as much as I used to when I was in college or when I was taking voice lessons. These house gigs I have are great places to try out new songs and make sure I stay in practice, as long as I’m doing it in a weekly or biweekly basis. That keeps me up to speed on a lot of things. Otherwise, I don’t have a lot of time. If I’m at home, I’m songwriting.

Ashley: What are house performances?

Maxine: By house gig I mean I have a regular gig there.

Ashley: Have you toured before?

Maxine: I went to a music school in Nashville and when I was there we went on a tour collectively; but I haven’t done a solo tour. I’ve traveled around to Toronto and some places in the states but I haven’t done a full-fledged tour.

Ashley: What would be the most stressful thing about planning or getting ready to tour?

Maxine: Booking is tough in outside markets, especially when you are doing it alone and trying to sell somebody on yourself. It’s definitely easier when you have somebody else booking for you. Being an unknown and reaching out to a market that doesn’t know you is the toughest part. In Winnipeg, I feel like I have decent handle the regular big gigs I want to book. Everybody is connected here so I find that if I want to get in touch with somebody I can. They won’t necessarily book me but I find it easier in touch with people rather than going to Toronto who would prefer your agency to book you and you don’t have an agency.

Ashley: What you recommend for people who want to book shows in Winnipeg?

Maxine: It depends what kind of shows you want to book. Once I have new music to market myself, I want to push for playing bigger gigs and festivals. Right now I’m playing smaller patios and such. For that, I just found contacts with managers at different bars, etc. For festivals, I’d say the more musicians you know the better. Even getting booked as an opening act at the park theatre or West End. The more friends you make, the better. Go to Manitoba music events, work your ass off, follow people online and connect with them. Try to write with them and things like that. If you have that rapport and your genres work together, why wouldn’t you want to work together?

I’d say try having someone vouch for you for festivals, unless you know the organizers yourself. Sometimes it just looks better to have someone else; if you have an agent that is awesome or a manager, or if you have somebody who can play that role for you.

Ashley: Who inspires your music when you are writing or performing?

Maxine: There is this girl I’m currently obsessed with lately, everybody knows it, her name is Tori Kelly, she is the love of my life. She is doing something very similar to what I want to be doing. She writes from the heart, which I love. I also love Lauren Hill she’s amazing! I love Top 40 too. People knock on pop music all the time, but I love pop song structure. Styles like Katy Perry and Taylor swift; I love taking that and infusing it with jazz and soul.

Ashley: What is your songwriting process?

Maxine: I’m not going to lie I need to do more co-writing; I don’t do a lot of it. I usually write by myself. I like to start by writing before I go to bed if I have some thoughts in my head. I have to feel like I have something to say. I’ll usually write the lyrics separately and a lot of the time I’ll just let go of whatever is inside me. When you are writing you have to turn off your editor at first. You can turn it on later to make the song the best it can be but at the beginning during the creative process you just need to let yourself be as free as possible. I like to just write and write and never let myself think something is too wrong to write. I’ll usually take a section or a line or two lines and later when I’m playing guitar I’ll come up with a riff and whatever that riff is I’ll find some sort of melody to go with it. I’ll try to infuse the two together and build other lyrics around that. I’d say my music is very rhythmic based. 

Ashley: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

Maxine: In 2013 I won a songwriting contest for a single of mine called Shame On Me with the Manitoba Songfest. It was really nice as a writer because I’m primarily a singer and it was great to be acknowledged that way.

What’s really cool and recent is that I opened Nick Carter and the Pyramid. That was a lot of fun! The demographic was exactly what I want to be playing for.

Also, I was with a bunch of artists about a year and half ago playing a fundraising show at the Burton Cummings Theatre. It was with all these other local artists. On that stage I did a song solo and did two songs with a beat boxing friend of mine. Being alone on that giant stage, it’s such an iconic stage, it was such a big moment for me.

Ashley: What advice would you give to beginners who are nervous about starting out?

Maxine: I would say when it comes to being on stage and getting over nerves you have to throw yourself into it and know that it’s going to get better. I find with nerves that often half way through the first song you’ll find that you’re going to be okay. It’s going to be all right and you are going to get less nervous as you do it.

Also when songwriting, don’t be afraid to suck and know that you’re going to write a lot of shit. Most people write a lot and take what’s good and you edit that to make it the best version of itself. Not everything you’re going to write is going to be gold and you have to be okay with that. I know people that have told me that they have tried to write and they say, “everything I write is just so cheesy.” You don’t need to worry about that right now and just keep writing. The greatest songwriters are not writing hits every single moment. They are writing a lot and they take from that lot and edit it down.

[You also need] to network. The better your know yourself as an artist and a band the easier it is to stay true to yourself, to market yourself and sell yourself when you are in the world.

Ashley: What is your favorite song to perform live?

Maxine: I have two songs, one that I open every show with and one that I close every show with. One is called Better that’s the one I’m recording it right now and I’ll close every show with it. I open with I just want to love you. They are both really upbeat jams with pop chorus. I feel like they optimize what I do so those are my favorite. You have to have your opening and closing songs down pat for sure, they have to be killer.

Ashley: What is the process to get started to record a single? Did you have to apply for funding?

Maxine: I’ve applied for grants in the past and did not get accepted for them. The current producer I work with, he is fantastic, has been helping me out. I got connected through a DJ friend of mine, so we sat down and I played him a bunch of songs and he was really into what I do and he wanted to help me out.

Ashley: How did you decide which song to pick for your single? How did you know the song was ready to be set in stone through recording?

Maxine: I’d say the latest song you’ve written is always your favorite one but that doesn’t always mean it’s the best one. Sometimes you have to let them sit for a month and play it for people that you trust too. Have them tell you if you need to tweak some things. For a single it has to be a very specific type of song and I just had that feeling for this one song of mine. I feel like it could have a good mainstream feel and I love what I’m saying in it. As long as it’s got the marketability along with heart connection, I think that’s a good balance.

Ashley: What’s the best advice since you’ve started working in the music business that has just stuck with you?

Maxine: One of my Profs in Nashville said ‘the audience isn’t always right but they never lie.’ The audience is going to react the way they are going to react, they may not be right but they are always telling you their truth. I think that’s something to keep in mind. Think about that when you are out online or at shows, you don’t have to take everybody’s advice but they are going to tell you what they think is true. 

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Sep 17, 2015 at 7:46pm PDT

Support Local Singer-Songwriter Maxine Peters!

