Welcome one and all to what is perhaps my first online interview, as well as an impromptu one. It was a cold day in November when I made the vow to do more blogging and to deliver this particular promotional piece for, you guessed it, our beloved Washingtonian band, Colorworks. I did not go into this intending it to be an interview, but as I have attained full permissions to share this treasure trove of wonderful information that was discussed between lead singer Bret Dylan and me, I am able to bring you all a closer look at this enigmatic band. Hopefully, this is the first of many online interviews that can help amplify the connectivity amongst us, not just as artists, but as human beings in general.
[Interview starts with me asking if I can ask a few questions for a previous blog]
Bret: Thanks for thinking of us with regard to your blog - we'd love to be a part of it! As far as what you'd like to write about, I think mentioning that Colorworks began in 2014, but this lineup (the best one) only came together one year ago. I guess that's just some interesting and useful biographical information. As far as what inspires us, I'd be happy to talk that, and I'll write up something right now. You're welcome to ask what our songs are about as well - do you have any specific songs in mind?
Alyssa: I appreciate it! I'd love to know what inspires you. I guess I'm looking for what inspires your writing itself. Love, politics, cataclysmic events, etc. I definitely get Beatles vibes from your work. As for songs, "Circles" was definitely one of them. Did you play "Lady Soul" at Conor Byrne a year ago? I'd love to know more about it.
Bret: Per your first question - yes, love and broken relationships are a big inspiration. We don't have much of a political thrust in our released songs, though that'll change. We have one song that's very much inspired by the, shall I say, historical moment we're all living through. We have some other songs that I think are inspired by things that I can't help but feel our society gets wrong - the way we treat the environment, the obsessions we have with our technology and phones and how that brings out our darker impulses as humans, the warping of what "truth" and "facts" are politically... We also have a couple of darker tunes about how bad a relationship can really get.
Musically, we're inspired by a huge range of artists from The Beatles to David Bowie, Wilco to Steely Dan, Temples and Tame Impala, Radiohead and The Talking Heads, Judee Sill and The Velvet Underground, The Smiths and Oasis, The Beach Boys and Neil Young, The Rolling Stones and XTC, Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell.. too many to list, but a lot of British artists.
As for the lyrics, a lot is taken from my personal relationships. “Circles” came from a trip to Paris I made to see my girlfriend at the time and the aftermath of it two years later (when we were no longer together). I felt like I was stuck in a loop for years trying to work through old pain and heartbreak while desiring to start a new relationship, and when I did, I was unable to fully let go of the old one and fully embrace the new one. An endless circle, with no good endings.
“She Said No” was written by my old bandmate, Nick Myette, who used to play bass and sing in the band - it's a great song! I know he was inspired by the Zombies and Marvin Gaye for that song. He was listening to both a lot around that time.
I'm pretty sure we played “Lady Soul” that night at Conor Byrne, yes. “Lady Soul” is straight up autobiographical. My first love was a girl who I had a strong connection with, but ended up heartbroken, as is often the case with first loves. I spent years unable to let go of that relationship, which was in part because our breakup happened when we both lived in different countries, so we never really had an in-person breakup/closure. And I really just couldn't let go after meeting someone like her (it was not healthy on my part). After a few years of brief and hopeful phone calls leading to more pain and tears for both of us, we finally ended up in the same city and tried being together again. It was strange, getting a phone call from her that didn't immediately give me a shot of adrenaline. To be able to just interact with her day-to-day after years of pain was strange. But of course, all that history foreshadowed what happened, which was that we did not stay together. I think with “Lady Soul” I was trying to say "even though we finally know this doesn't work, I'll always be there for you, no matter what happens”.
“I spent years unable to let go of that relationship, which was in part because our breakup happened when we both lived in different countries, so we never really had an in-person breakup/closure.”-Bret Dylan
Alyssa: Wow, thank you for sharing that with me. What prompted you to remaster your songs?
