Here's an Interview With Brendan Webb of Sandpit.
Here's an interview a bloke and i did with Brendan Webb of Sandpit and many other things. I wrote the questions, the other guy made everything look prettier. This was done over the net probably close to 2 years ago, maybe 1 and a half, who knows! Anyway, I hope it's of interest to someone.
Brendan started listening to music at an early age and as a result was exposed to all sorts of styles from the beginning. “My dad played drums in a R'n'B/Rock'n'Roll band when he was young and had some older 50's pop music on 45's. By the time the 70's had hit, he was listening to a lot of country stuff like Loretta Lynn, Merle Hagard, etc so I have to say that my first taste of music was through my Dad.
Once I was in high school I started buying vinyl and tapes of my own mostly daggy pop stuff like Duran Duran, Go West, etc. I was into Smash Hits Magazine in Year's 7 and 8 but by the time I was in Year 9 that's when things took a different route for me. I discovered punk and
Thrash, and also started skateboarding. Without wanting to bore you with too much self-indulgence I should say that I didn't really know what I was into until I was about 15 years old really, and that's when I began listening to Sonic Youth, Dinosaur JR, Mudhoney, just about
Anything on the Sub-Pop label before the huge grunge explosion. I also enjoyed bands like The Pixies, Swervedriver, anything with angular guitars really.
I grew up in north-east Victoria in a country town called Benalla so it wasn't until I started travelling to Melbourne on weekends that I really was able to explore underground music. The Au-go-go mail-order service was something that also kept me listening to whatever was fresh
at the time.
I have to say that hearing more raucous groups like Polvo and Sebadoh had a huge influence on my songwriting around the time that Sandpit was first taking shape. It would also be obvious that singer/songwriters like Smog and Will Oldham also played a great part in some of the songs
I wrote as BL Stryker later on.”
This wide range of musical exposure had a mixed effect on Brendan’s music. “I think that I wore some of my influences on my sleeve from time to time, but I was also incredibly wary of that and tried my best to be as original as possible,” said Brendan. “I just wanted to glean some great ideas from the song structures and the exciting tones that we're coming from the records I treasured in my collection and use that to assist me in creating something (hopefully) equally as interesting.”
With the band Sandpit, Brendan managed to make some pretty catchy pop tunes. “I was in love with hooks,” remembers Brendan. “Almost every song has more than one memorable riff in it. I think I just wanted to create bunch of really interesting progressions and string them together to create music that people would like. I have to admit that by the time we'd started getting played on radio such as Triple J and we're signed and everything, that I did feel some responsibility to "come up with the goods", but at the same time, I wasn't prepared to just belt out a shit pop song just to get played.”
Brendan has used some bizarre tunings and has really tried to push the boundaries of what a regular guitar can sound like. “This was the most important thing to me at times,” remembered Brendan. “I had read an interview with Thurston Moore in "Guitar World" or one of those
Guitar-geek mags and he'd mentioned that he only really used a distortion unit and might have messed with other pedals only occasionally. I guess I took this on board and felt that I could relate to his stance on FX pedals. To me, the playing was more important and I guess I felt that I just liked the sound of an unprocessed guitar tone. Eventually I had myself a really nice couple of guitars (a gold '66 Fender Jaguar and a '74 Fender Custom - which I still own) and an original Orange 120 watt single volume amp head. The only pedals I ever used we're RAT distortions, yet I did own a locally made Tremolo unit and a Sans-Amp pedal, but both never really saw much use and we're sold not long after having them. The Sans-Amp was used quite a bit on the "On Second Thought" record, but the RAT's we're used on the EP's and for live shows.
Some of the most recent recording I did with a friend Rob Schifferli (ex Braving The Seabed, now in Minor Ache) had me trying the most weirdest things on guitar, almost to the point where I had an idea that I wanted the melody to sound more like a guy on a laptop than anything else. So yes, I would have to say that where possible, I did like to explore guitar tone and did attempt to make it sound a lot less conventional. But of course there's plenty of songs that don't sound too far from standard tunings and some songs towards the end of Sandpit's lifetime we're written in standard tuning for "kicks".
