SUNDAY • The 13th hour with Olivia Dres at 1:00 PM | Sin Waves with Camden Dyer at 5:00 PM | bee sides with grace teuscher at 7:00 PM | tragic school bus with abaum 10:00 PM | Shmidnight Snack with Ben Hirsch at 11:00 PM | something something NiAcolas cage with Jasen at 12 AM MONDAY • meet me in the bathroom with Patty Alvarez at 2:00 PM | A Little Bit Brooke with Brooke Turpeau at 3:00 PM | Snack Time with Alice at 4:00 PM | Rouge Orange with Kay Ingulli at 5:00 PM | Not The News with Hannah Megery at 6:00 PM| Livestream of Consciousness: A High-Concept Radio Show with Shayan Farhang at 8:00 PM | the lone rangers tribute show with Liz at 10:00 PM | Flavortown with flave johnson at 11:00 PM TUESDAY • Industry Partners with Emma Anisman at 12:00 PM | Looney Show Tunes Show with Jaden Satenstein at 3:00 PM | Cowgirl Hour with Abbie Leonard & Bridget McGinn at 4:00 PM | sunk costs baby with Natalie Fikes at 5:00 PM | distraction hour with adam at 6:00 PM | Happy 2 hour with Nina Redpath at 8:00 PM | Ted Drews Lacanian | Nightmare with DJ Peptochrome at 10:00 PM | Funks Grove with Cam Lind at 11:00 PM WEDNESDAY • Recess.radio with recess.radio at 4:00 PM | music i hope jerry trainor would like with Sam Schwartz at 5:00 PM | loop trolley haters club with sam at 6:00 PM | cosmic noise with numbavocado at 7:00 PM | very musical show w5 with Sulan at 8:00 PM | Adam & Levi Talk Basketball with Adam & Levi at 9:00 PM | Bababooey with Sam Lance & Nathan Springman at 10:00 PM | Freelance Influencers with Michael Doherty at 11:00 PM THURSDAY • Harvard Business School 2: Business Harder with Em Powers at 1:00 PM | ruminations with zoe at 2:00 PM | The Magical Mystery Show with jared lieberman at 3:00 PM | camp campb3ll with harrycampb3ll at 4:00 PM | Dscotekka with Levi 5:00 PM | clean streams for midwestern teens with Kade Becker | Beethoven Wishes He | Was Deaf with Spencer Kates at 7:00 PM | transient beans with Rachel Rhee at 8:00 PM | jazz for people who are | cool with sasha lyubashevsky at 10:00 PM FRIDAY • WALKWOMAN with Christine at 11:00 AM | HnJ with Tess at 12:00 PM | it be like that withCalvin Isley at 1:00 PM | no boyz allowed with Lacy Wilder at 2:00 PM | ABC (Anything But Country) with Anna Cooper at 3:00 PM | Codel Cove with Carsen Codel at 4:00 PM | Aw Shucks! with Kate at 6:00 PM | Honk if you love Catholic radio with Alex at 7:00 PM SATURDAY • Musica esoterica with George Yeh at 9:30 AM | I got Aux with JohnLemon at 10:00 PM
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Contributors Indigo Amunategui Kade Becker Eno z DeMichele Levi Gentry Spencer Kates Jasen Vest
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Venus Of Solstice Droplet of light Hover over Moon Consumed by plight Arc of clouds Glaze over the midnight Twin sister Unparalleled delight Unknown beauty
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ERIC FEENEY is an independent musician who currently attends Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. He’s been making music for several years now. KWUR members Levi Gentry and Jasen Vest were able to chat with him about his work over the summer. Here’s their conversation. Photo by Parker Fairfield Jr. @pjz_photo_jar
JASEN: Do you want to introduce yourself? ERIC FEENEY: Yeah sure. Hi. I’m Eric Feeney. I use “he him his”. What else do you want to know about me? I’m a singer-songwriter. I have two albums out. LEVI: Yeah. Great. JASEN: How was growing up in Indiana and how does that influence your music? What are some misconceptions people might have about Indiana? ERIC FEENEY: Yeah. Well there’s definitely more than corn in Indiana. There’s more soybeans than corn actually. Like I think that production changed a few years ago. I think that’s so interesting. Like I mean we’re not all farmers. I have to drive 45 minutes, I think before I can get to a farm. I would say growing up here— I mean I think it was a pretty like chill setting I think that people in like New York City or LA or like some big city don’t have- like they just deal with a big hustle and bustle. I think it was nice that I was able to also just have— Like I grew up near this park. Like we walked our dog here every day. I did my eagle project here. Like yeah. Yeah and I’ve definitely grown up around a lot of nature. There’s a lot of State Parks nearby. And I’m like—I’m an environmentalist and I’m studying Environmental Studies. So it’s definitely something I think comes through my music, in that I likea lot of my walks and stuff like that. That’s when I would come up with a lot of my music.