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Genre(s): Indie Alternative Pop

Instrument(s): Bass Guitar, Guitar, Keyboard, Voice

Sandy from Indicator Indicator, originally from the band Quinzy, talks about the struggles of leaving one band and feeling the need to keep making music. He talks about the stresses of starting out and touring and talks about his decision to join the label Pipe and Hat. His was really interesting to listen to and I really enjoyed the way he understood each experience meant to him and what he took away from it all.

With me still not really used to meeting and interviewing band members, I was really nervous about meeting Sandy. I had heard great things about Indicator Indicator from a couple of my co-workers but hadn’t met them before the interview. I had volunteered at Sc Mira’s Album release on June 11 (which was an amazing show by the way) and got to see Indicator Indicator perform as one of the opening bands. They all had an excellent stage presence that really pumped the audience in a great way and the music was vivacious. You could really tell the crowd adored them. 

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Ashley: What started Indicator Indicator?

Sandy: Well, Quinzy was just starting to wind down a little bit. We spent a long time with Quinzy, doing the four-piece pop rock band thing, a little more mainstream. We spent a lot of years trucking away, swinging for the fences with labels, things like that, and it started to weigh us down a little bit. But we’re best friends - we didn’t want to stop, and so we just put it away for a little bit.

But I’ve got the sickness worse than anyone else, I think, so I just couldn’t stop. I write, and songs just kept coming. My first love, since I was 15 or 16, has been home recording. So I kind of wanted to get back to where I started, which was these home recording projects. Not even thinking about how you would play them live, or what the point of it was. Just to make music for the sake of making music. That’s what the first Indicator Indicator EP was. [It was] me playing at home on my computer, recording all of the instruments myself. A little labor of love.

Then it was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award and things were going really well with it, and I wanted to take things further. But I wanted to do something different from a 4-piece rock band because I had just done that, and was a little bored with it.

So, I recruited a friend of mine, Matthew Harder, and we did it as a duet, striving to make as much noise as possible. We couldn’t quite play these rich pop tunes with just the two of us so we did a lot of digital vocal harmonies and looping and a bit of electronic sequencing. And things like that that were totally out of our comfort zone because we were just musicians, not necessarily technology-oriented people.

In fact, Matt is a folk player - blue grass, primarily - so we really pushed ourselves outside of our comfort zone. We spent a couple years doing the two piece thing, and did a little touring - it was really cool and fun. Then as the next recording started to happen, it was getting bigger with more live drums and real bass guitar, and I was starting to inch back to making it a band. I took this long circular route back to a 4-piece band!  But this time we’re using a lot less traditional electric guitar, more synth, more fake instruments and other stuff like that. Just blending organic with inorganic.

What I love about pop is that it’s like a mockingbird.  These birds are known to grab all the other bird songs they hear and blend them into their own collage. It doesn’t care about genres, it will just take what it wants out of everything. So, if you like a hi-hat tone from this hip-hop song, grab it. If you like heavy synth, use that. It doesn’t have a lot of parameters, and I like that. 

Ashley: Where does the name come from?

Sandy: It was a song title for about 10 years. I like song titles; I have notebooks full of them. For some reason its kind of where I start a lot of the time. So I had this song title that I really liked - I had read about a bird called the greater African honeyguide, the genus is “indicator” and the species is “indicator”. It somehow knows where honeycombs are trapped in trees, but can’t get to them, so it co-evolved with nearby tribes of humans, and would lead them to where the trees were and where the combs were trapped. The humans would crack them open and they would all get to share the honey.

I though it was the coolest nature story, plus I loved it as a name, but I could never find a song that was really good enough for [it]. Then when I was starting this new project I was like “oh good, I’ve got the perfect name waiting in the wing.”

Ashley: What is a practice session like with the whole band?

Sandy: I get to play with a lot of guys who have a lot of band experience, so we don’t have much patience for watching each other practice anymore. There are high expectations that everyone knows what they are doing, and so more we’re just tweaking and selecting who is playing what part, and making more “production” decisions than actually “can you play this guitar line”.

I tend to think with production in mind as I write, and maybe 1 in 10 songs I could just play on an acoustic guitar and have it make sense. I guess I could write more of those types of songs, but that’s not really where I lean. I like parts; I like having a bass line that’s distinctive to the song. When there are all these moving parts in a song and there are only four of you to play them, it’s more about who is doing what at what time, and making sure we’re representing the song correctly. If someone were coming in [and listening to this] cold, would they be able to understand it?

So it’s more about a “producer” mindset than “instrumentalist”.  I don’t want just a guitar player, or just a drummer. I want people who can do whatever. And so we’re just four producers trying to make something cool.

Ashley: So when you are writing music, do you think of every part? How do you bring that to the band?

Sandy: Usually I record it all and then say, “here’s what we’re playing.” Although this is the first recording that the other guys are really deeply involved. We’re getting ready to release a mini-LP, (it’s a little bigger than an EP, so I’m calling it a mini-LP), and one of the songs is called No Anthem, which is the first single, and I had it fully produced [to sound] kind of cool. But when I brought it to the band it just wasn’t working. So it got deconstructed and became something totally different and now it’s very much a band arrangement.

But for the most part they come fully fleshed, though. I did that a lot with Quinzy too. As soon as I get into a song, I can’t really let it rest until it’s finished in my head.

Ashley: I can’t produce music.

Sandy: You should try, it’s easy.

Ashley: I have tried, it’s too hard for me.

Sandy: The world we live in, every low-entry Macbook has Garage Band; which is an amazing recording tool and let’s you multi-track as much as you want. You can dick around, and no one needs to hear it. You just chisel away at it. Sometimes you can be recording something, a full song even and the only thing you like about it is this little guitar part, so then take that and build around it.

I think it’s a great tool and it’s obviously revolutionized music. People are making laptop rock. People are making full music all on their own and they don’t know how to play a single instrument. It’s lusher and more innovative than any 4-piece folk rock band you’ll ever here, again because they’ve got no parameters.

Ashley: I guess I can give it a shot. So who inspires your music?

Sandy: Bands that mess around a lot in the studio.  And people who can write songs. But that’s almost beside the point. Too me, it’s how can they make it interesting, different, cool. Subvert what may be a great melody. I find that stuff inspiring, and I’m often scared that I’m maybe not pushing myself enough to do that.

But also, modern pop. I love modern pop. With Tegan and Sara, when they just jumped straight into top 40 synth-pop recently… I thought that was a really cool move. And I know they took a lot of slack for it; but I think their songs are just so beautiful and air-tight, so unnatural-sounding, but so moving. It cannot be recreated. It’s an art onto itself. It’s unnatural. It’s an impressionistic painting or something. All kinds of pop nowadays, the amount of creativity involved is just staggering, the amount of love these engineers and producers are putting into it. Put headphones on and it’s a magical world, it’s great. And pop never gets credit for it. It’s seen as disposable, and maybe it is. The songs don’t actually “mean” anything, but they are staggeringly beautiful. Like that new Selena Gomez song; I mean, who likes Selena Gomez? But that song is so good when it comes on the radio.