Sandpit had a few band troubles, lack of a drummer for a while, and eventually Stephanie Ashworth joining Something For Kate, which eventually led to the end of the band. “It's no big secret that Stephanie's move to SFK is what killed the band and I am glad it happened, said Brendan. “I know at the time it was unexpected and I have to admit that it was a shock and quite devastating for me at the time, but when I look back it now, I am really glad that we stopped playing when we did. I will continue to say that it changed my life for the better and I was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief once we'd finished the last shows and got the album out there. I think it was an achievement to get "On Second Thought" made as the shit had well and truly hit the fan before we'd even started recording the album and I was determined to see the 6 or so songs that we're written before the recording session make it to CD. Some of the tracks went down slightly under-developed, and also under-rehearsed. I must say that it wasn't easy being in the studio during that time as I knew than band was falling to pieces and I was just there out of an obligation to myself to see it through until the album was complete.
But with all that being said, I have to stress that Stephanie and I are both good friends again. We do not see each other much, but are in contact via email occasionally. I have also seen Paul a few times in the past few years and we still get along reasonably well. I think all three of us couldn't hold grudges and would look back at the band as being a great experience, and something to be cherished despite the tough times.
Brendan has also gone solo performing as B.L Stryker for a while. “I liked the fact that I didn't have to teach songs to anyone else, I could make any sudden changes to song structures without messing up other players, etc.” said Brendan. “It was just a means for me to play some more mellow and personal tunes that felt out of place in a Sandpit show. It seemed important to separate the two. Most of all it was a good chance to play on my own and perform some of the music I was demo-ing at home on my 4-track recorder at the time.”
Along side playing with Sandpit Brendan had also done a fair few side projects. “I loved playing with other people during that time”, said Brendan. “There was a few little jams that happened that we're given names and pursued for a short period. Guy Blackman (Sleepy Township/Minimum Chips) and I we're supposed to do a split EP which we started recording and also played shows together, The Kurlee Brothers was something Paul from Sandpit and I would call ourselves when we had jams and we recorded a few lo-fi tunes together; Vas Deferens was a project that my friend John ("Kenz" from Sci-Fi) and I did for a little while with me on the drums, and eventually solo shows with Matt Dufty on violin morphed into By Ferry Or Steamer, which as you know latest a while and is documented on a few small releases. That group was the only side project that ever really went anywhere. But wait! I can't forget Mandrille with Tom Larnach-Jones (manager of Trifekta Records), this was probably the most fun I have had in a side-project simply because the songs we're crazy and it was more like performance-rock than anything else. On a similar note, I played bass for Tim Everist (Co-founder/Owner of Schwipe)'s
Whoarsetracke project, who helped launch a T-shirt range a few years back. It's projects like these last two that have made my music career really colourful and allowed me to take things less seriously.
“I was in Minor Ache for a few months with Rob and Marty from Braving The Seabed (oh, I also played bass on a few BTS songs live before they called it a day) and I now play bass for Sally Seltmann's New Buffalo project I in her live band with my good friends Simon Parker (ex-Parlour/The Bites) and John Lee (Honeysuckle/Frische). This is something that's giving me the chance to get up on stages while I work on my other musical endeavors.”
Over the various projects Brendan have been involved with he has experimented with different styles of music. “People change, tastes change” said Brendan. “I listen to a lot of underground hip-hop now and it's also a genre that inspires me to make new music. I think that I have just moved with the times perhaps. I still enjoy most of the music genre's I have in the past. What is most important to me is songs, it's not genres. You can have amazing and terrible songs in all genres of music. I like music of substance, or songs that are emotive. Songs for different moods I guess. I love MF Doom at the moment, he's really popular now and I think it's for a reason. Check out the Madvillain album and you can see how exciting that music is. Madlib is one of the great new innovators of now. I guess that’s what I like. New music, innovation, anything well-crafted. I still like David Grubbs records. My housemate will pull out a 70's record by someone obscure like Spirit and blow me away with a track or two. There's so many amazing songs out there and I think it's important to be open to hearing all of them. I heard and interview with Buck 65 when he was in town and he spoke of all the great non-hip-hop records he loves and talked about how it's important to understand the history of music (he was talking mainly about popular styles), it was inspirational. I don't think I would ever like to stick to one style of music. I have made thrashy-guitar pop, melancholic folk, country tinged instrumentals, dabbled in garage and house for fun and for the past few years I have tried my hand at mixture of melodic electronic music and sample-heavy hip-hop. I listen to anything at least once to see if I like it, even the shittest of songs have some influence on me, even if that is only sending the message to my brain saying "Mental note, don't ever do anything that sounds remotely like this."”
