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Exclusive Interview with
Donnie Klang
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Featured...
Donnie Klang Donnie Klang tells Mixture about writing music, his experience on MTV’s Making The Band and working with Diddy.
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Nate Landers R&B singer, songwriter, pianist and author of the autobiographical book A Walking Peace, Nate Landers shares his inspriational journey.
Maars Exclusive interview with producer, musician and illustrator MAARS.
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Malik Williams Exclusive with producer, composer, and musician Malik Williams, who has worked with talented musicians such as Charlotte Church, Aubrey O’Day, Jordan Knight, Bobby Brown, Jeff Timmons, Louie Bello and Lisa Bello.
The Luxury Lead singer/ guitarist Jason Dunn discusses how he got into music, forming the band The Luxury, and winning the WBCN Rock Rumble.
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About Mixture Mixture Magazine is all about inspiration. Produced by Jaymes Leavitt, Mixture uncovers the inspiration of today’s leading artists. Mixture Magazine can be found online at www.mixturemagazine.com.
Credits A Magazine by Jaymes Leavitt Art Director/ Designer Sarah Rowlands Photographer Jaymes Leavitt
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Nate Photography by Jaymes Leavitt
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“My calling in life is to spread Love, Peace, and Happiness with the art of music.” — Nate Landers
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Motivated and inspired by the compelling remarks of his music idol Babyface, “Out of thousands of musicians I’ve met traveling around the world there was never a time I was so eloquently moved until today!” as Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and Nate Landers met at centered stage in front of a cheering crowd. Nate Landers a native of Boston, Massachusetts, an R&B singer, songwriter, and pianist stated, “this was a key defining moment in my life and the confirmation of why I am a musician today.” Since the age of 13, Landers studied every lyric and melody written and composed by Babyface. This proves to be evident when we listen to the compositions of Nate Landers and his catchy melodies, angelic harmonies, and creative lyrics of which will reach the depths of people souls and the hearts of millions.
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“Nate Landers is one of America’s most talented and inspiring young men.” — ABC Good Morning America
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Landers’ musical origins traces back to the early 90’s at a mid-size Baptist church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he directed choirs and played a breath taken Hammond B3 organ during Sunday services. It was at church where he developed his understanding of harmonies, playing with soul and compassion, and what would soon be recognized as his “final performance mentality”; to perform at a level as if it’s your day on earth, he’d always say. Landers’ was known as a musician who never got tired of entertaining. He could energize and electrify any audience while crossing generations.
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Landers is working around-the-clock finishing the final stages of what is expected to be his breakthrough album. The self-titled album is schedule to be released worldwide in the fall 2009. All songs are written, produced, and arranged by Nate Landers and Jared Hancock of SureFire Music Group with featured producers Shawneci, N.D.P. Music, and others. “I’m really excited about this record; each song is a true testament of my experiences. If I had to choose personal favorites it would definitely be INSANELY THE ONE, DREAM AGAIN, HEY HOLLYWOOD FT. S-CAL, NOWHERE TO RUN, BONNIE AND CLYDE FT. CLAP COGNAC, JUST CAN’T GO, MEN OF UNITY, and my latest song about finding love after giving up hope, LIFELINE.”
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All it takes is one person, I believe, to show others that there exists the possibility of rising above the circumstances into which some of us are born.� — Nate Landers 19
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Nate Landers continued the pursuit of music through his attending and graduating from the prestigious Berklee College of Music with a bachelor’s degree in Music Business Management and Piano as his principle instrument. He was the first Berklee student to complete his internship working under the sole direction of Ryan Leslie and the Universal/Bad Boy subsidiary label Next Selection. His duties included, but were not limited to marketing, promotions, advertisement, and traveling with the hit producer/singer and the Billboard pop charting R&B artist Cassie. The world is in for a treat to witness the inspiration of Nate Landers, a living legend whose music will speak life to people’s circumstances, conquer their fears, and will break through barriers of the ordinary music business.
