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An interview with Letters From Traffic
Q. What’s the saddest song you’ve ever heard?
A. ‘Casimir Pulaski Day’ by Sufjan Stevens. It’s made me weep multiple times. Stevens has a tremendous intimacy in his voice and style, and the narrative – scenes from a childhood witness to the death of a friend – is just heart-wrenching.
Q. Name a band or musician, past or present, who you flat-out LOVE and think more people should be listening to. What’s one of your all-time favorite recordings by this band/musician?
A. Radiohead. These cats have demonstrated that everything they do is infused with creative curiosity and a desire to push perspectives, limits, and envelopes of expectation. Anyone who wants to know where the edge is should spend time with some Radiohead. I couldn’t name an all-time favorite track . . . maybe “Fake Plastic Trees.” Honestly, I never tire of their entire catalogue, but I have to say their latest offering, “In Rainbows”, changed my life in healthy and interesting ways. It has a raw sense of immediacy that deserves careful and repeated listening. The tracks “Weird Fishes” and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” both have particular appeal to my ears.
Q. Lately what musical periods or styles do you find yourself most drawn to as a listener?
A. I never tire of exploring older music -40s through 90s. Lately, I’ve been really exploring James Brown’s catalogue, Curtis Mayfield, and a lot of soul from the 70s. I find that time is an excellent filter. There’s an implication that bands and recordings that have withstood time have qualities about them that transcend the zeitgeist. In that transcendence there are secret truths about what we as a society/culture find inspiring and hold meaningful that step beyond our claims of inspiration or meaning at any given moment. Gleaning these truths is a powerful exercise for any songwriter seeking to create meaningful art for our contemporary age –not because the truths are universal or timeless or worth repeating, but because these truths defined previous ages and are, therefore, the giants whose shoulders new truths -and good art- will stand on.
Q. As you create more music, do you find yourself getting more or less interested in seeking out and listening to new music made by other people…and why do you think that is?
A. I spend time listening to new music as a way of keeping my ear open for other artists’ takes on those truths, but as any artist who has leapt into the cultural information stream (aka “The Internets”) can attest, there is a TON of music out there and without the filter of time, it can be tough to suss out the stuff that really pushes where we can go. I find a lot of new music I hear to be well done –and I applaud anyone who tries hard to put themselves out there- but my most common complaint when filtering through new music is that it merely iterates what is successful rather than expands it, expounds it, or blows the doors off it. It’s that trick of seeming original when there’s nothing new under the sun. This is a tough task and I certainly don’t claim to pull it off consistently myself! But as an artist, that’s my goal -nothing less. We’ll just have to let history decide whether I’ve succeeded or not . . .
Q. When was the last time you wrote a song? What can you tell us about it?
A. I finished a tune called “The Shag (Love You Right)” about a month ago. “The Shag” is a deeply personal story embedded in lyrics that explore a disturbed instance of love that damaged the narrator in his youth and left him wondering for years. He doesn’t have language for it -just baggage he’s been dragging around for a long time. By the end, he’s realized where it came from and why his ability to love has been so comprimised for so long. “You see it’s not so easy/to love you right/I have to put up a fight.” (You can check out a video version of “The Shag” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1A0rYcS-b0.)
Q. What aspect of making music gets you the most discouraged?
A. There is just so much out there -so many artists and performers and songs. We’re all clamoring for attention, believing we just need to be heard by the right people and we’ll take off or get what we want. How does one stand out? I used to think it was quality -and that does have a lot to do with it, you have to have reached at least some threshold of quality- but I’ve come more and more to believe that fortune and connection are as important as quality. This makes that task of getting heard and noticed that much more daunting. Still, it’s an exciting time to be alive and be promoting yourself. With all the tools available on the internet, there are new ways everyday to get out there and I just keep plugging away. Every single person who sees these words, “Letters From Traffic” is one more cat I’ve reached. Maybe the next one will tell a friend or by CD or come and see a show or establish contact and share words of encouragement.
