" This...will appeal to those disciples of Goth and punk and horror rock but it will also appeal to fans of folk, Celtic, grunge, punk and neofolk music. Violins, mandolins and cellos are not the typical instrumentation of Goth rock but this record is not typical in any sense of the word."
Indie Habit
Indie Habit
Just finished listening to your music and, wow, you certainly don’t fit into any boxes do you?
Are you saying that this song makes me sound fat? Seriously though, I have no idea what a genre really is. I have no control over how the music sounds. I don’t even know the names or chords or strings. I have no idea how to play guitar, or mandolin, or bass, or lyre, or sitar, or any of the other instruments that I play. The music tells me what to play, and what to say. I am the vessel, the music does what it wants. I can only choose to receive the message, or block it out. Woe to me when I attempt the latter though. You don’t want to anger the music. Things get dark, fast.
How is your music received at shows? What genres of fans gravitate towards your music?
We have a great time live. Rooms full of rowdy people singing along, invites to return, or play other venues from the staff, merch sales… it’s been great.
I don’t take a poll of people who listen, so I don’t really know what genres they gravitate toward. A metal magazine asked me a bunch of questions about what it is like to be a “folk” musician the other day, we played a singer songwriter showcase the other night, but the night before we came on with a bunch of punk and ska bands in Tijuana, so… I think we have a diverse array of supporters from varied musical backgrounds.
I get lumped into the “Singer songwriter” genre a lot, but it never really fit. I mean, yeah, I write music, I sing, and I play an acoustic guitar, but most of the singer-songwriter acts I’ve seen make sweet sounding songs about love, heartbreak, history, travel, themselves, or the people that they care about. They are universally excellent musicians, have clean, clear voices, are nearly always clean cut, and don't usually say curse words to the audience.
I bang out power chords, cover Misfits songs, scream more than a little into the microphone, cuss like a sailor, write about ghosts, spirits, the devil, drugs, and suicide, wear a mohawk, bondage pants, black nail polish, combat boots, and often a home-made black shirt with spikes, stars, vinyl highlights, and antique Lenin-youth badges on the collar.
We seem to get the best response from punk audiences, which sounds kind of weird for a trio that has a male singer, female singer, guitar/mandolin player, and violins.
Critics, and supporters, have compared my stuff to Janis Joplin, Davey Havok, Peter Murphy, Nick 13, Jim Morrison, Lindsey Buckingham, Nick Drake, Nick Cave, Axl Rose, Jeff Buckley, and Vince Neil… so… make of that what you will.
Are you saying that this song makes me sound fat? Seriously though, I have no idea what a genre really is. I have no control over how the music sounds. I don’t even know the names or chords or strings. I have no idea how to play guitar, or mandolin, or bass, or lyre, or sitar, or any of the other instruments that I play. The music tells me what to play, and what to say. I am the vessel, the music does what it wants. I can only choose to receive the message, or block it out. Woe to me when I attempt the latter though. You don’t want to anger the music. Things get dark, fast.
How is your music received at shows? What genres of fans gravitate towards your music?
We have a great time live. Rooms full of rowdy people singing along, invites to return, or play other venues from the staff, merch sales… it’s been great.
I don’t take a poll of people who listen, so I don’t really know what genres they gravitate toward. A metal magazine asked me a bunch of questions about what it is like to be a “folk” musician the other day, we played a singer songwriter showcase the other night, but the night before we came on with a bunch of punk and ska bands in Tijuana, so… I think we have a diverse array of supporters from varied musical backgrounds.
I get lumped into the “Singer songwriter” genre a lot, but it never really fit. I mean, yeah, I write music, I sing, and I play an acoustic guitar, but most of the singer-songwriter acts I’ve seen make sweet sounding songs about love, heartbreak, history, travel, themselves, or the people that they care about. They are universally excellent musicians, have clean, clear voices, are nearly always clean cut, and don't usually say curse words to the audience.
I bang out power chords, cover Misfits songs, scream more than a little into the microphone, cuss like a sailor, write about ghosts, spirits, the devil, drugs, and suicide, wear a mohawk, bondage pants, black nail polish, combat boots, and often a home-made black shirt with spikes, stars, vinyl highlights, and antique Lenin-youth badges on the collar.
We seem to get the best response from punk audiences, which sounds kind of weird for a trio that has a male singer, female singer, guitar/mandolin player, and violins.
Critics, and supporters, have compared my stuff to Janis Joplin, Davey Havok, Peter Murphy, Nick 13, Jim Morrison, Lindsey Buckingham, Nick Drake, Nick Cave, Axl Rose, Jeff Buckley, and Vince Neil… so… make of that what you will.
Tell us about your previous experiences (musical and otherwise) and the evolution of how you came to “now”.
Wow. That could take chapters. I’ll try to be succinct. I started singing professionally in musical theater in the second grade. By that age both of my brothers were already dead. I wasn’t a normal kid at all. I wanted to study philosophy, religion, occult stuff, mysticism, fight bad people, and see the world. I dropped out of high school to be a street vigilante as well as a private investigator and ended up spying on senior politicians on both coasts.
