
Bite Your Own Teeth Interview
Q: Can you talk about your history as an artist?
A: Hey, sure. My first instrument was the guitar. I pestered my parents to buy me one for a good while when I was a kid. They gave me one on Christmas in the year of our Lord 1999. I think they maybe thought that I would be placated and eventually move on to another interest, as kids tend to do, but I made such a racket with it for so long that they decided to put me in lessons in the hopes that my playing might become listenable. So, thank you mom for driving me to lessons every week, and thank you dad for paying for those lessons. My brother started learning drums a few years after that, and I taught myself to play by watching him play and then commandeering his drum set whenever I could. Other drummers give me shit for drumming open-handed, but that's my brother’s fault because that’s how he drums. He and I were in a band together in high school along with a couple of friends, one of whom still makes music under the name “Friend in Law.” I eventually also learned to play bass, keys and banjo. During college, I started messing around with recording in GarageBand using one of those awful Logitech USB mics that my roommate had, and then later on, I used a super basic intro version of Ableton to record a few things. However, I didn’t make a concerted effort to try and learn how to really engineer audio until last year. I got laid off from my job, and at that point I decided that I would make an EP using Pro Tools and release it into the wild, because the music industry is famously lucrative with plenty of room for each artist to make a living.
Q: What is your recording process like for Banks St?
A: It was all done at home. I like to simplify things as much as I can, and gear is expensive, so I tend to eschew/be intimidated by lots of bells and whistles. I think every song on the EP started with just a recording of a guitar riff. I use a number of pedals and mic my amp with an SM57, which is the same mic I use for vocals. Not a great vocal mic, but Neumanns cost more than ass implants. Maybe not. I don’t know what ass implants cost. After getting some guitar recorded, I’ll start adding drums, bass, etc. I usually do the drums one piece at a time using TD-1K V-Drums and a Roland TR-08 drum machine. I just play the drum parts a billion times in a row with only one of the drums plugged in at a time until all of the individual drums are recorded onto separate tracks for mixing.
Q: What is your creative process like?
A: Well, it’s just me writing and recording everything, so it’s all about layering one part at a time. It takes forever, but it’s cool to hear stuff get built brick by brick. If I have a guitar part I’m liking, I’ll loop that with a pedal and then try out different grooves and bass lines over that. If I have a groove I think is cool, I’ll mess around with different riffs I have at that time to see which one works best with the groove. Sometimes, I know exactly where a song is headed before I start recording. Other times, I only have one small guitar part down and basically the entire song gets written as I record it. I guess it just depends on how much potential I think certain riffs have. Sometimes, I’ll also just chug a quart of scotch and then start playing and see what happens.
Q: Can you talk about your history as an artist?
A: Hey, sure. My first instrument was the guitar. I pestered my parents to buy me one for a good while when I was a kid. They gave me one on Christmas in the year of our Lord 1999. I think they maybe thought that I would be placated and eventually move on to another interest, as kids tend to do, but I made such a racket with it for so long that they decided to put me in lessons in the hopes that my playing might become listenable. So, thank you mom for driving me to lessons every week, and thank you dad for paying for those lessons. My brother started learning drums a few years after that, and I taught myself to play by watching him play and then commandeering his drum set whenever I could. Other drummers give me shit for drumming open-handed, but that's my brother’s fault because that’s how he drums. He and I were in a band together in high school along with a couple of friends, one of whom still makes music under the name “Friend in Law.” I eventually also learned to play bass, keys and banjo. During college, I started messing around with recording in GarageBand using one of those awful Logitech USB mics that my roommate had, and then later on, I used a super basic intro version of Ableton to record a few things. However, I didn’t make a concerted effort to try and learn how to really engineer audio until last year. I got laid off from my job, and at that point I decided that I would make an EP using Pro Tools and release it into the wild, because the music industry is famously lucrative with plenty of room for each artist to make a living.
Q: What is your recording process like for Banks St?
A: It was all done at home. I like to simplify things as much as I can, and gear is expensive, so I tend to eschew/be intimidated by lots of bells and whistles. I think every song on the EP started with just a recording of a guitar riff. I use a number of pedals and mic my amp with an SM57, which is the same mic I use for vocals. Not a great vocal mic, but Neumanns cost more than ass implants. Maybe not. I don’t know what ass implants cost. After getting some guitar recorded, I’ll start adding drums, bass, etc. I usually do the drums one piece at a time using TD-1K V-Drums and a Roland TR-08 drum machine. I just play the drum parts a billion times in a row with only one of the drums plugged in at a time until all of the individual drums are recorded onto separate tracks for mixing.
