Michael Persall

What got you interested in music?

Michael Persall: Both my parents are really into music. My dad had a collection of CDs - like thousands of them - and he would have me organize them alphabetically when I was a little kid and I remember I used to hate doing it actually, but it got me familiar with a lot of different artists and he'd have music playing all the time around the house. I tried to play piano when I was a kid and that got me just starting to write my own stuff.

Do you remember the first song you wrote?

I think it was actually a hip hop song. I was really into hip hop growing up and it was terrible, it was a terrible song, but it kind of turned from a poem into me writing a rap song, so I think that's actually the first song I wrote.

Which artists are you influenced by?

Elvis is my all-time favorite artist just because he's, I think, the best showman of all time and he was able to reach a lot of different audiences. I also am really influenced by Otis Redding, just the way he conveyed emotions in his voice when he sang.

Is there anything you're hooked on right now?

I'm really into Wet, I've been listening to them a lot the past couple of weeks. I think they're great; I really like the front girl's voice.

How would you describe your sound?

I think my own sound is a mix between pop and soul. A lot of people like to point out that there's a retro influence to it, especially on this EP, and I have a pretty soulful voice so that association is going to be present regardless, but I think the way I write songs, structurally, they're pretty consistent with the pop genre.

Could you sum up your EP, 400, in one sentence?

It is an exploration into what it's like for me becoming a man and dealing with various relationships.

You just finished 400 shows in one year, what makes for a great live show?

I mean, any time the audience is really engaged it feels like it's a good show but, at the end of the day, that comes back on the artist or the band, where it's your job to make sure the audience is engaged and really loud. I think some of the best shows that I've had have been some of the more intimate ones where maybe they're smaller shows, but the people are there just to listen to the music and they're paying attention to the words you're saying, because I do a lot of songwriter nights and so I like that too, just because I am a writer and I like to write and I put effort into the words I say; it's nice because, a lot of times, when it's a loud show or a big venue, that's kind of secondary for an audience. Other times, people just wanna dance and have fun and party and those ones are also really fun. You kind of have to be able to do both, I think.

Where do you draw inspiration from when you are working on new songs?

Most of it comes from different experiences I've had in my life. Any time I ever feel something, any type of emotion, strongly, I'll try to sit down and put it into words or come up with a chord progression that fits that emotion. It's not all autobiographical, but definitely comes from experiences I've had, friends have had, things I've heard about.

What was the inspiration behind this latest single, "The Move"?

I write a lot of love songs and ballads and I wanted to write something that was more upbeat and fun - so I wanted to write a hook that was easy to sing along to and dance to - and I guess the overall theme of the song is just about how, with people you know, you're held to certain expectations in relationships and sometimes, when you meet somebody for the first time, those expectations aren't there and there's a connection, you don't really have to worry about being judged based off of preconceived ideas of who you are; sometimes, those situations kind of feel more comfortable than the people that you actually know really well.

What do you hope people are able to take away from your music?

I just hope they can relate to it, even if there's any one line that somebody can hear and say, 'oh, I've felt that, I get that,' because, for me, that's the kind of music I like. I like being able to listen to something and relate to it because it makes me feel like other people are out there feeling the same thing, so that's kind of what I try to do.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

I'm going to be putting out the first single of my next project, probably, in mid to late January, and I have a residency at Pianos in February every Wednesday at 10 PM.

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Jodi Valentin

What got you interested in music?

Jodi Valentin: I've actually been playing and singing since I was three and it's the only thing that I've really ever pursued. [Laughs] My preschool teacher caught me singing in the bathroom, like, more than once, and then told my mom, 'hey, I think your daughter really likes singing,' and ever since then I've been taking lessons and performing.

I'm actually at the Clive Davis Institute, it's for recorded music, so I'm studying songwriting and performance.

Are there any artists who have influenced your sound?

Yeah, totally. I would say, as old as, like, Ella Fitzgerald to contemporaries like Lana Del Rey or even, right now I've been listening to The Weeknd a lot.