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LEVI: How would you describe the Eric Feeney sound in three words? ERIC FEENEY: Do the three words need to be connected or-? LEVI: You can do whatever you want. ERIC FEENEY: Unconventional- Oh wait- unconventional, un-genre’d, unhinged. LEVI: Hmm. That’s great because that kind of leads us into our next question, here. Do you have a specific genre that you mostly align yourself with? Or you said you’re more genre-less? ERIC FEENEY: Like the song kind of comes to me in my head, rather than like “oh, I want to work with like this instrument or something like that.” And so I’m like “Okay, then how do I recreate this really cool song I heard in my head?” I’m much more about what the song sounds like and like the lyrics in it, rather than “Oh I’m gonna make a rock song, oh this needs to be like a rock album or a pop album or whatever.” Yeah. I like how my songs don’t all sound the same. But they do still- Are cohesive in the sense of like- they’re all mine. LEVI: Gotcha. Okay, I see. So it’s like you have in this kind of Brian Wilson way, where you hear the song, and it’s a matter of “how do I get there?”
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Photo by Parker Fairfield Jr. @pjz_photo_jar
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JASEN: How would you describe your songwriting or artistic process? Are you more habitual or sporadic and what inspires you? I know you mentioned nature already, but anything else? ERIC FEENEY: I would say I’m definitely more sporadic.I think one of my processes is like just taking a walk and like having the words come to me. Or even like coming up with words like in the shower just something, like when I’m not really doing much that like stimulates me otherwise. And I think that really helps me to really get my thoughts across like in my head. Because like I’ll y’know I’ll tweak them in my head. And then by the time it’s time to sit down and be like “okay, I actually want to like to create a song,” I already have like a chorus I’ve heard 30 million times in my head, because I’ve sung it to myself that many times. JASEN: Would you say when you’re- I guess coming up with the song in your head, do you usually start with like the words first or a melody or does it kind of come together simultaneously? ERIC FEENEY: I think it- I think it depends on the situation. I think the song “What Happened?” was definitely like- I was coming up with all at once, which was a very new experience for me. I don’t think I’ve had a song quite come together like that and that was really cool. JASEN: Speaking of “What Happened?,” you have two versions of that song available, one in Burnt Orange and one in Burnt Orange Revisited. The original foregrounds your fiery vocal performance, while the remix brings in kind of
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like the incessant groove in the background. How much do you think varying instrumentals can shift the meaning of lyrics even when the words remain the same? Is this true of “What Happened?” and its remix? ERIC FEENEY: I think “What Happened?” was the last song that I came up with lyrically on the album. It was something I came up with within the year of actually sonically creating the album. I don’t even know how much of “What Happened?” is like a “me” experience versus just like something that just came together. But I think like yeah I definitely i mean it’s slower. And so it has that more accent on what I’m saying for sure. Like the dance acts, I was just like, ever, like, a lot of people were like “We want a remix of this song”, and then they just didn’t have time. And that’s fine. And so I was just like, you know, I can make like a dance because I feel like, like, I think it would be really fun. And I was listening to a lot of songs that had gotten remixed into like, as kind of a dance style and more fast paced and I really wanted to like, you know, experiment with doing like a bass drop and like just doing those kind of experiences that you can have a dance mix. Like, I was also because I react to music on my YouTube channel TurtleStormer. And, like, recently, at that time, I was getting so many like songs that were gonna, like, lead up to a bass drop, and then they do something so unsatisfying, and I was just like, “Here, let me just fix it for myself and get me that closure”. So I I thought like, I like having both of those versions because I think one is more for like, if you want the original and just like to vibe with it for like, four and a half minutes I think it is. Whereas like if you just want to like, go hard for like three minutes. It’s like, there you go.