Reproduced with permission from www.myspace.com/natelanders
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Photography by Jaymes Leavitt
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Mario, how did you get your start as a producer? i got into it 4 years ago. i did not even know what kicks and snare drum were until a professor DJ Flackett who works at Mass College of art where i went to college got me into music theory. it was 2 years ago when i came back from england i started taking it seriously. i didn’t really like the music i was hearing. i felt compelled to make my own stuff that i wanted to hear. There were no albums coming out of hip hop i really felt so that is what really kicked it off. i started to make beats. any person who knows me knows that i don’t dance so the greatest challenge for me was catching the rhythm and getting everything on beat and in sync. Creating sounds was easy for me. Just like creating illustrations, i would say i paint sounds together. so i always felt i could do it but the process was what i had to learn... the technical side of things. Producers like DJ Premier and Kanye are my influences i really study their process. When i was younger i did not know that the songs i heard and beats producers made contained samples. Once i knew that being a producer wasn’t an impossible thought for me and that made things easier for me because i’m not classically trained to play
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an instrument. i know what sounds good when i hear it and that’s how i am able to produce songs. i diligently work on my craft and studied a lot of people. i met Kristian garcia last year and he was looking for a producer and i did not think i was ready to be working with a rapper yet. People had hit me up before but i was never compelled because i wasn’t feeling them so much. i wanted to work with someone unique and who saw music like i did. Cause a lot of people who were hitting me up were gangster rappers and i wasn’t really into it. i love gangsta rap but i just don’t make that type of music right now. he sent me a song and it wasn’t really mixed, it was on Myspace and i really could not tell how good he was. until he came over my crib and we met in person and he just spit 48 bars and i said that’s it. i could not let the chance pass by this wasn’t a coincidence we met so i had to step up my game a lot to make music at that level. he is really motivating to me to push me to do my best. To get better a lot quicker than i thought i could.
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How do you come up with your ideas for your work? What is a typical session for you? When i first started it was more out of desperation. i hated my day job and my passion for illustration was fading. i just had a passion and hunger to be able to do it. That really pushed me to study other people and see what they were doing. My first thing was to mimic one of my inuences. Kind of like paint by numbers. To see if i could duplicate a track the way somebody they did it using the same sample. Once i was able to do that i was then able to take an idea that i had take it to completion from beginning to end. That was my biggest challenge at the beginning was getting an idea i started and making a complete song. i had a lot of ideas and i did not past that initial thought. getting past that point where i could assemble an entire song from beginning middle and end. My usual thing is that i listen to all types of songs. i listen to a lot of different genres and that gives me inspiration i don’t listen to rap all the time. When i want to create hip-hop music i listen to other types of music like all producers do. i have to be removed from it and it usually just laying back and trying to get as relaxed as pos-
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sible. i will hear some soulful songs and i will hear a little part that i like and something will go off that start humming and i get an idea from that and then i just build and build on top of that. That’s usually how i start. humming really helps. One track i created i heard the sample over Pa at stop and shop and went home that night and made it. another instance i had this sample for like a year and i did not know what to do with it and then i just woke up one night completely relaxed and went on my computer and i just knew what i wanted it to sound like. That is usually how i do it. i can’t play the keys really well but if i stay at it long enough i can figure out a tune that will sound good with a hiphop drums. it wont be like Mozart but it is something i could put a beat to and from there i can add other sounds that will work. Tell me about your current work. The project is with Kris garcia, check Kris out at www.myspace. com/kristianthemusician, we’re working on an album/ mix tape because we want to create a buzz and let people know who we are and possibly get signed soon. Working on the project is myself, Lennon Murphy also from the 617 a brilliant producer
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and engineer. We co-produced the whole project and once i started working with him the beats just got bananas. you can hear some of his work at www.myspace.com/murphy617. We want to start doing a lot shows and we have a show coming up June 18 at the Western Front in Cambridge which we just got word of. Our project was called Beauty at first but the name keeps changing but i think Kris has settled on “Mass effect”. We have almost 20 songs completed now and we hope to have like 30 or so. What are your goals as a musician and where do you see yourself going? right now i am comfortable working with Kris and i hope to make that last. i am not looking to work with any other rappers right now. unless i meet someone who really inspires me... i focused primarily on this project and our next one. i do have things that don’t fit his style that could be used with other artists though. i spoke to Prolific Pro who made beats for Lupe’s first album and asked him a lot of questions about the business. he was telling me because (it was a concern of mine) of my age i
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felt like i had to rush into things because i am 27 i feel like most people do you gotta make when you’re 21 or 22. he was telling me that’s not really the case. he was told me it’s more like 28-30’s is when people really start to make it. i got at a few people for advice but they never hit me back but he was a cool dude he broke me off with some valuable info, so shout outs to Pro. That convo really made me think and not try to rush things and to just focus on the work to just carve my style and to hone down my own niche. i am not looking to be famous i just want to contribute where i can artistically to make good music. Where people can look to me for good songs. i want to try to achieve my own unique style that people look to me for. i would like to be signed at one point. i really want to make a classic album that will go down in history. To have something that people can listen to and really enjoy for years and years. i would like to have a production company or be part of one. We have a good base of people to make this happen here, especially with Justin springer the man behind curtain, Boston’s best promoter on board. i really want to work with artists and collaborate to make amazing music.
