You Can Be Anything: An Interview with Model Human

I've been quite the fan of this duo since I stumbled upon their music one day while surfing Twitter.  It was the perfect combination for my Monday morning wake up.  An acoustic guitar duo from New Orleans covering and composing their own material.  I got to say, I was pretty hooked from the get-go on their music and style.  That duo is Model Human.

Check out my previous post about them from 2014 in case you missed it.

So as luck would have it, the guys produced a new album and were looking for some album reviews for their site.  I thought this was a perfect opportunity to get in touch with Tim and/or Chris and see if they'd be down for a Q&A instead.  All the pieces fell into place together and thankfully, Tim came through with some great answer to my questions.  We discussed everything to do about their history, their music inspiration, and more importantly their brand new children-adult cross over album titled "You Can Be Anything".  Enjoy!


(Photo courtesy of Jana Powers and Model Human)

Well, let's start with the obvious.  What prompted you guys to create a crossover album such as YCBA?

The basic message behind our band is "everyone's included", so our approach is to create music that that's appealing to as wide a demographic as possible. With YCBA, we tried to create songs that are short in length, ideally paced for children with music performances and production value that captures the attention of adults and audiophiles alike. As some point in everyone's life, children's music was their genre of choice, so we felt that although you may outgrow the songs of our your youth, your Old McDonald's, your Twinkle Twinkle's, etc., for us at least, our heart still holds a place for the music we were first exposed to.

I completely agree with the level of quality you have put into the album.  Some of the songs I have listened to such as "DayO", and "Old McDonald" have an interesting twist to them with some great acoustic guitar licks.  I take it that was planned as a mix between the original song, and what Model Human had to offer?  Do I sense a little bit of a jazz/blues influence in the song(s)?

Up until this point we've been predominantly an instrumental guitar band, so with YCBA we tried to stay true to the spirit of our virtuosity but also take our music in a different direction in order to be appealing to as wide an audience as possible. In jest, we've been marketing it as "The Dark Side of the Moon" of kids music, but it really does share a lot of similarities with the DSOTM, in that as you mentioned, it's heavily influenced by jazz and blues. In addition, much care was put into the production of the album so the stereo picture is and audio dynamic is pretty amazing, if we do say so ourselves. It's definitely something you want to listen to with good quality headphones if you get the chance!

So for YCBA, this was the first time Chris and yourself laid vocal tracks on your songs?  Or have you done so in the past?  Your vocal ranges and levels seem very experienced.

This was pretty much our first attempt at full on vocal production as Model Human. We've been vocalists in other projects and I (Tim) have done a lot of vocal production and engineering in the past, so it was nice to have the freedom of not having an established vocal style with Model Human, consequently we were able to explore and experiment a lot with stacking harmonies, using our natural voices in unison, and sometimes even throwing a little (a lot) auto tune on there for the kids. The kids, they love the auto tune!



Haha that's very true.  So can you tell me a little bit about the recording, mixing, and production of YCBA?  Where did you record this?  Were the duties mostly handled by your two?  Did you have  others giving you a hand in the studio?

We actually engineered, produced, and mixed the album ourselves! Tracking was done mostly at our respective apartments in New Orleans, so we were able to work at our own pace, get great takes, and ultimately put out a short, yet action packed album whose quality rivals that of million dollar studios. Much thought was put into making the songs geared toward kids (short + fun) with the potential audiophile parents in mind, so I think we did a good job in that respect. 

In contrast to our previous EP 'Conversion', which was strictly live instrumental guitar takes with zero post production, YCBA gave us the freedom to take our music in a few different directions stylistically, while maintaining our 'progressive folk guitar duo' dynamic. Really, the end-game is a deal with Disney, Nickelodeon, or the alike so we're hoping this at least gets us on their radar lol.

Ahhh going for some big fish there.  But good on you guys for looking into that direction.  So who did the album artwork?

The album artwork was done by famous Dutch illustrator Pepijn de Jonge, who is currently illustrating a children's book called "A Concert for the Moon". He specializes in vintage-dreamlike-musician character illustrations, so he was perfect for the job, and we think our cartoon-selves look freaking awesome, so we cant thank Pepijn enough!

Any reason why you chose those specific songs?  Do any of them have any special meaning for either of you?

In a way, we wanted to pay homage to the first music we remember hearing in our youth. I'm pretty sure that "Quinn the Eskimo" by Manfred Mann was one of the first songs I can remember hearing on the radio and I've always thought it sounded like a kids song, so our approach was, 'What would it sound like if Disney made an Eskimo movie called  'Quinn the Eskimo'?" and I'd say we hit the nail on the head.



We went with DayO (The Banana Boat Song) because we were huge fans of the movie "Beetlejuice" growing up and if you're in your late 20's or early 30's and reading this, I don't really have to say much more about the importance of Harry Belafonte's version of DayO in your life.

On a deeper level, the two songs are social commentaries presented  as happy pop dance tunes. There's themes of social disparity, benevolence and altruism in "Quinn" and "DayO" is commentary on colonialism disguised as a fun calypso song. We like to think laterally.

Old McDonald & Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are as classic as American kids music gets, and at some point in our lives at least, children's music was our genre of choice, so YCBA was our way of revisiting our musical past, in a very broad sense.

How has the reception been thus far for YCBA?  Do you think you two will compose another album similar to this?

So far the receptions been great!  We actually have a lot of material recorded for our next album. It's definitely a lot more serious than YCBA, but still fun music. We're working on a short film and film score we're calling Model Human: The Movie. Without giving away too much, let's just say its not only beautiful, but awesome!

Wow, it seems this is only the beginning of 2015 for you guys and your upcoming work.  What are your thoughts on social media?  Do you find it's helping your exposure, or making it harder to break out?

