Alexander

Ryan Alexander believes he reached too far. I don’t buy it. Then again, his opinion matters a lot more than my own.

Alexander’s last album, White Flags and Silver Spoons Have to Sleep in Separate Rooms, found some critical appeal, but failed to attract fans in a way they perhaps expected, turned away by diving into what Alexander describes as “too many genres” and failing to identify a specific sound and platform. After all, how can you grow an audience if you vary so much from song to song?

That makes sense, but for me that was part of the appeal of White Flags. Now, Alexander (the band and, therefore, the man) is in Orlando, recording a follow-up EP and full-length that he believes will be something to move the band forward. He recently gave SSv an exclusive interview to discuss giving their next EP away, figuring out how to market their music and what he’s aiming for this time around.

SSv: I’ve read where you’re back in the studio doing some new recording, but I’m wondering about the last album and just where you’re at with everything?

Ryan Alexander: Our last album, White Flags and Silver Spoons Have to Sleep in Separate Rooms, came about because  a friend that we went to elementary school with had been recording. We parted ways before but he was recording with his band and then I started getting into songwriting a lot more. When we were 21, we decided to get together and do this record of songs. I had only played with the band 40 times or something like that, a pretty small amount to do a full-length record.

The band thing is weird for us because I do all the songwriting and I write 80 percent of the parts just because I do things holistically when it comes to music. I can’t just write something only on a guitar or mandolin, so I’m obsessive compulsive musically. I want to be responsible for everything. So the band just basically learned what I wrote for them on the first record.

What’s different about what we’re writing now is that my outlook on music and the industry and all of that has really changed. I always thought that if we wrote good music, then we would make it. That was overly optimistic. So after doing a Florida tour and then going to California, we’ve absolutely been reminded that you have to work as hard as you possibly can. So the new recording we’re doing is very, very essential.

SSv: Why do you say that?

Ryan: With the last record that came out, it was about doing what we can to not make it sound absolutely ridiculous. If you listen closely, there are five different genres in there and I think that made it harder to listen to. But I think that’s because we hadn’t played a lot at the time. We weren’t used to playing a lot of the rock venues every night. But we’ve been at this for a while now and so now we write knowing that we want people to enjoy this at a venue and not be confused between the variety in the songs.

For a while, we had digital distribution through The Militia Group. But now the record isn’t being distributed by anyone – it’s just whatever we sell from shows. We’ll do another release of the first record and figure out some cool ways to do that. Then what I’m recording now is just me and Steve – the guy who did the recording for the last record. We’re doing a four-song EP that we’re donating the proceeds to charity. The only way to buy it is to go to the website of this cause so you have to see that and then buy the record as a donation. You can pay one cent, but you can also give $100 and give it all to that charity.

After that, we’ll be releasing an eight to ten song full-length. That will be pretty much me and Steve doing the engineering, production and playing on the record. I know that’s a long explanation. [Laughs]

SSv: Musically where are you landing right now? If you’re wanting to limit the variety and focus the genre a bit more…

Ryan: I think you have to limit yourself to what you really enjoy personally. For me, I am really moved by lyrics. That’s always been my strength. I know when I run out of tricks on my guitar or computer, I can default to lyrically writing something that’s a little more creative than I do musically. So I’ve had to learn that as my strength and get over the fact that I’m not going to write ripping guitar solos or anything like that. I won’t write anything that will make people say, ‘Wow, this kid can play.’

The things that will bring people is that the songs really highlight melody and highlight what’s being said. I think we find ourselves falling there, where I look at guys like Paul Simon and Ben Gibbard and Ben Folds where they have a lot of variety on every record. They can have a 6/8 shuffle and have a swinging groove but then also do straight-ahead indie rock stuff. But it’s all based around an instant melody and enabling people to hear the words. So I think that’s the direction that our band is moving in, instead of doing more electronic stuff or more acoustic stuff or that. We’re focusing on just making sure we’re enabling the lyrics.

When I came up here to Orlando to record, I had 32 songs written over the last seven months. Some of them were on the mandolin and others were on the piano and we made them all into songs that I could play on the mandolin because not many can play that and it’s really cool. We thought if we could make them fit together, then we could make it a holistic effort and not individually. So we’re excited to release 15 songs that we’ll be putting on the full-length and the EP.

Personally the music I’ve always enjoyed listening to is Arcade Fire or the Bowie stuff, but I know that anytime I try to raise my voice in any capacity to yell, I sound like I’m telling my dog to get off the couch. [Laughs] So I have to hold back in that realm. As far as what the band is doing and what direction we’re going, I just want to play what I would enjoy listening to. The point of writing music and being creative is that you have to be interested in it at the end of the day.

I was just introduced to Chris Carabba from Dashboard Confessional and he called me, which is a huge deal, about co-writing some music to do for people on the radio. If we could write a Kelly Clarkson song, which is really interesting for me because I just turned 23-years-old this week, so just learning how to play in high school and thinking people sold out like Green Day. But my view of selling out has really changed over the last year, so it’s been neat to talk to Chris about this. He knows that if he just picks up an acoustic guitar and he finds a heartfelt song, he knows that it’s money. He knows his strengths and that he can make music he likes and that others will like. So these new songs have went a long way for me to figure out what my own territory is.

SSv: Lyrically where are you going right now, then? If that’s the focus, what are you wanting to say?

Ryan: That’s always been the challenge for me is wanting to be involved in everything. Part of me wants to save the world. I want to look on something like child starvation and I want to write all my songs about that, so that maybe the one person that can do something about it would listen. Then on the other hand, I realize there is so much depth as far as songwriting is concerned, so that’s where I struggle. I want to reach my arm into that depth, but now I realize my arm is only three feet long and I’m trying to reach down into it like an ocean of wisdom. Every time I pull up my hand, I believe I should write something deeper than I’ve ever written before. But I have to realize that the pool I’m pulling from is something that’s so much larger than I can even perceive.

Lyrically I find myself just trying to challenge myself with the things I say. I had a high school basketball coach ask me “are you smoking what you’re selling?” And I think that’s the biggest challenge for me. It’s so easy to stand in the face of injustice and say that it’s bad and that it should be gone, but are we active in those things? When we say that there’s hope or love or life where there is no life, are we living that way? Are you contributing to it? So I want my writing to add to that or reflect that. It’s music that challenges me to smoke more of what I’m selling.

Content-wise, I want to write about war and how terrible it is. But there are plenty of others writing about that and so I’m actually just writing about the injustice that’s a lot more closer to me. There are larger things to write about like sex slavery or child starvation, but I don’t want someone to leave our shows and want to kill themselves. I want to learn to mask that behind amazing chords and electronic beats.

SSv: You’re knee-deep in recording, but what’s the plan ahead then for the band?

Ryan: Yeah, we’re recording now and I should be done by this weekend and we want to release the EP really quick – probably by the end of February. Then we’ll start playing and booking some tours for some time after March to really get ramped up and going. It’s essential that we set some goals and dates and just move forward with whoever is on board. So it’s about solidifying the music we have to release and finding a platform to communicate it. Also, the line-up of the band is a concern because this is really a side project right now. As we get more and more serious, we need to get the people in the band who are good to add.

We’ve always been known for having a decent live show at least, but we really want to have that down. We want to play all the instruments you hear on a record in a live setting. I think that’s really important. Of course, we’ll never be an Anathallo, but we could really chase down that live sound.

Tagged as: Florida, Piano Pop

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.