Great Waves

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/greatwavesinterview.jpg" alt=" " />Two members of Great Waves, a young alt-country quartet out of Washington State, boldly stepped into the 21<sup>st</sup> century with QRO, employing space age technology...

  After the initial kinks were worked out, Ashley Bullock (vocals) and Ryan Sprute (drums) dish on the death of the Matirns, the birth of Great Waves, and why Sammamish rocks so damn hard.  At the time of the interview the band was waiting for an invitation to Sound Off! (since received), a battle royale for up-and-coming bands in the Northwest.  Thanks to Great Waves for suffering through computer glitches with good spirit and good luck to Ashley, Ryan, Will (guitar), and Paul (bass) at the Sound Off!

 

QRO: Apparently my mike is really silent so let me fix that.

QRO: I’m not hearing you.

QRO: Are you hearing me?

QRO: Fuck the 21st century…

Ryan Sprute: Hmmm.

QRO: Can you hear me poorly or not at all?

RS: Uh, not really that well.

QRO: Is it choppy or is it low volume?  I can hear you.

RS: Really low volume.

QRO: OK, then I’ll type, you talk.  So I loved the EP (QRO review) – have you guys released prior stuff?

RS: Yeah, sort of…We used to be called the Matirns (Here, let me type it out…).  That was our band name in high school.  We broke up for college, then when we got back together this summer, after not being together at all for a while, we played a bunch of shows as the Matirns.  One show it was spelled the ‘Martians’.  Another show we were called the ‘Martins’, which is kind of funny because [the Matirn] is a type of the Martin, that’s the origin of the name.  So we’re like, ‘It’s come full circle, time to hang it up.’

We actually wanted a new band name forever, but none of us could agree on a new name.  We never had a unanimous vote until, I guess, ‘Great Waves’.  Was it you that came up with that?

Ashley Bullock: Yeah, I think so.

RS: Yeah, we came up with Great Waves.  Will liked it, and we immediately changed it.

QRO: Well, sometimes, new band names are good opportunities for growth and change.

RS: Right, we kind of wanted a fresh start, I think. 

We felt like this EP was a huge jump musically for all of us.

  So we wanted to clear the slate, and not have our old high school recordings (that we recorded in one day in the studio) compete with the stuff we’ve had enough time to record.  And they’re just better songs all around, so we wanted a new thing.

QRO: Do you guys handle the production of the album, or do you have a producer?

AB: On this album we had a producer, but he kind of came in at the last minute.  He was our… what’s was he?

RS: He was an engineer.

AB: Yeah, so he’s the first time we’ve ever worked with anyone as a producer.

QRO: I hear a lot of very smooth instrumentation/recording.  Were all the instruments played in the band?

AB: The only other instruments that weren’t us were the violin and the mandolin.  The piano was our bassist.  And we actually had three other people sing on the album: Bill Campbell sang on "Blue Blood", my friend from college sang on "The Moon and the Gutter", and our producer sang quietly on a couple parts (if you listen closely you can hear him on "Sea Legs" and "Konza Plains").

QRO: I really liked "Sea Legs", "Blue Blood" too.  I think I’m a sucker for the more melancholy songs.

RS: I’m glad you liked those two.  It seems like we’ve gotten a big response for the "Konza Plains" and "The Moon and the Gutter", the more up-tempo ones. 

My mom was actually like, ‘You guys are too sad on those ones [the melancholy tracks].’

  We like those songs a lot.  "Sea Legs" was the one that we wrote first…

AB: It almost didn’t make the EP.

RS: Our producer really liked that one too; glad you enjoy it.

QRO: What direction do you see the band going in, upbeat, downbeat, or both?

AB: Right now Will, our guitarist, is pretty set on writing upbeat songs.  We’ve never really done it before, because even "Konza Plains" isn’t….

RS: It’s sort of mid-tempo…

AB: Yeah, so we’re trying to go upbeat, but I know my favorites are the "Blue Blood" sort of song.  So it’s kind of going both directions…

RS: We were talking about this earlier…  For a live show, I think we all sort of felt that it dragged a bit when it was all pretty slow songs – which can work – but I think for audiences, in a live show, up-tempo songs are more well-received at least when your starting out.  As opposed to the mid-tempo or slower stuff.  We wanted to energize the live show a bit and write a couple of [higher energy] songs.