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“I think I am an artist by heart in every single way. Any form of art I really gravitate to use my creativity...”
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You are not only a talented musician but you are an artist too. Do you continue to do your artwork as well? i am an illustrator. i think i am an artist by heart in every single way. any form of art i really gravitate to use my creativity i can usually do well with it. Like i do a little bit of graphic design, i draw and paint. Watercolor is my specialty and doing portraits. Before i started this project i was working on a children’s book that was based on music. after this music project with Kris is finished i would like to go back to that and work on completing that book. Where can people go to hear your music? right now people can go to www.myspace.com/maarslanding i am currently working on my new myspace layout and web site dedicated to our music and we will keep people updated on our myspace page when that comes out. Mass effect will be complete this June, look out for it!
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Donnie Klang Where are you from? Originally from Brooklyn NY. Moved out to Long Island when I was 12 so that was kind of a period of my life where I went through a lot of changes and meeting new people trying to fit in and that’s when I really got into music cause it was like a gateway to do what I felt inside me and not have to be what people wanted me to be whatever it was when you are the new kid in school so that was the first few steps of me getting into music seriously. When did you get your start and when did you first get into the music scene? I was always into it from a very young age. My parents listened to R&B oldies like Stevie Wonder and stuff like that. Even before I could remember they told me I was in the playpen with glasses on pretending I was Stevie Wonder. I used to see the videos... it was before I could even remember. And then when I was the new kid in school out in Long Island during Sixth grade, I did the talent show and basically everyone was asking “Who is this? Does he even go to this school?” And that was when I really started to realize this is great! This is really what I want to be doing. I started a group in high school with that boy band craze going on at the time... we just started a boy band. I learned so much from that experience, being with those guys my best friends growing up. We did so much together that I don’t think I would have
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made it without them. Once I auditioned for making the band I don’t think I would have made it with out the knowledge and experience I gained from being in that crew. We got our hearts broken by managers, labels everything like that and we got experience doing shows, being in the studio, so all that led up to Making the Band and I ended up getting signed to a solo deal. It’s unbelievable. I still don’t believe it. Its crazy. How do you come up with your material? It depends... sometimes I just get inspiration from past experiences. I had an uncle that past away whom I was very close to. Break-ups... it’s so cliché but it’s true... like falling in love and it’s stuff that affects me so deeply... it’s what I sing about. When I go into the studio, it’s the kind of thing that I put into my music... real feelings that I can’t capture any other way. When somebody else writes the music I really have to zone into what they were trying to convey and the feelings they want to convey in the songs. That’s why I really like to write my own music because it’s from me. It’s my emotions and it’s my core of what makes me into me and I put it into my music and it comes through in my music just incredibly.
What is your procedure for making songs? Sometimes I will hear the beat first and then put melody and lyrics to it or I might hear a beat and think that it sounds like a break up so I will write a song about a break up. Or a lot of times I will take my iPhone and when I am on the road a lot I will take out the phone... backstage, in a hotel, on a plane and when I come up with an idea I record it into my phone. When I get back into NY or back into the studio I have all these ideas recorded on my phone. I remember I have one recent one that is going to be a song on my new album. It’s going to be called Ruby Slippers and I related everything from the Wizard of Oz movie. It was Halloween and a friend of mine said she was going to be Dorothy, so she wanted to show me the costume that she had bought and I said wait a minute... I just got an idea for a song! I related everything to me going through a break-up like I was the scarecrow ‘cause I am trying to get my brain off this girl... and I am like the Tin Man trying to fix my broken heart... Inspiration for me can be pulled out of anywhere. I just put it into my phone when I am inspired and lay it down in the studio. What did you learn when you were on Making The Band? I learned so much. Especially having someone like Diddy as the ringleader of the whole show. It was, to me, like a boot camp for the industry. First you have the cameras in your face all the time and you really have to get used to that. Then there are the interviews, or con-
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fessionals are what they call them on reality TV, and it just got us so prepared to answer any questions that are thrown at you. Sometimes it’s a friendly question and sometimes it’s a difficult question that will sidetrack you if you are not prepared. On top of that there is just the workouts... the studio... the rehearsals... it just got us so prepared to be in this industry. Diddy is the type of person that you could be doing the best you could do and he still wont let you know that. He’ll just say there is room for improvement. “I want to see you next time and I want to see you have done better.” And he will break you down. He will really put you down and break you down and it will actually build you up and build your character and your work ethic. It really helps so Making The Band for me was just like a boot camp. What is it like working with Diddy? It’s good. He is actually working on his album now. Just seeing everything he has accomplished and everything he has done and that he came from nothing and built an empire is amazing. He is not just a rapper he has his own label, a clothing line, his own vodka, he has colognes, perfumes and just to be around someone who is working so hard is inspirational. He could easily retire right now yet he is still working harder than some of the new people who are coming in to the industry. So it’s just having that kind of boss that puts me into the right mind frame. To say OK yes I have a record deal and yes I have an album out – but there is so much more that I can accomplish. I just can’t stop working now.