We can’t do that modern pop thing, quite. I don’t have the skills, but maybe I would if I could.

Ashley: You mentioned a little earlier that you start with songwriting titles, but what exactly is your songwriting process?

Sandy: Sometimes titles. More often than not I’m sitting at the piano. It’s almost always at a piano. Once in awhile I’ll try to come from a more production-based place. I’ll get a really nice feel or beat or something like that and just improvise over it. I usually have email drafts of lyrics all over the place and when one melody comes out I’ll sort through the lyrics and see if anything goes with that; in terms of feel, or if it actually fits with the melody.

So it’s pretty rare that I just sit at the piano and pop something out all at once. Maybe a verse melody comes along, then I think about other chorus melodies I have laying around, and see if they fit. Look around at the lyrics I have, or see if there is a title I want to start with, and it slowly comes together.

But it can happen suddenly once in awhile. Our new record starts with a waltz called Instant to Instant, and that feels like the last time I just sat down at piano and was like, “Oh, here’s a song. Oh, and the lyrics came too, how nice!”.  I walked away that afternoon feeling all good about myself. But it’s usually a more painful process than that.

I try to be really ruthless with songs. My personal belief is that everyone can write melodies. Everyone can. When we’re whistling in the street, when we’re singing in the shower. People are creative. Every single person. I think the craft of it, or the hard part, is in he editing. Knowing what’s good and what is not, and being able to cobble it into something that both makes sense on first listen, and yet is not quite what people would expect.

Ashley: With Indicator Indicator, what accomplishments are you most proud of?

Sandy: Little moments. Like back when it was just Matthew and I doing a two-piece, when we were in Toronto for a little festival - it was our first time on the road, and we were still working out a lot of kinks. (Actually we never really got through all the kinks, we kind of just moved on). But it was particularly tricky in that first little go, to the point where two thirds of the shows were miserable. This piece of gear broke, I didn’t do this right, this looped sucked.

We had one of those shows, and it was a showcase where we were supposed to be judged, and it was a terrible show. I was like “Oh my god, I’m too old to have terrible shows like this.” We went home, had a beer and kind of licked our wounds because we actually had another show that night. We did eight or nine shows in six days, I think. So we had to pack everything up again and go do another show and THAT one we crushed. The idea that we just got right back up and put the first one in the rear view mirror, and then got a win. It’s those tiny moments that I love and will never get tired of. Because it should always be hard, it should always be SO hard so when you get those little victories it feels so good.

It’s a double edged sword, I’m always kind of proud of the product, but I’m never satisfied with it, I’m never really happy with it. I like the records that I’ve made, I like the recordings, I like the recordings Quinzy made. But I don’t listen to them, I would never listen to them, I would only hear the things I would want to change now. Similarly, I look back at shows and see the banter that I didn’t like, or the missed notes. So, the details are almost always painful, but there is a more general pride simply in that I get to be in a band. It’s the coolest thing in the world and I still love it.

I love it as a concept, but every actual moment of it seems frustrating and hard and soul-sucking [laughs]. But it’s who I am and I have to do it.

Ashley: What is you favorite song to perform?

Sandy: I think it’s the song called Back into the fire. It’s the last song on the first EP, and in retrospect it touches on the time that Quinzy was going for major label deals, and we got kind of close, but all around us we could just see that this model we were chasing was dying. That it doesn’t work anymore. It’s all going to be totally different soon so when it ended, it felt like I was escaping a burning building. But then I realized “Nope, I’m going back in. Here we go.”

It’s a simple song that just felt kind of pure coming out, and the feel of it works with the lyrical vibe. And I feel it every time we play it, almost every single time. It’s a slow, boring ballad and maybe we shouldn’t be doing it all the time, but I love it and it’s important to me. It’s one of those rare victories that I don’t always feel in songs.

Ashley: How do you deal with nerves before performing?

Sandy: [Points to beer] For the record, I just pointed to my beer. [laughs] No, I generally don’t get too nervous. What’s funny is that I’ll usually have nerves the day before. Or even the day of, but as soon as I’m setting up, that’s where the experience comes in. “Oh I’ve done this before, I’ve done this a million times. I know this.” This process of getting ready, strapping on your guitar, checking on your gear, tapping on your mic, it just puts you in this zone like, “I know how to do this”.

I used to have worse nerves, and you just have to barge through it. There is no easy way around it. Really, you should always have some nerves. If it’s just dead to you, that’s not a good thing. You have to feel some kind of apprehension that it’s not going to work, that you’re always on the knife’s edge, and you have to accept it for what it is. Yet, you need to realize that the stakes are not that high. I mean, you cannot play the worst rock and rock show ever played. You can’t. And what’s so important to you won’t be that important to the audience. That’s sort of sad and sort of cynical, but it’s the truth. All you can do it make them feel that this is as important as it is to you. The worse case scenario is not that they’re going to hate it, it’s that they’re not going to care. If you can kind of realize that without letting it take away your steam, you can put it in a proper context. I mean, this isn’t Doctors without Borders. It’s standing there trying to entertain people, and it’s been done a million times before you and will be done a million times after you. So just do you’re best.

That’s no answer for you at all, I’m sorry.

Or, I guess the answer is doing it again and again and again because you have to. That’s the only way.

Ashley: What is the most stressful thing about touring?

“...it should always be hard, it should always be SO hard so when you get those little victories it feels so good.”

— Sandy Taronno

Sandy: Money. It’s expensive, and being away from home is hard. I have a two-year-old son and it’s not easy to be away and realize he’s growing up without you, and that life just goes on. I know a few musicians for who [touring is] their primary source of income, but it’s very rare. For the most part, even the most creatively successful musicians have another job somewhere. They have to. Which means you need to leave that behind when you tour, and if you have a family you need to leave them behind too. There’s just so much selfishness that it can feel pretty bad. So, when you come to a place and play for no one, you wonder “why am I leaving everyone for this?” Yet, if you want to be in a band you have to do it. It’s a sacrifice, but really it’s a selfish sacrifice. And if you think too much about it, that’s what makes it hard. So, you just need to not think so hard about it at the time, and be very careful in the touring that you choose to do, and make sure each trip is the right move. That it’s appropriate, and it’s worth the investments. You have to do it for a very good reason.

