Divides Interview with CJ Marie: Lead Vocals / Keys Bryan Calhoon: Lead and Rhythm Guitar Joe Jackson: Bass / Backup Vocals Corey Rainey: Drums Paul Anderson : Guitar / Backup Vocals.
Divides Interview
– What’s new in the world of Divides?
Divides’ Joe: We just filmed a brand new music video! That was a lot of fun, but we’re all pretty beat up and bruised from that.
Divides’ Corey: Excuse me?
Divides’ Paul: Ok everyone except Corey, he’s practically made of weapon-grade titanium.
Divides’ CJ: We’ll be putting that one out in just a couple weeks, just after Brokentooth drops. Speaking of which, we just got the physical copies in today, that was pretty cool.
Divides’ Bryan: Now that we have the actual CD’s I’m pretty sure that’s all we’re going to be listening to on the road for a while.
– How was it recording your album Brokentooth? Also where did the title come from?
Joe: Recording it was an amazing experience, we got to work with Casey Bates which was just a great process for us. We got the offer very suddenly, so even though we had a lot of pre-production done, we had to rush to finish up. I think we ended up finishing three of the songs in around 36 hours.
Paul: We did demos for everything here in Portland at Hip Stew Studios. We kinda ran through everything and sent it to Casey, and he told us what he liked, and what we should probably change. Overall he was pretty much just like, “keep it brief”.
CJ: We definitely toned down a lot of our verbosity. We tend to be a little long-winded sometimes, but it was good to trim the fat. It was a little hard during the recording process since we couldn’t all be there in the studio at the same time, everyone had to record their parts at different times.
Paul: But I mean we really rehearsed the hell out of these songs. Pre-production was really extensive and any adjustments were sort of made on the fly. Putting the microscope on every little part really made a difference. Casey would say “does that part really need to be there?” and invariably the answer was no.
CJ: The title of the album we actually had a really hard time with, because we’re sort of perfectionists. Nothing really felt right at first, the album itself just covers so many different topics and has so many different styles; it was hard to sum it up. The name Brokentooth is the name of a mountain in Alaska, and subsequently the name of a brewing company in Anchorage associated with our favorite restaurant there, The Moose’s Tooth.
Joe: So we landed on that as sort of a nod to our Alaskan roots. Also, ironically enough, CJ had a tooth literally break and fall out of her mouth during the process of writing this album, it was super gross.
CJ: Ha, so yeah, there were a lot of reasons behind it. All in all we just kind of came to a moment after all the arguing about the name, sort of a parting in the clouds like, “Yes, this is the one.”
Paul: Plus it just sounds badass.
CJ: There is also that.
– Must be an awesome feeling when your singles do so well. The current singles “Drag the River” and “Echoes Fade” has great quality footage. How long was the process for these videos?
CJ: Well the process was definitely pretty long on my end, since I do all the editing and post-production on our videos. So filming is a very packed and intense process in and of itself, but then there’s just hours and hours after that spent going through and shaping everything into the final product.
Joe: There’s plenty beforehand as well, all of the brainstorming sessions, storyboarding, reviews and edits of the script and specific shots. We’ve been lucky enough to work with Scotty Fisher of The Fight Design Photography; he’s always been so great to work with. He’s been with us since the “I Guess Love’s a Funny Thing” video. He’s super flexible, he can take an idea and run with it, or rework things so they flow better aesthetically.
CJ: He’s sort of our “unofficial” official photographer. It’s been really cool to sort of test our limits and see how good of a video we can make ourselves, on next to no budget. Initially we had planned to spend money working with people who do this professionally. We tried working with a few people, but things kept falling through with various videographers and we needed to get the video out. Eventually when we were getting crunched for time we just said “fuck it” and we did that video ourselves. It turned out great and since then we just started running with that. Overall I’d say roughly 50 hours per video. It’s a lot of work but it’s so great to be able to put it out on such cool outlets and we really get to celebrate the fact that it’s all DIY.
– When writing a song, is there such a thing as investing too much time?
Bryan: Yes there is. What I find best is to invest as little time as possible and then let you guys run with the rest. But it’s funny, we have songs like Echoes Fade which were written really quickly on a time crunch, but then we have songs like Splay which we have been working on in some way or another since this band started.
Paul: Yeah, for example, Vines and Thorns took CJ and I maybe twenty minutes to write. It came to us just so easily.
CJ: He started playing this on guitar and I had just written those lyrics. Those lyrics are just about putting everything you have into something and being sure that no one is going to give a shit.
Paul: So pursuing a career in the music industry.
CJ: It’s pretty much a toss-up for us, cause yeah, Splay was written so early on, almost three years ago, but it wasn’t finished until after I finished tracking the vocals for the actual album. Casey made some last minute changes to the vocal line in the chorus and it completely changed the way the song comes across. Whereas with Vines and Thorns it happened so quickly because it just immediately felt right.
Paul: I’m really not used to writing in a collaborative unit like this, so that’s been an interesting new challenge for me. But it works well because writing with Bryan is totally easy for me. He and I both come about this the same way. We don’t go into it with a whole lot of pretense; we’re not precious with our parts.
Bryan: We have a solid idea, but if it’s not working with the song it doesn’t stay. We still get across the idea we are trying to convey to people.
Paul: Bryan is pretty much the Spaceman and I’m Ground Control over here.
– What is the strangest inspiration you’ve ever had for a song?
Bryan: I don’t know, all of mine come from sort of the same place: whatever sounds good.
Paul: For me it’s very much based in state of mind at the time. I’ll either write songs out of sheer happiness, utter aggression, or total melancholy. I guess I’m more inspired by mood than any event.
CJ: Yeah, all of the songs on this record are really visceral, I guess Drag the River is kinda the weirdest song on the album.
