Chad Bowar: How did the band get together?
Jamie van Dyck: Frank and I have been friends since we were 6 years old, and have been playing in bands together since age 10. Midway through high school, we were playing in separate bands, and needed a new more serious music project to forward with together. Frank knew Ben from his band and I had been playing music with Brandon. We wrote “The Greatest Wall” in our first band practice, and we knew that we had something worth committing to. A year ago Sean replaced Brandon on the bass as we began working on the pre-production rehearsals for our EP.
What inspired the band name?
While it started with our dissatisfaction with a certain high-profile political figure, it definitely came to mean that our music embodies an unrelenting force of nature, which is consistent with our wall of sound and beautiful intensity that is our defining aesthetic.
Where do you go to college, and what are your majors?
I’m a music major at Yale, which is where I met Sean. Sean is majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Frank is majoring in music production and composition at Hampshire College. And Ben is a double major in English and Philosophy at Boston College.
Why did you decide to add vocals for your new EP Canvas?
All along we had been writing songs with vocal ideas in mind in addition to the instrumentals we recorded for our debut album. When we realized that our drummer Ben had some serious pipes, we decided to start working more on the vocal song ideas and really fleshing them out as well as writing new songs with vocals. We have plenty more songs that we’ve worked on and just haven’t gotten around to recording yet while we’ve been at college and given that producing a full-length album isn’t exactly pocket change.
How would you describe the sound of the EP?
We were recently described by someone hearing us for the first time as “Beethoven on Steroids.” We definitely have a heavily layered sound with emphasis on creating a wall of sound that is at once brutal and beautiful. We try to balance being somewhat accessible while also finding ways to be subtly intellectual and complex. Over the course of the four songs, the EP shows the full breadth of what Bushwhack is about.
Describe your songwriting process.
We write songs in two ways. Sometimes they are born out of a spontaneous creative band jam session such as is the case with “Flawed” off the new Canvas EP and songs like “The Greatest Wall”, “Mariachi Massacre”, and “Honor” off the first album. In other cases, a band member comes into rehearsal with either a song idea that we jam on or full demo of a skeleton of a song that we workshop together in pre-production for the recording of album.
This second method has become much more common for us given we spend a lot of time apart at school. Hopefully we’ll return to the spontaneous jam method a bit more often by the time we gear up to record our next full-length effort.
Do you have any live show/tour plans?
We’re hoping to confirm a bunch of shows over the summer and we’ll be sure to post them on MySpace, Facebook, and send out emails via our mailing list as the shows materialize.
How did you get started in music?
I started out taking piano lessons at age 4 when my parents discovered I had perfect pitch. However, I never got very good at the piano because I always spent more time studying the theory and improvising music even as an elementary schooler, and thus never learned good technique or any of the pieces I was supposed to learn.
I then switched to guitar in 5th grade with a teacher named Don Wunderlee who helped me balance creativity and technique and made the lessons fun. I then resumed piano a bit with a teacher named Joe McWilliams who taught me music theory and jazz improvisation. I name these two by name as they were my musical mentors throughout my prime developmental period and allowed progressing in music to be fun for me.
Was there an album or artist that inspired you to want to perform music?
I’ve wanted to be a composer/musician ever since hearing Beethoven’s 7th Symphony as a pre-schooler. Various artists along the way have been pivotal in changing my goals and tastes, but that’s where it all started.
What was the first concert you attended as a fan?
Third Eye Blind, Vertical Horizon, and Splender. My musical tastes have matured a bit since then, but all three bands still make me feel very nostalgic. I came a 3EB and Vertical Horizon, and left with an obsession for Splender who ended up being my favorite band in middle school until I discovered Metallica and then Sevendust.
Who are some current artists you admire?
Porcupine Tree has been a longtime favorite. Sevendust is an awesome live and studio band that I always feel like I can relate to and has gotten me through some of the hardest times in my life. Fair To Midland, Karnivool, Textures, Dredg, and Deftones have all also released very strong albums recently.
What is your all time favorite album?
Porcupine Tree – In Absentia. Everything about it is just immaculate. There are brutally heavy tracks, as well as some of the saddest most beautiful songs ever written on that album. The compositions are complex, but in a subtle way, the harmonies are gorgeous, the textures are lush, and the production is crisp and crystal clear. “Gravity Eyelids” is my favorite song of all-time.