Brendan has began construction of the website, Alongthemoors.com which is dedicated Sandpit. “It's a pet project of mine,” said Brendan. “Steph has said she'd help where she can but it's just something that may take years to put together. I suppose the main aim is to build a place where I can give people the chance to hear most of the un-released material and also provide some accurate information about the band and its members.”
Recently Brendan has made a bit of a departure from guitars. “I signed publishing with Mushroom at the end of last year. As a token effort (spurred by Ahsan Naeem from Slanted Recordings) I whipped out the guitar to see if I still had any desire to make guitar music. I made three short demo recordings and then went back the other styles I was working in” said Brendan. “The publishing contract was offered after I submitted a bunch of rough demo ideas to Mushroom, and I am sure that some of my history favored my a little as well. The CD I gave them had a very mixed bag of stuff, some tunes that would probably even be a little embarrassed to have anyone else hear, or at least to have represent me as a musician. There's some funny stuff on there, even me singing a tongue-in-cheek house song and also an r'n'b influenced hip-hop jam too.
The publishing deal bought me my new studio basically, which provides the main answer to this question. I am working on mostly sample-based tracks now, and have moved from sequencing on my computer with software like Reason and Logic, to using my Akai MPC2000XL which is truly the "hip-hop machine" that people say it is. I have taught myself to cut and scratch vinyl a little and can confidently do this at home but am also aware that I have a long way to go before I really want to record my scratching onto any of my own beats.
“I have made many good friends in the hip-hop community and now am a part of a local underground crew called Awakenings who have released a compilation CD and four other releases scheduled. My role in the collective is mainly publicity and promotion as well as booking events and also submitting beats for any MC's who may wish to use them. I am a new member of the crew and am only really getting collaborations organized now. It is my wish and the plan of the label to release some kind of CD of mine at some point, but I can't say whether it will be an EP or a full-length release just now. I have at least 20 songs on the go, but not many of them will make the cut for a release. Most of what I have made over the past few years feels more like school assignments than official material as I have had a lot to learn now that I am producing at home and learning not only how to make songs in this new style but also engineer it as well.
“I did some demo recordings for a friend not too long ago which are guitar and vocal style songs which I hope to add to, and have already began augmenting, but we've kinda put that on hold as we're both busy with other things. So I guess it's not like I have put my guitars away in cases never to be used again, it's just more a matter of choosing the right time to pick them up, and while I am enjoying what I am doing at the moment, there feels like there is little need to bother with it just now. I play bass in New Buffalo and have dumped some baselines onto my hip-hop tracks and that's enough for me for the moment.”
Brendan started listening to music at an early age and as a result was exposed to all sorts of styles from the beginning. “My dad played drums in a R'n'B/Rock'n'Roll band when he was young and had some older 50's pop music on 45's. By the time the 70's had hit, he was listening to a lot of country stuff like Loretta Lynn, Merle Hagard, etc so I have to say that my first taste of music was through my Dad.
Once I was in high school I started buying vinyl and tapes of my own mostly daggy pop stuff like Duran Duran, Go West, etc. I was into Smash Hits Magazine in Year's 7 and 8 but by the time I was in Year 9 that's when things took a different route for me. I discovered punk and
Thrash, and also started skateboarding. Without wanting to bore you with too much self-indulgence I should say that I didn't really know what I was into until I was about 15 years old really, and that's when I began listening to Sonic Youth, Dinosaur JR, Mudhoney, just about
Anything on the Sub-Pop label before the huge grunge explosion. I also enjoyed bands like The Pixies, Swervedriver, anything with angular guitars really.
I grew up in north-east Victoria in a country town called Benalla so it wasn't until I started travelling to Melbourne on weekends that I really was able to explore underground music. The Au-go-go mail-order service was something that also kept me listening to whatever was fresh
at the time.
I have to say that hearing more raucous groups like Polvo and Sebadoh had a huge influence on my songwriting around the time that Sandpit was first taking shape. It would also be obvious that singer/songwriters like Smog and Will Oldham also played a great part in some of the songs
I wrote as BL Stryker later on.”
This wide range of musical exposure had a mixed effect on Brendan’s music. “I think that I wore some of my influences on my sleeve from time to time, but I was also incredibly wary of that and tried my best to be as original as possible,” said Brendan. “I just wanted to glean some great ideas from the song structures and the exciting tones that we're coming from the records I treasured in my collection and use that to assist me in creating something (hopefully) equally as interesting.”