What advice do you have for newer lesser-known singers? My best advice is that it is real easy to dream as a little kid when you don’t have anything else to worry about. You don’t have a full time job, a mortgage, and bills. You just have school, work, papers and whatever it is. You have parents hounding you to make sure you get your work done. When you’re young you have your schoolwork and when you get home you have time to dream about whatever it is you want to be in the future. Whether it is a fighter, an astronaut or a superstar. Whatever it is, it’s so easy to dream when you are little and it’s so easy to lose sight of a dream when you get older because you have everybody down on you when you get older. What I did... I had it very tight growing up. My folks got divorced when I was little and my mom was always up on me about my schoolwork. She never got to finish high school and she had to fight financially growing up. So for me the most important thing was my education. As supportive as she was for me with my music, I still had to get my schoolwork done. I did everything I had to do with my homework, my papers, my job when I helped out with bills and stuff. With my extra time, an hour or fifteen minutes, that’s what I put into doing my music. It all adds up. As little as it may seem a small amount every day adds up. If you really put the work in and the time it takes to practice and believe in yourself you never know what can happen.
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Tell us a little about yourself. i was born in Dorchester. a Boston native and i am a composer and producer and i do work for film, records, radio, TV and advertising all that is involved in audio production. i also basically work with singers and musicians in the performance music business. How did you first get into music? i first got into music because other family members, other siblings of mine were into music when i was a lot younger. Basically i was just checking out what they were doing, i had no great focus or passion at that point i was about 11 or 12. i never had music lessons in school or anything like that. One of my brothers had a lot of his friends over the house and they would practice in a band. Whenever they were done i would go in and mess around with their equipment when i wasn’t supposed to. i think the bass was the first thing i messed around with. When i was younger i used to get in trouble a lot and while being on punishment for the summer i had a guitar in the closet with four strings on it. i did not know how many strings were actually supposed to be on it, but four strings on a guitar is a bass so i got real familiar with those four strings. i just learned songs off the radio in my room, as that is what got me into it. From there i went to Boston Tech high... so no real music education going on but again, i was more into architectural design and in senior year in high school a buddy of mine Liam Deeney who is still a friend ended up being in a band together with a couple other guys and that’s when i got into the music scene a little bit more. There was a gap between age 16 and 19 where there wasn’t really a music influence. i remember my sister asked me to sing at a Christmas party my brother Ken was at the party playing music. he was with ralph stacey and they were looking for a bass player. i was singing at the time and he asked me show him whatever i could do so i ended up being a part of their band. That is when the focus started getting into production. The bass turned into keyboard bass and i was playing a little guitar and i was singing and the cool thing was that all of us used to switch instruments so the drummer would be the guitar player and i would switch to key so it was a lot of fun. everyone in the band was a songwriter as well so we ended up forming another production company. actually John Weston, who is here at Futura Productions was one of the guys with whom i got introduced to. Back then there was a lot more of a technical revolution going on and computers were scary to me at that time, so hanging around these guys the was a real learning experience of the power between sequencing and computers. We are all still friends and we still collaborate. I saw your performance at the Boston Underground Music Festival and I was floored by your performance. How did you learn to play piano? everything was self-taught. i never went to school for music. i went to college and studied mechanical design and architecture. i was working at a job and i had hurt my shoulder so i was out for a long time
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and music was the only thing I could do. That is when I got into the manual and more of the technical side of music and I studied how it is done. Because I was a singer, a writer and playing guitar, I was into seeing what I could do by myself. I just started learning and I got into the theory of writing music. Not knowing it at the time, looking back I ask myself how did I ever learn this stuff? Reading manuals and studying the books and learning like how to operate a drum machine... it was just picking it up and just doing it. I was working backwards a lot just playing and then going back and finding out, “Ok, what did I just do?