Ep 136 Eleventyseven

I have written down here. This is less beat boopy than your. That's great. That's great.

Hello and welcome to WNC original music episode 136. This old check episode. Very excited this week to have Matt Langson from the group 1107 out of Canton, North Carolina. They are an EDM pop punk out band.

A lot of other stuff in there too. You just can't pin them down. Matt and I talked about their EP Revenge of the Mountain Medley, which should be out by the time you hear this podcast. 1107 is more than just a band though.

They are they have a label. They have a podcast. The label is called Rock Candy Recordings, which you've probably have heard of already. Make sure to go and listen to both 1107 and some of their other acts on the label.

We have links to that in the show notes of course. The new EP Revenge of the Mountain Medley is a little bit of a departure for the band, but also retains kind of the heart of what they do. So it's got a little folk tinge to it, a very indigreeze depending on the track, but not too far away from what you know of 1107. You can find the album at 1107 is alive.com and also rockcandyrecordings.com and also as always in the show notes of this podcast.

You're going to hear my discussion with Matt Langson in just a few moments. And right now here is 1107. Yeah, so I think this was the very first song that I wrote for this EP. About 10 years ago, we did another EP that was called Attack of the Mountain Medley.

And it ended up having this song on their called Appalachian Wine. And almost all the songs that we wrote for that EP were kind of a joke. You know, it was sort of us just like sort of making fun of where we come from, but also kind of embracing the weirdness of it at the same time. And everything that got put on that EP for some reason, it's like sort of the thing that we became known for on the internet.

And it doesn't sound anything like none of this EP sounds anything like what we normally do. Like I think you might have heard some of our stuff before it's all, you know, super boot boopy and synthesizer heavy and stuff like that. I have written down here, this is less beat boopy than your. Yeah, that's great.

That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I think when I first started out with this one, it was just kind of started out with that little with just the acoustic guitar loop.

And I ended up like looping that guitar around. And then I'll do some, I'll do what's called top lining a lot of times, where you just sort of take a loop and sing a couple of ideas over it. And a big thing, you know, like within Southern culture, like all of the country songs that I grew up listening to, I really, really love or kind of this, you know, constantly being beaten down by our circumstances in life. And everybody's kind of got their own shit that they're dealing with.

But maybe there's a way to flip the coin and kind of look at it from a different perspective, you know, like in a way that like maybe we really are kind of blessed. And so I feel like that's kind of a lot of times like in life, I forget that everything that's happening right now, like is the thing, you know, like I live so much in the worrying about the past or anticipating the future or, you know, like rewriting my past in my mind or even just like simple conversations that I have with people like I really wish I could have done that differently or said that differently. And I'm a chronic worrier about how things are going to play out or that I am missing the point of life and I'm going to get to my very last day here on planet and just be like, oh, God, I completely screwed all this up because I didn't get the point of it. You know what I mean?

Like I didn't either appreciate or see or understand what was happening. And so I feel like I want to just write myself a song that reminds me of like that feeling that I get when I do feel like I'm in it. And I think that's sort of the idea for for hiding in us was like, you know, everything good that life has to give us is kind of here right now if we can sort of just tune into it and shed everything else out and like be present with the people that we love and with our family and our friends, even when things get weird or difficult, you're in like conflict with people. It's like, man, those kinds of things, even that conflict can be appreciated because after the fact you're like, well, I'm a stronger, I have a stronger friendship with this person now or I have a stronger marriage or like, if everything is just always, you know, butterflies and rainbows and unicorn buttholes, you know, you're just kind of like, oh, but it's like, it's that weird dissonance that we sort of encounter every day that I think we just we see it all as being maybe something something a little more worse than it has to be.

So it's just kind of a reminder for me. I like the idea of like songs that are sort of a chronicle of a time or an experience. Like, I mean, even just a standard love song is a chronicle of, you know, here's how I'm here, this person, but also there are ones that are like about, you know, people's children, their parents and experience they had. And this is an interesting take on that where you're you're chronicling a feeling that you have that you wish you had more, like it's almost a reminder to like, you can listen to this later and say, hey, this is when I was really feeling that, here's what I wrote.

So you can kind of reattach to that at a later time, maybe. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

I just remember like growing up listening to all of these spirituals and stuff that we would seeing in church. And I just thought it was so it just got to be so depressing how often this theme of like, well, one day when we get to heaven, it's going to be okay. Like one day. And I feel like that's just kicking the can of joy down the road, you know, until you knock it off the cliff.

