SCAD Radio volunteers Jake Sherry and Elliot Ferro chatted up Dove McHargue, the chair of SCAD\u2019s Sequential Art department and avid musician, fresh off his new album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019re from the south, does your music have any southern influence?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s B-Sides<\/em>\u2026 But definitely [rock], soul, R&B, maybe even a little gospel and funk, that\u2019s what I was raised on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You have a new album out called <\/strong>Hurricane Fire<\/strong><\/a><\/em>. Describe it in one sentence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I would say it\u2019s groove oriented R&B and \u201880s synthwave inspired music. It’s all pop kind of music\u2026 It\u2019s 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 \u201860s soul. But recently I\u2019ve become a fan of St. Vincent, so there\u2019s definitely a couple of songs in the album that you listen to where you can hear that nasty fuzz guitar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s your favorite record by Saint Vincent?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The one with \u201cRattlesnake\u201d on it, Saint Vincent<\/em>. I knew the guy who mastered the album. The guy who mastered my album actually mastered my first one, Intake<\/a><\/em>. I was sending him tracks and he said \u201chave you ever heard of St. Vincent?\u201d And I hadn\u2019t. I mean, I\u2019d heard of her because of the guitar she plays, but then I went and watched her and I was like, \u201coh, my gosh, this person is amazing!\u201d… She can play all these melodies while singing. It\u2019s a very unique, original sound that\u2019s very hard to find in pop music now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How long have you been working on your album?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You guys are artists as well, if I asked you how long you\u2019ve been working on that image you\u2019re working on, you might say a day or two, but in reality it\u2019s been your whole life… It\u2019s been working up to that peak of the iceberg, but underneath the water is all this experience you\u2019ve had\u2026 I\u2019ve 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\u2019s free on Bandcamp. It\u2019s called Purple Politicians<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What made you want to make it in the first place?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019t have to worry about writing music. I could cover, rearrange, produce, and practice production of music\u2026 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jake- You and I are both musicians and sequential artists, and I\u2019ve 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?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I think music is a beautiful storytelling device, and we\u2019re 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\u2019re doing with your visual stuff. They strengthen each other for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would you ever consider playing your material live?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not out to make a ton of money doing these\u2026 but the way to really actually make money, for any aspiring musicians listening: selling music that\u2019s 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s next?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a>, it’s about a sad sketchbook. It\u2019s artist-related stuff, that students at SCAD would find entertaining and funny or interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n