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.

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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.

The post Interview With Atlanta-based Post Punk Outfit MammaBear appeared first on SCAD Radio.

Your next album Scorpio Moon is out May 31st. Can you describe the new LP in one sentence?

Sara Rachele- Like Emmylou Harris fell down a well and turned into Alice in Wonderland.

Your music combines a lot of elements from folk, country, and pop rock. How do you pull it all together to make the style that you like?

I grew up listening to a lot of ‘60s pop and for me, the music that I listen to directly informs what I write. I grew up in the South and growing up in Georgia, it sounds a little bit like Americana, but then listening to a lot of old music makes it sound [older]. I think that’s why it comes off as a little folk, a little Americana, a little old school.

In an age where more musicians are creating music that’s more slowed down and chill, how does your music fit into that landscape?

I just kinda ignore the landscape. I don’t know, but I imagine if you ask other artists who are making more dreamy, studio-based music, they’d probably say they ignore it, too. They just make what they wanna make. So for me, I just make what I wanna make.

Your lyrics can be really melancholic. Do they come from lived experience or are they impersonal and just there to help set the mood of a song?

It depends, I generally write from stories of my own. If they’re not autobiographical, I’ll write some stories I have heard, stories that I find interesting to tell. On this album [Scorpio Moon], there’s songs that have previously been recorded by other recording artists, but beyond that, these songs are autobiographical in nature.

Who would you want to collaborate with in the future?

Oh, man. There’s so many people! Anybody? Alive or dead? Phil Spector. Which I know is impossible, but you never know!

(laughs)

Your Instagram is very eccentric; lots of black and white photos with interesting quotes. What thought goes behind the posts you make?
I grew up in a family of artists, like, visual artists. I’m a pretty terrible digital artist. I like photography a lot, so a lot of what’s on my Instagram is stuff that I’ve shot myself. A lot of that is stuff that I find interesting artistically, whether it’s something I’m working on, something I’m going through, but I love monochrome and I feel really at home with analog music recording as well as 35mm film. I think what goes behind that is a large question, but I’d love to do a photo show at some point and delve a little bit more into how that goes. I write poetry outside of my music, that’s a place where I kind of connect words, visuals, and music altogether.

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