So yeah, that kind of has it some those kind of spiritual songs, which tend to be from the like lower socioeconomic class of religious orders, even goes back to like field songs of slaves where they have that same percent because they have, you know, a slave has nothing to look forward to in his life. The only has after like look forward to. But then, and then, you know, like the Pentecostal and Baptist community kind of took that too. But they never like grew away from it as it became unnecessary, you know, right?

It's sort of misappropriating an entirely different group of people struggle and just turning it into your own pity party. It's kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah.

Tell me a little bit about 11,07, you know, like a Genesis of it. More religious. Um, we, um, so 11D kind of started in the early 2000s when pop punk sort of reign supreme, and we were super into all these bands, like no effects and Black Flag and Branson and MXPX and Blink 182. And so that was like the thing that we, that we felt like sort of channelled what we were feeling in life at that time.

But also the original members, we all grew up in a very Protestant evangelical culture. And so we were, we were very much like, if you can think of like prototypical youth group kids, you know, just like looking forward to going to see any sort of live music or worship bands or anything like that in our area, we just thought that was the coolest thing ever. So we actually all met in a worship band at church. Um, and then ended up meeting some people, you know, through that and then long story short, you know, we did that all through high school.

And then our senior year of high school, we started to get a little bit of label attention. And then our year, our first year out of high school, I think when I was 19, we ended up getting a record deal from this label that's not around anymore called Flickr Records. But as soon as we got signed to them, they got bought out by Sony. So we sort of immediately found ourselves like getting upstream to this major label, but then also at the same time sort of being a part of this whole like Christian music, uh, subculture.

And it didn't take us very long within that culture to realize like, Oh, I don't think that we want that to for this to be our life. Or because we all had our own questions about like, you know, as, um, I don't know, as powerful of a feeling that we had about Christianity at the time, the older that I got, it's like all of that sort of got morphed into a an anger towards that subculture and the ideologies that we grew up with. And so as we were sort of deconstructing and like figuring out a way out of Christianity or at least out of Christian music, was the same time that we were having maybe the most success like within that market. And so there just became a lot of dissonance because, you know, we constantly wanted to be and we wanted to play shows.

We didn't, uh, we didn't want to see people any differently. We just wanted to show up and do our thing and share life with people in that way. Um, but ultimately it just, our ideologies were not cut out for it. And so we definitely burned a lot of bridges.

Um, back in the day, I think just acting out, like just being dumb kids, like not really knowing how to put, um, not really knowing how to, how to speak intelligently about what we were going through emotionally or personally. Yeah, and there's not a lot of, um, uh, leeway in the Christian rock community for like personal behavior and personal choices. No, no, and the sad thing is like all of that behavior is still, like, all the, the crazy rock and roll stuff that the parents are always warning kids about. Um, all that stuff happens, it just happens secretly, you know, it just doesn't happen as publicly as everybody thinks it does, but, um, yeah.

So how many of your, like what percentage would you estimate of your fans? Did you pull with you from the change from Christian rock to the, uh, kind of pump, pop beat, beboop? I mean, I, yeah, from the beboop, um, I think I'd probably get a couple of emails or messages a week from people that grew up with us, uh, listening to the stuff that we did when we were, uh, on Christian labels, and they're just absolutely sorely disappointed. Oh, um, people that, uh, I don't know, they say, they say some pretty nasty things, uh, or say some really mean and hurtful things to you about you, uh, and then think that it's totally fine to do that because somehow they're justified in their faith or because, you know, because they're somehow like holding the party line for God.

And that's like how long ago did this change happen? Like, uh, seven or eight years? Yeah, I mean, this is, this has been a little, a little while ago now. Um, but, but, well, have you ever been to church?

Yeah, okay. That's funny. Um, yeah, but for the most part, I feel like we were just very, we learned how to be open about what we were experiencing. We learned how to be open about how we were feeling, um, and about being honest about our spiritual journeys and the things that we thought about God and, um, and spirituality and what that looked like in our own lives.

And I think just attesting to that honesty and learning how to be honest in that way with people, um, brought a lot of people along with us because, you know, we're 30 some things now, but a lot of our fan base is between 15 and 35 maybe. And they are, they're all kind of going through that same, uh, Exodus, I think from, from whatever church looks like in America to just, I don't know, just stepping outside of that, you know, broadening their horizons and like understanding. I think it's also like, it's easier to see the faults in the flaws within that kind of system now, especially with the internet and everything. It's like, yeah, every, every week, there's like a new megapaster who got, you know, denounced for, I don't know, screwing kids in the youth group or something.

