KCSU Music

This week, Music Director Monty Daniel was able to chat with Logan Ledger, an up-and-coming country artist who channels old western aesthetics. They chatted about songs off his new album, as well as mythical creatures and what sparked his love for country and bluegrass. Thank you to Co-Sign artist development agency, Concord Records, Ledger’s management team and of course Logan Ledger for making this possible.  All music was used with permission from the artist, label and management.

The post Music Mondays: Logan Ledger Interview appeared first on KCSU FM.

Recently during quarantine, assistant music director Yasmin Conchas was able to sit down with The Q-Tip Bandits and discuss their recent project, Ain’t It Great.

The post Music Mondays: The Q-Tip Bandits Interview appeared first on KCSU FM.

This week, in another edition of the KCSU Music Podcast, Music Director Monty Daniel was able to chat with Robin Skinner from Cavetown about his new album, Sleepyhead, as well as mental health and what he loves most about his mom. Thank you to The Syndicate Entertainment Marketing Agency, Sire Records, Cavetown’s management team and Robin Skinner for making this possible.

The post Music Mondays: Cavetown Interview appeared first on KCSU FM.

For this week’s edition of the KCSU Music Podcast, Local Music Director Josh Kellogg had the opportunity to talk with Colorado-based band King Crawdad and even break-down one of their songs: Hutu Hop. Stay tuned for weekly episodes, every Monday.

The post Music Mondays: King Crawdad Interview appeared first on KCSU FM.

Traveling from Thorton, CO, Enrique Sandoval and Luis Prado of The Nova Kicks joined Music Director Monty Daniel in the studio for an interview on the morning of Feb. 29, 2020.

The post Music Monday’s: The Nova Kicks Interview appeared first on KCSU FM.

KCSU Music Director Monty Daniel had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Nandi Rose, aka Half Waif and discuss living in quarantine during COVID-19 and her new album ‘The Caretaker’. Special thanks to Pirate Promotion, Terrorbird Media, Anti and Epitaph Records and of course Nandi Rose herself for making this happen. All music was used with permission from the artist, label and management. Below is a transcription of her interview:

MD: So the first question I wanted to ask you was where your artist name came from?

NR: That’s a good question. So I sort of have two answers, one is the silly one and one is the serious one. But I think both kind of fed into the origin story. So first off, it was from college; a friend of mine coined the term. We were talking one day about my romantic prospects and how they never seem to pan out. And he was like ‘You know what Nandi, you’ve gotta stop going after all these waifs. Like, we’ve really gotta find you a half waif.’ I loved that phrase and it stuck with me. A couple years later when I was starting this project and I needed to come up with a band name, that phrase just sort of floated back into my head. At that time, I had just left college and was feeling sort of adrift in the world. I had left college, we had moved out of my childhood home, I found myself suddenly living in New York City and in some ways felt like I identified with the plight of the waif. You know, being kind of destitute and without a home. But the reality wasn’t that I didn’t have a home, it was that I had many homes and my heart belonged to so many different places at that point in my life. So… I felt like I was really more of a half waif. 

MD: That’s really interesting.

NR: The name stuck. 

MD: That seems to really reflect in a lot of your music, too, which is really cool.

NR: Yeah! You know, I think that this idea of place and belonging and home has really been threaded through my life as a whole. I’m half Indian and grew up in western Mass(achusetts). I held onto this sense of identity as a way of feeling special I think. You know, that I was half Indian in this community that was all white. So this idea of being half-something has sort of followed me. That’s something I’ve been keen to explore, like where is my place in the world? You know, coming from these two different worlds. 

MD: Yeah, for sure. I guess feeding into that, can we talk a little bit about your new album, The Caretaker, maybe some of the process leading up to the release?

NR: Yeah, totally. So The Caretaker is out in the world now, which I was not expecting it to come out in these circumstances. No one foresaw this time that we’re in. But it’s really fascinating to me that this record is coming out right now because I wrote it at a time in my life when I was experiencing deep feelings of isolation and a sense of removal from the world. I had moved to upstate New York, where I live now, I live in a really really tiny town. I was just experiencing this sense of stepping away from New York, where I used to live, and stepping away from some formative friendships and relationships in my life. So this album was a product of that time where I found myself alone a lot. My husband is also a musician, so he was often on tour and so I’d be alone in the country, kind of ruminating and reflecting on the state of my relationships and sort of the things I had done in my life to bring me to this point. So it is interesting now that this record is out in a time of collective isolation. Maybe it makes the music, I hope it makes the music resonate a little more deeply with people to also be able to enter into that headspace. But I also worked on The Caretaker over a long period of time. Maybe not long in the grand scheme of things, I think often artists can work on records for many years. But for me this was definitely the most focused I’ve ever been working on a record. I wasn’t touring that much and I was very stationary, again, in this small town and this house. So I was coming at this record with a sense of letting it unfold maybe a bit more organically than past projects. I didn’t feel any rush, I guess is what I’m saying. That’s also kind of reflected in this time that we’re in right now. The pace has really slowed down and it’s given us more room to reflect and pause. 