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LEVI: Yeah. What songs inspired the remix? ERIC FEENEY: I had listened to Katy Perry’s Smile album and Not the End of the World had a very unsatisfying drop for me. And so that was one of the things that was unsatisfying. That was right around the time when Club Future Nostalgia came out from Dua Lipa. And like, some of the remixes I really liked and some of them I just like, weren’t vibing with. but I liked the idea of adding a lot of instruments and percussive elements, and something that made it really cool. I think I was also vibing a lot with SAWAYAMA and like, I liked how in her production, a lot of random things would just happen. And I just really liked that and I wanted to experiment with that as well. LEVI: Great to hear. So is Burnt Orange Revisited a remix album? Is that how you think about it? ERIC FEENEY: I think this might sound cheesy. I think of it as a revisited album. I feel like the revisited album allowed me to especially collaborate with other people, but also allowed me to experiment and like to do something that I might not have been comfortable with a couple years ago. For example, I didn’t know I would be on a metal song but then Indet came to me and was like “Yeah, we want to do a metal cover” and I was like “Rad, let’s do it”. I think like having it be a revisited album, where it doesn’t have to all be sonically cohesive, like it allowed me to have completely different versions that I think I loved more. JASEN: Yeah. Burnt Orange Revisited includes samples of your experimental EP A Walk in the Park, if I’m not mistaken. So do you think that musicians should strive
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to have more continuity and interaction between their albums? If so, how do you think that enhances the listening experience? ERIC FEENEY: Yeah, I mean I loved adding the remix component originally it was going to be a remix with other artists, but like they were really busy or just stressed out during the pandemic.I really liked that A Walk in the Park was just a walk, in this park actually, like I just like what wanted to see what happened. I really liked that I was able to take those samples and turn them into something that’s really cool. Next door, originally I couldn’t listen to it, it’s too slow. But then like if I listened to that it’s like a faster pace, I just really like it. I think I love how it turned out percussively and I think l believe that. Like for me the revisited album still has a sense of cohesion. It’s just not sonic. All the songs to me, like they rely on these feelings that are burnt orange in my head. So before I think a lot of the production was very burnt orange heavy, like in the original, but I think it’s revisited form it allowed me to still have like those feelings go throughout. I think that my work doesn’t need to have a specific genre, that I can just do the music that I really want to. LEVI: So you mentioned things that feel burnt orange, what is burnt orange? It’s my understanding Burnt Orange houses a narrative between its tracks, but could you relay that narrative to us? Is this expanded upon in Revisited, what’s that ecosystem?
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FEENEY: Yes. Oh, I like the word ecosystem. Like Yeah, for me like I mean I have synesthesia, so it’s like certain sounds, and also just certain words, and also just feelings I would say like are in color. I have a very complex feeling because there’s just a lot of colors going on in my head. I don’t always know exactly how to describe it in words and I think Burnt Orange allowed myself to get those feelings into words. I don’t want to say that Burnt Orange is like a burn book. I don’t think I was super angry on any track, like I didn’t scream at them or anything, I let other people do that in revisited. I think it allowed me to like see that pattern of events, and like orange has always been my favorite color, and like I think it’s a color that not a lot of people really care that much about. Nothing rhymes with orange, but that’s my favorite color, like the sense of like nobody will really vibe with me. I think for me like it was definitely like a set of feelings of being burnt and like still like feeling at the end of the day, like this outcast of like being orange, and like I think in revisited I allowed those feelings to like kind of like, not disperse, but like just kind of like go like crazy way. I really have been listening to a lot of Fetch the Bolt Cutters Fiona Apple. Lovely, lovely album. So it was like something that was like, in my head is a really instant inspiration by really like how, like my revisited album goes in, it allowed for me to feel all those feelings like to the nth degree. I didn’t think that my song walking out the door would become a metal version. I didn’t know that I was gonna get a weird baby sound on irresistible. At the end of the day, I think it allowed me to explore that feeling more deeply and allowed me to feel all those feelings all the way.