Bret: As for “Circles”, “Ashes”, and “Diamonds”, it wasn't just remastering - we actually rearranged and re-recorded them from the ground up. Thus the "reimagined" line, haha. This lineup is only one year old, but is the strongest lineup of Colorworks I've experienced. We had all this music that we've planned on releasing as two-song singles (I believe the correct term is "digital seven inch"?) We felt like it would be cool to re-release two of our songs from the last EP to kind of reboot the band, before the brand new songs came out, and show people what this lineup is capable of sounding like.
I've always loved “Circles” and “Ashes”. They’ve been mainstays in our sets for a few years. But I felt like the recorded versions on our last EP really didn't do justice to either song. They were too fast, too produced, with too much autotune (probably because I didn't sing them all that well, haha). I wanted to slow them down, feature Ash on the keys, let Deno and Kail reshape the grooves, and personally I wanted to sing them better. We recorded everything in-house, with the help of Jake from Fruit Juice - he offered his engineering and production expertise and it really made a difference. I mixed and mastered them myself. We're all pretty happy with the results!
Alyssa: I appreciate all of this food for thought! It's been really helpful. Let me know if you have any questions as well! Would it be okay to ask any more questions if any pop into my brain later?
Bret: Understood - I'm happy to answer any questions you got! As for hopes and dreams for Colorworks - we're finally in a position to record everything ourselves. We've put together a DIY studio, and populated it with the requisite microphones and cable spaghetti. We're finally arranging songs by recording, rather than arranging in a basement practice space, and the results are like night and day. We finally know what we sound like! Usually that awareness comes once we're in a high-pressure situation in a professional studio, and there's really no time to revise or rearrange - that'd be a waste of time (and dollars!). But now, we can take our time. Which is great, because we have so many songs that need arranging and recording.
So, with that lengthy preamble - we want to release the best tunes we can. We don't want to feel like we did the best we could "under the circumstances" - now we can record the songs the way we'd like them to be, and we hope our fans and the general music-loving world will notice. Hopefully those recorded songs, along with convincing live performances, will help get us noticed more in and outside the Seattle scene. We've gotten some really positive reactions from Europeans over the last few years, and we'd love to do a tour over there. Supporting a bigger band like Temples for a tour would be a real dream come true. And I think ultimately we want to release a great record (or three) - these days the music industry prioritizes the singles market, and we're kind of playing that game, but we long to make a complete piece of art a la the albums we love and grew up with. Hopefully we'll get that opportunity soon. Yes, any questions you got, feel free to ask. I'm glad you're asking!
Alyssa: I was wondering why so many people were producing and releasing singles instead of albums. That's really good to know. That's amazing that you're doing everything yourselves and still making it sound good-quality! What was the biggest difficulty you overcame in your music experiences so far?
And lastly, what advice would you have for anyone in the Seattle music scene or music scene in general?
Bret: I think one of the biggest difficulties that I've personally had is in the process of becoming a songwriter. When I completely committed myself to music when I was 23, I knew I couldn't finish a song, and even the ones I could weren't very good. It's taken a lot of work, a lot of late nights and critically listening to music, to learn that I can write songs. A lot of self-doubt has clouded me at times, to the point where I almost left the band. But perseverance has allowed me to work with and make music with the best bandmates I've ever had. I actually write all our songs with my former guitar teacher. He's been a big mentor to me, and I've learned so much from him. When we started out, it was a lot of him helping me understand where my songs were falling apart, and helping me write whole new drafts of songs to make them resemble an actual song. Now it's much more like a partnership, where we can just riff off each other's ideas and we usually finish a session with something good. And sometimes I'll walk in with almost complete musical ideas, and then we just dig into the lyrics I write and really fine-tune them.
The biggest "hallmark-y" advice I have for someone in the scene today is to be authentic to yourself, but there are plenty of self-help books saying that, so maybe the more functional advice would be this: learn how to take criticism. Try to understand what someone is saying about your song or your show without taking it personally. I know I've had to deal with my own ego trying to protect me from hearing things I don't want to hear, but when I actually listen, and I respect and trust that the person I'm talking with actually cares and is informed, I always find value in what's being said. Whether it's about one of our songs, a performance, my singing, the lyrics, etc., it's always helped us make better art. Having mentors and people you trust to give you the honest truth is invaluable.
