PipemanRadio Interviews In/Vertigo

0:04 Hey, you have done to censure. I'm for see wow for you your room? Oh no, w the bouse and I'm too god, watch U save me come myself? Oh wow, say I got so wait not mel watch to save me myself? W d im rooming of the balls. I'm looking for a shot. I'm going to a small and I've got Selby's honor, and I'm hosp and I'm a god my seas hot and.

0:51 I watch on no Yo, it's the fight man, and I'm very excited about our next guest. And we're going a little north of me. Of course most of everything was north of me. There I am, but with some great music and man, this is new music that's been waved by fans for a while and I'm so excited about So let's welcome to the show. Duncan from Invertigo. How are you. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this. Hey, my pleasure and we will prevail. Absolutely. So I just wanted to say right off the bat, I thought it was really cool that your your guys, if I read correctly, your first show this year was on Canada Day.

1:43 Yes, we were in strattmore of this little town just just outside the city of Calgary. And yeah, we've played there, played under Brewery there a few times and yeah, it was great, it was it was an awesome time. Yeah. So one of my co hosts on my live show, and she also has a show on another show on our network, she lives up in Calgary, so she's always very excited that I had. When I have guests from Canada, it's about that area and I do a lot of them because, you know what, there's so much great music up there. Like everybody likes to talk about the US and Europe, but man, there is so much good music in Canada. And like I kind of look at kind of like the Scandinavian countries. Sometimes it's just so fricking cold there. But you have nothing there to do but make great music.

2:45 That's absolutely the thing, Like there is pretty much nothing, nothing better to do. Yeah, you think about some of the Prairie provinces like Manitoba and stuff, and like, what else are you going to do with your time? It's right. And then I'm always amazed at the bands that could sound like they have as many members of Slipknot and only you'll have like two or three people in the band, like I mean, everybody knows Rush of course, but there's a perfect example how much music comes have three people. Yeah, that's that's always been a big focus for us. We've been largely a one guitar band, our whole are, our whole existence. During the recording of Prevail and the upcoming EP we had another guitar player, Brandon Hatto, But it's always been sound as big as possible with as little instrumentation as possible. Definitely a focus for us.

3:41 So tell us a little bit about your music, how you and the artist would explain it to the listeners who have never heard you before. Besides the bullshit genre stuff that everybody likes, the lump artist into. Yeah, we do definitely try to bring in as much influence from the for genres and whatever. We're a rock and roll band, but we love everything else. And it's really just we're trying to keep it real, you know, like we're four guys jamming in a basement writing songs together. We couldn't do backing tracks of our live shows if we had to. We have no idea how to do it, and it's just, yeah, just raw, real rock and roll the way people did it. In the old days.

4:26 I love that you said rock and roll because to me, nowadays there's so many subgenres and micro genres and it's all just rock and roll. Man, it's the raw genre. It's all just rock and roll, And like, why do we have to put these labels and box artists in, you know? And I think there's a resurgence now of rock and roll meaning just people that are musicians playing great music opposed to whatever formulas have been put out there these days that make rock or hard rock or metal, Like, none of those three areas should ever have a.

5:09 Formula totally right there with the end, you know, music it works in cycles, right, and you know, it sucks for a while, and then it all comes back around at some point and we're I think we're definitely we've got that going on right now. You know. Yeah, I love that because I hear it in yours and there's other bands that I've seen at festivals that. Man, it reminds me of rock in the seventies or the sixties, where you know, it was just about the music. Like you said about with the backing tracks. You know, not that backing tracks are bad. I just think that's not rock and roll. I think that's role is about musicianship totally. It's not a thing. And you don't want to hear your song sound exactly like does on the record. You want to evolve and you want happy accidents to happen, and you wanted to be cut on the edge of disaster all the time, right, And that's definitely where we live.

6:01 And it's funny because see, that's an everything about rock and live music. Live music should not sound like tape. It should have flaws, it should have mistakes. You know, even with my radio shows sometimes I'll make mistakes. Everybody does. I'm like, I tell the engineer, fuck it, keep it in there, man, make it make it real, like unless it's something like really really bad like a dropped internet or whatever, like just keep that shit in there. So what I fucked it. It's lots, that's what it's all about, right, Yeah, we're totally from that school of doing things. It's so real and it's so fun. I was just telling a story yesterday on interview about in nineteen eighty three Van Helen headlining the US Festival and David Lee Roth forgetting the words to ain't talking about love instead of like trying to fake it. He just yelled to three hundred thousand people, I fucking forgot the words and they cheer it.