MD: Yeah, definitely. I definitely felt that a lot on the record. So it’s really cool to hear you say that because it definitely did give me that feeling as well. 

NR: Cool. 

MD: Your music seems to have some really vivid imagery in it, was there any kind of scenes or stories that seemed to influence you a lot on The Caretaker?

NR: So this view that I’m looking out at right now I would say was a really formative image for this record. I’m looking out at my yard and there’s a train that goes right through the backyard. It’s funny because leaving New York, I was gonna get away from the subway sounds, instead I’ve moved to this house that has a freight train that goes like right through it. But it’s something that I’ve found very comforting, actually. Again, I don’t see too many people where we live. We see a lot of birds and a lot of animals where we live and we see this train. So there are these non-human signs of life kind of populating the backdrop of this record. You can hear that in the sound of insects, these sort of night bugs that would come up in a big chorus in the backyard. They make their appearance very literally on the record a couple of times. But also in some of the synth sounds that I was using, I was trying to emulate just the sort of like fuzzy chatter of these bugs in the yard. And the caretaker, this character that sort of emerged in my mind as I was finishing the record, her narration really takes place on this porch, looking out at the scene. She was charged with taking care of the land, but instead, the land is completely overgrown: much like my own backyard. And so the weeds are sort of growing up all over in the cracks of the house and the animals are taking over. So this setting of almost like untouched nature became a big backdrop for the record. So those are a lot of the images I was pulling from. 

MD: Yeah, that’s really cool. There’s a freight train that actually goes through Fort Collins and I can see it like right outside of my window, too. So —

NR: That’s so cool!

MD: Definitely can relate. You can hear it wherever you are in Fort Collins, I swear. 

NR: Oh, I love that! Yeah, it’s like a nice reminder, I don’t know. It feels like everytime I hear the horn, you know, and it’s approaching from down the tracks it’s like a little hello. 

MD: I love that. Well, I wanted to delve into specifically two songs on the album. The first one that I think hit me kind of hard was “In August” (segment of song plays) I kind of felt like in the song, you were struggling to let go of someone who had maybe hurt you. Could you maybe tell me a little bit about the story behind this song?

NR: Yeah! This was, as I was sort of alluding to earlier, this was a point in my life when certain friendships were no longer working. And I think a lot of that is a product of growing up and leaving the sort of easy bonds of school and college. And ...

From now on, when I think of dedicated musicians, I’ll think of The Copper Children. There was traffic, there were technical difficulties, but the entire night there was nothing but positivity. The band was initially caught in traffic on their trek from Denver, and they even did some off-roading to make their way to our studio in Fort Collins. Although we had a late start to the evening, each member came to the studio with one goal: to have a good time. And that’s what we did.

The interview got weird, specifically with our discussion of monkeys, but everyone was good with that. The Copper Children played four live songs throughout the night, and let me tell you, they are amazing live. Each recorded song is brilliant in its own right, but the chemistry of the band and the way they expand on each song when performing is truly amazing. Overall, the band’s poistivity, relaxed nature and creative genius made the night a beautiful memory.

You can listen to their performance below.

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Support local musicians! Here are some other bands you might like:

Los Mocochetes

Andy Babb and the Big Beautiful Band

Cactus Cat 

The post Live In-Studio: The Copper Children appeared first on KCSU FM.

Mlady is coming into the music scene strong this year. Their debut, self-titled EP consists of 6 beautiful originals, 4 of which they performed during their sessions. Between the live music, we discussed the band’s initial chemistry and the lighthearted competitiveness between members.

The post Live In-Studio: Mlady appeared first on KCSU FM.

On this episode of The Rocky Mountain Review, JD and Emily interview Frank Boring, CSU’s documentary filmmaker, on the upcoming documentary for CSU’s 150th anniversary. Next, they cover local news, featuring a segment on Odell’s Cloud Catcher beer and a CTV performance from local artist Danielle Ate the Sandwich. This episode also features national news, Thanksgiving-themed cupcake tips from Podcast Director Cheyenne Duba, and an interview with The Wonder Years by Video Director Sam Bulkley.

The post The Rocky Mountain Review November 15, 2018 appeared first on KCSU FM.

The Wonder Years’ earlier releases contained a sense of raw energy, captured in the depths of suburban Philadelphia and reflected the emo and pop-punk genres disdain for living in suburbia hell. Surrounded by white picket fences and false faces of the community, they found a niche of fans who felt the same feelings towards their hometown. The raw energy of their earlier records like The Upsides and Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing reflected in a way that lead singer, Dan Campbell, created and displayed his vocals and lyrics; not quite capturing the standard rock & roll frontman sound. Instead, he created his own style of singing and lyricism that reflects how he truly feels in his own personal struggles with being scared, lonely, and feeling lost. The Wonder Years’ earlier style made them a staple in the world of pop-punk by combining these ideas with cutting, heavy guitar, and drums that backed these ideas.

Jump almost ten years forward to their newest release Sister Cities, and the band’s ethos has grown to a global perspective. Distancing themselves from their pop-punk roots, they created a clearly defined “rock” album with a new sense of depth in every second of their songs. This new profundity reflects their sentiments for experiencing the world while being displaced from their hometown. It’s an album about global connection and the experiences that they needed to share.

Below is a brief interview over the phone with Dan Campbell, you can read through or listen to the interview.

The Wonder Years will be playing at Washingtons on Saturday, November 19th with Have Mercy, Oso Oso, and Shortly.

So this is your second bout of touring on Sister Cities, which I feel like is a large leap away from your previous records you’ve produced. With the record you released a book with a collection of photos and journal entries. I’m curious to get your take on streaming services, especially in the last few years, that eliminate the physical connection of music and the accessories that come with it. What’s your outlook on that?

Well that’s kind of why we went so over the top with the physical product. We knew that a good percentage of the fanbase, or just in music fans in general, that are happy to just have the music at their fingertips. And here it is. It’s cool. I have it, I press play at midnight and boom… The record is there. But there’s still a lot of people who love music and love to have a physical product for music. We learned about it really early on in our career, when we started doing 7’s of our EPs way, way back, like 2008. People were buying these records and I couldn’t believe that all these people had a record player. And sometimes people would say, “I don’t even have a record player, I’m just a fan of music and this is a thing I can collect to show that fandom.” Right? So here is a physical manifestation of the fact that I like this song, in a way that you might collect a baseball card as a physical manifestation of your fandom of baseball. So, we know that there are people who care about the physical product. They like to look through the art. They like to read the lyrics. So we thought that as music moves to more of a digital space, we should make the physical product so engrossing that it feels like you’d be missing out if you didn’t have the opportunity to engage with that product. You can listen to the record on your own and it can tell a story to you, but if you open the book up and you look at the photos and read the journals, you can experience on a whole different level. We wanted to add that option in there for people who really care about physical music.

With the book you went really in-depth with 200 pages of photography and clips from your journal.

Yeah, so it is photos. I shot the European tour, our tour manager Dave shot Latin America, Japan, and Australia. Our touring photographers, Kelly and Mitchell, shot the U.S. and Canada. And Megan at our label shot the studio stuff. So there’s a million photos in there, so many pictures. Along with tour journals, poetry, paintings that our drummer did, scans of artifacts from the songs on the album… I kept the paper crane that I reference in “Raining In Kyoto,” we scanned that in and it’s just on one of the pages. So that kind of stuff.

Speaking of “Raining In Kyoto” and getting into Sister Cities a bit more, I think that song sets an astounding starting point and sets the theme for the entire album. Was that always meant to be the opening track for the record?

No, when you first start writing songs you just gotta get a couple out. Once you start structuring it then you get a feel for what could be an opener. But from the first time that I started thinking of that as an opener, it was perfect to me. Once I got my brain around it, it made a lot of sense.

I think that on this record your voice has certainly grown and matured a lot. It’s changed throughout the years in the band. I was amazed to hear the depth that you’re creating with your vocals. You’re able to bring detailed expression into all of your lyrics. Have you ever been vocally trained or did you just grow into this updated form of singing?

I think the biggest thing we did this time was get a whole set up of in-ears (monitors) for writing, so that I could actually hear myself sing while we were writing the record. Which was not a thing that we had available to us before. So it actually makes a massive difference because I can hear myself. I’ve never been able to hear myself while we write a record before. So it’s basically been that everything has to operate in binary. If I want to sing quiet, there can be no drums. As soon as there are drums, I had to sing as loud as I possibly could to hear myself over the drums. Which put us in a situation where I was either very quiet over very quiet music, or belting at the top of my range over everything else. So technology, honestly, opened up the option for that.

On this tour you’re with Have Mercy, Oso Oso, and Shortly. Each of you covered each other’s songs and put it up on Bandcamp with donations going towards the ACLU. What was the idea around that?

We had done something like that before on a tour, and really enjoyed doing that. I was listening to the Shortly EP and was thinking about how cool the songs were. I knew that this was a tour where we were bringing our three bands and that maybe they are less widely known than some of the bands ...