SCAD Radio volunteers Jake Sherry and Elliot Ferro chatted up Dove McHargue, the chair of SCAD’s Sequential Art department and avid musician, fresh off his new album.
You’re from the south, does your music have any southern influence?
I have a music undergrad, so I studied jazz guitar, and played in a band called The Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. Long, weird name, but most of us went to jazz school together, and before we graduated, we started playing music and making albums. I was on the first five albums that they put out and toured for a while… I think I grew up listening to probably one of the biggest influences ever: if you listen to my first solo album that I put out last year, it sounds like Prince’s B-Sides… But definitely [rock], soul, R&B, maybe even a little gospel and funk, that’s what I was raised on.
You have a new album out called Hurricane Fire. Describe it in one sentence.
I would say it’s groove oriented R&B and ‘80s synthwave inspired music. It’s all pop kind of music… It’s really tough because the album is a collection of songs that kind of hang together. I wanted it to feel somewhat like an old soul record, which is why if you see the album cover, it kind of feels like it might have been a throwback to ‘60s soul. But recently I’ve become a fan of St. Vincent, so there’s definitely a couple of songs in the album that you listen to where you can hear that nasty fuzz guitar.
What’s your favorite record by Saint Vincent?
The one with “Rattlesnake” on it, Saint Vincent. I knew the guy who mastered the album. The guy who mastered my album actually mastered my first one, Intake. I was sending him tracks and he said “have you ever heard of St. Vincent?” And I hadn’t. I mean, I’d heard of her because of the guitar she plays, but then I went and watched her and I was like, “oh, my gosh, this person is amazing!”… She can play all these melodies while singing. It’s a very unique, original sound that’s very hard to find in pop music now.
How long have you been working on your album?
You guys are artists as well, if I asked you how long you’ve been working on that image you’re working on, you might say a day or two, but in reality it’s been your whole life… It’s been working up to that peak of the iceberg, but underneath the water is all this experience you’ve had… I’ve been working on this maybe two years, off and on… I had a Prince tribute album that I put out on the anniversary of his death that was me covering a bunch of unusual B-side Prince songs, and some of them are done just radically different than he did. That’s free on Bandcamp. It’s called Purple Politicians.
What made you want to make it in the first place?
I started doing my own music about 3-4 years ago. I thought the best way to [start] would be a cover album, so I didn’t have to worry about writing music. I could cover, rearrange, produce, and practice production of music… I wanted to honor Prince- it was the year of his passing. I also thought it would be a great way to practice making/recording music as a producer and an engineer.
Jake- You and I are both musicians and sequential artists, and I’ve met a lot of other people in our field that partake in a musical hobby. Would you say that working in a silent medium is part of the reason we desire a sonic outlet?
I think music is a beautiful storytelling device, and we’re storytellers, it’s what we do. [The audio story] goes hand in hand with that visual story. You learn about pacing in song. You learn about arcs and story shape. All of that goes directly into what you’re doing with your visual stuff. They strengthen each other for sure.
Would you ever consider playing your material live?
I’m not out to make a ton of money doing these… but the way to really actually make money, for any aspiring musicians listening: selling music that’s recorded, you really have to play out… To do the music as it is on the album [live], I would need backup singers and horn players and the whole bit. I would love to have that, so if anyone wants to volunteer an entire rhythm section, let’s do it!
What’s next?
I have more albums coming, there’s gonna be one a year. One I want to put up next is an art album. Now that sounds weird, but I already have a song on Instagram, it’s about a sad sketchbook. It’s artist-related stuff, that students at SCAD would find entertaining and funny or interesting.
For more on this SCAD professor’s music career, click here.