� And figuring out technically how things worked. I did not stress about it though. As a songwriter, I was not concerned so much about the theory behind it all as I was with how the music actually sounded. It was more important to me that the music sounded good. I learned at my own pace and it is true that a lot of good musicians learn this way. I bought a guitar one time and I wanted to learn more so I got a beginners DVD just to start playing things correctly and I did that as well with a keyboard. And by the time I got through a whole chapter I could have made an entire song. So I never stuck with the lessons and I learned more when I just did it on my own. The musicians I work with are real hard-core and they are all Berklee musicians and they have the language of theory down. To be able to communicate effectively with them, there are a lot of things I have to know and understand so I continually study that stuff. Not enough to stress over because my ears are really good but it is a fun was to learn. How has your career evolved? Music to me is one of those things that definitely would be me. My music and my real world experiences in music business have evolved. Back when it was just playing music and being in a band to be cool to writing songs and being around artists who are also in the same frame of mind was a huge shift. Back where I grew up in Dorchester a lot of racial divides made it hard for a lot of different people to get into a room and hang together but music definitely breaks those barriers. In the 70s and 80s Dorchester was sometimes not a fun place to be walking up the street but as I got older and being able to work with many different types of musicians and many different types of cultures I realized that none of that really matters. When I am in the studio, race, political views, none of this comes up when you are doing music. So it is like that universal language that everyone talks about. It IS the universal language. You don’t need to speak to understand each other. And not my outlook on life has evolved the same way. I have had a lot of opportunities because of that. I am able to not shut out anyone because of prejudices or racial divisions. Giving people the benefit of the doubt regardless of who they are or what the look like. What has been one of the most outstanding experiences of your career? Probably the best thing was that I was production manager for Jordan Knight with the New Kids on the Block when he had his solo project. What was cool about that was that the opportunity to travel into the
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Interview and photo shoot at Futura Productions Roslindale
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unknown and to different parts of the world. We were travelling as a unit but the experiences of just being out there made me realize how big the world is, and how a lot of people are the same. All the sex drugs and stuff that come with the rock scene never got to me and I just cut it out of the mix. I was focused strictly on business. I was always thinking... How do I further my career? Everyone is expendable when you are on tour because you not the star. Somebody else is the star. How do I become that star? What do I have to do to make it like that is my career? So when I got back home, it was interesting because none of that cool stuff ever mattered to me. Waiting on lines in clubs. Drinking... the drugs. All that did not matter to me. When I got back home it was all about my family and my career. It was all about my family and how to build upon my experiences. I made a lot of friends all over the world. These relationships gave me a lot more focus on what I should really be doing. The tour was cool. It was a lot of work and I was always keeping in mind that this tour will end and what happens next. I planned ahead of time what I was going to do. That is how I got more into the film and TV end of things. Film and TV is something that I love and I could just sit and write all day long. Like hundreds of songs. So that became another niche and something that I could tap into. Pitching for projects. And doing the hustle. That is one of the things that probably changed me the most. Who else have you worked with? I have worked with Jordan Knight, Charlotte Church in the UK, a lot of the local people here like Bobby Brown to Jeff Timmons, who is in 98 Degrees, Aubrey O’Day... she is in that group Danity Kane. Louie and Lisa Bello, Dickie Skinz and cats with all different genres of music. How are people finding you? People find me probably more so by network that anything else. My production company dose a lot of work with a lot of people. And I get calls frequently from clients whom we have made an impression on and we get a good referral. Like a reality show I worked on a year ago the director referred me to another director and I get the call. It’s all about collaborating. I try to collaborate as much as I can. I have a broad network of people I have worked with in NY, LA the UK and here in Boston so word gets around. We also work with a lot of people who take their careers seriously and when there is a lot of integrity in the process that makes a huge impression. It ends up being very positive. From my experience I can better identify the types of projects I want to do. You still take chances and I work with a lot of up and comers. Anyone who comes to the table with talent is always got a chance. What projects are you working on currently? I am working some music for an Indy film in NY and also some advertising. We just finished up Louie Bello’s record and I am working on Lisa Bello’s record. I have some projects in Atlanta. I am always
