PipemanRadio Interviews Sovereign Council

0:00 Hey, you love them too. That's her four c WOW for you ll wake up America. It's time for the Adventures of Pipe Man on W four CWY dot com. West Palm Beach is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the pike Man. M there's a part and everyone that is wokecome. All it takes is one moment. Listen to the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man w for See Why Radio. And I'm here with Lisa Thompson from Sovereign Counsel and they have some cool new music. How are you, Lisa, I'm great. Thank you, Dean, how are you?

1:11 Thanks for having me on the show. Oh my pleasure. I'm doing great. So tell our listeners a little bit about you as an artist and about Sovereign Counsel and your music for those have never heard you guys before. All right, Well, myself as an artist, I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into one. To be honest, this is kind of my first time as a lead vocalist in the metal scene, being the front person for a band with this new release. I've put out albums in almost every genre you can think of, and I've always sung other people's music songwriters would approach me and have me sing on their albums. So this is really the first time that I'm putting something out into the world that I've had a heavy hand in writing as well as being the front person for it. So it's a little stressful and nerve wracking and exciting at the same time. But yeah, and Sovereign Council as a band, We've been a band since twenty eleven and I've kind of we've gone through lineup changes and our sound has changed over the years as well, and where I feel like we've gone from kind of like a gothic symphonic sound to now something that's a little bit more mainstream.

2:44 And yeah, we're just kind of hoping that it's absorbed and well received from the people that have heard us before, and anyone who hasn't heard us before, they're, you know, just digging the new tunes. Nice. I love it, And so I gotta ask, since you've done pretty much, you know, most genres, what made you pick metal to do this. It's a great question. So going back to when the band was formed, I was in a country band at the time, and our guitar player, Chris is actually my cousin, and he approached my dad asking him if I would lend my vocals for their first album. And I was a little hesitant because I was a little naive in the sense that at the time I felt like metal wasn't something that was for me as a musician. I had very little knowledge of how extensive the subgenres were, and I guess I just, yeah, I just wasn't aware of just how beautiful and vast metal music is, and so I lent my vocals. I recorded in my own home studio and sent vocals off to their producer in Kingston. And at that point I

4:19 wasn't a band member, but they wanted me on the photo shoot for all of their promo material for their release, and then it all kind of stemmed from there. They just kind of asked me to perform at their first show with them as to perform the vocals that I had recorded, and from that moment on, I was a band member for Sovereign Council and we always kind of joke around that I was, you know, just kind of blindsided and brought into the band almost unwillingly. But I love it and I've loved the metal scene ever since. Everyone is so inviting and inclusive, and it's just it's such a wonderful scene to be a part of. And yeah, I can't say enough nice things about about metal music and the scene in general.

5:13 So I love all that. And it sounds like, yeah, you got sucked in and didn't even realize it till you were already in, which is cool, and it's so true, Like it's so funny. A lot of people that aren't in the metal scene, they think, oh, metal scary, and everybody's devil worshipers and everybody's this and blah blah blah. And you know, I'm going to tell you a story that you're gonna love being where you came from. Right. So I go around and I do radio coverage for a bunch of different music festivals, and one weekend I had two festivals in the same weekend. So I had somebody else that worked for me.

5:57 I'm like, I'm going to have you cover this festival. And she was a country girl, okay. She never listened to rock, much less metal okay, and she never was that rock show ever, and so she did have that intimidating feel about it, and that you know what everybody seems to think. I'm like, no, you don't understand. Okay, First of all, you go to these country shows and you got a bunch of rednecks getting drunk getting into fights. We have mosh pits and we don't have fights. So you're gonna go there. You're gonna meet new people. You're gonna see that when we're one big, happy family, you're gonna see that everybody's included. It doesn't matter who you are. There's no like you have to be a certain way, like you may think, and you're just gonna have the best time of your life. And you're gonna go to this show that you think is scary, and there's gonna be all these fights and stuff goes to mosh pits that you're gonna that nobody is gonna get into a fight and nobody's gonna get hurt. And we have this like thing where you just people fall down, you pick them up and all that. So I went through the whole thing. She comes back after the weekend and she goes, oh my god, that was so amazing. You were so right. I have all these new friends, now have a new boyfriend, and I have this brand new band that I loved. They're called bring me the Horizon, and

7:29 I was like, yeah, they are pretty good, but you know, you have to experience it like you did, Like we are a family. We are inclusive. It's like and everybody that's excluded everywhere else in the world is included at a metal show, you know. And it's like it's funny too, because I've had artists that I've interviewed and we've talked about this, and some artists are like, yeah, let's keep them thinking it's scary, you know, because because you know what happens is like, okay. Sometimes these people, especially these macho big dudes, come to metal shows thinking, oh, I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna show how tough I am and all this, and they don't even get what the whole scenes about.

