Matt’s Hat Interviews – Jam Cruise Edition – Big Something
While enjoying the utterly amazing Jam Cruise 15, I had the good fortune to sit down with Big Something, the quickly rising six-piece outfit from North Carolina. We talked about a wide range of topics that none of the members were shy about diving in to. Each of the members was eager to share his stories, ideas and vision for the future of the band and each of their roles within it. Wonderfully, while they all had a unique style and method for approaching their futures, those futures were nevertheless unified and directed to a single goal. This speaks volumes about why they are rising so quickly and that the trajectory they are on should propel them to even greater heights.
I also want to take a moment to thank Cloud 9, Jam Cruise, Live Loud Media and especially Alexandra Dunne and Meg Ryan for working with us to get us a good place to sit down with the artists to do these interviews. It made things much easier, and it was absolutely appreciated.
Sitting with me for this interview were Nick MacDaniels (guitar, lead vocals), Jesse Hensley (lead guitar), Casey Cranford (alto sax, EWI), Josh Kagel (keys, trumpet), Doug Marshall (bass) and Ben Vinograd (drums)
As always, I asked questions but also put a large number of questions into my hat and tossed it into the middle of the room for anyone to grab a question.
HAT QUESTION: What are you most excited about right now?
Nick: There’s a lot of cool stuff happening for us right now, and we’ve been working really hard to take things as far as they can go. Probably though I would say the new album is what I’m most excited about. I think it’s the best album we’ve put out.
MFN: Why is that? Any particular reason? You’ve gotten tighter? You’re more comfortable? Production? Songwriting? All of it?
Nick: All of it. In terms of art, I feel most proud of this as just a project – from every angle. The playing, the songs, the artwork. Artwork is done by the same guy who has done artwork for us for a while – Tim Webster. He draws everything by hand. Spends a lot of time on the details.
<At this point several more members filed in, and there was much discussion on the variety and quality of the croissants on board the Norwegian Pearl.>
MFN: Big Something is a large band. Did any of you play in bands of this size before and how do you deal with giving other members space, not stepping on people, etc?
Doug: I grew up with band in school – concert band, marching band, jazz band. I’m very used to that structure.
Casey: We probably all started playing around middle school. Big band, concert band; I love playing in a theater, playing in a huge 30-40 piece band.
All: We are still figuring it out!
Ben: You have to be very cognizant of supporting whoever’s time it is to be shown at that point. If Casey is soloing we all have to just lay back and lay a foundation for him. If Jesse is soloing, the same thing.
MFN: Do you structure your songs with that in mind? That is – this will be Casey’s part, etc?
Casey: We structure them like that for the most part. Learning each other musically has been the biggest thing. We are lucky enough to have been playing with each other for six or seven years through just any given situation. We’ve been able to learn how to work with each other personally and musically to make it work. I’m still getting to know Jesse and Ben musically. I feel like I’m just now able to bob and weave with them and we can move together. I feel like we are starting to read each other really well.
Josh: A lot of it is very democratic, too. We’ll start with the frame of a song, and Nick might be like “Casey, do you want to take one here? Jesse, do you want to take one here?” They both kind of decide on how the feel of a song is up until that point leading up to a solo section and realize maybe a guitar is better here, etc.
Ben: Sometimes it’s also just whoever steps up. Sometimes something just happens in the magic of the moment, and then that’s what that song becomes.
Jesse: Sometimes I like when someone makes a mistake, and it turns out to just be awesome. There’s a thing we do in “Megalodon” – a stop – that was just a mistake one night, and then we were like let’s do that again. Now it’s just part of the song.
All: Happy accidents!
MFN: How do you balance having your own festival – The Big What? – with being able to tour, record and everything else a band has to do?
Ben: I think it gets harder every year.
Nick: Less time to practice and prepare every year. It’s a good problem to have. This year we were practicing in the van. We drove through Kansas and all had our instruments in the back of the van while Brian and Cameron were in the front seat driving.
Casey: We have a lot riding on this. Every year has gotten better. We have to live up to it somehow.
Nick: You hear from people who can’t wait until the next one, and there are people who have grown to know and love it so we try to make it as good as it can be for them.
Jesse: Especially for our core base in North Carolina. It’s more than just this idea that the music is really good and I want to go to that festival. It’s like a reunion for them.
Ben: It’s also about turning people on to new music now that we’ve been exposed to.
Nick: We did a secret set in a different location on the property and leading a brass band parade at 2 in the morning. As soon as the main stage was done a brass band converged on the field and started leading a parade, and everyone got in line and walked like a mile through the woods and came over this hill, and they saw this stage that had a visual screen in front of it. You couldn’t see the band, just the silhouettes of the band with the visuals going. It was this really cool moment.
MFN: You played Wanee last year (2016) – was that your first time as SOSMP?
Nick: Blackwater was our first. Then we did the Zach Deputy Disc Jam.
MFN: You did the traveling stage at Wanee right? [They also played on the Mushroom Stage.]
Casey: That was one of the coolest things. Other than we setup wrong…
Nick: We set up the wrong way on the stage! We were facing the wrong direction!