With the band Sandpit, Brendan managed to make some pretty catchy pop tunes. “I was in love with hooks,” remembers Brendan. “Almost every song has more than one memorable riff in it. I think I just wanted to create bunch of really interesting progressions and string them together to create music that people would like. I have to admit that by the time we'd started getting played on radio such as Triple J and we're signed and everything, that I did feel some responsibility to "come up with the goods", but at the same time, I wasn't prepared to just belt out a shit pop song just to get played.”
Brendan has used some bizarre tunings and has really tried to push the boundaries of what a regular guitar can sound like. “This was the most important thing to me at times,” remembered Brendan. “I had read an interview with Thurston Moore in "Guitar World" or one of those
Guitar-geek mags and he'd mentioned that he only really used a distortion unit and might have messed with other pedals only occasionally. I guess I took this on board and felt that I could relate to his stance on FX pedals. To me, the playing was more important and I guess I felt that I just liked the sound of an unprocessed guitar tone. Eventually I had myself a really nice couple of guitars (a gold '66 Fender Jaguar and a '74 Fender Custom - which I still own) and an original Orange 120 watt single volume amp head. The only pedals I ever used we're RAT distortions, yet I did own a locally made Tremolo unit and a Sans-Amp pedal, but both never really saw much use and we're sold not long after having them. The Sans-Amp was used quite a bit on the "On Second Thought" record, but the RAT's we're used on the EP's and for live shows.
Some of the most recent recording I did with a friend Rob Schifferli (ex Braving The Seabed, now in Minor Ache) had me trying the most weirdest things on guitar, almost to the point where I had an idea that I wanted the melody to sound more like a guy on a laptop than anything else. So yes, I would have to say that where possible, I did like to explore guitar tone and did attempt to make it sound a lot less conventional. But of course there's plenty of songs that don't sound too far from standard tunings and some songs towards the end of Sandpit's lifetime we're written in standard tuning for "kicks".
Sandpit had a few band troubles, lack of a drummer for a while, and eventually Stephanie Ashworth joining Something For Kate, which eventually led to the end of the band. “It's no big secret that Stephanie's move to SFK is what killed the band and I am glad it happened, said Brendan. “I know at the time it was unexpected and I have to admit that it was a shock and quite devastating for me at the time, but when I look back it now, I am really glad that we stopped playing when we did. I will continue to say that it changed my life for the better and I was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief once we'd finished the last shows and got the album out there. I think it was an achievement to get "On Second Thought" made as the shit had well and truly hit the fan before we'd even started recording the album and I was determined to see the 6 or so songs that we're written before the recording session make it to CD. Some of the tracks went down slightly under-developed, and also under-rehearsed. I must say that it wasn't easy being in the studio during that time as I knew than band was falling to pieces and I was just there out of an obligation to myself to see it through until the album was complete.
But with all that being said, I have to stress that Stephanie and I are both good friends again. We do not see each other much, but are in contact via email occasionally. I have also seen Paul a few times in the past few years and we still get along reasonably well. I think all three of us couldn't hold grudges and would look back at the band as being a great experience, and something to be cherished despite the tough times.
Brendan has also gone solo performing as B.L Stryker for a while. “I liked the fact that I didn't have to teach songs to anyone else, I could make any sudden changes to song structures without messing up other players, etc.” said Brendan. “It was just a means for me to play some more mellow and personal tunes that felt out of place in a Sandpit show. It seemed important to separate the two. Most of all it was a good chance to play on my own and perform some of the music I was demo-ing at home on my 4-track recorder at the time.”
Along side playing with Sandpit Brendan had also done a fair few side projects. “I loved playing with other people during that time”, said Brendan. “There was a few little jams that happened that we're given names and pursued for a short period. Guy Blackman (Sleepy Township/Minimum Chips) and I we're supposed to do a split EP which we started recording and also played shows together, The Kurlee Brothers was something Paul from Sandpit and I would call ourselves when we had jams and we recorded a few lo-fi tunes together; Vas Deferens was a project that my friend John ("Kenz" from Sci-Fi) and I did for a little while with me on the drums, and eventually solo shows with Matt Dufty on violin morphed into By Ferry Or Steamer, which as you know latest a while and is documented on a few small releases. That group was the only side project that ever really went anywhere. But wait! I can't forget Mandrille with Tom Larnach-Jones (manager of Trifekta Records), this was probably the most fun I have had in a side-project simply because the songs we're crazy and it was more like performance-rock than anything else. On a similar note, I played bass for Tim Everist (Co-founder/Owner of Schwipe)'s
Whoarsetracke project, who helped launch a T-shirt range a few years back. It's projects like these last two that have made my music career really colourful and allowed me to take things less seriously.