Which of The Weeknd's tracks are you hooked on?

Oh man, I love the song "Shameless" and I love "Often". It's actually kind of funny because a bunch of my favorite artists released albums this year and I didn't think that The Weeknd counted in that category. I'm huge into Lana and I like Adele a lot and The Neighbourhood - and Justin Bieber too [laughs] - and then I was thinking about it and I thought that The Weeknd's album is actually the best of all of them.

How would you describe your music to someone who had never heard it?

I would say it's romantic piano blues: pop songwriting but soulful melodies and romantic lyrics.

What inspired your latest release, "The Radio"?

I was in a relationship with someone and it was my first, kind of, tumultuous relationship, but I really loved him a lot and he was older and, just, we had a lot of issues communicating, so that's what inspired the song.

Is that single indicative of what we can expect to hear on your forthcoming EP?

Yeah, that one's actually the moodiest of all the songs, the rest are a little bit more, like, true romantic.

Do you have a favorite track from the EP?

My favorite's "The Radio" but I also, there's this tune that is called "With My Baby" and - I'm not releasing that as a single, I'm just gonna release it with the album - and it's kind of like an old feel, old love song from the '40s and '50s.

What do you hope people are able to take away from your music?

It's so weird, our culture today is all about online dating and the hook-up culture and I'm very into the idea that there is true love and two people can take care of each other and I'm just trying to bring back what it's like to truly love someone and have a functional relationship and not just be like college culture.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

I just really hope that people like the album and relate to it and I hope it at least touches someone.

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Dustin Ransom

Photo Credit Jon Karr

What first got you interested in music?

Dustin Ransom: Oh, gosh, I mean, I don't really have a conscious memory of not being interested in music. I started taking piano lessons when I was three, and I'd been playing so much Nintendo at that point - this was the late '80s - that my mom thought that the coordination I had could be put to better use and so she put me in piano lessons. But, honestly, the first real exposure I had to music was watching videos of Elvis Presley, and so those two things kind of helped keep it going as I got older and more interested in other artists and

Which artists do you take inspiration from?

[Laughs] A lot. The Beatles, U2, The Police, James Brown, Led Zeppelin, Death Cab for Cutie, Sigur Rós, D'Angelo, Al Green, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder; there's a whole list of them, I could go on and on. 

What type of tracks are in your playlist now?

Oh man, it's all over the place. I've been listening to a lot of Pearl Jam lately. I kind of have this collection of bands in the back of my mind that I've always loved but I've just never taken the time to dig into, so they're kind of on the palate right now. But besides that, I've been listening to Tupac, the Bad era of Michael Jackson; it's all over the place, it kind of changes on a daily basis.

Having worked with other acts in Nashville, what made you decide to go solo?

I guess in the back of my mind. I've always wanted to do this.  I've always had these visions of grandeur: being the guy up front and leading the band or being the frontman, or whatever you want to call it.  I've been in Nashville, Tennessee for ten years and I've done everything; I've been a session musician, a touring musician, a producer, an engineer, a mixer, a songwriter, a film composer, I've written out musical notations for magazines and have arranged orchestral scores and things like that - a lot of stuff. I think I just got to the point where I kind of got tired of giving away all my good ideas to other people and I just wanted to do it. Why not? I just didn't want to be afraid of putting myself out there in that way, rather than self-consciously hiding behind an artist or another producer or something like that.  I just wanted to make a statement now, and hopefully make some good statements later on.

How would you describe your sound?

If I could boil it down, I would say that everything is very groove-oriented. I'm a huge, huge fan of classic funk and soul and RnB and hip hop and I just love when things really feel good.  They make you bop your head, they make you want to dance, they make you want to get up. On top of that, I think my voice also brings the sound together because, like I said, having done a lot of different things as a musician, I've just got, like a huge palate of musical tastes to pull from and I love those things all equally.  So, I would say, to define my sound really kind of comes down to just the groove and my voice, as well as the musicianship being on par - I have a high standard of it because I usually play everything on all the recordings I do.