8:18 Those are the people we want to keep scared so they don't want to come. But metal people all are, all are welcome, And you know, it is interesting to go the other way because I meet a lot of people who are like, well, I used to like metal, but now I'm into country, and I'm like, well, then you never liked metal. If you used to like metal. There is no such thing for a metal head, right yea. So, and you do have that that gothy, angelic voice that you find in female fronted metal bands kind of like one of my favorites. I really like that. Yeah, well like kind of one of my favorites, like Lacuna Coile. Okay, so your voice does remind me of her. And yeah, that is a huge compliment because here's what I think as an old school metal head. I'm so glad that the gatekeepers are gone because I think the women in metal are way more badass than the men. Oh wow, well, thank you. That's very encouraging. You know, it's been extremely stressful just releasing the CP, just just the anxiety around it of well, what are how how is it going to be received?

9:50 Right? So, so yeah, thank you. I really appreciate that. Well, definitely, everybody has check it out because I listened to it and it badass, So everybody has to check it out. And you know, I love the single World on Fire. If I knew nothing else, I would know just from the name that that song is relevant to the world we're living in right now. Absolutely, yeah, and that's kind of you know, I I we've kind of been sitting on the EP for a few years just because of the pandemic and everything that's been going on. And you know, everyone in our band has had some things happen in their personal lives and myself included. So when we were writing and recording the entire ep, every song has meaning for us personally, but we also wanted to make it extremely accessible to anybody that was listening to each track and you know, kind of experiencing their own emotions from each song. And yeah, it's absolutely something that we want people to listen to and have some kind of emotional reaction from it, as we do when we when we perform it. I think that's important in having any good song is Yeah, when you're you're writing lyrics, of course you're writing things from your own experiences, your own perspective, but a truly good lyricist does that where the people listening can apply it to their

11:22 own experiences and what they're feeling right there. So everybody that listens to music can put their own meaning to it and does have their own meaning. I agree. Yeah, So now you're going to laugh too, because based on what you said earlier, So the single that was just released recently, Breathe You In. Yeah, without having anything to do it lyrics a song or anything. Just that title sounds like how you got into this band. Yeah, I mean just the song title. Yes, I agree for sure.

12:05 And it's funny how that that song kind of came about, Like our writing process is it kind of varies from song to song, but we had brought in the new guitar player, Joe Moon into the band, and he had this really cool guitar, like and I sat down and here in Canada marijuana was just legalized. And obviously there's other meanings behind the lyric as well, but but it just kind of inspired, you know, just a whole fork of all these different kind of elements of imagery and that kind of thing.

12:45 Yeah, it's just it's it's just funny that you say that. Yeah, so it has it definitely has multiple meanings behind it, but in the end, we kind of look at it as a song with meaning of you know, you're you're definitely allowing yourself to be gulfed in whatever you're experiencing at the time. Yeah, yeah, right, So so it's it's definitely a sexy song and you know, it kind of has an insinuation of that, but at the same time, it's really meant to be, you know, you just allow yourself to let go and just kind of have or just be in the moment and in that experience. So so, the full five song EP will be released on May fifth, and it can be pre ordered through band camp. Can you tell everybody how to connect to you guys on social media, on the web, your band camp, all that stuff so that they can check everything out and get the new album band drops. Absolutely, the best way is to go through our band camp just or Sovereign Council World on fire. We are on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, pretty much everywhere, Spotify and yeah, any support is always super We're super grateful, even just

14:15 with everything that's been going on in the last couple of weeks. And we hope that the CP inspires and people just love it. Well, I know they will. They have to check it out. I love it and thank you for being on the Adventures of plate Man. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of plate Man. I'm w for CUI Radio.