It just, and we, we saw that for years. And it was just like, just didn't really want to have any part of that. I think it was just, yeah, just turned us off to it. This is about people who send your emails a couple times a week.

You guys used to be cool, man. You guys used to be cool when you were praising Christ. And now you're going to hail and I'm the only one that can stop it. Yeah.

Mean Street was one of those, I think a lot of people that we've grown up with in life, and there have definitely been times in my life as well where I feel like I just have these things that sort of keep me from being the person that I want to be, or sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you're like, wow, I'm like drinking way too much, or I get involved in this thing or that thing where, oh shit, now I'm addicted to this substance. And those things just happen so fast and they happen so frequently. And I don't know if anybody, at least within our group of people who doesn't have friends who kind of go through that. And then the other part of that coin is once you kind of have those kinds of things in your life and you realize that you don't want them to be part of your life anymore, you kind of look around and you realize, oh my God, look at all this damage that happened.

And how do I pull myself out of this hole? How do I try to make things right with people? And at the same time, it can feel like you're crawling out of this hole and there's somebody waiting at the top of the hole to just kick you in the face, or push the ladder back on you. And sometimes that's just part of life.

Sometimes those failures, the struggles, those addictions, those things are just what your chapter in life is right now. It doesn't mean it's always going to be that way, but there's something for you to learn. There's some kind of superpower developing in you because these things are happening to you. And so, Main Street is just kind of this reminder that it's hard.

It's a little bit of a pleasure to say that when you go through things, it's character building, but it really is. It teaches you as a child, when you go through fall and scrape your knee and you cry, and then if you have a parent's sense, is that really hurting still or are you just upset that it happened? They kind of work out that kind of thing with you. And then that builds in still those kind of problem solving and kind of perspective having insights that you need later.

But you never stop doing that. You learn as you hopefully, you never stop doing that as you get older. I'm 54 years old and I'm still learning that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I totally understand that. It's sort of like this, some of the 12-step ideology too, where it's like, I mean, there's some things you just can't control. It doesn't matter if you're trying to do the right thing, if you're trying to crawl out of the hole, it's just there always going to be things there. And maybe today, it's not today you get out of the hole.

Maybe it's next week or next month or next year. So, I guess in that way, it's sort of a lament that just kind of put to a poppy tune. Yeah. So, who is like, so right now, 11-7, who is in 11-7?

What is that, Bann? It's 11-7, right? Not just 11-D. Am I saying it right?

Yes, it's 11-7. I'll normally like abbreviate it to 11 because I end up having to type that word out 50 times a day. Yeah, so it's me and Davey, Davenport. And normally we're, like I said, just beat Boopin around town synthesizers.

And our live show is more of like a sort of EDM-type dance party kind of situation with like visuals and projector screens and you know, kind of fun. Fun stuff that you want to throw a fog machine at. So, but yeah, he was the bass player and I used to play guitar when we were kind of more pop punk-heavy. And that was really fun.

And then it ultimately kind of destroyed our spines. And now we have to go to the chiropractor in our 30s. We're like visiting the chiropractor all the time now. Have you played any live shows lately since the pandemic?

Well, right before the pandemic hit, we were supposed to go on a tour of Japan. And then like the week that we were supposed to be on the plane is the week that like all of the COVID shit hit the fan and it got so bad so fast and the world just kind of lost its mind for a minute. And so every time that we've kind of gone back to the drawing board to be like, okay, well, maybe let's try to book it. Let's try to head back there at this time.

And then all of a sudden there will be another COVID outbreak in Japan. And so all the places around there that we would need to get into and out of like South Korea, it's been real hard to book a tour. I imagine it's also it's the kind of thing you don't want to spend too much effort setting up something that you might have to cancel, even if things look okay now, because that's happened before where a few months ago, vaccines came out, everybody things started to open and then all of a sudden shut down again. Yeah, of course.

And yeah, I mean, maybe I need to have a little bit more mental or emotional fortitude for this one because this is everybody's going through that. It's been really cool to see all of the all the singer songwriters kind of picking up and doing the brewery circuit again and and figuring out what that looks like in Western North Carolina, like what live music looks like. And it's definitely seen some some missteps maybe, but no no judgment on my end. I'm just I'm happy to see our friends like picking up and doing gigs and getting out in front of people because it's been a very lonely year and a half, I think, for a lot of us just trying to figure out what's next.