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Photo by Parker Fairfield Jr. @pjz_photo_jar
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JASEN: The album Burnt Orange, as we’ve touched on a little bit, has recurring motifs. But specifically, there’s the answering machine, which pops up a couple times, and/ or references to things like fate or destiny. How important is building that narrative and creating a cohesive album experience? FEENEY: Yeah, I think it’s definitely useful. I mean, I think a lot of artists and just people like to have their motifs that they like to go back to, I think, like, for example, the door was in a lot of things. It was not intact. And honestly, a lot of that wasn’t necessarily that the most like intentional, like, I think there are motifs that like people just kind of go back to and like things, things like in symbols that they use to explain something. And I think a door, like separating you from the rest of the world, or another person, like that’s something that very much spoke to me on the answering machine. I feel irresistible like it would have been what I would have said on a call. And so, that’s why I use it more there. And like I think fate and destiny kind of goes to the fact that like I was feeling like I was cycling and that nothing like no matter what I did, like it kept like still being like a cycle. And so it felt like it was fate. For sure. JASEN: So a few years back, you released about 30 voice demos on Soundcloud of acapella samples or demos of potentially future or past songs. What inspired that level of transparency in the artistic process? FEENEY: I think for me, I do like to push the bounds, like the first “I Want You Right Here” is entirely acapella. I just didn’t feel like because I was like, inmo, like memorializing
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someone I didn’t want, like, and I felt like no sound could really convey it perfectly. And so like when I did the chromatic piano version, like, I felt like I was using all the colors at once, which I felt right again. But like with the voice demos, like, I was doing like a research thing at Vassar, and at the end of the day, I didn’t really have anything else to do. So I just pushed myself to be a little more deliberate and make music and like, there were a lot of thoughts I had, I had at the time. Like I went through having a concussion and mono and a really bad friend group breakup. I just had gone through a lot of things. And I was just like, really this ready to, like, just write down what I was feeling. And like, a lot of those are like, first, right? First writing, I realized that some of the melodies end up sounding the same. And that’s because they were all written in pretty much the one month, like that’s just going to happen. If I was making an album, I’m not gonna, like, take two that sound exactly the same, obviously. But I think it was very helpful for me, I think it was what I needed to do, I felt they were much more like journal entries. I want to use some of them at some point, but like, it’s just it’s like something that I have to like, get back to. I’m also feeling new feelings. Still Burnt Orange was a culmination of a lot of feelings throughout my life. I feel like I also at the same time, like, I write a lot of sad songs. And I think that the more I write sad songs, the more I get into a negative headspace, so sometimes I’m trying to write more happy songs like 20 and 2020, which was a really nice happy tune for me. And like I mean, it was ominous and foreshadowing--- but sorry, y’all I didn’t mean to.
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But yeah, I think like the voice demos, they really just helped me and if any of them were like, something that like a lot of people wanted to listen to, it was like something I definitely was considering like, like creating more in some capacity and i don’t know i’m still like thinking about that. And if someone wants to, it’s more like, I have them come up with something like production, production tires me. So if someone wants to come up with production for them, let me know. JASEN: So in doing some homework for this interview, we did come across your account TurtleStormer, and notice that embedded into all the albums uses this list which ranks nearly like 1000 albums and-FEENEY: It’s not really that many, like 700 something, that said it’ll get there eventually. JASEN: So one album that stood out to us, though it is an unranked album, is A Crow Looked at Me by Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum of The Microphones. What informed your decision to leave that album unrated? ERIC FEENEY: I mean, I definitely have a strong feeling about death and songs about death. When I was memorializing someone in I Want You Right Here, it was very much like a “I don’t know— Can any music suit it best?” and I’m like “All the music suits at best”. When I listened to the album, I didn’t know, going in, that it was gonna be that sad. I know it was about death at all and then the whole album is just about death. I just didn’t feel right like I’d seen reviewers like The Needledrop for example, I think giving it a nine, I just don’t want to put a number on someone’s grief.
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I don’t want to say “Oh, it’s like a 5 out of 10” because like the thing is, first of all, I don’t really vibe with listening to too many songs about death in the first place. So I knew I wouldn’t probably revisit it all that much. But I also didn’t want to do a disservice to Phil or Mount Eerie, just because he was going through it. Like he’s going through a lot again, I didn’t want to push my opinion and just my feelings because it’s at that point, it’s not really much about the songs or the lyrics at all, it’s about how he’s grieving. And I didn’t really want to put a ranking on that at all. LEVI: Switching up from the turtle Stormer account, In your own work, do you have a favorite or most meaningful song? Are there any lines to stick out? ERIC FEENEY: I really like the whole pre chorus/chorus of “Burnt Orange”, the title track, because I wanted something that’s faster and has symbols in it, then I came up with it in like 20 minutes. I was like great, love that. I really like the line in particular: “I keep spinning in circles but when I stop it’s always at the wrong tangent” because I was like “Let’s just make a really obscure math meme”, just like why not? I think because I thought that’s how I felt as I was like cycling. I also really liked the bridge in “Burnt Orange” as well. That one has a lot of my favorite lyrics in it. The “You don’t know what color you are until you’re shaded” like how other people really affect the way you see yourself. I like the line because I was really vibing with Taylor’s Reputation during that. I think that definitely inspired me, like that reputation is overrated. I like the lines that have random double meanings in them, and I don’t even think I remember all the double
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Photo by Parker Fairfield Jr. @pjz_photo_jar
meanings, so some of them would be just personal, just something I thought when I was like 16, and I don’t even remember anymore the emotions I was feeling at that time so like I have to like dive back in to get them. LEVI: Gotcha. Okay. What artists do you think you’re most similar to and why? ERIC FEENEY: Oh, that’s a really good question. Thanks. Um, I don’t think that thing is like for me because I’m definitely a much smaller artist, so it feels weird like you know comparing myself to someone who has like millions of listeners every month. So I like to stay humble in that regard. I mean I’ve always been a Swifty, and I don’t want to say that I’m the same as Taylor Swift, because I’m not. I think something I really admire about her is that she’s like she’s not afraid to change her sound completely. If you hear a song you know exactly what project it’s from and I think that’s really cool. I like that she’s gone from country, to pop, to folk, she can do whatever. The great thing is that she has so much success in whatever, her fans are gonna listen to it. I think for me because I’m such a small artist, I don’t necessarily have such a loyal fan base. I’m not making my money off of music. So it’s nice to like, be able to experiment as well, like I think that’s the artist would say I’m most similar to in terms of how I see myself personally, not necessarily like in a musical sense.