Ashley’s voice, I think, is better suited for darker and slower songs.  We definitely want to keep that element.  But we want at least a couple up-tempo songs that the audience will be like ‘Alright!’, to mix in with the ballads.  We’re still trying to find our sound.

The up-tempo songs that we’re writing now are pretty influenced by the Lonely Forest, which is a local band from Anacortes.  Myself and Will are huge fans of them, borderline obsession.  We went and saw them at the Shellbox just recently, and they just killed it.  The crowd was just loving it.  We kind of wanted to have a show more like theirs, so we wrote two songs so far that are more up-tempo like that.

AB: We’ve also written some sweeter, simpler songs like "Untitled".

QRO: Yeah, you need to mix the ballads/crowd-pleasers/etc…  Are you guys touring around the Northwest?  Do you want to?  What’s been a good live show experience for you?

AB: Yeah, we’re going to try and start touring.  It’s kind of hard since we don’t have that much of a following yet.  Right now we’re taking whatever we can get, playing as much as we can.  We’ve been playing on the street.  Stuff like that…

RS: We’re playing a couple shows in January.  It’s really any show we can get right now.

QRO: I hear you, where are you guys out of again?

RS: We’re out of Seattle right now, we all live in Seattle.  But we’re all originally from Sammamish, which is like 15 minutes away from Seattle.

QRO: I like how you’re representing Sammamish on the MySpace!

RS: Oh yeah, thanks! 

We decided there are so many Seattle bands that we wanted to represent our little niche…

AB: It actually worked; we got an interview from the local press.

RS: And then, I guess a good live show is… Well, it’s kinda crazy, I don’t even know if the venue is still around.  But it was called Top of the Hill Studio, in Oak Harbor, Washington, way out there.

AB: Middle of nowhere…

RS: They just like twittered us (or ‘tweeted’?) saying ‘Hey, you should come do a show!’ and we didn’t really have anyone saying that like, ever, so we said ‘Yeah!’  It was just around fifteen people but it was like the greatest crowd we ever had, pretty awesome.

AB: And they still follow us now, which is pretty cool.

QRO: OK, what should we expect from GW in the future?  Is the EP prelude to a full album?

AB: We don’t really know yet… We have recording time in March, the end of March.  We’re going to kind of see what takes shape.  Since we’re not very quick at recording, it’s hard for us to save enough money to do a full album as of right now.  And we’re also waiting to hear back from a local band competition.  If we get in, we’re going to spend a lot of time on our live shows, which would steal time from our writing for a while.  So it’s all up in the air, I guess.

RS: Yeah, due to financial constraints we probably won’t be recording an album anytime soon.  But we’ll be recording another at least…

AB: Another five or six…

RS: Yeah, five or six songs.  Maybe, hopefully, two EPs to finish out this year.  After that, if an album emerges out of those three EPs and we see a theme appearing, then we might bundle them up and release it as an album.  Besides that we’re kind of just going with EPs.

QRO: I hear you.  The quality of the recordings is sounding really good, so keep recording how you’re recording.

RS: Oh, thank you.  Yeah, we recorded at Jupiter Studios in Wallingford, Seattle.  Considering the quality it was a really good price!  We were able to get ten days, which I think is the time that we needed to get the songs the way we wanted them.

QRO: Ra Ra Riot (QRO spotlight on) and Middle Distance Runner (QRO spotlight on) basically released the same album for three-four years.  The thinking is quality over quantity, and keep improving the live show.

RS: Sure, yeah.  If we get into this local competition called ‘Sound Off’ we would really want to focus on our live show.  If not, well…

It’d be nice to play, go on tour and stuff, but our number one priority is always going to be making the best music we can

, so we have to budget our time accordingly to what we can fit in.  I think three months is the minimum to be able to get another EP ready…

AB: Even that’s a little short.

QRO: All right, last question: paper or plastic?

RS: Ah, I used to work at the grocery store so I’m just going to say plastic because it’s easier to bag.

QRO: Ashley?

AB: Uhhh…

RS: This is very important!

AB: I don’t know.  Recycling’s important, so paper.

QRO: Tension within the band!

RS: It might split us up.

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