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writing songs and pitching to major labels. a lot of times i get a call from an agency that cannot license a song so they ask me to come up with something with a similar feel. it’s cool because as a composer and as a musician i can do that and it takes me out of the whole beat making category. Where you can compose a song based off of someone else’s music. i don’t do that. i do original music. What is the process for coming up with new material? My Brain. That’s the process. i could not explain it to you. it really is whatever i am thinking of at the time or whatever i was feeling at the time. That translates into music. i don’t know how to describe it. That is the gift so i don’t really know where i am coming up wit6h it sometimes put people say your crazy if you hear things and i do! What is a typical recording session like you? it depends on what the session is for. say i was doing something for film or for TV. That could be identifying what kind of sound they want. a film could be do you have a sound like this it could be classical it could be jazz it could be any of that. it could be more directed like if they need a hip hop song like it was done in the 80s well then i would go back with what i am familiar with and i can use the instruments that they used in the 80s. The drum machines. The guitars and i could get that sound. a 60s sound would be more acoustic. it shapes the sound for what you are doing. Other than that it is applying sounds and music to what someone wants. The sound and instruments you are using translate the feeling of the music. if i wanted to make you cry i would write a certain way if i wanted to make you laugh i would write a certain way. so it depends on the application. That is what makes me successful at that because i can be a chameleon and go from your everyday pop to soulful music to love songs or ballad. What is the one thing you have learned in you your career that has been helpful? Besides the basics i would say mentorship in business. Most musicians have rapport with other musicians and you learn from each other and you feed off each other. as you get into new situations listen to what’s going on. Listen to what people are telling you and don’t be so opinionated because that could be very powerful feedback. at the end of the day it’s business. it’s the music business. Most musicians don’t educate themselves. i have friends who have been in situations where they have been burned real bad and so i would listen to what’s going on and research it and learn from that. now it is much easier to research it because of the inter net. you can google something and find out about it. i still meet people now who are in their 30’s, still clueless. i might meet a songwriter who does not have an agreement with a rights society like asCaP and BMi. and they don’t even know what it is. how do they make money? i will always try to teach someone if i have the time. i always had to do things myself. i am a publisher as well so i try to educate people on that as well. Being able to listen and learn
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and be focused on business as well as the fun stuff. Because you will never stop having fun. you will regret not having any knowledge of the business when you get taken advantage of one way or another and you wonder why you are broke. There are a lot on niches in the music industry that you can get into versus being a rapper or a songwriter or a singer. you can be an engineer and you can tune pianos for a living. There are so many different layers that you can tap into. Tell me about the Grammy Awards and how did you get involved with that? Well i was an academy member for about 7 or 8 years and i would notice that whenever i would travel as a member you get some cool opportunities to go to some networking events and the parties. and i realized in Boston there was nothing going on. i would get an e-mail to go to ny and to go to ny is like a two-day process. you drive there you hang out you want to take other meetings you stay overnight. a lot of people cant even justify the cost of doing that sometimes it gets so expensive and you are a vegetable the next day so it does not even work out. if you are running a business you cannot afford to do that. Take two days for ny and then recover the next day. When i go to La with my friends who are academy members there and i could go buddy up with them and go to a film screening. you end up in a situation at an event with other academy member and it ends up being a little more focused on the music business because not everyone can be an academy member. you have to have a certain amount of credits so to me it was a huge benefit to go to these events and mingle with people in the industry. i kind of questioned what was going on in ny and i was talking to people in La and i wanted to help. i was on the board of the Boston Music awards and i hooked up with another academy member who was interested and then we hooked up with the Director in ny who ironically made a phone call and he was referred to me so we got the committee together and that is something that i am excited about because it is going to open up tone of opportunities for a lot of folks here in the music industry not just for musicians but for a everyone remotely connected with the whole industry. We want to focus on events not just for musicians but also for anyone who wants to be involved and learn. We have relationships with schools high schools and the n the colleges as well. so Berklee, the Conservatory and others. We have what’s called the grammy university and that is going to open up a whole channel of learning opportunities for kids. That’s what i did not have when i was growing up so that should make a great experience for people who want to get into the music business. We are on a mission right now to just let people know about the industry here in Boston. it has been that way ever since the new Kids Maurice starr and what he did. Back then i was fortunate to witness and be a part of what was going on so it’s been 20 years of just nothing going on. There are no events where people can go to and learn about these career things. We are going to change that.