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There’s also a lot of artists I’ve definitely gotten into lately that I like really vibe with their music and definitely how they create music, but not necessarily as people, I definitely have gotten into a lot of mitski lately, and I kind of really just want to do like a really like edgy like any even edgier Burnt Orange that’s even more, but then I’m also like, “Do I want to say in those feelings, or do I want to go to a better place?” and I don’t know yet, I’ll figure it out. JASEN: Do you boast any creative endeavors music aside? FEENEY: Yes, I do theater. I really like to dance as well. Like I wanted to do I might still at some point do like a choreography to one of my one of my songs. I wanted to do “What Happened?” at one point, but I don’t know. I just never have the time, I’m always busy. But I like to dance. I’m in three different dance groups at Vassar, I do theater as well. I normally do like directing, rather than acting. I also do a lot of stage here, as well. But yeah, I’m definitely like, really like someone who really likes the arts, it’s still something I find really fun to do. And definitely something that I find myself going back to again and again. JASEN: Do you hope to accomplish anything specific with your music? Do you maybe have a message or goal that you’re trying to achieve? ERIC FEENEY: I think music is a healing process for me. like I think allowing me to share those emotions got them into words and I didn’t. I didn’t have the words to describe it before and I think if I make happier music, it’ll put me in a good mood. I don’t want to say “Oh, this is music for me”, because I like that a lot of people enjoy the music.
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I think if I had a standard message, then I probably have a genre too, but I don’t have either of those. So I really like that I’m able to work within my bounds, or push my own boundaries, rather than having to think about what the fans are gonna think. It’s nice to think like that, because then like if people really vibe with what you’re thinking, and like what you’re thinking, like that’s awesome. It’s great to connect in that way. But it’s also nice to like, hear the music in my head and be like, wow, I created that. Like there’s a sense of satisfaction in that. LEVI: When can we expect new music from you? Do you have a new project rollout in the works? What are you working on? ERIC FEENEY: Well, I have a lot of songs where I’m like, should these be released like singles? Or like an EP? Or like, is this gonna go on the next? Because there are certain songs that I definitely have a clear vision of, and then what I want the next album to be, but I don’t know exactly when it’s coming out. I don’t have the whole album yet. I also don’t want to release the song untilI know the project rollout. Like one thing that I did really poorly with the Burnt Orange rollout, as I released “Fate”, then I released “Turn Around”, I released “What Happened?” and the album wasn’t done when I announced when the album release date was, which was just stressful. I mean, my album randomly dropped on Spotify earlier than expected. So I think it was better than Kanye in that regard, at least, at least it was out by the day of release. And so like, yeah, I’m very interested in seeing how it all turns out, probably in 2022.
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LEVI: Is there anything you want to say about this album? ERIC FEENEY: It’s a different color. LEVI: All right. And then as a final question here, if you could say anything to those reading this article, whatever it may be, what would you say? ERIC FEENEY: Yeah. Thank you for listening to my music. I thank you for taking the time to get to know me. I really appreciate it. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. Hope you’re doing well. And if you have a passion, like go for it, like make it so nothing stops you. LEVI: Great send off there. Well thanks, Eric. ERIC FEENEY: Thank you so much.
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Sample is zine made from the work of the KWUR 90.3 FM community. This edition was designed by Kade Becker and is set in Sukhumvit Set and Canto.
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