#I wish we'd done that because the atmosphere was better and I'd have been able to hear Ritz and Four Out of Five properly

[glorious-blackout]

You went to the show last night?? How was it? Did you have a good time? 💕

Honestly, I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to but that's entirely a Me Problem; the band themselves were terrific and my sister and best friend had an amazing time. I've just been constantly busy since Thursday and have barely recovered from Friday's Muse gig as it is, so by the time the gig started I really was mentally flagging and not feeling great. It was like I could feel my brain actively refusing to make serotonin whenever a song I loved came on 😅

We were in a bad spot during the first half as well where the sound wasn't great and the crowd was fairly packed in and rowdy so I couldn't really hear or see anything properly. We started heading further back after Fluorescent Adolescent which was the best decision we made because the sound was so much better and we could finally see the stage and the screens clearly. Thankfully that meant I got to hear all of the songs from The Car properly and they all sounded gorgeous, Body Paint and Sculptures especially (Alex was such an adorable goof during the outro to Body Paint, I love him so much) 💖

I did leave the gig wanting to see them again, but preferably in a smaller venue and definitely not after I've been on-the-go with very little sleep for four days straight... I was beating myself up last night for not feeling the gig as much as I wanted to but I feel a bit better about it this morning. Honestly the fact that they played Sculptures of Anything Goes made up for everything else - they could have come onstage, played Sculptures and then immediately left and I'd still have been happy 😁

[musicatheart12]

A Chat with a Bassist: Natalie Kim from Old Joy

Old Joy is an indie/alternative rock band that released their debut album on September 7th, 2018. They come from the underground New Brunswick scene and have played many basement shows around the area, with their most recent performance being for a student-run charity club at Rutgers University. This week, I got the chance to interview Old Joy's bassist, Natalie Kim, also a student at Rutgers University.

The interview:

What kind of music do you guys play?  How do you, as a band, characterize it?

It's kind of under the umbrella of Alt Rock and Indie just because we're in the local New Brunswick scene. So it's kind of like Indie, DIY kind of music.

How did the band get together?

So my two bandmates who started the band started it before I got to Rutgers. When I came here as a freshman, I met one of them, Phil, and he told me they were looking for a bassist so they kind of adopted me. And then we had no drummer, so we had to go out looking for a drummer. So yeah it started with those two people. The other two of us kind of made our way in.

How long has the band been together?

I joined at the very end of summer before freshman year, and back then we had a like a different drummer like every month.

That's interesting.

Yeah, it was kind of weird since I play bass. Bass and drum really have to work with each other so I would change what I played for like every person. It was kind of rocky to start with, but we found someone about 3 months in, who ended up staying for the rest of the next summer. So when we all decided we were in it for the long run, that's when we recorded our first album.

Wow, that's very cool. Yeah, but he decided to go back to school, so literally the day of our release party, we got a new drummer.

Oh wow! Fun fact, drummers are like the hardest people to find because if you're going to be a drummer, you have to be good because everyone can hear you. There was a really big shortage of drummers, and this is a problem that every band has.

I didn't know that.

So in this current state, we've been together about 2 months.

So even though the current band is fairly new, are you guys still playing songs from the first album?

Our new drummer, he didn't make his parts, he had to learn it. But obviously, from now on, it's going to be him.

Are you guys going to make any new music?

We've started making some new stuff, but we're probably going to record, I don't know, not for a while.

That makes sense.

Maybe sometime next year. But it's also a lot different, because the two members that started the band found me after everything was already written so like, in this case, it's everyone. It's more democratic in the way we're making music. It's like everyone is developing it together, rather than it being the work of two people.

So, I know you're a full-time student. It must be difficult to find time to practice.

It's f***ing hard. The good thing with my band is, they're really good at planning ahead. We'll set up a date for a rehearsal a week or two weeks in advance, I'm so grateful. The worst is definitely when we're recording an album. It was so hard last winter. I'd have to go down to the recording studio like twice a week, and it's like an hour away, so like what I ended up doing is bringing my homework and doing it in a dark lit basement. It was hard work, but it definitely paid off because now it's just basement shows and events, which are just a weekend sort of thing. Sticking it through recording was definitely a good idea.

Were you taught music/playing or writing? Are you self-taught?

Kind of, so like, I think I developed an ear for music growing up from piano lessons as a kid. Even though that only went up until like fifth grade, that's what taught me how to read music. And then through middle school, I played French horn, I played flute.  And when I got into high school, that’s when I picked up bass and I really should've taken lessons then. I regret not taking lessons when I had the time to when I was like 14. I kind of just learned bass by ear. And the internet's fantastic.

I have other questions, but I'm trying to think of a question based on what you just said.

I mean I can keep talking if you want.

Yeah, go for it if you want!

I mean, here's the thing about bass, so like I've had my friends ask me to teach them before. A lot of people have this conception that "oh I have to start the same way I learned piano" with all the scales and fundamentals, but I think for bass it's heavy on intuition. Of course, you'll be a better musician if you know all the techniques and fundamentals but like you cannot be a bassist if you do not have some kind of musical intuition. Like over the first year I picked it up, by the end of the year, I listened to music differently. I never noticed bass parts before I started playing. And then once it like really clicks you start to listen for it, and that eventually grows into the intuition. Especially playing in a band versus an orchestra. I play in an orchestra every year, and it's much more technical. Playing in the underground music scene, its more about what sounds good, what works versus what doesn’t work.