You just released a video for your track "Our American Way," what was the inspiration behind that song?

In that song, each verse is a little short story, based upon three people who will go unnamed, but they're real people and, basically, how they're used their platform for more destructive purposes than good purposes it seems.  It’s really an overall critique to just state that if you're put in a position of power and influence, you have a responsibility to use it for good and not bad. Because of that position, you can do a lot of damage or you can do a lot of really amazing things for people in the blink of an eye or in speaking even one or two sentences. That song is really just about taking responsibility.

How would you sum up your EP, Thread On Fire, in one sentence?

I would say it's the truest representation of who I am as an individual in a musical setting that I've been a part of so far.

Do you have a favorite track from Thread On Fire?

Man, that's hard. I would have to say "Dig" which is the fourth track on the EP, which is also the single from the EP.  In many ways, it encapsulates what I said about my one sentence response to the record. It's got really deep grooves, it's really sonically interesting, I really wanted my musicianship to be shown off on that track, and lyrically and emotionally it's coming from a very raw and transparent place.

What do you hope listeners are able to take from your music?

I hope it provokes them into thinking about things from a very open-minded, wide ranging view in regards to different topics, whether that's love or politics or relationships  Honesty, those are kind of the three big topics that I tend to lean toward.   I just want people to treat each other well, whether that's a husband to a wife, a partner to another partner, religion to religion, country to country, nation to nation, continent to continent, so on and so forth.  We're obviously in a very volatile state right now with everything that's going on in the world, and that's really been at the forefront of my mind,  so I hope that my music can inspire whoever listens to it by challenging them to really do something for the greater good.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Thread On Fire is available for free on noisetrade.com/dustinransom  and once that EP reaches a total of  2,500 downloads on Noisetrade, I have another EP that is, essentially, about 60-70% done that I'll release once we've reached that goal. But, I will also say too, and this is just a very recent development, that there's a lot of - kind of like what I alluded to a second ago - there's a lot of obviously really intense events happening in our world right now and it's hard for me to just kind of keep saying, 'oh, you know, I have a lot of things I want to say but I can't do it until I reach this goal,' but I finally just kind of said, 'well, screw that, I'm going to put something out' [laughs]. I'm actually going to start recording a collection of songs that really just speaks into, at least, one part of a major part of what's going on in our world today, especially when it comes to America's economic disparity between the rich and the poor, as well as the onslaught of violence we’ve seen flare up with ISIS, Boko Haram, and so on.  That's kind of where I'm going to be headed here soon. It’ll be out hopefully sooner than later.

Photo credit Macey Leslie

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Minor Soul

How did your name, Minor Soul, come about?

Jack Wagner: I think we came up with it about five years ago, just when we were putting the band together. Max and I, we grew up in Hong Kong and we'd sort of been playing music our whole lives; Max had been a theatre kid and I was mostly just playing songs in my bedroom and hiding them from everyone else. The name Minor Soul came about when we were at dinner and we realized that we wanted to do a band together and it sort of came about when our dad saw Max playing video games and he saw the words 'minor soul track' and he thought 'that's a pretty cool band name' and so, at dinner, we decided to take off the 'track' and just kept it at 'minor soul'. And, for us, Minor Soul is really meaningful because it's sort of what our music is about, being young at heart; it's accessible to everyone and it just means that we have young souls, and that's what we try to convey.

Which words would you use to describe your sound?

Jack: Yeah, so, I guess the genre would be kind of a pop folk kind of thing. It used to be more acoustic based and now it's kind of acoustic and pop, it's kind of a mixture of the two. Definitely contemporary, as well as being kind of classic, in a sense, because a lot of our inspirations are, you know, Simon & Garfunkel and The Beatles, as well as having more contemporary influences, so it's kind of a mixture of classic and contemporary.