Ashley: How did you get signed to your label?

Sandy: When Indicator Indicator started, I knew I wanted to release as much as I could on my own. I’ve always liked the do-it-yourself approach. I’m a very hands-on kind of guy. I even ran our own promotion campaign for the first record because I wanted to see what it was like. And I just like learning and seeing all the different sides of the industry.

Anyway, I was really happy doing it all myself and seeing how far I could get, but cracks were starting to show and I was hitting some walls. I wasn’t doing a very good job over here, or the music was suffering over there. And there were just these walls you hit – some things you just can’t do on your own. It’s not a matter of will, it’s that you just can’t do it. I came to the realization that I should probably team up with someone to relieve some stress and get opportunities that I can’t get on my own.

So I reached out to Pipe & Hat just because I wanted someone local that I could talk with in person everyday if I wanted to, and I felt like they’re hungry. Like, they have these large ambitions so in a way I can unload that feeling a little bit. Let them feel the fire and hunger so I can focus a bit more on perfecting my own little world.

These guys seemed to fit the bill, so I reached out to them and we right away got along beautifully and formed a fast friendship. I’ve been really impressed with what they’ve done so far and the level of professionalism that they’ve brought. They’re challenging us to raise our game, and that pressure feels damn good.

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jun 18, 2015 at 3:21pm PDT

Support Winnipeg Band Indicator Indicator!

If you like this post, please hit the like and share button below! Please reach out to me via Twitter or my contact page! I would love to hear anything you have to say! Really, anything. I'm lonely. Also I now have a new Facebook page that will let you know when each post is posted! I would really appreciate if you could like it! Thank you!

Name: Lucas Roger

Instruments: Acoustic and Electric guitar, voice, a little bit of everything

Favorite genres/Music to play: Rock and roll, singer-songwriter, story-lead music, folk roots

Name: Madeleine Roger

Instruments: Guitar, piano, Mandolin, voice

Favorite Genres/Music to play: Rhythm instrumentation, singer-songwriter, folk roots

Roger Roger is a sibling folk/roots duo from Winnipeg, Canada. Twins Lucas and Madeleine Roger are both singer-songwriters who have joined forces, each playing guitar and shamelessly harmonizing all over each others' songs. The offspring of producer/engineer/musician Lloyd Peterson, the twins have a knack for songwriting that must have something to do with growing up in a recording studio. 

Before we started the interview, I had the great opportunity to hang out with Madeleine and Lucas over some tea as they shared stories of growing up together and how they got their adorable but temperamental cat "Turtle". I was able to hear the story of the unexpected birth of this charming duo and how their fun and enjoyable music came to be. This adorable and quirky pair are definitely some of the coolest performers in town.

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Ashley: You [Lucas] like rock and roll and you [Madeleine] like folk music?

Madeleine:  Oh I love rock too! In terms of playing, I’d love to be able to do something like thrash around, but that’s just not where I am right now. We grew up listening to a lot of rock music.

Lucas: The Who, Tom Petty (that’s a big one), the Hold Steady. It sounds nothing like our music, but we like it a lot. Deep purple, country-rock, Jayhawks, Canadian rock like Matt Mays and Joel Plaskett.

Madeleine: People who kind of walk the line between folk and rock. Ron Sexsmith is one of my favorites. I’m typically drawn to is singer-songwriter style music or people who are singing about stories. I ‘m really drawn to the lyrics and melodies.

Lucas: Even if it’s not a unique story; but the performer sings a normal topic in a really interesting, unique way. It’s always fun to hear a songwriter write like that. I think that’s what Ron Sexsmith does so well. He has really cool and interesting stories, like “Strawberry Blonde” and “Pretty Little Cemetery”; and then he has songs like “Clown in broad daylight” which is a song about a clown in broad daylight. You wouldn’t normally think of things like that but he just does it so well. That’s what I like in songwriters.

Madeleine: I think a lot of the art that I like, in many genres and aspects, has some kind of connection to human truth and there are many ways to access that kind of inspiration. I like it when someone puts their finger on something and an audience can listen to it or view it and think “I know exactly what that feels like” or things can just be amazing to listen to. If it’s something that sounds so incredible and imaginative that it’s a new way of hearing something.

Ashley: So you told me earlier you have been playing instruments since you were little, why did you decide to play together?

Lucas: At the time, we were both writing songs on the acoustic guitar. I had been playing in a rock-and-roll band that dissolved in a very healthy way. I took some time to enjoy writing songs on the acoustic guitar and singing them in the kitchen, waiting for the pasta to boil, and Madeleine would walk by and she would add a harmony line to the chorus. Then Madeline went away to the cottage by herself and wrote a bunch or really great songs and started playing them when she was waiting for her pasta to boil and I would hear her.

Madeleine: I would say it was almost accidental. When Lucas was in his rock back, I would hear them rehearsing in the basement and would be sitting at the top of the stairs singing along the entire time. They didn’t know and I probably actually didn’t want them to know that I was making up harmonizing tunes and blasting from my little haven in the kitchen. Then at some point, like Lucas said, I went out of town and started to write more. I had written a couple songs and I knew that I liked songwriting; but I didn’t really like the songs yet. So I thought maybe if I go somewhere and just focus on it for a while so I could figure out how to do it.

Lucas: Did some woodshedding.

Madeleine: Exactly. So when I came back, I remember being a little sneakier that Lucas said. I remember quietly playing the songs I had written in my bedroom. When I thought no one was home I would come down and play them in the living room. Lucas would come in and say “Hey whose song is that?” I would bashfully say, “Oh, it’s my song” and he would ask me to teach him. 

Lucas: In the winter, Madeleine works out at this ski hill and pretty much everyone who works there are musicians. They all like to get together and hang out.

Madeleine: The family that owns the resort is so wonderful and generous. They really have gathered this incredible community of artists around this resort and around that area. It brought together a lot of like-minded people.

Lucas: We had a chance to play some tunes out there. It was a lot of fun and then we started thinking we should see if we could play for the Young Performer’s Program at Folk Fest. I think that was the first things we tried to do together as a duo. We were going to need some demos, so we went on the computer and recorded some basic songs. It got to the point were we needed a name. It wasn’t a one day decision.

Madeleine: We maybe wouldn’t have realized it could work if we weren’t living together. We wanted to sing songs with other people and we were both here, so it just kind of made sense.

Ashley: So, how often do you guys practice your instruments, alone and together?

Lucas: Uh.. [laughs] Easy answer: not enough. I don’t spend a lot of time practicing to get better at the guitar. I probably should, I work all day on guitars and then go home and work on some guitars some more in my shop.