But you know, I think it goes back to what you're just talking about. This is going to be I hear a lot of things, you know, a lot of negative obviously it's been a negative year and a half, but also, you know, a lot of good has come of it and will continue to as people sort of readjust their expectations and kind of priorities. Yeah, with this kind of thing. I think a lot of people are, you know, I hear a lot of people saying, you know, that kind of help them clarify a few things, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel like I think about shows a little bit differently than I did before, because we played one festival like two or three weeks ago in Hot Springs, and we were able to do our set. It felt so good. It felt so good to be around people and like having a good time and seeing people dancing and being able to act full. But then like after the set, there were people that were coming up because people want to talk after the set.

And by the end of the set, a lot of people were already a little bit toasty, you know, they were three or four drinks in and people become really close talkers whenever that's the situation. And I was like, oh, this is, oh, this actually makes me kind of uncomfortable. Like I love everybody, I love seeing them out. I'm so happy that they paid for tickets to come.

Hang out. I just, this, it, I don't know, the pandemic and the way that people handled it. Just I've realized how it had sort of changed my perception of how close I want to be standing to people after a show. Heaven for Devil's, I think is maybe, maybe the darkest song on the EP.

When I played it for my wife, she was like, wow, this sounds kind of like a girl did me wrong. Kind of hating on some women kind of thing. And I was like, oh, it's actually not, that's not what I was thinking when I wrote it. But she always has like a much better perspective on that kind of thing than I do.

It's actually like, is more about like substance abuse and addiction and just sort of like the idea that there's this, this person who's like, this thing might kill me, but at least for right now, this is my heaven. Yeah, I'm realizing now there's way too much, way too many heaven references in this EP. Ron, no, I wish I had sent this to you sooner and you had confronted me about this. Well, that was my next question is, what's with all the heaven?

No, I guess it, I guess it's some cohesion, you know, there you go. There you go. A theme. You're your kind soul.

Tell me a little bit about rock candy recordings. That's your, that's your label, right? Or your studio? Yeah, it's both actually.

So rock candy recordings is a studio that we have here in Western North Carolina. Whenever I started out with the band, I ended up, we ended up going through a lot of producers in 11D and working with a bunch of different people. And I realized that the thing that I really loved and most out of the process was producing. And so I started producing for other bands, started doing some co-writes and songwriting for other bands.

And then that ultimately just turned into a full-time job. So we recently, about three years ago, moved here to this new space and opened up a studio. And it's been really great. Like, it's been super fun.

I'm like, the thing I'm most passionate about is helping bands create like label quality releases. And I think like going through that for so many years and just seeing the approach that everybody has, what the difference is between people who are like, well, let's just go pay an hourly rate at a studio and like put something out. And then it's like, well, yeah, but that's a totally different thing than working with a producer who can kind of like see your music from the outside, tell you what's really great about it, and then knows how to sort of like get into pro tools and make make you sound as absolutely best as you possibly can. And I kind of live for those moments.

I live for those moments like working with bands where it's like, oh my gosh, we're like the band surprises themselves with how good they sound. I used to love those moments when we first started out recording and working with producers. And so I really like facilitating those moments for other people as well. What are some of the acts you have on your label?

Where we are? Well, right now we are doing like we self release everything for 11D. I also do another band called the Jelly Rocks, which is just even more synth pop, beep boop stuff. But we've had, I think that in the last year, we've done some singles for the Maggie Valley band, which I don't know if they've been on this show.

They have not they've been on like a mini episode, but not like a video. Yeah. Okay, gotcha. They think they're too good for me.

Oh, man, they would be so nervous if they heard you say that there's there's some of the kind as hard of people I've ever met. Oh, yeah. But yeah, so yeah, we do that. But a lot of the times, you know, it's like if there is a band that is that needs that we really just believe in the material that they have, but at the same time, it doesn't look like they're going to be in a financial situation to be able to put that out.

Then a lot of times we'll work something out with the label, where we'll move some monies around in a different way. But for the most part, we really like sort of coaching bands on like, Hey, let's just put together a budget, because what we want is for you to be able to have the rights to all of this stuff and to be building up your numbers on Spotify and Apple Music and and getting putting yourself in a situation where you can count on a specific set of money each month from streaming, because that just like takes the takes the weight off of artists, especially during things like a pandemic where that's one of the only sources of income that a lot of artists have. So I know that that a lot of artists see Spotify and streaming and all that stuff is being problematic. And in many, many ways, it is I don't mean to like discredit that argument at all.

But it does exist. And it is but it does exist. And this is the hand that we're dealt. And this is the way that things are now.

