Position: Lead and rhythm guitars, lead vocals
Age: 15
Instruments: I have 5 guitars in my house but my main guitars are my 1990 Epiphone Les Paul Standard and my Epiphone acoustic guitar. I also own a Squier Hendrix - Style Strat, a Fender acoustic guitar and an Alvarez acoustic guitar. I use a Marshall Valvestate amplifier.
Influences: I like listening to any style of music with good melody and heavy rhythm. I was introduced to music through my dad with old 70s and 80s rock guitar gods like Eddie Van Halen. Slowly as I got older, I started hearing more alternative rock bands that you would hear on the radio. I started learning songs by these bands and that's where I started out. So I guess you could say that you can still hear a bit of that influence now in my songs, especially in the vocal melodies and the rhythm-oriented guitar parts.
Bush, Foo Fighters, Incubus, Matthew Good Band, Moist, Nickelback, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots, and Weezer are some of these bands.
Inevitably about two or three years ago I ran into punk music and all those little sub-genres within it. At first I wasn't that into it, but eventually I started writing music with a punk rock influence in mind. Obviously most of the music I write now is inspired from punk rock roots, and you can clearly hear that in the songs. Bigwig, Lagwagon, No Use For A Name, Rufio, Thrice, Jimmy Eat World, and Moneen are just a few of the good bands I've gotten into in the past little while.
I'm also generally influenced by good musicians. To me, "musicianship" is just as much in the mind as it is in the skill. In my opinion, here's a few things that make up a "musician":
Open-mindedness. Influence is what makes your style. Listening to and respecting all different kinds of music is a good thing to do. Even if it's not your thing, try to understand where the music's coming from and what makes it appeal to others.
You have to do your own thing. While influence is a key thing to me, you can't write music with the intentions of being a carbon-copy of some other band. If people want to hear Thrice, they'll listen to Thrice. People may not like what you do, especially in a punk rock scene where bands are constantly getting accused of "selling out." But if you stick to it regardless of that, your musical needs will be satisfied and you can say "fuck the rest of them."
Support other bands. Drawoff is part of the "Timmins Punk Scene." Scene, meaning a little network of bands that help each other out. If you're always on this ego-trip where "you're the best band in town because you've been at it the longest" or something, that's the reputation you'll eventually develop and people will lose respect for you. Help out the new bands, help set up and promote the shows, buy the EPs, buy tickets, and the other bands will remember that and help you out one day. A scene is a unified thing, not just one band that outdoes the others. Fortunately Timmins has a pretty good scene.
Play music for yourself. This kind of goes with doing your own thing. If you're writing songs with the intention of appealing to the punk rock crowd that's usually at shows, you're just gonna end up getting frustrated. Because your mind is always going to want to try something slower, something more textured, a slower beat... A song doesn't need to have a fast So-Cal drum beat to be "punk". Play your music out of your own passion and devotion and you can't go wrong.
Favorite Albums:
1) AFI - The Art Of Drowning
2) Bigwig - An Invitation To Tragedy
3) Incubus - Morning View
4) Jimmy Eat World - Clarity
5) Lagwagon - Hoss
6) Nirvana - Nevermind
7) NOFX - Punk In Drublic
8) No Use For A Name - Leche Con Carne
9) Rufio - Perhaps, I Suppose...
10) Strung Out - Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues
11) Weezer - The Blue Album
Currently listening to:
1) At The Drive-In - Relationship Of Command
2) Bad Religion - The Process Of Belief
3) Choke - Needless To Say
4) Millencolin - Home From Home
5) Moist - all albums
6) Nirvana - Bleach
7) Propagandhi - all albums
8) Puddle Of Mudd - Come Clean
9) Strung Out - Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues
10) Thrice - The Illusion Of Safety
11) The Strokes - Is This It?
12) Sloan - all albums