“…we want to release the best tunes we can. We don't want to feel like we did the best we could "under the circumstances" - now we can record the songs the way we'd like them to be, and we hope our fans and the general music-loving world will notice.”-Bret Dylan
Alyssa: I don't know how I haven't asked this yet, but how did Colorworks come to be?
Bret: Well, I was in a band back in middle school with Nick Myette. We had a good run as a punk band through high school, and we got some nice attention and great opportunities. That ended in college, but the music never ended for us. I moved to Korea to do some soul-searching and improve my spoken Korean after college, and I was very inspired by my own broken heart. The girl who inspired “Lady Soul” was the inadvertent inspiration for me committing completely to music. It was August 2012 and after reading biographies of Jeff Buckley, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon, I decided to take the deep plunge and go for it, just like all three of them did. I moved back in 2013, downloaded Cubase and went to work trying to record my own songs, working with my former guitar teacher Greg on songwriting. I found a couple of bandmates, got Nick on board by 2014, and we went for it. We went for an early Beatles/1960s sound, in part to reflect how early-on I think we all (and I in particular) felt about my relationship with songwriting and being full-on with my own music. I was a newly-minted songwriter, in my mind, and I wasn't very good. But I persisted nonetheless, and now I work with the best bandmates I've ever had. The synergy we've got would've knocked the socks off of my twenty-three year old self back in 2012.
I think whatever the art form, taking in the best of the best in that art and being a critical student of how it was made is super important. Then taking that critical eye to your own work really sharpens up the ideas and the focus.
Alyssa: I definitely noticed the camaraderie amongst everyone in the group, especially at the Acoustic Music Festival.
Bret: Yea, that was such a fun show! Elijah from Tobias The Owl put together a fantastic production, and it was his seventh year doing it!
Alyssa: Yes, Elijah does a wonderful job at all he does, voice acting included! You seem to have had many adventures so far. Thank you, Bret, for taking the time to answer all of my questions!
Bret: You're welcome Alyssa, thanks for asking! Ah, and to answer your other question: we just released the first two-song single a few weeks back, The Bright Carvers // Propellers. The next two-song single should be coming out in February.
Alyssa: Thank you! I'm curious what your newest songs are about. What are a few tidbits you'd like me to know about them?
Bret: We've got songs going back to 2013 which were never recorded. Last year, we all agreed that we should do one of them, and we started recording it. It's almost done now. It reflects what I was thinking and going through six years ago. I remember I was gifted a record player for Christmas from my parents, and my dad got me ten records he was sure I was a fan of. In there was a Harry Nilsson record of unreleased material, including him covering a John Lennon song. I was inspired as soon as I heard it. The new song is called "Holding On (And Losing Sleep)” which I worked on with Greg in January of 2014. It's heavily inspired by Harry Nilsson and John Lennon, along with Burt Bacharach.
We've got the luxury of having too many songs to work on, so we're looking at only eight right now. We're not sure what's going to come out first, but one we're all excited about is the last song I finished writing. I wrote pretty much all the music in one sitting one night in the summer. The lyrics mostly came from a poem I wrote on the streets of New York City after having walked through probably a bunch of art galleries in Chelsea in October. On the plane coming back to Seattle, I hummed the poem to the rhythm of the melody from the summer, and it surprisingly fit well. It was pretty funny to experience that because I've never written a song in that way before. It doesn't have a proper title yet, but we call it "Waves", that being the first word of the song.
We had jammed it a bit, but the four of us were never actually in the same room. It was me, Deno and Ash, or me with Deno and Kail, but not all four of us. We played it for the first time all together a few weeks back and it felt like everything just fell into place. Usually we'll spend a lot of time working on the arrangement, trying out different things, sometimes for months. But the way everyone played it that night, it just worked. I think we're going to try to record it pretty soon to capture that spontaneous energy.