7:01 I love moments like that. It's great, right, you know, that's that's the kind of thing that sticks. With you, no doubt, you know. And like I see other bands nowadays, if they don't have their tracking in their tracks or their laptops or whatever, they can't do a show like Whereas like, there's this band I really like that plays a lot of the festivals I cover called Bad Flower, And one time Josh, the lead singer, he had laryngitis, so he came out anyway, and yeah, he had the audience sing the songs for him and they just yeah, they played it like without the without singing, and then the whole audience was singing the songs and it was great. It was a once in a lifetime experience instead of you know, if you go see the same band like six times within a year, it's the exact same show.

7:56 Sometimes Yeah, yeah, I don't think we played the same sh twice ever, Right, it's the best part. I'd prefer the grateful dead way, where every show is different, you never know which one to expect. You know, and absolutely. I mean to me, that's rock and roll too. It's like I think the musicians should play what they feel at the moment, because otherwise they would just be dialing it in. If they're really being a musician and they're really like having fun with what they're doing, you never know what might happen. Yeah, That's that's the way we do things. And you know, I love electronic music, and I love a lot of the modern rock and metal and stuff, and it's great, but just it's not.

8:41 What we do. Yeah, And I like a lot of different stuff too, you know, I just think the same as you like. Everybody's gotta be unique and do their own thing, you know. That's that's what makes you a musician. It's like I've told a story a few times. You know, when I start first start playing guitar, my dad like he goes, you better quit that because you don't know what the hell you're doing. And what I was really just doing is I was just trying to find out what sounds I can make on that thing, you know, Like I wasn't trying to play a song or notes. I was just like, hmm, what can I do that'll be different? And not like this boring scale shit. That's awesome actally what I was thinking, you know, because every guitarist when they first start playing, they hate doing that whole scale thing. You have to kind of do it sometimes.

9:32 But it's also fun to just say, hmm, I wonder what happens if I do this, you know, And that's what's happened with the greatest guitarist Listen. We just lost Ozzy, but Black Sabbath move never existed if it weren't for Tony figuring out a different way to play the guitarist. Absolutely, I'm a music teacher myself, and I use tone story constantly, right, just using your you know, your limitations and the things that happened to fuel you, you know, to to just make the next thing happen. And it's it's that's incredible. Right, I mean, it just it formed a new genre that like is one of the most memorable bands ever in history. He could have gone two ways. He could have gone, oh no, I can't ever play guitar again.

10:27 And I'm a motivational speaker too, so I love that story because it's just as you know, it's not what happens to you, it's what you do with it. Absolutely. I like that. I'm using that, I'm stealing it. There you go. It's so true. And Black Sabbath is the result of that. And even Azsi like and Azsi he really couldn't even sing well, to be honest, you know, but he has that unique voice and he just loved what he was doing. And you know, I was just reading something today of you know, it's rare that you have a band like Sabbath come once in a lifetime, but somebody to create two mega things like okay, he's out of Sabbath. Now. You know how many people go into solo careers and it's not nearly as big, but he created two huge phenomenons like like, how often does that happen? That's why you can only give him respect.

11:27 And he admitted, he admitted many times he didn't know how I was saying, he didn't know how to play an instrument, you know, but he just loved music. And I think that's the most important part, because if you don't love what you're doing in this industry, you're in the wrong industry, right, So tell us go ahead. Sorry, And just the thing like just seeing how excited he is to be on stage all the time. You know, that's kind of one thing I've taken away from from him constantly. He's just he's so stoked to be up there. Oh, no doubt, Like I oh, I've said for years now that he's not going to retire because he if he retired, he would he would pass away. And I kind of figured that was going to happen after this last show because he did last raw. He gave it everything that he had, Like, oh my god, I think it's the best he sounded in years, to be honest, you know, and just like he went out on his own terms for sure. So what else do you guys got coming up throughout the year here, And let's talk a little bit more about the new EP and everything you want to listeners to know about.

12:41 We are still putting together some release shows for for the EP, so no concrete shows quite yet, but we are following Prevail up with a new EP right away, so you won't have to wait five years for new music again. And we've just been you know, writing, doing our own thing. We're focusing on solo music. The band itself is we're not hugely, hugely active right now, but we're all busy doing each other's projects and things. So, but there is new Invertico music coming up right away which is going to be great. Oh yeah, definitely exciting. And how do people connect to you guys on socials on the web. Check out all your stuff and you know, be updated for when you do do shows and you do release new music.

13:29 Our Facebook and our Instagram are the most active and you can find them both at get Invertigo all one word, and that's probably the best place to find us. Nice And so what else would you want to share with the listeners that we haven't covered already? We are dropping a new music video for the track weather Vane tomorrow, so that'll be going live on Rockshots Records YouTube page tomorrow and will be posting all about it. And it came together great, so hopefully you check it. Out nice, And what got started? What guy you started in this anyway? Like? Ooh, well me personally, I played music like I had to, you know, play piano as a kid, and I hated it. And I only really got serious about it when I started having friends who were musicians, right, I had buddies who were taking it seriously and just like, oh, I want to do that like my first musical heroes were the guy sitting beside me in band class and just kind of took it from there. And I was nineteen or twenty and I met our guitar player, Shaddy.