Q: What is your creative process like?
A: Well, it’s just me writing and recording everything, so it’s all about layering one part at a time. It takes forever, but it’s cool to hear stuff get built brick by brick. If I have a guitar part I’m liking, I’ll loop that with a pedal and then try out different grooves and bass lines over that. If I have a groove I think is cool, I’ll mess around with different riffs I have at that time to see which one works best with the groove. Sometimes, I know exactly where a song is headed before I start recording. Other times, I only have one small guitar part down and basically the entire song gets written as I record it. I guess it just depends on how much potential I think certain riffs have. Sometimes, I’ll also just chug a quart of scotch and then start playing and see what happens.
Q: What are some themes that are touched upon in your release Banks St?
A: “Comes and Goes” deals with depression. How familiar it is even though each bout seems to bring something new to the table, how it makes you feel worthless and lie to yourself, how it immobilizes you, whatever. But it’s also about what depression can teach you, like how hard it is to to actualize joy and contentment without having also experienced pain and suffering, and how it highlights the need to exist outside of yourself, as in the “death to self” discussed in the New Testament, or the Jungian “psychic death,” or whatever you want to call it. “Everything, Endless” is more existential hogwash like that. It’s generally about the anxiety that accompanies our attempts to control and bend existence to our will, and then the peace that can come when we stop grasping, so to speak. There’s one line in there that I just completely stole from a book I read about Zen Buddhism. Later on, a friend informed me that it’s actually a line from Shakespeare. I’m one of those people that just regurgitates information I’ve been given while trying to disguise it as an original thought. Just awful. There are also lyrics I write that don’t mean anything. Sometimes I just want another part recorded to add texture and layers to a song.
Q: Have you started playing shows now that the pandemic is almost over?
A: I have not, but I think I might soon. Honestly, I haven’t played my stuff on stage in years. I’ve always enjoyed writing music more than performing it. But I teach at a music school now where I’m constantly surrounded by musicians who perform, so that kind of makes me want to start playing live again.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I guess I would just say that my music is kind of all over the place. Sometimes I wish it were more cohesive, but at the same time I love music from every genre, so I enjoy trying to make something tolerable based on whatever moves me at the moment. At this point, I don’t really know if I’m a shoegaze guy or a metal guy or a zydeco guy, or whatever, although the stuff I’ve been writing recently has been pretty Phrygian. I suppose I just hope that my music - 1. Makes people think that I’m super handsome and badass. And 2. Helps even a couple of people realize that they have the capability to create. I shat in a urinal once when I was a kid because I hadn’t figured out there were toilets more well-suited for #2, so if I can create something from scratch, you definitely can.
A: “Comes and Goes” deals with depression. How familiar it is even though each bout seems to bring something new to the table, how it makes you feel worthless and lie to yourself, how it immobilizes you, whatever. But it’s also about what depression can teach you, like how hard it is to to actualize joy and contentment without having also experienced pain and suffering, and how it highlights the need to exist outside of yourself, as in the “death to self” discussed in the New Testament, or the Jungian “psychic death,” or whatever you want to call it. “Everything, Endless” is more existential hogwash like that. It’s generally about the anxiety that accompanies our attempts to control and bend existence to our will, and then the peace that can come when we stop grasping, so to speak. There’s one line in there that I just completely stole from a book I read about Zen Buddhism. Later on, a friend informed me that it’s actually a line from Shakespeare. I’m one of those people that just regurgitates information I’ve been given while trying to disguise it as an original thought. Just awful. There are also lyrics I write that don’t mean anything. Sometimes I just want another part recorded to add texture and layers to a song.
Q: Have you started playing shows now that the pandemic is almost over?
A: I have not, but I think I might soon. Honestly, I haven’t played my stuff on stage in years. I’ve always enjoyed writing music more than performing it. But I teach at a music school now where I’m constantly surrounded by musicians who perform, so that kind of makes me want to start playing live again.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I guess I would just say that my music is kind of all over the place. Sometimes I wish it were more cohesive, but at the same time I love music from every genre, so I enjoy trying to make something tolerable based on whatever moves me at the moment. At this point, I don’t really know if I’m a shoegaze guy or a metal guy or a zydeco guy, or whatever, although the stuff I’ve been writing recently has been pretty Phrygian. I suppose I just hope that my music - 1. Makes people think that I’m super handsome and badass. And 2. Helps even a couple of people realize that they have the capability to create. I shat in a urinal once when I was a kid because I hadn’t figured out there were toilets more well-suited for #2, so if I can create something from scratch, you definitely can.