There are a few others I could detail. We have a song called "Electric Children" which was fun to write. Kail came in with a guitar riff and we all had fun just bashing away on it. It's a really hook of a riff. I think I wrote a dozen different melody ideas for it until I found one that stuck and two of three choruses until the right one showed up. We started playing it live over the summer and it seems to get a good reaction each time. It's a big mix of Temples, The Kinks, The Stone Roses, and perhaps a bit of Radiohead. I liken the lyrics to a love letter to everyone who goes to big music festivals, and makes their life about experiencing live music.
“We have a song called "Electric Children" which was fun to write. Kail came in with a guitar riff and we all had fun just bashing away on it. It's a really hook of a riff.”-Bret Dylan
Alyssa: I'm always amazed at the ways people come up with songs. This is no exception. I'm sure we (your avid music listeners) can't wait to hear this new content! May I ask what inspired your latest single release (The Bright Carvers//Propellers)?
Bret: The “Bright Carvers” has a big Burt Bacharach influence, and I was listening to The Smiths a lot as well when I was writing it. I definitely tried to do a bit of a Hal David impression when writing them. It's definitely autobiographical, though the lyrics are a somewhat-fictionalized narrative of waiting for someone to show up at a train station, and all the anticipation of that. Neil Young was a big influence as well. Kind of an impressionistic lyric in that sense.
“Propellers” has an interesting story. Four songwriters on that one. Back in 2008 I came up with the main riff for the song waiting for my roommates to come home one day. I moved to Korea to study the next year, bought a classical guitar, and worked out some bits and pieces. They were not necessarily connected to the riff, but I jammed them both in the same recording, which I then sent to Nick, who was still in Seattle. What I know is that Nick worked on the song with Greg and our friend Ella Ordona, a very talented poet who we hung out with at that time. She wrote all the lyrics from two different poems, and Nick and Greg put the pieces I wrote together in a coherent way, and finished out the rest of the structure and melody. Really a group effort, haha. We played it in our college band - never very convincingly, but it was fun nonetheless.
When I moved back from Korea the second time (this time fully committed to music) I was teaching myself how to produce, arrange and record, but I didn't have more than two or three finished songs then. I always loved “Propellers”, so I decided to record the whole thing, and that demo I made in 2013 was the basis for the released version. I threw piano, organ, multiple guitars, and other various things on that demo, and it ended up having echoes of Elliott Smith, which excited me! “Propellers” was one of the first songs Colorworks tried in 2014, just months into the band. I think we even made some recordings and played it live, but we soon tabled it because that first iteration of the band couldn't really do it justice, and we had other stuff that was more in our range. I showed it to Kail and Deno, and they loved it. And we all knew when Ash joined the band, we could finally do it, because he could bring to life all the keyboards from my original demo way back in the day.
““Propellers” was one of the first songs Colorworks tried in 2014, just months into the band…. I showed it to Kail and Deno, and they loved it. And we all knew when Ash joined the band, we could finally do it, because he could bring to life all the keyboards from my original demo way back in the day.”-Bret Dylan
Alyssa: So cool! Sometimes the shoe just fits! Or maybe I should say "puzzle piece" since likening someone to a shoe isn't flattering. I'm incredibly impressed by the apparent chemistry amongst every member of the band. Please remind me when we can hope to hear these new songs again.
Bret: Haha, I'm sure Ash would be just fine to be referred to as the shoe that fits. I think we're trying to release our next digital seven-inch in February. I hope we can make it happen!
Alyssa: Well thank you for continuously bringing to life all of these artists you're inspired by and for sharing all your stories with me.
Bret: Of course! Thanks for asking Alyssa.
I’d like to thank Bret Dylan once again for sharing this cornucopia of information with us. The boys over at the Colorworks Workshop are working hard to deliver you their next two songs, “Juliet of the Spirits” and “This Floating World”. They will be releasing these beauties into the multiverse sometime in the near future. Keep an eye (or ear) out! You won’t regret it!