Q. What aspect of making music excites you the most right now?
A. I’m a lyric junkie and I can’t help but exult in digging through words and meaning. When I’m writing, I’ll often have an idea I want to express and I’ll make lists of words that come close to it, looking for just the right one that might simultaneously reinforce, obfuscate and multiply the meaning I’m looking.
I believe most songs are love songs –the act of songwriting is fundamentally devotional, no one writes songs about things they don’t care about (unless they’re getting paid for a jingle, I suppose)- but the word “love” is really an absurdity in our culture. We use the same word to describe emotional relationships with our partners, parents, pets, siblings, favorite foods, books, activities, etc . . . It’s a perplexing idea to me that we don’t have a much deeper vocabulary for these complex and radically varying degrees and styles of relating to the world around us. Of course any word we created for any of these different emotions would still be just another inert symbol for something that can vary wildly. The only real chance of imparting a deep feeling is through metaphor (and art as metaphor). I find this to be the most exciting realm to write in –the creation of a rich lexicon of notions of love and other complex emotions- and this is where I tend to write. I suppose an ultimate goal of mine would be to found an emotional encyclopedia based on stories and experiences imparted through music.
Q. What advice would you give to beginners who are nervous? Do you get nervous before a performance or a competition?
A. When I was a young person, I used to get terrible nerves before performing (particularly the National Anthem at high school basketball games). I realized, however, that the nervousness would do me no good, so I’d go through a mental reassurance process, convincing myself that what I was feeling was really just “energy” and as such I had the ability to label it as good or bad. Then, I’d re-label my “nerves” as “excitement” and convince myself that I was just stoked. At the time, it would also manifest physically as shaking, so I’d imagine I was pushing that shaking down into my legs and I’d wear loose-legged pants. Once on stage, as long as I wasn’t walking around, I’d seem calm and collected and no one suspected that my legs were just vibrating like crazy.
At this point in my path, I don’t get nervous anymore. Before performances, I just remind myself that I’ve earned what I have and deserve to be where I am. For advice to cats just starting out who are trying to overcome anxiety or fear, I recommend hitting tons of local open mic nights. I did it and I’ve seen tons of others do it as well. Find some that have folks performing at a level you’re not too intimidated by. There will always be a few good performers and there will always be some awful ones, too, and typically most folks come out to open mics to either perform or see their pals peform. Either way, they’re not there for you. If you aren’t doing well, most audiences will just ignore you. This is great, because then you realize that it really doesn’t matter whether you’re nervous or not. Once you realize that, you’ve just made you’re first big leap to getting over it!
About Letters From Traffic
Letters From Traffic was founded by singer/songwriter Scott Concinnity, a transplant to Seattle from rural Idaho at the turn of the 21st century. Having cut his vocal chops fronting college rock cover bands during the late 90s, Concinnity decided he was tired of telling the tales of other artists when he had plenty of his own to spin. Nearby Seattle beckoned to him as the place to make the scene.
After building a small catalog of soul, rock, & jazz influenced original material to explore while defining his voice and refining his skill with the guitar, he spent a few years jamming with various musicians trying to find the right crew to create something synergistic and downright cool. In ‘06 & ‘07, he finally found the cats he was looking for in college-trained trumpeter Chris Couvillion and self-taught rock pilgrims Jim Laws (also the drummer for Seattle rock trio ‘The Valley’) and Dennis Hart.
The crew grew together and got developed a tight enough groove to catch the attention of Ghana-born Afro-funk veteran bassist Ataa Adjiri in 2008. Adjiri proved to be the final piece necessary to give the band the momentum it needed to launch into the Seattle music scene and they’ve been breaking out, making fans and getting hotter ever since.
The summer of ‘09 brought changes to Letters From Traffic as Jim Laws moved to Idaho and veteran multi-style drummer Matt Miller took over the skins and tins in Seattle. Laws joins another former member of LFT, keyboard jazz improvisationalist Twenty-D, and establishes an eastern contingent of the band, providing new opportunities for the cats to book and tour through the northwestern United States.
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