You've mentioned some of your classic influences, what are some of the contemporary bands you're influenced by?

Jack: Well, Max and I have actually quite different musical influences, but there are a few bands that I think we share as being really passionate about and as being well modeled to us. There's an English band called King which we both think is just one of the greatest, and they're a contemporary band. Also, Coldplay, especially the first four albums, we were just obsessed with and, you know, in terms of the differences, I listen to more alternative music - my favorite bands are, like, Bon Iver and Radiohead - and Max tends to listen to more pop and, Max, you can say what your favorite bands are.

Max: Yeah, I mean, we also have several bands that we both enjoy, you know, Coldplay, like Jack said, and King, but definitely, kind of walking down the street, I'll pop on some Top 40s. Everything from Katy Perry to Tiesto to Ed Sheeran and all of those guys, I love them.

Are there any tracks you guys are hooked on now?

Jack: I'm obsessed with Justin Bieber's new album. I can't stop listening to it.

Max: Yeah, I think he's awesome.

Jack: He's really made a massive comeback. I mean, "What Do You Mean?" is like the song of the year, absolutely.

Max: Yeah.

When you're writing and working on new tracks, where does your inspiration come from?

Max: It kind of comes from all over the place, you know, we don't sit down and think, 'okay, this song's going to be a happy song' or it's going to be about someone who has finally found the love of his life or something like that. It really just changes from what mood we're in and kind of where we are, what we've just done; if we're on holiday on a beach, the likely song will not be a sad one, it'll probably be a happy one, just from natural experience. Definitely, we also draw inspiration from things we talk about, from things in our life, you know, all the songs have a personal meaning to us, especially on the Tiger album.

Jack: Yeah, and it varies from love based sort of experiences that influence the music but also a lot of the songs that Max and I wrote on Tiger are about our experience in the music industry and just, sort of, working through challenges and finding ourselves and sort of reminding ourselves of who we are and all those different themes that he and I share.

Do you guys have a favorite track from your Tiger album?

Max: I think we both loved "Charlie Chaplin" as well, which is the first single, and I think we loved that just because it's a very dynamic song, in terms of songwriting as well as production. Then, I think a couple of personal favorites are "Summer Nights" for me and "Walls and Ceilings".

Jack: Yeah, and for me, "Babylon" on the Tiger album is my favorite.

What's the best response you've heard since releasing the "Nothing At All" video?

Max: I think, you know, it's been a really, really positive kind of couple months since we released it. It's definitely just very happy and it's a different video, it's quite creative, which we did a kind of green screen thing with it and a lot of the fans are saying how much they enjoyed the creativity and the storyline.

Jack: Yeah, and I think what's most important is that, a lot of our music videos and songs before this were quite heavy songs, sometimes sad songs, and so we're just super happy that this video is just making people happy. It's very lighthearted and it also carries a lot of meaning to it, so we're very proud of it.

What do you hope listeners are able to take away from your music?

Jack: I think that, from our music, I would love for people to sort of take away sort of rediscovering what it is to have really great acoustic music with vocals and songwriting and, sort of, the old fashioned sort of Beatles style songs that we try to achieve, while also not feeling like it's just listening to their parent's music, and I think we are able to bring the youngness, because we're both young kids, and the influence from really classic bands into a day and age where most radio is dominated by bands and pop - which we love, as well - we also want to bring a new dimension and some of the acoustic songs and classic songs back to mainstream.

Max: Yeah, and I think we also kind of want to make sure that our songs vary in subject material, so it's not always sad, it's not always happy, and, as humans, we experience tons of different emotions all the time, every day, up and down and everywhere, you know? So, the songs are all very dynamic in terms of what they talk about and we want there to be a song to describe every moment that you have, for if you've just gone through a tough break-up or if you've just found love. There's got to be a song for everything, so that's kind of my goal, at least.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Jack: We're working on album number three and we should have some new singles out probably next year.

Max: Yeah, and we really, really hope everybody enjoys the video.

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