Bryan: Well that one would be weird if you wrote it down into sheet music, but it doesn’t come across as strange, it all flows together.
CJ: It flows, but we definitely went outside the box on that one. I was in a really fucked up place writing those lyrics. It was trying to express thoughts of wanting to hurt yourself without condoning that or making that your message. It has a lot of intensity, but that makes it a great song to play live.
– Do you have any tours coming up in the near future?
CJ: We do! In about a week, August 5th we’re doing a short North West mini-tour with some good friends of ours from Alaska in the band The Quiet Cull. They were good friends of ours up in Anchorage and we’re really excited to have them down here and playing with us. Hopefully heading down to California later this year to hit up some of the South West US.
– Could you describe what goes on in a day in your life as a musician on tour?
Bryan: (making snoring noises)
CJ: Ha, basically all we do is sleep.
Paul: Well you three sleep; Bryan and I switch off driving the van and getting us where we need to be.
Corey: Yeah it takes me about two minutes once the van starts moving and I’m passed out.
Joe: But then as soon as he gets out of the van he’s all over the place, bouncing off the walls. Touring around definitely brings out the weird in us.
Bryan: There’s just a lot of waiting around. Between the times we have to be somewhere, to when we’re supposed to load in, then till we actually play.
Joe: There will be times when we’re driving and the van will just be totally silent, then five minutes later we’ll be having the most detailed, in-depth conversations between people, it’s great.
CJ: I’ve always wanted to record their conversations without them knowing and turn that into a podcast at some point. It would be hilarious. Maybe I still will one day.
– Could you describe some of your earliest influences in life and in music?
CJ: The Cats Musical. I was literally singing along to that shit before I was even talking as a kid. I would run around the house with a pair of pantyhose wrapped around my waist like a tail just singing these songs. Then years later I saw the movie Josie and the Pussycats, that’s pretty much when I decided I was going to be a rockstar.
Bryan: For me, as far as life influence, it would definitely be my grandparents on my dad’s side. I definitely wouldn’t have the work ethic I do without them. Musically I have to say it would be The Deftones and Nirvana. If it wasn’t for those two bands I probably wouldn’t be doing this right now. The first song I ever played air-guitar to was My Own Summer. Then the first album I remember buying on my own was probably Bleach, it just had a big impact on me.
Paul: Honestly I was probably more influenced by Michael Jackson. Seriously, just a lot of stuff that Quincy Jones was doing back in the day. I didn’t really get into heavier rock until into high school. Then I was really into a lot of those early hardcore bands; Fugazi, Minor Threat, Quicksand, all that stuff. It was that raw energy there that really pulled me in. Actually it was the Quicksand album Slip, that one really changed my life. I’d just never heard guitars played like that before. It’s still one of my go to albums for when I find myself stagnant in my writing process.
CJ: The Chariot was another big one for me in that sense, not that you can really hear it in Divides music, because we sound nothing like them. But I really appreciated their freedom to write whatever they wanted. We take that in a sort of different direction, exploring the same freedom in not caring about defining our specific sound, or to fit a specific genre as long as the music is something that means something to us.
Joe: I started off doing Theatre at a young age and just fell in love with performing for people. I did that for years and actually didn’t get into playing music seriously until I was in college. But I’ve always loved that thrill of live performance and that’s definitely a big part of why I do this. As far as musical influence, one of the big defining moments that led me to this type of genre was the first time I heard The Used. I just remember thinking, “holy shit, are they allowed to do this with music?” It was so refreshing to hear something so passionate for a change. Burt’s vocals on a lot of their early stuff is just so genuine, you can feel every emotion in his singing and especially his screams. That was really inspiring to me and since then I’ve always wanted to do something that genuine.
Corey: When I was young I was in concert band, just drumming away. Always just on a snare or some crash symbols or something. When I first got a full drum kit, I was drumming along to a lot of stuff like New Found Glory. Then yeah, The Used really started transitioning me into heavier music. They’re easily still one of my favorite bands.
– What would we be surprised to find in your music collection at home?
Joe: Ha, you’d be surprised at the entirety of my music collection.
CJ: Yeah, no kidding, what were you listening to earlier today?
Joe: Atmosphere, I actually have a whole lot of Hip-Hop music on my computer. But no, my iTunes ranges all over the board. I love everything from Enya to Between the Buried and Me, from Lights to The Dropkick Murphy’s and everything in between. I like to take influence from all music and I feel like there’s something out there for every mood. We joke within the band that we take as much influence from Parkway Drive as we do from Katy Perry.
Corey: One of my favorite bands is called The Family Crest. They’re kind of Folk-Orchestral music. Most of the members actually have master’s degrees in music, so they’re just pretty amazing.
CJ: We’re kind of all over the board; we just love music in general. Especially people who really care about it and are trying to do something with it. We’ve always tried to just never be afraid of where we pull influence from as long as it means something to us.
– Any words of wisdom to share with aspiring artists?
Bryan: (literally said while stroking his beard) The one thing I would say to cover all bases is to not do it unless you really want to, unless you really mean it. Don’t do it because you think it’s cool or because you think it will help you get somewhere. If you really do it because want this at your core, the rest will kind of solve itself.
Paul: That and don’t do it unless you legitimately have something to say. I mean, we do this because we can’t not do it. I think if any of us stopped we might actually implode from not getting these thoughts and ideas out of our heads.
CJ: Like what Bryan was saying, my advice would be either do it or don’t. There’s no room to be lukewarm about this kind of thing. Don’t just sit around and wait for it to happen. The harder you work the more opportunity you’ll find and if you really mean this that won’t be work at all. This is everything to us and we’re going to give it everything that we have. That’s what it’s all about.