Madeleine: I think the nature of the work you do though has you noodling away on the guitar all day.

Lucas: Yeah, I guess so.

Madeleine: There you go, so you practice.

Lucas:  Yeah, you could say I practice 12 hours a day [laughs].

Madeleine: I also don’t spend much time sitting downtown to practice the instrument specifically. I try to play each instrument everyday, but most times, what seems to happen is when I sit down to try to learn a new song; I just deviate into songwriting. I can’t find myself actually focused on just the instruments for too long because I start to hear tidbits or lyrics and melodies in my head and I end up wanting to catch that. So I stop practicing and start songwriting. I’m starting to see songwriting as a practice in itself. I can happily spend four hours of an evening, just working on a song. And with the practice of songwriting, sometimes it resolves in nothing and sometimes it resolves in bad verses.

Lucas: That’s such a good thing though!

Madeleine: It’s so great! There’s a song you didn’t have to write.

Lucas: I find it so helpful to get past a song. Not to discard it completely or saying that’s awful. 

Madeleine: Just to be able to have the exercise. I’ve written a chorus and I don’t think a verse will come up and that’s okay. I can walk away from this and maybe something will come to me two months later. That’s been happening to me a lot lately. I have this book that collects all the lint and static and madness from my mind. I go through it periodically and see what’s in there from months ago. I might see something I’ll want to work on more. It’s amazing what can happen. I finished a song the other week that had been a couple chords and a couple lines that resurfaced from a year ago. 

Ashley: I’m glad I’m not the only one who has a crazy little book of music.

Madeleine: I would go absolutely mental if they were on just little scraps of paper or worse that I’d try to have my mind remember them. My phone is filled with little pieces too and I will often put them on paper. I always feel I have to catch that stuff. If I don’t it’s gone; which is okay too. 

Ashley: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

Lucas: Getting along?

Madeleine: Not killing each other. It’s amazing how we live together, we shared a womb, share an Instagram account, a bank account a house and a refrigerator and we don’t hate each other.

Lucas: Or we are really good at pretending! I think our greatest accomplishment is that we are setting a goal for something. Madeleine has been doing a lot of work in terms of preparing for the future and what we are working on. It was so much fun to play together in the Young Performer’s Program because we had been going to see performances there our whole lives and it was important for me to be on the other side of the microphone.

Madeleine: Even the other week, we had opened for Carly Dow’s CD release and played with the Crooked Brothers at the West End Cultural Centre. We had been going there since we were born. Our parents used to pack us up in snowsuits and blankets to haul us there two or three nights a week because our dad was often working or playing there. We would always be going there to see shows. We spent so much of our childhood falling asleep in that building. It was so exciting to play on the same stage where we watched so many of our favorite performers play. A whole bunch of our family and other Canadians musicians I’ve watched on that stage. It was pretty special to play that show with performers and artists that we really respect and love as human beings. It was so amazing.

Ashley: What advice do you have for beginners who are starting out who are nervous about getting out there?

Madeleine: The biggest thing I believe in is to go for it. There is nothing to gain from not trying. You have to just jump in.

Lucas: I would say the same thing. I wish I could tell myself that. I don’t open myself up much to playing with other people. I’m very reserved with how I play and write. I like to do it on my own. But, whenever I play with someone else I learn so much. Just have fun with it.

Madeline: Be nice to people!

Lucas: Write bad songs!

Madeleine: and get over it. Writing a song is an incredible thing. You took something that had nothing there and you turned it into something. That’s amazing! I also really believe it’s important to find other people who are your comrades; we can all help each other. People want to be touring, doing shows in town, recording, they want to be experience new instruments. They are all around us, we just need to find them and drink tea with them!

Ashley: How do you balance work and paying bills with your music.

Lucas: I don’t balance very well.

Ashley: How so?

Lucas: I put work at the top of the list and put everything else at an equal last place priority list. Lately I work eight hours a day and fix guitars then I come home and I work in the shop in our garage until 11:30pm. I’ll give myself time to eat and I can pay the bills; but I just shut everything off.

Madeleine: He’s also been doing fantastic things. Like he’s making me a new acoustic guitar. The guitar he plays is the first one he’s ever built. So we will both have instruments that’s he’s made. They will sound really great because they will have similar qualities.

Lucas: I’m working on making them complement each other well. I think it’s cool that madeleine and I just like making things. She draws, sews, makes kayak paddles, and whatever else she’s making.

Madeleine: And the moccasins I’m wearing!

Lucas: Yeah, it’s apart of who we are, so why not play on guitars I have made.

Madeleine: In terms of balancing, we are both trying to do a lot at once, sometimes it can be hard to focus, or figure out what we want to focus on. I’ve been having an easier time with it because I’m not working full-time. I’ve been able to put a lot of my efforts on navigating learning more about the music industry. I’m learning how to make grant applications, and what’s the best order or operations for releasing an album. That’s what I was talking about before with knowing other people in the industry.  Those people are so helpful. Every time I have a question, I feel like I have a couple people I can call up and ask about pieces of advice. Like booking a show or whatever the case may be.

Lucas: Madeleine is able to just tell me when something needs to be done. I’ll be doing something in the shop and she’ll come up to me and tell me that on Thursday we are going to the studio. If there isn’t a second party making that call, I won’t even be able to do it.

Madeleine: I’m making a lot of my work the administrative side of the music making process. I’ve actually found I quite enjoy it because it’s a lot of logistics and a puzzle needed to be put together. I’ve never really been okay planning two years in the future, Lucas can attest to this, I’m more of a traveler and a wanderer. I usually don’t stick around too often. It’s nice to have found something that I feel really solid and safe in planning two years in advance. This strange feeling of peace comes up when doing all this paperwork for planning, recording, releasing and marketing an album. I need to figure out audiences and what kind of playing we want to be doing for the next couple of years.

Ashley: What is your writing process?

Lucas: I hide away where no one can hear me and I don’t come out until it’s done. That’s probably a very basic answer. I often come up with the entire structure of the song on the guitar and then piece in words. I’ve only ever done the opposite once. I wrote the words down and then the music. It actually went really well so I maybe I should do that more often but; most of the time I hum along to a few chord progressions until something comes up.  I don’t co-write. Again, I’m very reserved. I don’t really do that.