We find some social media networks to be more effective than others. We do very very well on Instagram since we're a very visual band and our personality and friendship makes our music relatable and appealing.  Being able to remind your fans that you exist on a daily basis is vital, since people in all likelihood wont be listing to your music everyday, being able to remind them you're still living and working on music a good way to stay fresh in people's minds.



That is a very interesting way to look at your daily interactions.  I will agree with you on certain platforms as well.  Being that AFGM is only online based with no paid advertising, I am always trying to find the right blend of exposure, without bombarding people, as well as keeping them involved.

I forgot to ask in relation to your own production.  What kind of hardware and software are you using to record, mix, and master these tracks?

We used a fairly minimalist setup, mainly a Blue Yeti Stereo Condenser Microphone with Logic Pro X. The Yeti is nice because it's USB and in addition to being a very high quality stereo mic, it also acts as your recording and monitoring interface. So you're able to have 0 latency monitoring right off the mic, which is really nice! Mastering was done a Grand Junction Studios in New Orleans by Ren Richardson, and he primarily used Izotope Ozone 5 to give the tracks volume and harmonic enhancement. We did our best to be "Anti-Loudness Wars", so there's very little compression on the final master, thus leaving all of the dynamics in place, as opposed to being 'loud for loud's sake'.

That's phenomenal!  I have been very curious in the past when walking through music stores and looking at the Yeti microphone.

Yeah it's only about $100 but you can make recordings that sound like a million bucks!

I'd like to ask you about an ongoing battle I have with music friends.  What do you guys prefer?  Composing original material, or doing your own spin on covers?

There's benefit's to both. Original music will make you more money since you don't have to pay royalties to publishers and songwriters, but cover songs will always attract more fans. Covers are a lot easier to do since there's already some framework in place, but there's nothing like when an original composition starts to mesh and you start to impress even yourself! We try to provide a mix of both, but if we're feeling devious we'll intentionally cover a song that's trending on the Billboard Top 10, because we know it'll put eyes and ears on us. Shhhhh!

Haha totally understandable.  I was cruising through your Soundcloud page and noticed one of those ("Let Her Go").  So where and when did you start picking up a guitar and thought this was a life long hobby and love?

Personally, I've been trying to play guitar since I was about 8 years old. I tried to build my own at first, which proved to be difficult for an 8 year old. I eventually got a real guitar and then figured out I was left-handed and had to make some adjustments (reversed everything, a la Jimi Hendrix). But once I got a comfortable setup, my ability grew exponentially. Aside from some music theory classes and a classical guitar class I took in college, I'm completely self-taught, as is Chris (the righty to my lefty.)

When I was about 18 years old, I was able to improvise over blues and jazz chord structures and that took things to a whole new level. At 27, I switched to opening tuning and finger style playing and I've been on that road ever since!

Did you start composing music on your own or was that not until Chris entered the picture?

I've sort of always quietly been a song writer and creative force behind several projects, but when you're in a band with 4 other guys, it's hard to be recognized and it's hard to develop public personas for each band member, so success was always fleeting. 

Here's a song I wrote back in 2006 for my band "Frozen Concentrate".  It's on MySpace so it's pretty much a cultural artifact at this point.  Chris and I's project is concise enough to have a lot of control over branding the direction of the music and the dynamic of a song writer duo seems to be appealing to the public these days (The White Stripes, The Black Keys, MGMT, etc.) so we just go with the flow.



So a couple of fun questions to round out the interview, if you could share the stage and/or a track with a famous musician, who would it be and why?

Tim: I (Tim) would have to say that I'd love to jam with the Spoon Guitarist Hannes Coetzee. 
I saw this video (see hyperlink) close to 10 years ago, when YouTube was just becoming a 'Thing' and it pretty much inspired the direction that I chose to take the music I write and play.

Chris: I (Chris) would love to play bass in an band led by the great Stevie Wonder. He seems to bring out the best in the musicians he plays with while simultaneously holding down the groove and improvising his heart out! The man is absolutely amazing.

Since you guys are avid fans of acoustic music, what company do you feel builds the best acoustic guitars?

We're going to have to go with Martin Guitars because they simply sound and play amazing, however we'll recommend any guitar brand that's smart and decides to endorse us ::wink::

Smooth answer.  Love it!  Best live performance you have ever attended?

There's a local but globally known jam band called Galactic. Every year, they do an a show in New Orleans at a club called Tipitina's the Monday before Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), that goes all night long. Basically 11pm  - 7am. Anyways, their show in 2007 was absolutely AMAZING. All I can remember is that every note they played had meaning and character, and it was just an over-all great example of musicians who listen to each other and know exactly how to complement everyone else and have ultimate control over their instruments.

Wow that sounds like one hell of an experience.  I can only imagine what the music scene looks like in New Orleans in comparison to Toronto.

It's pretty diverse but puts an emphasis on music that's more 'traditional New Orleans', so although our music is heavily influenced by jazz and our live shows are all about improvisation- it's hard to standout in a city that favors brass bands and 5 piece funk bands.  That's mainly why we've started from the outside-in, gaining an international following before we broke into the local music scene.

I completely understand.  I guess most tourism for music would not encompass other genres because New Orleans has a traditional style of music that is derived right from there, similar to Nashville and country, or Chicago and it's blues.

Exactly.

Well gents, it's been a lot of fun.  One last question though, if you had to sum up YCBA in two or three words that described the album, what would they be?

Super Cool!



I wanted to thank Chris and Tim once again for giving me a great interview, and hopefully they gain some new fans in the process.  You can pick up a copy of "You Can Be Anything" online at the iTunes store.