And I would rather spend more time figuring it out and trying to get good at it than wishing that it went away because I don't think it's going to. Yeah. So more from Matt Langston of 1177 in just a few moments and more of 1177's music. Want to remind you that their new EP Revenge of the Mountain Medley is out now.

You can find it at rockcandyrecordings.com. 1177 is alive.com or look at any of these streaming sites for 1177. Hey guys, this is Kendra. This is Zach from the Brown Mountain Lightning Buzz.

And this is Waves from our new album Folk-ish, which you can find online. You can stream it. You can download it or you can buy physical copies from our website, which is Brown MountainLightningBugs.com. We also have some really cool t-shirts and some stickers.

So head on over there. You can also find us on all of the social medias. I mean, love for you to come join us. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, WNC Original Music, wherever you get your podcast.

Also follow us on Facebook and Instagram links for that in the show notes or just search WNC Original Music. I don't think it'll be that confusing. I think it's pretty much the only one. Corrections and clarifications from last week's episode with Jennifer Alvarado.

Custer was a soldier and ultimately a general in the Civil War and in the Indian Wars. And Custer is a type of ice cream that's a little bit creamier. I think it has egg in it. So we were both right.

Hi, this is Danny and Matt from The Old Futures and you're listening to WNC Original Music. Tell me some, um, some either local or national musicians bands or musicians that you think people should listen to more. Um, I don't know why it's not like standard protocol that everyone at the age of 13 gets introduced to electric light orchestra. Oh, yeah.

I just feel like that. I'm a huge Jeff Lin fan. I love just I gotta see if that's the most recent thing I was listening to. Oh, yes.

Okay. Let me see. Can you see this? What's the most recent thing I'm listening to there?

Can you see it? Oh my gosh. Yes. That's the E.

L. O. version of Xanadu without Olivia Newton, John. I love it.

It's great. Yes. Yes. Huge fan of Jeff Lin as a songwriter, as a storyteller.

I mean, I'm into everything they ever did. All the orchestra and stuff, I especially and it doesn't seem like a lot of people wanted to follow them into the more synthesizer heavy world. But of course that would be me. So when they started kind of, you know, firing all the orchestra people and be like, Oh, we've got a chord Juno or Roland Juno here that we can do this with.

I was just I was there for it. I was just I think songs are so good. Oh my god. Yeah, absolutely.

There's a there's a podcast. There's a great E. L. O.

podcast. They do like they're just doing every song. I'll see if I can find the name of it and send it to you. Yeah.

I love that. I do the history of it. You know, it's really really interesting stuff, you know, because you don't think of the L. O.

is having like, I mean, of course, I have a history, but it's the kind of thing where I'm like, they're not I don't know if they're popular enough where somebody's written something on every one of their songs. But apparently these guys find that out. So it's interesting to listen to some of them. I'm so I'm so glad I'm so necessary.

I think that's so necessary. The when I listen to Elo, they're like everything I love about the Beach Boys and the Beatles, like just kind of put on steroids. Like they're they're sort of happening on a budget where everybody else sort of feels like they weren't. I know that's not true because of how expensive was a record back then.

But All right. Anybody local Maggie Vayley band? You're like not even gonna let me say it. You're like, he's gonna plug the Maggie Valley band.

Obviously love the Maggie Valley band. There's so many, I mean, the amount of amazing folk music that I feel like exists in this area is completely under recognized. I feel like Rolling Stone could just come here and write articles on some of these bands for the next year, because they're so good. I love this band in town called Robot's Wind.

I don't know if anybody that does more of the singer song, or other stuff would even know who they are. But they're a pretty cool Asheville staple, at least for me. And they just put out some new stuff that I was able to actually mix for them. I felt really happy to be a part of that.

John Charles Dwyer lives around here. I don't know if you've ever had him on this show or not. But he's one of my favorite singer songwriters in the area as well. He came onto our podcast and it's just about the nicest salt of the earth guy you'll ever meet.

Yeah, sometimes some of our local bands like almost like irritated that they're not more well known, you know, because it's a weird thing where like, you know, Asheville is supposed to be like a musical hub, a musical destination. But I feel like I'm frustrated that it's not being exported enough. Like it's being imported. People come here, but it's not being exported.