Madeline: I love this question because it perfectly highlights the difference between Lucas and I. Lucas will write a song all at once or the same way every time, and always alone. Where as for more, it’s a choose your own adventure. I honestly have no set steadfast way of writing. Sometimes I write the lyrics first; sometimes I’ll write a melody and plug in the words later. Or I’ll be thinking about a topic a lot and I’ll decide to write a song about that story. One time I decided that I wanted to write a two-chord song and I sat down for a day. It really depends, I don think there are two songs that I’ve written that have been approached the same way. Maybe the first couple songs I wrote, but they were really directionless. I think I decided that I want to write a song and sat down at a guitar and plugged some meaningless words; but I quickly moved away from that to a completely scattered but intentional writing process. A couple times, I’ve had dreams where I’ll hear a song so I keep a journal beside my bed. There have been a couple times where I’ve gotten tidbits of songs from dreams and that’s really cool.  When that happens it feels like magic.

Ashley: What made you decide to make this upcoming album?

Madeleine: It’s time.

Lucas: It just came from looking forward to what we want; what we want to do. Like when we were talking earlier about the accomplishment of thinking of the future.

Madeleine: We have so many songs collectively. We have probably 50 finished songs between the two of us. That doesn’t include the bits and pieces that could turn into songs and those that are still brewing. When we play live we only play originals and we can play several sets of exclusively original songs. After most shows we have people coming up to us asking if we have an album for sale and we have to keep telling them no. We really want to start going on tour and see that it would be best to go with an album.

Lucas: Also venues want to see what kind of product you have. In terms of needing some kind of representation of what we are, we could have thrown up a couple microphones and done a demo but what we agreed upon was to make an album as best as it can possibly be. We realized this is the first one, and it we will be all over the place with ideas of what we want to do with it with how it should sound; but we want it to be done properly, in terms of how its produced and engineered and who else plays on it. We wanted all those aspects to be done professionally, not DIY. 

Madeleine: Even thought so much of what we do in the rest of our lives is DIY, we decided to take the opposite approach.

Lucas: we wanted to start with something we are proud of rather than worry that we don’t have representation online. We hear it all the time, people can’t find our music online. 

Madeleine: We made the conscious decision to not put music online until we have something we feel is really good quality, so the first time people hear our music, it’s something we are proud of and a true representation of our work.

Lucas: And until then, you can see us play live! 

Madeleine: Something else is, I want to make this first album so we can hurrying up and start making the second one. We have only been working on demos right now and it’s the most fun we have ever had. It’s so awesome.

Lucas: Recording is so great. We decided to, with our album, that we are going to have other people play with us. When we perform, we usually just have the two of us: two guitars and two voices. 

Madeleine: Believing that the art of recording is different than the art of performing live or song writing is a whole other entity. You have so many options available to you in a recording studio. It’s more opportunity to play with the songs you have created. Our songs have been growing and developing through the recording process, we have been changing things.

Lucas: When you hear it so many times, and you hear something you don’t like that you’re forced to fix it. It’s good to sit back and hear what you do. Although I’m very critical of myself when I record.

Madeleine: But who isn’t though?

Lucas: I just find doing vocal recordings to be so stressful because someone’s voice sounds slightly different then it does in their head. Or you’ll sing a take and you’ll think it sounds great but when you listen to it you’ll hear it wasn’t actually very good and you have so many things you need to fix and where to breathe and what to stress. 

Madeleine: We love that human quality of recordings though. We decided that we don’t want to make an immaculate album.

Lucas: That was another mutual decision.

Madeleine: We want to make an album that’s us: the real people. With all the flaws and all the moderate mis-chords that may occur.

Lucas: Maybe not so much mis-chords, but making a decision on vocal harmonies.  Some people want them to be bang on that it sounds great and match each other perfectly. There is a song we did the other night that with the feel of the song, even though the vocals didn’t line up it sounds kind of cool. It sounded like we were singing together than rounding off every corner and make it really comfortable. 

Madeleine: A lot of our favorite recordings, the older stuff, when the recording style was more analogue, you weren’t able to take as many takes as the digital world is able to offer. Those albums are filled with all kinds of things that now you wouldn’t often find. 

Those moments, where you hear something unintentional can turn into your favorite part of the song.  That’s the part you remember and you can picture the human in the room recording that part.

Ashley: Do you guys have any upcoming performances?

Lucas: We are playing at the Real Love Summer Festival, this summer in Gimli. It’s a good time.

Madeleine: We’ll be hosting some morning singer-songwriter workshops.

Lucas: some good friends of ours put on the festival and they do a really good job of making that happen; it’s a really cool thing. It’s good to be around people like that too, they said they were going to do something, and they did it. We are also performing at Folk Fest. We are doing the Young Performers again. 

Support Winnipeg Musicians Madeleine and Lucas Roger!

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Jun 6, 2015 at 8:59am PDT

If you like this post, please hit the like and share button below! Please reach out to me via Twitter or my contact page! I would love to hear anything you have to say! Really, anything. I'm lonely. Also I now have a new Facebook page that will let you know when each post is posted! I would really appreciate if you could like it! Thank you!

Genre(s): Alternative, Folk, Indie, Pop

Instruments: Drums, Piano, Alto Sax, Guitar

I had never met Ty before this interview so I was really nervous meeting him. I realized right away that he is actually really cool and super easy to talk to! It didn't really feel like I was interviewing him, it was more like we were having a nice and friendly conversation. We actually lost a chunk of the recording, so I missed some really cool stories Ty shared with me; but I still learned so much from him. Check it out!

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Ashley: How often and how long do you practice as a band?

Ty: Practicing in a band is much different from practicing on your own. If we have a show coming up and we feel really comfortable with the set, we will just play through start to finish. If we notice there is something off, that’s a little funny. We stop and work at that part. We’ll try to break it down if it’s a rhythmic thing, make sure out harmonies are correct, that we can hear each other, or see some parts are overbearing. If we find a particular line that we keeping flubbing up, we will work on it. If we do have something coming up, the main thing is we practice out set and transitions to make sure there is no dead weight.  We practice for the stage.

A: Who inspires you musically?

T: Everybody. Mostly. My dad was a big influence because he was always playing when I was little. He was in a funk/R&B/blues band so I grew up on a lot of Motown,  Marvin Gaye and Wilson Pickett. They played a lot of 80s and 90s so a lot of funk and rhythm sensibilities that I picked up early on translated well into soloing and grooves. Later on when I was learning piano, I got into classical and rock piano like Elton John. Also lots of classical rock, alt. pop, blues for soloing, and jazz because I was in jazz band in middle school. 

A: What kind of music did you learn for each instrument you played?

