Interview with @theBwack (part. 1)
Last fall I had the privilege of checking out the @crowderband on their Church Music tour. It was one of the most fun, and most technologically advanced concerts I’ve been to. Thanks to a good friend of mine, I was able to sit down with the Infamous Bwack (@thebwack), and chat about all things music, Crowderband and Ableton Live. It’s partially because of the music of the Crowderband and the electronic elements Bwack brings to the table that have encouraged me to get involved in electronic music, and especially how electronic music can natuarlly be integrated into a Worship Setting.
In the process of moving to a new state, and starting a new job, the editing and posting of the interview fail to the wayside. Thanks to a recent vacation and plane ride, I finally got the interview typed up and edited. I’ve split the interview into 3 different parts, that will be posting Today, Thursday and Friday. It’s full of behind the scenes info on how Crowder Band created their new record, and gives us a little bit of insight into the brain of the guy who literally created a drum-playing robot!
How did you start playing music?
I had a neighbor growing up who was a drummer. When I was in 5th grade she offered my mom a drumset and I started playing and taking drum lessons. I did 3 years of private lessons learning basic beats and rock and roll stuff. I joined the band in High School and played in the marching band, jazz band and the Orchestra program. All my friends were playing in funk and ska bands-It was one of those “band of the week” things were you’d play in a band for a week then you’d break up and a few more guys would come in. There were probably 30 musicians in my high school that were all really close and so at any given time there were probably 5 or 6 bands.
So because of all the different bands you were in, did you end up playing alot of different styles of music?
Yeah quite a few. I went to college for Jazz for about a year, and then I transferred to Baylor, which is were I met Crowder. I did music there for a few semesters as well. While I was there I was listening to Peter Gabriel. He was doing a lot of loop stuff, and Alanis was getting popular and she did alot of the electronic stuff as well. I was really getting into the idea of using loops. It allowed the drummer to do less-but more at the same time. Basically-you don’t feel like you’ve got to lay down Kick on 1 and snare on 2 and 4 all the time. Alot of those drummers were getting away from just the typical drum beat, because there was something else going on that was allowing them to experiment more with what groove is. Its almost like having 2 or 3 drummers in the band, I loved it.
How did you get into using loops and doing programming stuff?
There was always this desire to play with loops, but it was this far off distant, mysterious thing. How do you do that? I kinda knew what a loop was… you know it sounded like a distorted drum kit, it was drums that had been effected someway to sound less like drums. This was actually right about the time I was getting involved at UBC with the Crowder band and through some conversations with David we decided…yeah lets give it a shot. So we picked the song, “Waves of Mercy” (Every move I make)-you know old school 90’s worship song and we decided to make a loop for it. So I set up in the back room of our church and I’ve got Dave’s Korg M-1 Keyboard -which was like the standard of early 90’s Keyboard workstations, and I’ve got the drumkit pulled up on it. It was going through Jack’s Pedalboard into a Roland 202 sampler. So… I’m gonna make the first Crowder band loop ever. I programmed this regular rock beat and got a few pedals going and found a sound I liked. With the sp 202 you’ve basically got to hit record and stop at exactly the right time to get it to loop correctly. So I go get Crowder and said, “Hey I’m close to getting it where I need it, I just need someone to move the Wah.” So Crowder comes up and does the Wah. We figure out a cool wah pattern and I’m trying to get the 202 to record it just right. We got it figured out and we actually ended up using it for about 5 or 6 years.
What are you listening to these days musically?
Thats a good question. I haven’t bought a lot of records recently. I’m trying to think of what I’ve bought. There’s this Prog Metal band “Coheed and Cambria” I’ve been listening to their first two records a lot. I started with their first record and I’m reading the comics. If you don’t know, their singer Claudio Sanchez writes comics that all their lyrics of all the band’s albums are centered around. So its kinda like Sci-fi space trilogy stuff. I read the comic books and loved them, and so I bought the first record and spent some time with it, and right now I’m in the middle of the second record. It’s cool though cause they think of their music as a soundtrack to this epic comic work that the singer has done. Thats been my most recent music purchase.
And the Owl City stuff is just so pleasant to listen to and so great. Its kinda like “Thanks Owl City for making the second and third postal service records we never got”. I was a huge Postal Service fan, and I think i’m an even bigger owl city fan, because I think its more natural for him. I’m big into the Owl city stuff.
Thanks for checking out Part 1 of my Interview with Bwack! Make sure to check out Part 2 tomorrow @ 10 AM EST
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