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The Luxury’s lead singer and guitarist Jason Dunn
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The Luxury Photographed by Jaymes Leavitt
Jason, Where are you from? i’m from Vermont... actually born in Boston and raised in Vermont. My mom and dad met when they were seven, my dad was playing a piano and my mother sat down next to him and started playing along on the high notes. They dated off and on through high school and i was born when they were like 20. They never married, which technically makes me a bastard love child of the 70’s. My mom moved up to Vermont to get away from everything when i was about three. When i was 11 my dad coordinated a bunch of people to get me my first keyboard, the yamaha Dx 27. The Dx 7 was the one everyone was using and the Dx 27 was a knockoff, so it was kind of cheap, but i had a lot of fun with it. so i was synthesizing all these sounds and that’s basically how i got started in music. at 13 i started singing, and at 14 i started playing guitar, when i discovered Def Leppard... at 16 my uncle gave me a bass guitar and i was in my first band around then. it was basically a Kiss cover band and we had only 4 original songs, which i had nothing to do with. Then at 17 and 18 i was playing music with friends and that’s when i really started to write songs. They weren’t really good but it felt good writing my own songs. When i was 19 or so i picked up the drums and mandolin, harmonica sort of vaguely. i picked up anything i could get my hands on. at 20 i formed my own band called Wedge antilles, who’s 63
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a Star Wars Character, and then I formed The Halogens when I was 23. When I was 25 I moved to Boston and brought most of the Halogens with me. We did all right. We were in the Rumble in 2003 and had a bizarre manager who wasn’t very good, but we did wind up opening for David Lee Roth at the Palladium. It had nothing to do with our sound but was pretty funny. I wound up putting that to bed in 2005. The Luxury first came to be because a friend of mine, Dave Virr, who runs the local show on WFNX, was trying to put together a band to do a gig as Oasis — and actually the FNX program director Paul Driscoll was going to play drums — and he wanted me to sing and pretend to be Liam Gallagher. They got three guys who had just left Baby Strange, and we played just one show, but in that time I had more fun playing with then than I had playing with any other musicians for years so I just suggested that we form a band. So we formed The Luxury, and I took a bunch of my songs that had not been released yet with The Halogens and those ended up on our first record. Steve came with me from the Halogens on drums. The problem, though, was none of those guys ever wanted to tour again. They were all getting married and really had no interest being out of town for any extended amount of time. Steve I thought about it, we had a good band but we knew that we wanted to get out of town and do other things, so we had to find new guys. So I found Daanen, our guitar player, Justin, our bassist, and with Justin came Brooks, our first keyboardist. That was our first solid line up, and that’s what we had on our first record. Brooks left to pursue his own thing, Hey Now Morris Fader — he’s just a ridiculously talented keyboardist, he’s the type of guy who can play bass lines on a Hammond with his left hand and play two hands’ worth of piano playing with his right, while singing lead, so he clearly did not need us. It was great having him but we kind of knew that we were holding him back from doing the things he wanted to do. Plus it was 4 hours commute time each week for him to rehearse with us. Every week.
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Through the magic of Craigslist we found steven Borek, our new keyboardist, and he turned out to be the perfect keyboard player. When we met him he didn’t look the part at all. he maybe had a half-inch of hair, real gangly, and had this simply overpowering nose. it worked out okay — we just told him to grow his hair out. he’s the type of guy who’ll sit and just program sounds, and he uses this massive keyboard called an andromeda a6 which is able to do just about anything he wants, and a fancy new Kurzweil that replicates nearly everything with highperfection. he keeps us all in line, really, because he’s the one guy who has his head screwed real tightly onto his shoulders. everyone’s kind of an archetype in the band. We have our wild and crazy drummer who’s all into rock, the bass player, a real solid dude who is into stuff like classic metal, Motown, Portishead and trip hop and stuff like that, we have the requisite spaced-out guitar player who likes stoner rock and hard rock, and brings the guitar virtuoso element to the band, we have the paranoid, perpetually troubled singer guy, and then we have the outrageous keyboard player who programs all of these strange sounds and kind of ties everything together. if you look at us we’re almost cartoon characters of what you would consider that particular musician to be. so that’s the story. What kind of sound would you say you are? i would start with British rock and roll. My influences are bands like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Led zeppelin, but drive all that stuff forward thirty years and add some synthesizers from the 80, some 70’s Prog rock, add some bizarre arrangements in perfectly normal pop songs, and then put down as many 4 part harmonies as i can convince the guys to do and you have what we sound like. sort of British uber-rock sound.