When we obviously have successful working bands, you know, like Hustle Souls, they're touring the East Coast, Andrew Scott, he plays, he could play, you know, eight nights a week if he wanted to. I just saw Andrew Thelston's schedule for the upcoming week and he's playing, you know, yeah, but yeah, I want just like two or three people to like really just be nationally known tomorrow because they should be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Well, I mean, hopefully that's like, hopefully we're helping people take some really important steps up the ladder at Rock Candy because I love helping bands out. I love being able to sort of help them polish and refine what they're doing and get it ready for export. And I hope that in the next few years that we can really figure out a way to kind of pipeline those acts and platform them in a really healthy and cool way. I'm not a kid, but just because daddy pays the bills, something that I paint my clothes in, like those oceans to help it.

She said, I won't be one who never left this town. I can't bear where the shackles of one was where to go, heaven holds you, turn mine, but here if you fly her into it, I'll never find my freedom in me. She's saving for a set of keys to anything with wheels, because she's grabbing themselves from the rules. The most folky of the folk songs to me on the city.

Okay, all right. Oh, and don't let me rush there's something else you want to talk about if I'm passed over something about one of the other songs. No, no, you're good. You're good.

And you've got a great beard, by the way, it's a it's a very friendly. Hey, let's sit down and have a beer kind of beard. Oh, thank you. This is like the shortest it usually ever is.

I shaved it off. I was off last week and I shaved it off at the beginning of the week. And this is so this is one week of growth. Nice, nice.

Yeah, I can't get anywhere close to that. Mine just ends up in little patches. Yeah, I got a little balls. That's great.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, you're sorry, you're asking about Carolina pine. I'm trying to not be the only person to go on changes. We'll keep talking about it until it makes you so uncomfortable.

And you have to call for backup. Yeah, I think Caroline pine is like my favorite song on the EP, Hands Down. I think it probably took me, I don't know, a week and a half, maybe two weeks to to write it and demo it and make sure that like all the lyrics were the way that I wanted them to be. I know that there's some artists, especially there's some acts that we've had in here.

I don't know if you guys cover a lot of hip pop and stuff around the actual area, but we we had a friend of our space man Jones come in for to do a single with us before. And he was so good at just writing off the top of his head. Like, he wrote in this completely different way that was just super organic, super like, oh, this is just what I'm feeling. And we're just going to make it rhyme and like, we'll play the song three or four times and he's written all the lyrics that he's going to use.

And I am definitely the kind of person's like, okay, let's do some creative free writing. And then let's see if there's a cool idea that comes out of that and then take that idea and then nit pick it to death and then see if we can make things rhyme even more, or if there's a more clever way to phrase something or a more dramatic way of phrasing something that kind of pulls these images out of your mind. So yeah, I feel like I definitely have the, I don't know, the IT tech support kind of approach to songwriting. I wish I was a lot quicker at it.

I like that. I like that. I like that. I like that.

I like that. I think it's a good idea. I want to make a list of songwriting lyric techniques. And I like the tech support.

I'll give you credit. Awesome. Just write that down. Not like I'm recording this.

Yeah. Right. I'm going to forget it. Exactly.

Exactly. No, you're cool. In my free writing, I just, I ended up with this image of this girl in my mind who is growing up in a very similar area in space that I grew up in in South Carolina. And that I started channeling a lot of these stories that I heard from my grandparents and from my parents.

And like, we're not so far removed from, I don't know, this really sort of strange melancholy in the south of you sort of get born into this situation. And it wasn't, but just a few years ago, before it's like, nobody's going to, nobody's encouraging you to go to college, you know, nobody's encouraging you to like, to get out and do anything special with your life or to experience the world in a different way or to think about the world in a different way or to encourage you in music and say like, you can get good enough of that guitar that that guitar can fly you anywhere around the world that you want to be. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Or this sample pad, you know, get really good at samples and like music is just amazing to me in that way. Anyway, that gets off on a tangent for sure. But the idea was like of this girl who grows up hearing these stories from her mom, where she doesn't look at her mom and dad and like see like a loving relationship, she kind of like hears her mom in the first verse, you know, sort of saying like, Hey, be wary of of growing up and falling in love, because it doesn't always look the way that you think it does. And then she gets a little bit older and then you sort of realize in the song that that her dad completely has all of the cards in the family and that when he comes home, you know, he's been drinking, there's like some domestic violence and things going on and that.

And then at the end of the song, it sort of culminates into she's living in this cycle, you know, in the chorus, she's kind of crying out and saying like, somebody please just get me out of here. And then it's so easy for life to just come in and completely make you forget, you know, the immediacy of the moment can sometimes feel so overwhelming. And before you know it, you've thrown so many different futures away. Yeah.

And that's a lot down so young for some people. Oh my God. Yes. Absolutely.

