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Luke Sneyd of Music Now Artist/Band Spotlight Weekly Series |
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Luke Sneyd | ||
In this week spotlight with Canadian Indie Band Charge of the Light Brigade, our Webzine spoke to Luke Sneyd (Vocals, Guitar) about the band’s cool sound and fantastic music that music lovers will immensely enjoy. We discovered some cool facts from Luke about the band that we were excited to share with our readers. Here is the entire interview with Luke for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!
Isaac: HI Charge of the Light Brigade! You are living, working, and performing in Toronto, Ontario. Describe the music scene in your location and what does this mean to you as an artist/band.
Luke Sneyd of Charge of the Light Brigade: Toronto is a great city with a lot going on in its music scene. Which can be a boon, but it's also a challenge. There are so many bands and so many other things to do that the live scene is often hard-scrabble and random. In a broad context, there are great bands like Metric and Broken Social Scene that have come out of here, so there's good international awareness of the city's scene. But also a plethora of copy-cat bands. Seeing one Broken Tokyo Stars Club after another can be wearying. Doing original work takes time to find an audience. Oddly, we've enjoyed more success with gigs away from our hometown.
We've got a strong classic sensibility. I myself love great rock and the craft of a perfect pop-song. David Bowie would top the list for me personally for his incredible creative adaptability, closely followed by Macca, just 'cause how cool would that be? Neil Finn's another who's a great writer and really still exploring what he can create today. And Tom Waits would be a gas, but I doubt we'd get much writing done. For bassist Jason Eagan, his holy trinity consists of Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson and Graham Parsons.
Album Cover
Isaac: What’s the biggest challenge of pursuing a career in music?
Luke Sneyd of Charge of the Light Brigade: Money? Awareness? We live in a time with incredible opportunities for artists, and the possibility of overnight success is more available than ever before. And yet the ease of access makes it a million-channel universe. Finding people that like the music, identify and want to support the band as living breathing artists that have to pay the rent, and eat occasionally is a real challenge. When they do pop out of the woodwork, it's so gratifying, like stumbling across a kindred spirit.
Isaac: What do you like about performing in an intimate setting versus a huge setting and vice versa?
Luke Sneyd of Charge of the Light Brigade: Intimate environments rule for connecting with an audience. We haven't played a truly huge setting yet, some small festivals. Would love to mount a spectacle tour - the things that Trent Reznor and NIN can do with a stadium are mind-blowing for instance - but I like a medium-sized club for the direct relationship and engagement with the audience.
Isaac: What is the process you take to write? How do you go from a spark to a completed finished song?
Luke Sneyd of Charge of the Light Brigade: All the songs start with me. As a songwriter, I usually present the band with pretty developed ideas from the get-go. Most of the time, the lyrics, melody and structure of a song are already worked out, and then everyone else builds on top of that foundation. "Young Love" was like that, me fiddling and trying to surprise myself from one part to the next, till the whole epic stew was pretty much cooked up and ready to serve. Arrangements shift and evolve in the fleshing out process, but usually the songs don't change a lot. Marc's production adds a huge amount to the tonal character of the songs, adding layers of keys and guitar, and opening tangents or shifts in the dynamics. Zack's drumming brings a lot of energy and innovation, and Jason's come up with some great bass lines in the time he's been with the band. As a guitarist, my original ideas come from noodling around on an acoustic most of the time. Often though, the best ideas pop into my head away from the guitar, just a random neuron firing a memorable line or melody unbidden into my head.
Luke Sneyd and the Deed (Photo by Elena Vardon)
Isaac: When did you decide you wanted to take the DIY (Do It Yourself) route?
Luke Sneyd of Charge of the Light Brigade: When no one would sign us!? LOL! As an artist or band in the early stages, DIY is really all you've got, and the tools are out there to get yourself heard. It's a lot of hard work, but you stand to reap a lot of benefits, too. If you break through! I think most emerging artists benefit greatly from graduating to a smallish label.
Isaac: What are the pros and cons of doing everything yourself vs. working with others in the music industry?
Luke Sneyd of Charge of the Light Brigade: DIY you're shouldering all the risk and reward. Could be a windfall down the road, but reality is that music is a tremendous investment, recording, putting out material, gigging, promoting. If you can build a team to help you develop all those elements on your own, you've got a good shot. Working with a label can give you a leg up on some of those things. But it has to be a good fit and they have to believe in the music, your music, as much as you do. The best thing about DIY is the total creative freedom, making the songs that we want to make.
Isaac: What is the most difficult part about juggling family life, work, and a music career for you as a performer/artist/band?
Luke Sneyd of Charge of the Light Brigade: Keeping everybody motivated and on the same page. As a band we know we're creating some great material. The EP is a first taste of that, and we're really confident that the album will stand out as something pretty damn fantastic. At the same time, building an audience has been challenging, and for every good show we have, we've endured another playing to twenty people in a dank pool hall. Which is hard on the band, hard on family, who come out and support a lot, and hardly rewarding. You just have to be adamant you're creating something cool, memorable, and even better work lies just ahead.
Isaac: What are your plans for the future?
Luke Sneyd of Charge of the Light Brigade: Eating some leftover pizza and giving the cats a flea treatment? Oh the glamour! Seriously, finishing off our album The Defiant Ones is top priority right now. There's a bunch of really great songs we're working on, and we're pressing hard to have it out by late fall this year (you can check out a preview track "Temptation Lies" by being a fan of our Facebook page). And getting the word out to a bigger audience and pushing the live show to another level. The band's already super-solid, so the next logical step is other-worldly. Can't wait!!
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