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How do you come up with your material? I’m not the only writer in the band anymore. I do a majority of the writing, and as I play multiple instruments and have my own studio set up, I’ll often times have an idea and then demo it. I’ll use my keyboard to program drums and a melody, grab a bass and put down a bass part and then sing over it, and as soon as I feel it’s ready for people to hear, I’ll just bounce it down to an mp3 and email it to the band members. I’ll say, “Hey guys, here’s a new idea, what do you think of it?” I would say about half of those songs make it through the finishing process, which is letting everyone else in the band have a stab at it and just seeing everyone’s ideas and seeing which ones will stick and make the songs better. Some ideas overcomplicate the songs and get edited. The arrangements of the songs are pretty much up to the band as a whole. Sometimes Daanen will come down with just a riff that’s so good that I’ll write other parts behind it, and I consider that a sound that he wrote because everything is written around that riff. Borek will come down with keyboard lines or entire progressions not needing too much else but just a push in the right direction or a bridge. And Steve Foster writes complete songs — he actually wrote an entire album of Christmas carols that he had rewritten to be about chickens. It’s called Steve Foster and his Christmas Chickens. It’s really amazing. He played all the instruments and did the entire track for that. When writing lyrics for songs, sometimes it takes like a year before I can come up with a good set of lyrics. I can go through multiple sets of lyrics and throw away 90 percent of them. I beat myself up a lot about getting good lyrics, more than anyone else I know. For instance, the song “Sing For The Last Train” on the new record... I went through about 5 sets of lyrics and I threw them all away because I just wasn’t happy with them. It ended up that I wrote them while I was in the vocal booth at Zippah Studios just before I went in to record the track.
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What’s a typical day like for you? it depends if i have “real work” or not. real work for me is doing aV Tech for corporate conferences, but the problem with that is due to the economic collapse, big corporations who used to bring thousands of their employees together are no longer doing that. They don’t have the money or don’t have the drive to put together these things, so then i’m out of work. so on most days i get up and have some tea — i switched from coffee because it makes me feel like a piano is going to fall on me or something — and i’ll spend the day working on records that other artists are recording in my home studio. i have been recording with a lot of bands recently. Other than that i spend my days teaching myself how to cook, playing with my cat and various thing to keep myself in shape. Can you tell us about the WBCN Rock Rumble? We’d spent a little more than two years working on our new album, rewriting and rerecording songs and we were just about done with it when we got into the BCn rumble. We were pretty certain we would be out in the very first round, and the thought was “hey should we do this? We’re gonna get knocked out in the first round like most bands do, and then we’ll just get right back into recording our record.” That was the plan. We didn’t get knocked out of the first round. We made it to the second round and i was like “hey, OK guys, this is fun, so we’ll just do the semi finals and then we’ll get back to our record. Cool.” so we lost in the semi finals, but then were wildcarded into the finals, so i was like, “Oh! Well, back to rehearsing.” The whole time i was thinking the same thing, when all this is over we’ll just get back to our album. and then we go and win the thing.
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Well, we were just going to go back to record the finishing touches on the album, but I looked at the prize list and I was like WOW! We had time at some of the best studios in Boston And LOTS of it. Two days here, two days there, 5 hours here and 10 hours there so we were like, “All right how are we going to do this?” So we got together and came up with a plan… drums at New alliance, guitars and keys at Mad Oak, vocal tracks at Zippah, we’ll mix it at Blue Jay and then master it at M-works. If you look on my calendar over there, on the 6th — Keep in mind we had just won the Rumble and a week later we were recording — so on the 6th until the 19th was straight up recording. We had a huge advantage that we had already recorded the album twice so we were well prepared, to maximize the value of all that studio time. We had access to all the best equipment, and the only cost to us was hiring engineers. It was such a whirlwind for two weeks — I was working my ass off but it was so exhilarating. If I could choose to live a normal life over that one, I would definitely choose that one. Where can people go to hear your music? The best place to go is our website, www.theluxuryband.com and we constantly add to that site.
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