– What’s new in the world of Psycle? Spending time working on projects?
We are about to release our new album titled “Kill the Machine” on June 16th. Our first single which was the title track dropped on March 24th and the second single “Changing Tide” drops on May 5th.
– Let’s talk about a day in the life of a musician in the studio. How do you spend your time in the studio?
I love the studio and the ability to have such an open atmosphere for creating. To me one of the most important things is to make sure you have your parts down, your ideas together and make sure you warm up before you get there. Time is money and if you want the best product you must be prepared. It all depends on the producer on how their sessions will go but generally we work on getting the drums down first. We will create scratch tracks first of guitars and vocals and then complete the drum tracks. From their it’s usually bass, then rhythm guitars, solos then vocals last.
– How important is artwork for singles or albums?
Me personally I think the cover art is incredibly important. It needs to catch people’s eye so that you have a chance of them wanting to listen. Anything to get ahead of other people can help because there are so many great artists out there.
– When writing a song, is there such a thing as investing too much time? What’s the shortest time you ever took to write one? What was your strangest inspiration?
I can only speak for us but I think you can get to a point of overthinking and sometimes you second guess inspiration. However, once we have a song in place, we will play it and rehearse it like crazy until it feels like as our bass player Mike says “an old pair of boots”. Only then will you know it’s ready. The shortest time for me to ever write a song was one shower. I do my best thinking in the shower and I had all the lyrics written so I had to scurry to write them down once I was out.
– Do you follow a formula when you write?
Never, ever. I always let it happen the way it feels natural. There is a cadence to writing songs as including verses and choruses but never in terms of this has to be at this point in the song or at that time. You can get pigeon holed very quickly doing that.
– How important is merchandising? Could artists survive without?
I think that you have to create a brand to go with your music to make yourself recognizable. Without that you are just another band. I don’t think you can survive with out it. I think you will get caught in the waves of others working their hardest
– What would be some of your main musical influences today?
Alter Bridge is definitely one of them. I have tried to open myself up more these days to be influenced by some newer artists. I always seem to go back to the things that influenced me earlier like The Beatles and a lot of the 90’s Seattle sounds. I have been on a huge Big Wreck kick lately and Ian Thornley is to me the complete package.
– What would we be surprised to find in your music collection at home?
Hall and Oates…love them.
– How important is it for a musician in this generation to spend time on social media?
Social media is a necessary evil but as we have seen, you have to be very careful with what you say and how you interact with people. I think you should only use it as a platform to push your music and content and not get into any politic debates. That stuff should be left outside of the realm of your music.
– With the music industry shutting down presently. How are you dealing with these issues?
I have been trying to write and perform for people online to try to help and give back. I think as artists we have the ability to help other by giving them an outlet. I want to give that to people as much as I can.