We've seen a ton of that in our family and yeah, it's it's it's sad. But I think there's also like a really beautiful story in it as well. And I kind of feel like that's what Carolina Pine is is like at the end of it, you know, she sort of gets proposed to and you don't really know if she's going to perpetuate the cycle again, or if she's going to get out. And that's kind of life, you know, that's like, I don't know, the realest example of life that I can think of is like, we don't know what we're going to do.

Like we see our friends do a million different things growing up and head in different directions and everybody kind of ends up in crazy places you never would have thought. And the same is true for you, you know, like you can wake up one day, 10 years from now and just really surprise yourself with how good or how bad it is. Yeah. So I like that I like that.

And too, because it's not not only is it that you don't know what she says, you don't know what way goes because this is more, you know, more than just one person's story, you know, that for some people, it goes this way and some people go the other way. So some people are making a decision. Some people are making the opposite decision and kind of like fixing things or writing their mistakes or breaking that cycle. And then some people aren't some I mean, I even hear some people say, you know, there's just no way to run this is just a life I was born into.

I can't get out of it. You know, they'll say it just that plainly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. As long as they believe it is true, you know, and it's also like a lot of says we don't notice like in their head, right?

You know what I mean? Like we from the outside looking in on a lot of those situations is so easy for us to be like, yeah, but literally just pack up and leave. Like you're fine. But then when you're when you're in that person's head and you have all those experiences and all of that specific sets of of trauma, it changes the way you think about yourself and about others.

And I think if I can just do like one small thing and just like writing a song that allows me to be able to just look at that cycle, it helps me to understand it, helps me to have empathy and maybe understand the ways in which I'm also caught in cycles, you know, and I'm also a victim of circumstance sometimes. So yeah, that's interesting. What do you how do you approach recording the songs you have written? Like I know you said that you start like sometimes you start with loops and layering and that sort of thing, but when you do actual recording and you're sitting down and starting from scratch and saying, okay, I'm going to record this song.

I'm going to put these tracks down the straight down or do you, you know, kind of record as you write, like you said with one of those songs. It's all kind of happening at one time. In every like when I'm writing and recording, I might not know everything that needs to happen or where everything needs to go, but I know that maybe I'll just have this idea that, okay, well, this is what a drum needs to sound like right here. Okay, well, now that I've got this sounding cool, then, you know, it sounds like maybe this name would work well.

Well, these two samples create this really great beat together. And so it's like trying to not get bogged down and like making the whole song immediately at once and like getting overwhelmed with all of that. But just like, hey, here's just a really small decision that I can make that I feel good about. And eventually you do that three or four thousand times and then you end up with a song.

But yeah, for this one, I really love, I love drums. I love big kick drums. I love big claps. I love sort of feeling like, is there a drum kit or is it just a whole bunch of, you know, people and we're just doing, we're just making rhythm together?

So a lot of that stuff kind of starts out with, well, let me, let me create a drum loop that I feel like moves me or that I feel like would be easy to chant or sing something to or clap along with. And then that inevitably, you know, you just kind of start goofing off over top of that and singing lines and different things come out. And it's fun. So all these songs really like had a really interesting mix of acoustic and, you know, I guess I wouldn't say electronic, but you know, what's the word I'm looking for?

Electric instruments, you know, drum tracks, that's what I'm talking about. Were you, were there any songs that you were tempted or you're heading songs lately that you're tempted just to say, I'm just going to do an acoustic guitar and voice on this? Yeah, I mean, Carolina Pine was definitely that song. Right.

And then I ended up going to see or going to hang out with the Maggie Valley band, actually, one night, I came here for a show or something. And then they introduced me to this guy, Casey, who plays lap steel for them. And he was just absolutely phenomenal. And like the next day, I called him and I was like, Hey, I have this song, I think you would do a really, really fantastic job on, because pedal steel is no joke, man.

It still just seems like wizardry to me to watch somebody, there's really good play it. But I'm really, really grateful that they put in the time to have that be, you know, their pixie dust that they're putting out into the universe. For a lot of the other songs, during the pandemic, I ended up buying a lap steel and just started looking up YouTube videos on how to play lap steel. So that's where a lot of those electric guitar kind of sounds come from.

What's really interesting is like lap steel makes you think about what you're writing in a totally different way. It's like very limiting in one way, but it'll make you think about the attitude and energy of the song in a different way. I think that's, I mean, it takes you out of your regular patterns. Exactly.

Yeah. For sure. But what if it's all current? What if it's all current?

You don't matter to the moon. Don't you get tired, tired, tired? I skinned her to love on you. But you don't wait there.

