And welcome back to the continuation of the WXAV Jazz Department crossover special. And I'm here with the last interview of the series, Mr. Luke Hoderak. How's it going man?
Also known as WXAVs, one and only. A SAB LARS. One of the two Goofy SDJs on the airwaves. I am DJ Napping.
Indeed. But we're not on air right now. We're on podcast. We're gonna talk about your original piece that you did for the Sains Xavier Jazz Ensemble.
I know the answers to mostly these questions because we're pretty good friends. Indeed. But I gotta ask you, what do you play? I play guitar.
How long have you played guitar? I've been playing guitar since I was 11, but I'm only a sophomore. I've been playing jazz for maybe like one year before that. So I've been playing jazz for like maybe like two and a half years.
I'm playing guitar for eight and jazz for two and a half. Have you written music before? Yeah, I have. Yeah.
Even before Dippin Sauce, I wrote music with like a metal band called Pandemonium. Give some shout outs. Yeah. Yeah.
Definitely. I play in a band called Boys and Ties or songs for them. And then I play in this band called The Zamps. And I write a lot for that too.
How long have you been writing music? I've been writing music since probably I'd have to say I was like 14 or 15, but I haven't really like been proud of something until just recently. Because it's like writing songs at like 15. It's like they were all kind of like they're bad and they're all about regular show and other cartoons.
Oh, yeah. Just like the Lars and Happing Show on WXAV 88.3 FM Chicago, currently three to five PM every Friday. Indeed. So right now we are going to play a bit of your original composition.
And that was a little snip and a half of Dippin Sauce by St. Xavier's very own Lou Kodarek. WXAV is a sabbalaris. Indeed, indeed.
Right off the bat. How did you come up with that main melody? I was just kind of like playing around with the chord changes to Hank Mosby's Aha. And I changed up the rhythm.
So it's a contract. I changed up the rhythms and made it into kind of like more of a funk song. I was just kind of trying to follow like a pentatonic scale sort of thing, but through some chromatic licks in there. I put it all in Garage Bandit just kind of noodled over it until I found something I liked.
I actually played it in the wrong key. So Alexis was thankfully there to kind of help me navigate my way through what the right key would be. It was more of a D-sharp minor. Very cool.
Would you like to tell me about how the experience in the studio was for you? The studio experience was really cool because Delta Studios I think is the name of it. It's just such a cool studio. They had a pinball machine.
They had Nintendo 64 there. They weren't there doing that. We'd play the pinball a little bit, but we didn't do the Nintendo 64. But we were just kind of chilling in the back room.
It's like it's a really cool place to be. We sat and watched the first combo record their stuff, which was very good, very cool. And then we moved on to ours after taking our power naps and warming up and stuff. Yeah, we recorded everything.
Louise was really tired. I felt bad for him. He really pulled through because he played for both combos. And yeah, like I said, he was exhausted by the end of it.
But yeah, the whole experience was so cool. So fun. I'd love to do it again. Very cool indeed.
How did solos get picked for your song? It was more just kind of like Dr. Sammon kind of assigned them. And he's just like, who wants to solo on this one?
Who wants to solo on that one? Although I did want Ethan to do a bass solo on it, which was I was really glad that we were able to have him play on it because it adds a whole lot more dynamics to the song overall because there's a soft spot and it goes back into the thing spot. Guitar isn't such a primary instrument in jazz as it is in genres that you and I typically flirt with. So would you like to tell me how you feel being the offbeat kind of?
Kind of more like part of the rhythm section. Yeah, there's a lot more going on for me, I guess, because saxophones and brass and stuff, I'd say melodies and maybe some harmonics, but it's like I gotta be doing chord changes and comping throughout the whole thing and then I'll play the melody sometimes. And then also, so it's like, I don't know, I like playing guitar because I can basically play any part. Very true.
And one last thing. Very quirky thing in jazz, especially when there's no lyrics. How'd you come up with this title? Okay, so I was in the computer lab here at San Xavier and a lot of the other music people were hanging out.
I think Sergio is there too, but Alexis was there and he's important because he offered to get me some McDonald's and I told him to give me chicken tenders and he asked for what kind of sauce it was. And I'm like, just give me all the sauces, give me one of each sauce. So he did, no, actually I didn't ask for it. That's why he got me each kind of sauce.
I totally forgot to ask for a sauce. And so he just gave me each one. And so I'm just working on this. And I changed the title of it a million times.
I tried to make it all weird and funny and all of them were really cheesy. I think one of them was flashing light craze or something like that. Okay. It was like all the names were really bad.
I couldn't come up with one and I'm eating the chicken and others and stuff. And so I'm just eating it and I'm like, hey, wait a minute. So then I like, I make it, I call it dip and sauce and then I go and I hand it to everybody the next day at jazz combo and Alexis looks at it and he's like, yeah, I know what this is about. And then on top of that, like Louise and, I think it was Louise who is mainly on it.
But either way Louise and Alexis were both staying in it and they added like a short lyric to it and they're like, dip, dip sucks chicken nuggets. And that's kind of how it stuck. That's how it happened, baby. Indeed.
All right. That's all I need from you. Luke Hoderick, it is time for us to turn into a seplars and DJ Napping and go on air on WXAV88.3 FM Chicago. Thank you for listening to this podcast crossover special with Student Media and the Jazz Department.