After that I joined the Army where they taught me to speak, read, and write in Korean, trained me in espionage and interrogation, and gave me special agent credentials. That’s when I became very depressed and started self mutilating.
When I got out of the army, I joined a punk-metal band and wrote some songs that still get airplay in the UK. Scary punk-metal stuff about drugs and murder. Really wholesome stuff.
Around then my body really started to crap out from this immune disorder, so I had to start walking with a cane, had some surgeries, and still have to use a wheelchair from time to time. Fortunately, I got back into musical theater with a company of disabled performers, and we got some international attention for the musical I had the lead in, at the largest theater space in North America. Shortly after that I was in the hospital for a suicide attempt.
I pursued acting pretty heavily, got my SAG and Actors Equity cards, started making some money off of it, then loaded up my car, moved 1000 miles away in the middle of the night without telling anyone, and made a home in Hollywood on my former friend’s living room floor. He was this crazy 50 year old who took a lot of drugs, thought he was the Antichrist, and stole money from us.
I did a rock musical out here in Hollywood, and realized that maybe I could just do this for a living. Then our baby died, and the music started haunting me. I had to get it out, and the album Eleutherios was born. That was part of a weird cycle of events. Our first show ever was two years ago, on my deceased brother’s birthday, at the House of Blues on Sunset for the opening of the Sunset Strip Music Festival. That building is made out of steel from the crossroads where blues legend, Robert Johnson, sold his soul to the devil… and I had just written a song about selling your soul at the crossroads, so it debuted there. None of these synchronicities were planned, or thought out, it just all sort of happened at the same time.
Wow. That could take chapters. I’ll try to be succinct. I started singing professionally in musical theater in the second grade. By that age both of my brothers were already dead. I wasn’t a normal kid at all. I wanted to study philosophy, religion, occult stuff, mysticism, fight bad people, and see the world. I dropped out of high school to be a street vigilante as well as a private investigator and ended up spying on senior politicians on both coasts.
After that I joined the Army where they taught me to speak, read, and write in Korean, trained me in espionage and interrogation, and gave me special agent credentials. That’s when I became very depressed and started self mutilating.
When I got out of the army, I joined a punk-metal band and wrote some songs that still get airplay in the UK. Scary punk-metal stuff about drugs and murder. Really wholesome stuff.
Around then my body really started to crap out from this immune disorder, so I had to start walking with a cane, had some surgeries, and still have to use a wheelchair from time to time. Fortunately, I got back into musical theater with a company of disabled performers, and we got some international attention for the musical I had the lead in, at the largest theater space in North America. Shortly after that I was in the hospital for a suicide attempt.
I pursued acting pretty heavily, got my SAG and Actors Equity cards, started making some money off of it, then loaded up my car, moved 1000 miles away in the middle of the night without telling anyone, and made a home in Hollywood on my former friend’s living room floor. He was this crazy 50 year old who took a lot of drugs, thought he was the Antichrist, and stole money from us.
I did a rock musical out here in Hollywood, and realized that maybe I could just do this for a living. Then our baby died, and the music started haunting me. I had to get it out, and the album Eleutherios was born. That was part of a weird cycle of events. Our first show ever was two years ago, on my deceased brother’s birthday, at the House of Blues on Sunset for the opening of the Sunset Strip Music Festival. That building is made out of steel from the crossroads where blues legend, Robert Johnson, sold his soul to the devil… and I had just written a song about selling your soul at the crossroads, so it debuted there. None of these synchronicities were planned, or thought out, it just all sort of happened at the same time.
What are some of the inspirations for your songs?
I just have to do what the music tells me. If I sit down and think “I’m going to write a song about this one thing” then it will never happen. With “Goodnight, Goodbye”, I tried to write a children’s song and it became a suicide note. I can’t control it. I just have to listen to the music in my dreams, or the sounds that appear in my head very loudly at random throughout the day, and record them.
One song, “Black Dress”, is about my friend Santa Muerte. I didn’t know it was about her until after it had written itself. “Down” is a song kind of like that too. I didn’t know it was an ode to opiates until it was written. Some songs like “Immured” come about in a different manner. I was reading about a pervasive legend throughout Europe about a woman immured into a stone wall on her wedding day. She started singing to me. I couldn’t make it go away, so I recorded what she said, and my response, and it became that song. “She Rides Moonlight” just happened the first time that I picked up a mandolin. That song was in the instrument and had to come out.
What do you like to listen to on your time off? What other pursuits do you like to do on your time off?
I enjoy listening to a lot of stuff like Frank Sinatra, The Gypsy Kings, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, The Misfits, Danzig, AFI, Slayer, Marilyn Manson, and tons of different stuff.
As far as pursuits go, I am not a man with many hobbies. I guess my only two hobbies are espionage and joining cults. I spent a week teaching myself to write in English and Korean with my left hand. I was right hand dominant, but now I am learning two dimensional design and drawing with ambidexterity. Other than that, I like guns, philosophical debates, naked people, hard liquor, and pretty much anything with feathers or fur. My best friends are all parrots, cats, and dogs.