Casey: They didn’t tell us but they had everything setup one way and we just got on and set it our own way. But it was kinda cool. We are like jamming out, and we get to the destination and the crowd was behind us. It was actually kinda cool and unique.
MFN: The Carolinas have been putting out some pretty impressive bands. What is it about that area that seems to generate such great music? What is it about any given area that makes it have a good “scene?”
Casey: I think what makes North Carolina so good is, what else are we going to do? We have everything. I live in Greensboro. It has one of the best music schools in the country, but we don’t have a great “scene.” I mean, it’s holding on but by a thread. But everyone is a phenomenal musician. I used to host a jam session, and the talent was just amazing.
Nick: I think it’s partly that there are all these great cities, and they are really close to each other. So like you go to Wilmington, and you’ve got kind of a beach vibe. You’ve got Ashville with kind of a mountain vibe. You’ve got Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Greensboro. Everyone kind of gets to know each other from those cities. When it comes time for festival season, you’ve got all these people from all these different cities getting together.
Casey: There’s a wide spectrum. From Asheville to where I live it feels like a different country. It’s so different.
Nick: Ultimately, what I think makes it a cool scene is the people. The people are all very nice in North Carolina. We play a lot of different regions of the country, and it just seems like the people of North Carolina are very humble, good-natured people.
All: Some of the greatest musicians have come from North Carolina, so maybe there is something in the soil, too. Coltrane, Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, Avett Brothers, Ben Folds, his brother Chuck. Chuck is the shit, man. He’s a great bass player. He’s a really good bass player. They should get Ben Folds on Jam Cruise!
HAT QUESTION: Do you write songs with improv sections in mind, or does it flow naturally?
Casey: Improv is kind of a given. Personally, improvisation is where I came from learning. So even if we are playing…
Jesse: Some songs just started from improv.
Nick: Improv is just a word for creating in the moment.
Jesse: It’s good to have a mix of stuff you can just rely on and nail and be happy with the structure of the song for what it is and then having songs where you can stretch out more and let them go where they need to go.
Ben: There is always improvisation even within the structured parts. Well, like, in the studio recording “Passenger,” (Casey) did, like, 1,000 takes, each one the polar opposite of the next. It was a weird Middle Eastern Solo section, and then like some jazz thing, then a pulsing rock piece. Then we just settled on one. There was one line in there, that was my favorite thing.
Casey: I remember kind of being frustrated. I was laying down the solo over changes in “Passenger”…
Ben: He did like four or five takes in a row. I was in the control room with Nick and some other people. We were listening to him just go. Roll tape, do that section. Stop, Do it again. He did this last one and just did this little descending thing that carried over to Jesse’s section, and I just was like “That was so fucking impactful! We have to keep that!”
Casey: John Custer has done production on all of our albums. It’s gotten deeper, and we’ve gotten deeper into the production with him every time.
HAT QUESTION: What do you wish you had done differently?
Ben: I don’t wish I had done anything differently. I was playing lacrosse at the time in college, and I had to keep playing to keep my scholarship.
Casey: He was picking my ass up because my car didn’t work! He was coming from near Charlotte. Drive through Greensboro, pick my lazy broken-down ass up, drive me to practice and/or the gig, drive back after the gig.
Ben: I would get home from gigs at 4 am. Go to class at 8 am. Go to practice at 3 pm. Film sessions, lift, go back to my room, do work and then go to sleep and figure out what I was gonna do the next day.
Casey: Finding Ben is what solidified our band I think.
Josh: He powered through all that.
Doug: We really needed a drummer though. We went through several, and I was really having a hard time finding someone I vibed with. Simple, don’t over-complicate things. Make them catching or funky. It was hard finding someone who locked in with that mentality.
Ben: The way I met Nick is his younger sister was in a sorority with my older sister. So my sister went on vacation with him. We had never met…
Nick: My sister was in a sorority??
Ben: Yeah, they both quit. They were in Tri-Delta.
<All laugh>
Nick: I don’t remember that!
Ben: Yeah. She was on vacation with Nick’s family, and they were talking about the band and said we needed a new drummer. She’s like, “My brother plays drums,” so he just came down for Christmas and just jammed with me, and we hit it off.
HAT QUESTION: Goosebump moments. Talk about a moment where music gave you goosebumps. Playing your own, hearing someone else’s. Just something that stands out where you got goosebumps.
Casey: Kamasi Washington’s set on this boat. That absolutely… goosebumps times ten. I’ve never felt anything like that. That’s pure music, what they are doing.
Josh: Then all three of us woke up with “Cherokee” in our head.
Jesse: We got back at like 5 in the morning, just watching Kamasi’s set on the TV in our room.
Casey: And you know what? They were the coolest people. The greatest musicians, the ones that will really touch me personally, are personable.
Ben: It’s because they care deeply about music and not all the other stuff.
MFN: How fitting then that all of you have been very cool and very personable.
Ben: Hey FUCK YOU!
<All laugh>
MFN: Thank you all very much for your time. It’s been a real pleasure to speak with you, and I sincerely appreciate it.