14:41 We were playing on Michael Jackson tribute show. Was two thousand and nine when he when he passed away, and we just you know, started band after band, project after project, and landed on Invertigo. We've been playing together for ten years. We read our singer his old band played with our old band years ago, and we were looking for a singer and they stumbled upon each other like, oh I remember you. And then we poached our drummer from our booking agent and just it's one of those one of those, you know, the perfect group of guys at the perfect time sort of thing. Just total magic.

15:23 See. I love hearing that stuff because you know, most bands do have a past, you know, and in that past, you never know where it's gonna leave you, but it generally leads you to this story that you're saying, like, you know, somehow you get connected the six degrees of separation, and then that's the magic. Yeah. Yeah, when when the two of us met read the singer like that evening when we just met up to talk about plans and goals and stuff. I think we were all just like, yeah, I'm starting a band with this guy. It was just the instance like you know, you know it's going to happen.

16:05 See, It's like it's like with Ozzy when Randy was tuning up, Ozzie's like, you're hired. Yeah. Absolutely, It's exactly like that. We were just so on the same page and wanting the same things. And even though we're you know, those weird amalgamation of influences and stuff, we just we want we want to do the same thing, and it's it's great. Well see I love that part too, and I say it a lot, you know, going back to what I was saying about formulas and stuff like that. That's why I love when everybody in the band brings something different to the table. That's how we get the uniqueness nowadays, you know, because there's so many genres that that's the only way to get unique. You know, it's not like a black Sabbath where you are the only one doing it. Now, you bring in all these other people and he creates something that really says invertigo. It doesn't say anything else you know.

17:04 And figuring that out. Like we're still figuring out what that means. And we're just trying stuff, matching things together, coming up with ideas, and it's it's the best. I love it well. I love your enthusiasm about it. And I also ask how does it feel playing on both sides, meaning you're playing music but you're also teaching it too. It's it's interesting because like they they they're making me better at both things, but like I have to approach stuff from a different brain. Like when you're performing, you can't think, right, You're just like just do it. It's all automatic, it's all autopilot. And then teaching it's the complete opposite, right, and breaking down every single little detail, like oh, I see, like you're doing this thing with your hand, right, And it's weird, Like coming from a long day teaching to playing a show, I got to like become a different person, right, It's all make my brain work differently, and I'm figuring that out, but it's it's it is definitely something I thought about a lot.

18:08 That's why I asked that, because it is it's like you're switching hats people. A lot of people might think Oh, well, that's just makes sense. That's normal. But no, it's like a different mindset doing the two different things. Yeah, and it's like complete polar opposites, right, one can get in the way the other if you let it. Yeah, totally. And you know, it's similar to like like being a motivational speaker. That person isn't usually on the radio. There's radio me and there's speaker me, and they are different because one you're doing on stage for people, and one you're like you're playing a role when you're on the radio. You're kind of playing a role and you know it's not so serious and it's not you know, the worst thing you could do is do a seminar on the radio bore people to death, you know, so you know, and for me, it's like like this switch turns on as soon as the mic turns on, or as soon as I get up on stage, there's a switch and I don't even control that switch. It's like it just happened. And you know, it's like same thing too.

19:12 People don't realize that so many artists get stage right before they go up on stage, and the same for me, Like I'm like, yeah, the whole time before if I'm doing a speaking gig and the whole time before I'm thinking myself what I'm gonna say, and like I'm like all nervous, and the mid I step on that stage and the mic turns on, all that goes out the window, and like you said, it's like autopilot because you're just you're being you. Like when you're playing, in my opinion, you're being you, authentically you. But when you're teaching other people, it can't just be you. It has to be them too, and understanding what they do, what they need, what they want, and that they may learn differently than you, and not a really has that capability to put themselves in somebody else's shoes like that.

20:05 Yeah, it's uh, it's definitely something that's that's kind of you know, wrastled with a whole bunch and and just had to figure out and it's it's great because it's made me better at both things. Right, just right, they find each other. Yeah, totally. I bet you too, probably when you have and sometimes when you have, you know, taught students that sometimes they've taught you. Oh, definitely, I have a few that are just straight up way better than me. So it just directly like that's a smart way to do that. And then you know, just sometimes they make me think differently, or they asked a question that I'm like, oh, I never really thought about that or thought about it that way before, and one uh, I learned as much as they are and a lesson's great.

20:54 That's so cool. I love it. Well, your music's badass. Everybody's got to check it out or they can't on my show anymore. And thanks a lot for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man. Thanks so much. This has been great. Absolutely anytime, all right, I'll catch you later. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin on w for CUI Radio.