The music business has changed so much over the past few decades. How do you define success when it comes to your music?
Success is a loaded word and should be relegated to the garbage along with “failure”, “normal”, and “reality”. A success in one thing means that you fail at other things. If you set out to do something, then you did it, you succeeded. If you set out to do something, then realized you didn’t really want it and changed course, you also succeeded. If you set out to do something, but never do the work, you succeeded at not doing what you say you are going to do.
When it comes to my music, I don’t really think about it. I make money, I win awards, critics love our stuff, and I have the most supportive audiences in the world. Is that success? Probably to someone. I don’t define success. I do things for the experience.
What advice would you give to young musicians? (Traps to avoid, areas to concentrate, etc).
I just have to do what the music tells me. If I sit down and think “I’m going to write a song about this one thing” then it will never happen. With “Goodnight, Goodbye”, I tried to write a children’s song and it became a suicide note. I can’t control it. I just have to listen to the music in my dreams, or the sounds that appear in my head very loudly at random throughout the day, and record them.
One song, “Black Dress”, is about my friend Santa Muerte. I didn’t know it was about her until after it had written itself. “Down” is a song kind of like that too. I didn’t know it was an ode to opiates until it was written. Some songs like “Immured” come about in a different manner. I was reading about a pervasive legend throughout Europe about a woman immured into a stone wall on her wedding day. She started singing to me. I couldn’t make it go away, so I recorded what she said, and my response, and it became that song. “She Rides Moonlight” just happened the first time that I picked up a mandolin. That song was in the instrument and had to come out.
What do you like to listen to on your time off? What other pursuits do you like to do on your time off?
I enjoy listening to a lot of stuff like Frank Sinatra, The Gypsy Kings, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, The Misfits, Danzig, AFI, Slayer, Marilyn Manson, and tons of different stuff.
As far as pursuits go, I am not a man with many hobbies. I guess my only two hobbies are espionage and joining cults. I spent a week teaching myself to write in English and Korean with my left hand. I was right hand dominant, but now I am learning two dimensional design and drawing with ambidexterity. Other than that, I like guns, philosophical debates, naked people, hard liquor, and pretty much anything with feathers or fur. My best friends are all parrots, cats, and dogs.
The music business has changed so much over the past few decades. How do you define success when it comes to your music?
Success is a loaded word and should be relegated to the garbage along with “failure”, “normal”, and “reality”. A success in one thing means that you fail at other things. If you set out to do something, then you did it, you succeeded. If you set out to do something, then realized you didn’t really want it and changed course, you also succeeded. If you set out to do something, but never do the work, you succeeded at not doing what you say you are going to do.
When it comes to my music, I don’t really think about it. I make money, I win awards, critics love our stuff, and I have the most supportive audiences in the world. Is that success? Probably to someone. I don’t define success. I do things for the experience.
What advice would you give to young musicians? (Traps to avoid, areas to concentrate, etc).
- Fame isn’t real.
- Success doesn’t exist.
- Wealth is relative.
- Don’t listen to gatekeepers, or people who “teach” songwriting when they attempt to invalidate you or steer you away from what you want to be doing. They set out to do something and never got what they thought they wanted. They have nothing to offer you.
- There are no dues to pay, and there is no one way to do what you want to do, so just do you while simultaneously creating opportunities to be heard and seen.
- Shut out the voices, silence your inner critic, cut out the people who bring you down no matter how much you love them, and then enjoy the experience of being free.
- If you have to work a day job, make it serve you. Never become a servant to your wage.
- Give your music what it deserves by learning business, marketing, reaching out to venues and agents, and chatting with local bands after their shows. Don’t shortchange yourself.
- If you are going to do this, commit to it and say “fuck you” to anything that gets in your way, including your own ego.
What does the future hold for you?
I was recently described as a “weapon of mass consumption”, so probably liver failure and sexually transmitted infections. If I live to be 55, I will cut a gangsta rap album.
- Success doesn’t exist.
- Wealth is relative.
- Don’t listen to gatekeepers, or people who “teach” songwriting when they attempt to invalidate you or steer you away from what you want to be doing. They set out to do something and never got what they thought they wanted. They have nothing to offer you.
- There are no dues to pay, and there is no one way to do what you want to do, so just do you while simultaneously creating opportunities to be heard and seen.
- Shut out the voices, silence your inner critic, cut out the people who bring you down no matter how much you love them, and then enjoy the experience of being free.
- If you have to work a day job, make it serve you. Never become a servant to your wage.
- Give your music what it deserves by learning business, marketing, reaching out to venues and agents, and chatting with local bands after their shows. Don’t shortchange yourself.
- If you are going to do this, commit to it and say “fuck you” to anything that gets in your way, including your own ego.
What does the future hold for you?
I was recently described as a “weapon of mass consumption”, so probably liver failure and sexually transmitted infections. If I live to be 55, I will cut a gangsta rap album.