T: In terms of piano, when I was taking lessons at my neighbors, it would have been a lot of pop stuff from all over the place while using early technique books and stuff like that. The first time I focused on classical music was my grade 5 Royal Conservatory of Music exam for the high school credit. I also wanted to make sure I had something in my back pocket for teaching, and grade 5 seemed like a good benchmark. I ‘ve always had classical training but started jazz band in school. I also did a little jazz on the guitar for a little bit on the drums. In band class I was playing tenor and alto sax also upright.

A: What got the band Sc Mira together?

T: Well it started with the singer Sadie and I. I was a producer for a couple of her first acoustic folk songs and then we started writing together. A year and a half ago we were started as a duo, but decided we wanted it to be a full band. 

A: So then, what accomplishments are you most proud of?

T: Teaching little kids. I teach at a unique place, where at the end of the year instead of a concert or recital; we put all the kids into small bands. We then have five weeks of them rehearsing together on the same song. When you have these 6 year old on stage completely on their own, playing a rock or blues song, I guess it’s not my own accomplishment, but when I see them on the stage the feeling is so neat.

A: What do you like most about being a musician?

T: The biggest reason I like being a musician is because I’m good at it.  I mean that sounds arrogant but I feel that’s fair to say. For a lot of things that people do, if you’re good at something you generally follow that path. I’m good at it and I like it. It’s an artistic challenge. It’s logical challenge with pattern forming; mathematics, science and art components. It makes people happy and you get to share that with them. You go on stage and let go, play characters if you want. Open up and tell stories. As lame as it sounds, you reach for the stars. You get to travel or tour and play with other people. I love how you get to connect with others that are not a necessarily normal [way to communication with others], like talking. It’s kind of like an extra level of interacting with people. No one really knows why he or she makes music. I think I’m just making excuses as to why I make music [laughs].

A: What advice would you give to beginners who are just starting out?

T: Suck it up, [laughs] in the nicest way possible! For me, I still get extremely nervous. Not as much in the last year or so, but I would be terrified about doing any kind of performing with other people. I still get nervous. I don’t know how I got through it all those years or what kept me going; but there is always going to be some kind of nerves with showing something so personal to other people.  It takes guts to get out there. It’s not something everyone deals with on a daily basis. It’s not like your forced to go and play songs with everyone from the day you are born - like talking and walking. It’s still interesting that we don’t really understand why we connect to others with music so much.

To come out and say “ Hey I play music” and sharing such an intimate part of your like can be daunting. So to get over it, just close your eyes and jump off the cliff. Baptism by fire is the absolute best option for me. Some of the biggest things I’ve have to overcome, like when I played at the MTS Centre, that was the absolutely terrifying. If I had sat back and thought about it like “oh no I can’t do this, I’m going to mess up” I would have started doubting myself and throwing all of these things in the air that hadn’t been there before. I just closed my eyes, closed my ears, shut up and went out and did it. When I finished, the adrenaline and the feeling of accomplishment were amazing and there are very few things that match that feeling. On the flip side and you do go and make a mistake or embarrass yourself, which I have don’t countless of times, it will freak you out for a bit but it gives you really good incentive to never to that again.

Trust your gut. Trust your talent. Don’t listen to the voices in your head, just listen to the feelings; because that’s what music is. It’s feeling not thinking.

A: How do you balance music with your other obligations?

T: I’ve managed to turn music into my obligation. For example, being able to teach music as a job. I also do composing and songwriting or I produce and mix for bands, TV shows and movies; so that fits in really well. It’s difficult. But, the more I focus, the more it’s easier to become apart of my work and school life. It’s definitely a juggling act. You’ll find yourself  saying “I really want to work on this right now but I have an exam tomorrow” and it’s unfortunate. I could be 100% invested in music but it would make life very difficult at the moment. 

A: What is your common and successful songwriting process?

T: I would say there are three main ways I personally go about it:

1.     Someone needs a song. You sit down and say. “Okay I need to come up with something.“ It’s not very inspirational; but the music will be good! The music sensibility will still be there, but you’re being told to write something. The producer will tell me  “I need this, I need that” and I work on something and send it to them. They’ll tell me what they like and what they don’t and I’ll keeping working on it until it’s completed. That’s the least creative way. It’s still fun, it’s just a different kind of challenge. You’re trying to work to someone else’s schedule.

2.     The second way to compose is in a group, where I might start with some kind of melody or structure and sit down at the rest of the group saying “here I have this, I don’t know where it’s going. “ I’ll play something, they’ll play something; they’ll sing something, I’ll sing something.” We’ll sit together and work on a tune or two. It might take a day or a week; but the entire band works together. It’s really interesting because you get everyone’s different ideas. It’s like sculpting a weird sculpture with everyone brining his or her own chisel. It’s a very interesting process. A good team-building project.

3.     The last way to compose is the most personal way. It’s 100% just myself. I’ll hear a tidbit of a song and immediately have cogs turning in my head and out of nowhere I’ll coming up with a melody. Sometimes it can be quick, other times it will take forever. Many items it just clicks: BOOM, there it is. You’ll get an idea and sit down with it. Just keeping at it and building on it. Lots of times that will be without any instruments in front of me.  When I have something I like, I’ll run to an instrument to try it out. I’ll even try to record it to make sure I don’t forget it. I usually don’t but it’s a good safety net. The third option is the way I write most of my own personal stuff. 

A: Anything you are currently working on that you would like to share? Upcoming performances?

T: Nothing until the EP or Album release. We are releasing it at the West End Cultural Centre in June. Once we finish that show, we are going on the road for three weeks. We have a big tour across Canada and the United States planned. 

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on May 22, 2015 at 6:00pm PDT

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Instrument(s): Opera Voice, Guitar, Piano, Flute, Drums, Bass, Mandolin 

Genre(s): Classical, some jazz, classic and progressive/art rock

Tristan Zaba is a Canadian composer, arranger, producer, and instrumentalist. In 2012, he released his first album, Thoughts Past Pondered, and released his second album, In The Round, in 2014 with his band ZABA. Both albums feature the band's progressive rock style bringing in modern influences such as Steven Wilson, Rush, Jethro Tull, and Pink Floyd. Currently he is studying music composition with the Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba.

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Ashley: Let's start with you telling me how long have you been playing?

Tristan: I have been playing guitar since I was in grade 1, but I don't have much formal training. Actually, I never really received any formal training on guitar, but I’ve always made an effort to drill myself technically so I consider myself decent with classical and jazz technique.

As far as the instrument I’ve studied the longest in a formal setting I would have to say is voice. I’ve been singing opera for 6 or 7 years now. I trained when I was living back in Calgary.

A: That’s where you are from, right?

T: Yeah, I’m from near Calgary but I was originally born in Toronto.