So it's more about understanding the vibe?

Yeah, kind of. It's like what people say about writing, how you can't be a good writer unless you read a lot, it's the same way. You have to listen to a lot of music to be able to play well.

Do you guys ever spend time experimenting with different kinds of music, or do you stick to the same kind of genre?

Right now, most of our rehearsals are geared toward preparing for shows. But in terms of being experimental, I'd say there are 2 parts to that. Number one, there's a lot of cover songs. We'll just like jam sometimes and go off of each other and play whatever. But also we're like trying to be different for our second album… now that we're trying to follow up to our first album, we're trying to be more advanced in terms of adding more atmospheric sounds and big picture stuff. We're going to add some synth, maybe some more keyboard stuff. I think like in terms of experimenting, I'd like to do it more, but we're not going in the wrong direction.

I know Old Joy plays a lot of basement shows. What other kinds of gigs do you guys play?

Just last Friday we performed at the student center for the Seeing Eye club, I forget exactly what the event was called. Yeah so we did that, it was a fundraiser. And in a month we're going to be doing Overnight Sensations which is like a program run by WRSU, which is a Rutgers radio station. So every week they have bands come late at night. We've also done a lot of other charity shows.

And as far as setlist goes, do you have a specific order you play in?

Our album is 7, 8 songs. There are some songs that we all love, and some that we all don't want to play. So we'll play 4 to 5 songs and we'll do like one cover.

So it's short.

Yeah, it's usually like a half hour set. Also a lot of these songs, we recorded them in the winter so almost a year ago. Now that we're more mature musicians it's kind of like, I wish we recorded this differently or played this differently.

Do you guys tease new music in your shows?

Yeah we played a new song at our last show, which was last Friday… but yeah definitely.

Do you need to think about the audience, or do you just do you (as a band)?

It depends. We don't have very many songs yet, so there's a skeleton that we have to follow. It's usually the cover that we'll very. And then the other thing we'll mix up is the order. Sometimes it’s the energetic songs first if everyone seems dead. The hardest part is definitely when everyone's like "one more song!" and we don't have any more song.

What's your response to that? Do you guys play a song from the album that you wouldn't normally play?

We'll play another cover song, we have stuff that we kind of keep in the back in case we need it. But I wish we had more stuff.

How does recording working?

So basically what happens is, first everyone plays, to get a scratch track for timing purposes. Then everyone will go in on their own and we'll put it into the computer and do it as many times as it takes to get it right. It can take forever sometimes. And so the way we did this album was each time we went down there, we'd record one song. It took a while, but it turned out ok. The recording was less than half. The rest of the time was just mixing and then sending it out to get it mastered. Honestly, I'm not a fan of recording because sometimes I can get really perfectionistic. That’s why I really like playing basement shows. I don’t think I've ever played the same song the same way twice. Like this kind of goes back to the experimental thing. Thank god we play live shows because that's where you get to be creative as a musician.

How did you guys come up with the order of the album?

It's weird, I don’t think we discussed the whys of it. We all kind of came to a consensus. It might be a little bit subconscious, and it kind of goes back to the intuition of it. There might be some legitimate reason to it, like songs being in the same key. From what I can observe, I think the biggest things are tempo and mood. As an Alt rock, indie almost emo band, there are energetic happy songs like typical Alt Rock songs, but there are also songs that are really emotional. Like we have this one song "Rover Shore". Watching Phil do the vocals for that was literally spiritual. Like I've never seen anyone put so much emotion into one song. So obviously you wouldn't put that first. We put that sort of in the middle near the end. We never discussed the explicit details, it just flows somehow.

Yeah, it just feels right.

Do you guys plan on making music videos?

We filmed a music video last year, but because we switched drummers, we had to scratch all of that. I really wanted to because one of the girls in the band is a film major. It's definitely possible, the only issue is we all have no time. 3 of us are students, and one graduated but he has a full-time job. Yeah, the biggest issue is definitely time. I understand why some bands buy a house and live together like it definitely makes sense.

Do you have any other interesting stories? Anything cool!

The most exciting moment of being in this band was this Friday. We were at a house for a show and me and my bandmate we were just walking from one side of the room to the other, and we heard a group of people talking and they said Old Joy. It was the coolest thing 'cause it was like people actually know us. That was so exciting even though it was such a small thing because people actually recognize us. Like last week someone was at work and they said some of our music was on the radio. It was really cool!

What's weird is that the style of music that we play is not my style.

So what is your style?

I've never really gotten into indie music, but I figured I'd try it out. When I play on my own, I play a lot of Jazz and Funk. So this is very very very different. And this type of music isn't what I listen to but it's so interesting because the number of things you can do on bass is infinite. I do appreciate it, it's definitely grown on me. Before, all indie music sounded the same. Like to the average person, all classical music sounded the same. It's cool that I've learned so much through this.

Does it make it hard, not having listened to indie music beforehand?

When I first started, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was sticking to the root notes, keeping time. Super simple. By the time recording rolled around, I got the hang of it enough to create my own tracks, but looking back on it now, I would do things 100% differently.  

Natalie Kim is a talented young artist making her way through with her bandmates. With the first album already out, and another in the works, Old Joy is already paving their path into music. It's cool to see the beginning of a band that is transforming into something bigger, especially coming out of a local music scene.

Check out some of their songs: