SLUG Magazine

Tony Holiday, the frontman and namesake of Tony Holiday and the Velvetones, comes to Soundwaves to talk about his history with blues music and his commitment to keeping the genre alive. Along with Gordon Greenwood (bass), Joel Meza (drums), Michael Bigelow (baritone saxophone) and Landon Stone (guitar), the Velvetones play a style of blues that, while deeply connected to classic blues music, keeps the style fresh with extremely tight playing and a polished, clean sound.

In his younger years, Holiday’s love of the blues found him at odds with his surroundings. His friends’ love of hip-hop made him feel like he needed to keep his passion a secret, and the bluegrass and country musicians he grew up playing with found his frequent use of bent notes out-of-place. Regardless, Holiday stuck to his instincts and carried on with his blues training, eventually picking up the harmonica as his instrument of choice (Holiday now has an endorsement deal with Seydel, one of the oldest and most prominent harmonica manufacturers in the world). Though he notes that the process of learning the harmonica was difficult, the recordings played throughout this episode of Soundwaves showcase his exceeding proficiency at the instrument.

Holiday is not shy to talk about the frequent hurdles and missteps along his path. From his long-winded and stressful road toward opening for Willie Nelson to passport snafus complicating what would’ve been his first European tour, Holiday’s progress has been more of a stuttered climb rather than a meteoric rise. Holiday doesn’t look back with regret at these experiences: “Art is personal. What makes great artists great is that they’re able to put their whole heart out there, expecting it to get stomped on.”

In this light, Holiday’s heart has done a lot for him. Playing with Willie Nelson ended up being one of his most treasured performances, he frequently tours around the country, his group reached the semi-finals at the renowned International Blues Challenge in Memphis and is in the process of curating a roots-driven archival blues project called The Front Porch Sessions.

The Front Porch Sessions aim to record blues greats from all across the genre’s history right on their front porches—a crucial social and historical setting for blues music. The first volume is forthcoming, and Holiday has recorded musicians like Kid Andersen and Muddy Waters’s two sons (acclaimed musicians Mud and Big Bill Morganfield) playing on their father’s porch.

Tony Holiday and the Velvetones open up for Indigenous at the State Room on April 28, and head to their Facebook to check out their music and other upcoming events: facebook.com/tonyholidaymusic.

Thanks for listening to SLUG Soundwaves.

In this episode of Soundwaves, Jeremy Devine, drummer for local garage-punk band The Nods, plugs the band’s first monthly residency night at Urban Lounge featuring City of DIS, and bespeaks the The Nods’ ongoing, DIY recordings in anticipation of possible to-be-released tracks.

When the Nods first formed in 2013, Devine had yet to join but recalls attending some of their first shows as a fan and feeling impressed. Since Devine has joined, the band has begun to record in a new home studio owned by the band’s vocalist, Rocky Maldonado, a step up from their previous basement recording space, where they are now better able to catch the band’s live sound. This has given them an opportunity to re-record some previous tracks as well as some new pieces, which they hope to release in either the late spring or early summer of this year. In addition to the new recording studio, the band has been working with Hail Atlantis, a local label that focuses on rock and punk music.

The idea of holding a residency night at Urban Lounge originally came from the warm reception the Nods felt in playing their first shows there. These nights will serve as a platform for bands that are just getting started and to introduce underrepresented genres on a local level. “Come to the shows expecting a wide range of music,” Devine says. “Come in at any given one, and it will be different from the last one that we did. We’ll have things ranging from experimental electronic bands to noise bands, hardcore, straight-up rock n’ roll.” For the first residency night, Jan. 31, Mutie, 22A, Sotanos, Hyrkanian and Deborah Downer will be in the showcase. Devine encourages any other bands who want to be featured in future residency nights to contact the Nods via Facebook, Instagram (@nodhole) or Twitter (@NodsThe).

The featured song is “Chromatic Recollection” from The Nods’ self-titled 7″, available at thenods.bandcamp.com.

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Alejandro Gomez (drummer) and Rick Neria (vocals) of local metal band Dissension discuss their love for extreme metal, their inspirations, the elements of death metal and their debut album, Ancient Chaos, on this episode of Soundwaves.

The current members of Dissension have been working together since 2010, though at that time, they had a different name. Formerly known as Incendient, the band decided to move forward and adopt their sound as Dissension. This sound is heavily inspired by the earlier death metal bands of the 1990s like Death, Morbid Angel and Deicide (just to name a few).

“My biggest hero, as far as drums, is Proscriptor from Absu,” says Gomez, laughing. “I try to rip him off, but I can’t do it.”

Gomez and Neria explain that when it comes to death metal, it takes a lot of passion to play. “The most appealing thing about death metal and extreme metal in general is how genuine it feels,” Gomez says. “In order to play it, you have to truly mean it.” According to them, people are refreshed by the music they’re putting out. While other bands are focusing more on the note count, Dissension focuses more on the groove and the emotion, creating that signature sound.

Ancient Chaos hit the streets on Nov. 4, 2017, and physical copies are available at Raunch Records. Their debut album can also be found on Dissension’s Bandcamp: dissensionslc.bandcamp.com.

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Arcadio Rodriguez, frontman of local indie trio Pick Pocket, discusses the band’s music-education origins, inspirations and songwriting techniques on this episode of Soundwaves.

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Rodriguez’s interest in music started around the ninth grade. Since he would have to stay after school most days, he would sneak into the after-school band practice to see his friends. “Eventually, I would start to gaze and look over at their gear,” he says. “After I spent enough time in there, I became enough of a nuisance that people just started teaching me stuff.”

Rodriguez and his family moved to Colorado, and luckily, his high school in Colorado Springs had one of the best music programs around. At the end of his first year of high school, he auditioned to be in the jazz band as their keyboard player. “I got bumped to the advanced jazz band, which was really cool and really exciting.” For college, Rodriguez would move to Utah to attend the University of Utah, and pursue his education in piano performance and music composition.

Rodriguez’s next step would be taking on indie rock with Scott Stevens (bass) and Aaron Merry (drums). Rodriguez stresses that he has a problem with words and how he tries his best to keep a lot of meaning out of his lyrics. “Words mean a lot and they carry a lot of meaning for different people,” he says. “A lot of what I’m doing with this band is whenever I do choose to use words, they are usually meaningless on purpose.” By keeping this mentality about maintaining a whimsical feeling behind his lyrics, Rodriguez opens up the opportunity for the voice to be its own instrument and to carry out the melody that’s already in play.

See Pick Pocket’s first show ever at the Urban Lounge on Tuesday, Jan. 2, and give their demo a listen on their Bandcamp: pickpocketslc.bandcamp.com.

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Bill Frost—lead guitarist for the local rock n’ roll number, Magda-Vega—discusses assembling the band, the recording process of their new album, Destroyer, and their style. Magda-Vega came together in the fall of 2013. Frost and lead singer, Robin Brown, joined forces when their previous project, The Wild Ones, came to an end. They recruited their drummer, Mike Walton and bass player, Angela Mize to complete their vision of a new, “four-piece, Led Zeppelin–style” band.  

Destroyer, Magda-Vega’s most recent album, was recorded live at Man vs. Music. After recording their first album, the group realized that recording the “standard” way with headphones in individual rooms wasn’t the way they wanted to work. When they took on Destroyer, they made it a goal to record this album live. “You see movies where bands are in a recording studio and everybody’s all in there together and playing at the same time and that’s just not reality,” Frost says. “We decided that we were going to make it reality.”

As a band, they often ponder their own sound. “Internally, every once in awhile, we’re thinking that our songs are too different from each other,” Frost says, “but to people on the outside, it just sounds like us.” By mixing elements of doom metal, surf rock, garage psych rock and a Stooges-inspired sound, Madga-Vega create their signature sound and style.  

Frost wraps the episode up by telling those who are starting their own bands, “Don’t let anyone tell you what to play, how to play it, how to do it, or who to have in your band.”

You can catch Magda-Vega playing on KRCL every once in awhile, but staying updated on what the band is doing is made easy with their Facebook page: facebook.com/MagdaVegaSLC.

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Rare Facture released Suspension Of The Conscious Mind on Sept. 29. In this episode of Soundwaves, the duo pries open their respective musical upbringings and how they manifest in Rare Facture’s music.

Having grown up with a plethora of musical influences and a keen interest in experimenting with synthesizers, David Burdick of Rare Fracture first moved to Salt Lake for the active synth-pop scene. He was in search of a musical partner, which he found in Tom Cella. “I felt that Salt Lake was the place for synthesizers so I came here,” Burdick says.

In the years since they first debuted in London, Rare Fracture have gained a large international following, sparking interest in an international tour. While nothing has been planned for Europe—due mainly to the large number of resources required for such an undertaking—there have been discussions of a possible U.S. tour, which could possibly end in Mexico City.

With the release of their new album, Suspension of the Conscious Mind, Cella and Burdick work with the juxtaposition of depressing lyrics against cheerful tones, representing both their current emotions and their hopes for the future. Burdick also feels that by adding a cheerier sound to their admittedly depressing lyrics, they are better able to express their feelings in a balanced way that still allows for joy. For them, realism is important: The lyrics they write always drawing from personal feelings and life experiences. “When you write that music, it’s coming from a place that’s real,” says Cella. “Every word in this album and every album we’ve ever written is based on reality.”

Cella feels that by creating songs in a meaningful way, he is able to help fight the idea that electronic music is simply loud sound with no depth or nuance. “There is a stigma, that follows electronic music, that it’s just loud,” he says. “You ‘hit play and it goes fast, and there’s no dynamics …’ and that’s a big reason we try to craft our songs.”

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With her third studio album, The Darkness and the Sun, Debra Fotheringham discusses with SLUG Soundwaves the things that inspire her interest in music, her writing hiatus and serendipitous surprises while recording the album.

During her upbringing in American Fork, Fotheringham was always encouraged to play music. “One nice thing in my household was that both of my parents were musical,” she says. While they were all required to practice one instrument, they were never forced to be musical. “It was up to us if it was something that we gravitated toward.”

Fotheringham addresses her more Americana sound in this album by saying that it wasn’t completely intentional. “I did consciously want to do simpler songs with simpler structures and simpler chords,” she says. “A lot of that was influenced by classic country and Americana songs. I wanted to kind of channel that a little bit, and so my song ‘White Bird’ is the most Americana-sounding song on the record.”

This approach led to a more contemporary sound that came out of some major decisions made by Fotheringham and Scott Wiley during production. By using synths and panned-vocal techniques, Wiley gave the song a more Elliott Smith–esque sound.

She recently jumped back into songwriting after taking a four-year break. After taking some time for herself, she decided to start writing again after reading an article about her favorite comedian, Maria Bamford, which inspired her to “do the work.” After spending time every morning writing journal logs, her mind started working like a writer again. She also found inspiration in her friend, Ryan Tanner, who wrote and recorded an entire album in two weeks. “It was one of the most beautiful masterpieces I’d ever heard,” she says.

Debra Fotheringham can be found singing with the Lower Lights this holiday season at Kingsbury Hall, and it’s easy to keep up with her on Facebook: facebook.com/debfotheringhammusic.

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Local avant-garde duo it foot, it ears released their latest album, teeter, on Sept. 23 at Diabolical Records. it foot, it ears’ next show is Dec. 6 at Twilite Lounge for Lounge Night. You can download teeter at itfootitears.bandcamp.com.

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From writing songs to recording an EP and playing shows, Wicked Bears have had a busy year. Bassist and vocalist Casey Keele talks about the ideas that fueled their new release, Tuning Out, as well as the recording process, lyrical messages and their love for Salt Lake City in this episode of SLUG Soundwaves.

Since the band’s spontaneous beginning in the colder months of 2015, they’ve been working hard to create material. After talking back and forth among Keele, Nick Fleming and Ken Vallejos, they all agreed that being in a band would be a good idea. “We got together and wrote our first song two or three weeks later,” Keele says. “After we wrote that first song, we wrote five more songs and we did an EP in February.”

Tuning Out is considered to be a “snapshot” of how the band has been feeling over the last year. “There’s been a lot of polarizing things that have been happening, and we don’t really talk about the polarizing things,” Keele says. “It’s about the need to see more important things.”

While Wicked Bears were writing the songs for Tuning Out, they were hoping to quickly get the tracks done and get them out. The writing process started in March, and they started looking into recording in June. They decided to work with Wes Johnson from Archive Recordings, as well as Chance Clift from Lewis Manor in Provo. “He was really excited to work with us,” Keele says. “He’s a rapper, and it was really funny recording punk vocals in the studio with him …”

Wicked Bears are playing the Beehive Social Club in celebration of Tuning Out’s release on Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. Tuning Out will be available to stream and purchase on their Bandcamp:  wickedbears.bandcamp.com.

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Local rapper/singer/businessman Shanghaii opens up this episode of Soundwaves by explaining where he got his start in writing rap songs. When he was young, he and his cousin would listen to “hardcore rap” artists and play around with rhymes. However, it wasn’t until Shanghaii was in high school that he’d take his first step into the local scene.

Shanghaii has an impressive history of collabs and experiences with other local artists—however, the one he dives into the most is his opportunity to perform during the Twilight Concert Series. After receiving the good news that he had a feature, he started writing his verse immediately, learned it as quickly as possible and buying a suit to perform in. “I was super nervous the whole entire time, ’cause like, when you’re at my level, you’re not really performing for thousands of people or even a thousand people,” he says.

He also discusses where he hopes his career will go. After having a heartfelt conversation, his girlfriend stepped up to the plate and supported Shanghaii when he wanted to start spending time in the studio. “She started pretty much investing in me,” he says. “She ended up saving up money and giving it to me as a birthday present, and I would just drop that in the studio.”

Though he loves living in and performing in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles is calling his name. “My girlfriend even influenced the idea of us moving to California,” he says. “I know, as an artist, in order to grow more, I’m going to have to leave Utah.” After traveling back and forth, Shanghaii plans on making the move next summer.

Shanghaii can be found on Facebook, and on his own website where his music and apparel is up for grabs: shanghaiimusic.com.

Thanks for listening to SLUG Soundwaves.