You keep on playing with it. You can bet. You can bet. What if it's all current?

I'm tired that you've been fighting with it. If it's all meant to be, or you live in just a feel like you got something left to leave. You can bet. You can't let.

Yeah. So Curtin's is the only song on the EP that was a co-write with Mallory and Scott from a band called The Ruffin Tumble. They're actually from here or from the Black Mountain area. And then, and now they just like kind of travel the US in a camper with their dogs.

But there's some of my favorite songwriters of all time. And we go way back. Yeah, Ruck Candy's got some stuff for them or from them before. They're just, they have a really interesting way of looking at the world.

And one of the things I learned from my time in Nashville was just how much fun it can be and how eye-opening it can be. If you've been in the studio for a long time, just kind of slaving away doing your own thing to get out and do something communal like co-writing. And everybody just kind of shows up with a notebook of like, well, here's some interesting or dumb thoughts that I had during the day or for the past week. And maybe there's something fun in here.

And so yeah, when you got one person kind of picking around on guitar and and two other people, either top lining or coming up with lyric ideas and stuff, I think that song was probably written in about, I want to say like half an hour because it just happened really fast. And we all kind of caught vision for what it was. And then I think I ended up going back later in writing the bridge for it just to kind of like tie all of that. Once I kind of had time to sit with the song and like understand how the lyrics came to be and what everybody was trying to say, I always think the bridge is a really great place to sort of sum it up for people like me who may not understand what songs are about.

I love bridges because it's like a way to be like, hey, it's actually about this thing. I sort of drive the point home. I also heard someone say once that a bridge is a place to say a couple of things like to clarify the point of the song or to say, don't take this too seriously. I had some good experience where this song sounds real serious and you're like, but all I'm saying is there's a song called Superman by Five for Fighting.

It's like 20 years old. But it's a good example of that where the bridge is like, I'm just thinking out loud here. So don't come crazy. Or it's a way to say, I didn't mean any of that.

All that was for the words to rhyme and here's what I really mean. And then sometimes it's just a way to put a third verse in there that you want without having to be redundant. There's so many good uses for a bridge. Yeah, exactly.

I try to tell people like if there's something about this song or there's a specific line in the song that you need to yell to people that you really want to just hold people by the face and scream into them, let's do that in the bridge. Let's figure out a way to make that emotionally feel more intense. And sometimes that means getting louder and sometimes it means getting way softer and kind of drawing people in with a whisper. So yeah, I love that.

Yeah, I guess you probably have tons of people talking to you about about these little ins and outs of songwriting all the time. It has to be so fun. Yeah, it really is. Yeah.

Where do you go? What are you planning on? Or do you have anything you're planning on recording next? Do you've written some stuff for your next release?

Or you focused on this too much? We've always kind of got like another album's worth of material that we're always sitting on. Just because if I'm not working on something in the studio, I'm demoing stuff for 11D. I think we're probably for sure going to head back into the synthesizer heavy kind of territory.

But at the same time, I think the songs that we write in 11D, I feel like can be very esoteric and angsty. And they can run the gamut of being incredibly goofy or very serious. Like, hey, here's what I'm realizing about myself from therapy. And I think for these kinds of things, these sort of folk songs, I really like the perimeter of just being able to tell a story or sitting down and having those kind of stories pop into your head and evolve over time with Carolina Pine.

Those are the moments where you feel like the universe is trying to heal itself by telling you stories. And I think that's kind of a little mini miracle. And I love being a part of that in any way that I can. So much fun talking to Matt from 1175 for this episode.

Don't forget to go and listen to their new EP, Revenge of the Mountain Melody is out now on all the streaming services or go download it at 1175 as alive.com or rockcandyrecording.com. Also go back and listen to their back catalog. They got a lot of great albums before this one, a little more kind of indie rock tins, but always very melodic, enjoyable, energetic, just all those synonyms for good music. One more time, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, WNC Original Music, wherever you get your podcast or visit wncoriginalmusic.com and there'll be links there for you to subscribe to whatever you know what to do.

For the closing song this week, we have a really great track from the Kinsey Van Auss. Mackenzie is from Raleigh, North Carolina just like me. And she is a soloist ballerina in the Carolina ballet just like me. She's classically trained in piano, guitar and drums.

And she is currently working on an album surrounding her most recent single stereo to heaven, which you're about to hear right now. Here is Mackenzie Van Auss. Have a good week. I do need you to start getting a little more iron in your diet.

Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, you're making my lads right now. And a little less hops. Your hops, your hops quotient is with the author charts.