SCAD Radio volunteer Elliot Ferro chatted with Kyle of post-punk group MammaBear.
Your songs definitely vary. Some are super hard rock and others are soft and melodic. I hear some punk, and maybe a little psychedelia? What is the process behind it? Where does your inspiration for your music come from?
Kyle- I usually am just playing guitar at home. I only play the acoustic when I’m by myself, and I’m really into music that’s got really good rhythm, so I tend to not finish an idea unless I’m bobbing my head. I never approach like “oh, I’m gonna write a punk song, I’m gonna write this song”. It’s kind of being creative on my own… I love to be alone in that moment because I can throw spaghetti on the wall ‘til something sticks. I grew up listening to The Beatles, and one thing I really respected about them was that none of their albums sounded the same.
You’re originally from Atlanta. Could you tell me what the rock scene is like there and what it was like to start there?
When I was young, I was in a band with my buddies in high school and we really loved Nirvana, we loved Oasis, we loved The Beatles… I lived down in Atlanta for at least 10-15 years. Growing up down there, there was all kinds of fantastic bands, especially in the early 2000s. So many wonderful bands that never really got off the ground. More unique and interesting than any band I played with from out of town. We’d play with bands from Chicago, New York, anywhere, and it was never the same. There was just something about Atlanta, something about the collision of R&B and hip-hop with rock & roll.
I know there’s a huge hip-hop scene in East Atlanta. Do you feel like you have to carve out your own little rock sphere living there or is it all collided and mixed?
It was never like “I gotta conquer this, I gotta fit in here”… I’ve known people that’ve made hip-hop, I know people that make metal music, and to me it’s just a really nice collage of sound down here.
Your videos are all very eye catching. What goes into the production and thinking behind them?
For me, I’ve been in 5-6 projects throughout the 18 years I’ve been making music, and those projects usually lasted two years. One album, a burst of really cool energy in the beginning, and then stagnation, and then the band breaks up. So I formed MammaBear in the hopes to never stagnate, never have an argument with anyone, make the music I wanna make the way I wanna make it… Since those bands would break up after two years we’d never make a music video, so there’s virtually no proof we ever existed because music platforms that exist now didn’t exist [then]. With Mammabear, I wanted to make music videos because I never got a chance to do that in the past… I do not EVER wanna be thought of as “sex, drugs, and rock & roll”, I think that’s such f*ckin’ bullsh*t. The biggest lie sold to young kids… I just wanted to make videos that resonated with me, that had a bit of humor in them.
Can you tell us what we can expect from your new album SAY?
SAY is an attempt at trying to recreate something closer to what we’re doing actually live. We’re a three-piece band so I try to nix how much stuff I put in there, like we don’t need a fourth guitar line, who the f*ck is gonna play the other three guitar lines if it’s just me playing guitar on stage?
MammaBear will be performing live @ 529 Bar in Atlanta, GA on Friday, June 21st, 2019.
