Driving on City Sidewalks

It doesn’t matter how flooded the music market gets these days, there’s hardly a greater feeling than stumbling upon a brand new band. Maybe some blog somewhere beat you to the buzz. Perhaps all your friends already have it on their playlists. You don’t care. You know that you struck musical oil, Daniel Plainview style, and the surprising sense lingers beautifully.

So imagine the joy when I crossed paths with Driving on City Sidewalks the other day. Lots of discs come through and I don’t get to listen to nearly all of them. But I happened to wonder what these guys were all about and, voilà, a discovery was made. Some quick emails and I was on the phone with Barry Mielke to hear more about the Ontario band’s sound, influences and where they go from here.

SSv: I’d love to start with just defining who Driving on City Sidewalks is.

Barry Mielke: Basically it’s me and Darryl. It’s really just a two-piece right now and Darryl and I have been friends for a while. We played a while ago but then he went off to school and I started a family with my wife, so things were put on hold. He moved back to town and I was already recording in my basement. I have a very simple set-up in my basement that the EP was done on. It works well really. But I had some things done already and I’d been talking to Keith from Count Your Lucky Stars and Someone from Red Plane for the EP. That was already in the works and I had tried to get as many of my friends involved as I could. I spoke with Darryl and even the layout was done by a friend of mine. It makes for a good time and good memories down the road when you do it that way.

SSv: Does being a two-piece make it hard to achieve some of the epic sounds on the album?

Barry: Yes. Darryl and I have played maybe three times and when we play live, it’s just him on an acoustic and he sings and then it’s me on the electric, so it’s a very scaled down version of what the band will hopefully become. Right now with our stuff, I’ll write a guitar part and then sit down behind the kit and write a drum part. So playing live with that full sound is definitely an issue – one which I’m hoping to remedy soon.

SSv: So you’re looking for new band members?

Barry: Yeah, even if they’re not a definite part of the band, I just need people who can come and play with. We’ve kind of gone down that road already and I think I’ve found some people. Being January, it’s a resolution I should look into more.

SSv: Tell us a bit about the label situation because you have a couple outlets for Stateside and abroad, correct?

Barry: Yeah, when this all started, I had recorded some songs and the first song on the EP – “To Finish the Race” – I did the singing on that as well and I’m not really comfortable in my singing. [Laughs] So I was emailing the song to friends, just saying to check it out. I was getting sick of emailing people songs, so I just thought that I would put a song up on a MySpace page and have people check it there. Christian Bailly from France from Red Plane, he found the music and wanted to know if I would be interested in putting the song on a compilation he does. I was pretty pumped about that, because someone I didn’t even know from a completely different country was listening to my music and was excited about it.

With Count Your Lucky Stars, I met Keith Latinen from a band called Empire! Empire! I met him through MySpace and they don’t live very far away from me. I went to a couple of their shows and I think their music is amazing. All the guys in the band are fantastic people and then Empire Empire started the label and they asked us to be a part of that. They’re great people when they play and also when they’re not playing. It’s really great to work with them. The majority of it is being looked at through Count Your Lucky Stars, since I’m in the American market. So Red Plane is someone I just wanted to keep in the loop because they started everything to begin with. They got me thinking that it could be more than just a hobby, so you don’t want to just leave them in the dust.

SSv: There’s seemingly a strong spiritual slant within the songs. Obviously, with the word “Angels” in the title, that’s a no-brainer, but even within the songs themselves.

Barry: You could definitely say that Darryl and I are Christians, but I’ve seen a lot of this in interviews with other bands. We’re definitely not trying to become a mainly Christian band, I guess, is what I’m trying to say. You do see it in our lyrics, if you know they are there. One of the greatest gifts we’ve been given is creativity – the ability to create art or anything really. I think that’s how we look at it – anything that we create is a gift back to God and it’s our way of acknowledging his existence and our belief in him.

SSv: The post-rock sound that you guys have – is that something you’re largely inspired by?

Barry: Definitely. The turning point came from the movie Friday Night Lights…

SSv: From the theme from Explosions in the Sky?

Barry: Well, the whole thing was Explosions in the Sky. I’m sitting there watching this movie with my wife and every time a song would start, I would think, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ Right after the movie was over, I went on the Internet and, sure enough, this band from Texas, Explosions in the Sky, was all over this soundtrack. Then I found some other bands with similar instruments and I’ve never looked back. I’ve been listening to Unwed Sailor, Jeniferever, The Album Leaf and Moving Mountains lately. After the EP was written, I got a nice delay pedal for my guitar rig, so that’s definitely influencing some sounds. There’s definite similarities to what the music is about.

One song on the EP – “And Ever Since” – I was sure I ripped it off another band. [Laughs] I’d been listening to a lot of Explosions and I was positive that somehow in my subconscious I had ripped it off. So I stopped listening to them for three weeks and then went back and had to know. I had to listen to every CD of theirs and I turned out okay. [Laughs] But there are a huge parallel and even what we’re working on now is the same thing.

SSv: So you wrote the best song that Explosions in the Sky never recorded?

Barry: [Laughs] I would never want to say I’m up there. I saw them play when they played in Detroit and it was amazing. They came out and said, ‘Hey, we’re Explosions in the Sky’ and then just went into the music. They played non-stop and then when they were done, they just said, ‘Thanks for spending your evening with us.’ And it was an amazing moment. Everything was so fluid and every song blended into the next. It was awesome.

SSv: Do you love that challenge of using the music itself as a way of saying something – not just as the backdrop for the lyrics?

Barry: Yes, I do. I think that in this generation we’re in, a lot of older people don’t quite get it. Of course, I’m older, too. But I think there are a group of people that need lyrics. I see that as completely missing out on what music is. There are subtle things in music – a rise and falling, a different note placement, a cymbal crash – that can convey messages without a word. A lot of people miss it because they just don’t understand it. I’m friends with an older guy and he said he doesn’t get it. He can’t just sit and listen to something. I left him with Explosions in the Sky and he said it’s good but he needs something else to bring it home.

Not having to have lyrics makes it mean more to me. In everything that I’ve done, that’s my biggest weakness – to write meaningful lyrics. I don’t want to write cliche rhymes. I want it to mean something instead of being filler or easy. If a song of ours has lyrics in it, it means we felt very strongly about what it said. It takes me a very long time to write lyrics. It’s almost like I try not to, but if I have to, I spend a lot of time on it. We definitely don’t need lyrics to complete a song, however. That’s not what we’re after.

Tagged as: Michigan, post-rock

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