A: Did you move to Winnipeg for school?

T: Yeah, I did. I’m living in residence right now, and I came here because I’m a composer. The composition program had a really good offer. It came down between this and McGill and this seemed like a way better choice.

A: How so?

T: I was accepted at a few places, like University of Victoria, UBC, McGill, University of Manitoba and University of Western Ontario. For each university, I was accepted into their direct entry composition. The thing is, at McGill they have the largest number of music students of any school in north america in terms of sheer numbers, and it’s not huge in the composition faculty. I mean, there are only 8 students here. But there is not nearly as much flexible [at McGill]. Yeah, they are going to give you a great training but, it’s extremely regimented and you know exactly what you are going to be doing for your entire degree. They have it all mapped out.

Here at the University of Manitoba, it’s extremely free. I’m getting the same sort of training as I would at McGill; but I can also get away with a lot more. Gordon Fitzell and Orjan Sandred are fantastic composers. If I want to compose an opera or a chamber opera, even in my first year, I can get that performed. It’s great. That would never happen in McGill, not for awhile at least. Definitely not in the early years.

A: So how hard do you push yourself when you practice? How often and how long?

T: The thing is because I played so many instruments, it’s hard to say. What I perform on most with is voice, I do recitals every now and then and perform in my own compositions. And now I’m currently in the Manitoba Opera Chorus for their production Turandot. But for that, I don’t practice as much as I should. I practice maybe a couple hours once or twice a week; but the thing is it’s different because I’m doing a lot of practicing anyway. I’ve got opera rehearsal from 7:00 to 10:00pm every single night except Thursdays and Sundays so I’m doing so much singing anyways. I just don’t want to spend the extra time on it right now.

A: So when you are practicing, what are you doing - exercises, new music, technique, etc?

T: Actually when I practice on most instruments the first thing I think about it tone production.

A: What does that mean?

T: On flute especially when I’m practicing long tones there are extremely specific ways to get a really good tone and there are slight changes between octaves. And I think with singing and with wind instruments, it’s all about proper breathe support and from there you can kind of work on your tone so it comes a lot easier.

Piano and I have an interesting relationship. I had already learned a lot of instruments before I started playing it. I didn’t learn any piano for a long time but then university started coming up and I thought to myself “Oh I better start learning piano.” and after two years I went from knowing nothing to grade 8 Royal Conservatory. I did the same thing with theory.

When I’m practicing anything with dedication for a performance, it’s important to focus on the small sections that you can never get. Because those are the sections you really need to go over. When I was practicing piano every day, my mom would freak out at me because I was playing a measure and a half for an hour before I would move on and it drove her nuts.

A: Who inspires you musically when you are composing or performing?

T: I’m going to say Frank Zappa. He was a classical composer active from maybe mid 60s to the mid 90s. But he was one of those 1970s counter-culture figures. He was a classical composer that did everything else, like jazz and rock.

A: Like you?

T: Kind of like me, but he had a lot more attitude. He blends everything into everything else. He realized that it’s extremely hard to make money as a classical composer in this day and age, so the best thing to do is diversify and he did it without compromising which is really cool!

When you listen one of his rock albums, there are atypical instrumentation and all sorts of bizarre classical stuff. His classical is just off the wall and the amount of material he wrote was just unbelievable. He released 100 albums and he only lived to 55. It’s totally bizarre. If you listen to his jazz, it’s all mixed up with that stuff too. He is also extremely famous for basically pissing everyone off.

A: Anyone else?

T: There are people who have really inspired me on different instruments. In composition, Zappa is one of the composers I’m really influenced by; but, I’m also really influenced by Richard Wagner because I grew up on his music. I was immersed in his music as a kid. I went to see The Ring Cycle live in Toronto when I was in grade 5 or 6 and it made a huge impact me. I really enjoyed it.

As far as other composers go, I really enjoy Ligeti and some other minimalists. There is a lot of stuff I’m into but I try to blend it. On the rock side of things, I love David Gilmore from pink floyd. I love his guitar playing and I decided I wanted to play like him. Then I got to a point where I was like “okay, I can play like David Gilmore, now what?” and since then I’ve learned a lot more since learning to play like that.

A: What accomplishments are you most proud of?

T: It’s hard because music has always been such a huge part of my life. If I weren’t doing music I would have no idea what I would be doing. I can’t think what my life would be like without music. As far as my greatest accomplishments, I’m proud of my second album. My rock album “In the Round” that I released last year. It’s hard, I feel accomplished about certain things about certain pieces too.

A: What advice would you give to beginners who are just starting out performing or starting composition or maybe starting to get out there?

T: I’m pretty sure everyone giving advice to upcoming musicians would say “put in the time man, practice” and that’s part of it but I think the biggest part of music or being a good musician and creating music people with appreciate, is understanding what music really is and what it’s meant for. This is kind of weird answer, but in a philosophical way, but what it the music is supposed to mean to the performer and the audience? When you love a piece a music, what is it you love about it? And you do want other people to feel that way with whatever music you are producing? I think if you understand that, there is that underlying drive that is going to make you practice.

A: How do you balance your music with your other obligations?

T: Music takes up a huge portion of my life, and it has for a long time. I took a gap year before I came [to university] where I basically just practiced. I’m also a black belt in tae kwon do, but I haven’t been keeping up with it since I moved because there aren’t any schools in Winnipeg that studies my style. This year, I have been really buckling down about making everything about music. I have many commitments mostly music oriented. 

One exception, I guess, is I have been doing other classes. I’m in an english class on the thematic approaches to the study of literature with a focus on horror literature. I just got a paper back from my professor that he is wanting me to revise and actually submit for publication. So I’m going to see how that works out.

A: Anything you are currently working on or that you are preparing that you would care to share?

T: Composition wise maybe not so much as I’m starting to buckling down to prepare for juries; but, I have a new band together here in Winnipeg that I’ve been working with for the past couple of months. We’ve been meeting weekly and working on the material from my most recent CD. We’ve got a reasonably big upcoming show with DNA DAY downtown at 72 Princess street on April 24th, 2015. I will be playing guitar and singing. Also Bryson Debroni will be playing drums and Nicolas Pura will be on bass. 

A photo posted by Ashley Bieniarz (@ashleybieniarz) on Apr 7, 2015 at 1:00pm PDT

Support Winnipeg Musician Tristan Zaba!

If you like this post, please hit the like and share button below! Please reach out to me via Twitter or my contact page! I would love to hear anything you have to say! Really, anything. I'm lonely. Also I now have a new Facebook page that will let you know when each post is posted! I would really appreciate if you could like it! Thank you!