In this interview spotlight, I chat with Mankind’s Remedy about their latest project (Faceless), motivations, challenges, technology and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)
All three members are from South Louisiana (Southern Vermilion Parish to be more precise; Kaplan, Cow Island and Forked Island). Travyn Hargrave (Songwriter/Lead/Vocals) and Bennett Price (Drummer) take styles from 70’s Classic Rock/Southern Rock and 90’s Grunge/Alternative Rock while Mason Dugas (Bass/Vocal Harmony) tends to lean more towards modern rock/pop rock influences. The album Faceless is just that; a bit of influence from all of the above. It’s Rock, Alternative, some Metal, a bit of Americana, probably even some Cajun French mystically woven into the fabric of their music. I believe one highlight of the album Faceless is, no two songs sound alike, yet the styling stays intact.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
It seems that the interest in music for each member just sort of fell into their laps, and began taking roots over time in their early and now late teens. Both Travyn and Mason are the string instrumentalists (Lead, Bass, Acoustic, Piano…), while Bennett is all beats. They’ve worked out each song from beginning to end; sometimes at home in the shed and sometimes at the others house, or even while out playing in front of friends and family. Being able to hear all of these works come together clearly has certainly been encouraging going into our next album. We know more about how we sound and what to key in on while crafting the batch.
How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?
This is our first album and we’re all very pleased with how the final product sounds. These were songs Travyn had written years ago and has been playing with Bennett for some time now. When Mason was invited to join the band, he picked up on the notes and keys for Bass guitar rather quickly and before we knew it, after 6 months of rehearsal, we laid down our first 5 tracks, along with 3 others that didn’t make the album in a 12 hour session at a local recording studio. It was an experience like no other and it was driving force behind the next 7 tracks (which we had recorded 5 months later in another 12 hour session at the same studio (Dockside Studio, Maurice, LA)). With all of that behind us now, we’re hoping our music speaks for itself and that there’s enough interest out there for us to perform in front of live audiences far and wide.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
We really don’t know. Picking up fans and listeners is still yet to be seen. We’ve given potential fans a large sample of our music and hope they like some or even all of them. So we can agree that the digital music platforms have offered unknown artists like us a relatively easy path and method to get our music out to the world, but like you stated, because of this, it has allowed anyone with relatively inexpensive recording equipment and a laptop a means to get their music out. Like a double-edged sword. All we can do is put it out and promote it the best we can and hope that we stand out enough to be noticed.
What was the last song you listened to?
Distortion-Head Overdrive (namely because you put it up on your Rock playlist…lol), but we each listen to lots of current and classic songs by popular artists. Nothing too particular, just whatever happens to be on at the time or whatever strikes the mood.
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
MP3 format is convenient and all, but the sound quality is not the same as CD or vinyl. We can hear the difference between sites that allowed us to upload our files in WAV rather than mp3 format. But right now it’s just a matter of getting heard…period. Those who really like our music and know the difference will want the better sound quality formats.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
So far Spotify seems to be winning out in terms of popularity and ability to get info about who our audience is. Sound Cloud is another good one for the same reason, and they also upload the large WAV files for better streaming quality.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
acebook https://www.facebook.com/remedy/ is the simplest way to keep fans up to date on what’s going on with our music. Sound Cloud also allows listeners to leave comments and follow us and lots of other bands https://soundcloud.com/user-62631211
Anything else before we sign off?
Thank you for helping to get our music out and boom or bust, we’ll keep making music until we can’t.