“I was in Minor Ache for a few months with Rob and Marty from Braving The Seabed (oh, I also played bass on a few BTS songs live before they called it a day) and I now play bass for Sally Seltmann's New Buffalo project I in her live band with my good friends Simon Parker (ex-Parlour/The Bites) and John Lee (Honeysuckle/Frische). This is something that's giving me the chance to get up on stages while I work on my other musical endeavors.”
Over the various projects Brendan have been involved with he has experimented with different styles of music. “People change, tastes change” said Brendan. “I listen to a lot of underground hip-hop now and it's also a genre that inspires me to make new music. I think that I have just moved with the times perhaps. I still enjoy most of the music genre's I have in the past. What is most important to me is songs, it's not genres. You can have amazing and terrible songs in all genres of music. I like music of substance, or songs that are emotive. Songs for different moods I guess. I love MF Doom at the moment, he's really popular now and I think it's for a reason. Check out the Madvillain album and you can see how exciting that music is. Madlib is one of the great new innovators of now. I guess that’s what I like. New music, innovation, anything well-crafted. I still like David Grubbs records. My housemate will pull out a 70's record by someone obscure like Spirit and blow me away with a track or two. There's so many amazing songs out there and I think it's important to be open to hearing all of them. I heard and interview with Buck 65 when he was in town and he spoke of all the great non-hip-hop records he loves and talked about how it's important to understand the history of music (he was talking mainly about popular styles), it was inspirational. I don't think I would ever like to stick to one style of music. I have made thrashy-guitar pop, melancholic folk, country tinged instrumentals, dabbled in garage and house for fun and for the past few years I have tried my hand at mixture of melodic electronic music and sample-heavy hip-hop. I listen to anything at least once to see if I like it, even the shittest of songs have some influence on me, even if that is only sending the message to my brain saying "Mental note, don't ever do anything that sounds remotely like this."”
Brendan has began construction of the website, Alongthemoors.com which is dedicated Sandpit. “It's a pet project of mine,” said Brendan. “Steph has said she'd help where she can but it's just something that may take years to put together. I suppose the main aim is to build a place where I can give people the chance to hear most of the un-released material and also provide some accurate information about the band and its members.”
Recently Brendan has made a bit of a departure from guitars. “I signed publishing with Mushroom at the end of last year. As a token effort (spurred by Ahsan Naeem from Slanted Recordings) I whipped out the guitar to see if I still had any desire to make guitar music. I made three short demo recordings and then went back the other styles I was working in” said Brendan. “The publishing contract was offered after I submitted a bunch of rough demo ideas to Mushroom, and I am sure that some of my history favored my a little as well. The CD I gave them had a very mixed bag of stuff, some tunes that would probably even be a little embarrassed to have anyone else hear, or at least to have represent me as a musician. There's some funny stuff on there, even me singing a tongue-in-cheek house song and also an r'n'b influenced hip-hop jam too.
The publishing deal bought me my new studio basically, which provides the main answer to this question. I am working on mostly sample-based tracks now, and have moved from sequencing on my computer with software like Reason and Logic, to using my Akai MPC2000XL which is truly the "hip-hop machine" that people say it is. I have taught myself to cut and scratch vinyl a little and can confidently do this at home but am also aware that I have a long way to go before I really want to record my scratching onto any of my own beats.
“I have made many good friends in the hip-hop community and now am a part of a local underground crew called Awakenings who have released a compilation CD and four other releases scheduled. My role in the collective is mainly publicity and promotion as well as booking events and also submitting beats for any MC's who may wish to use them. I am a new member of the crew and am only really getting collaborations organized now. It is my wish and the plan of the label to release some kind of CD of mine at some point, but I can't say whether it will be an EP or a full-length release just now. I have at least 20 songs on the go, but not many of them will make the cut for a release. Most of what I have made over the past few years feels more like school assignments than official material as I have had a lot to learn now that I am producing at home and learning not only how to make songs in this new style but also engineer it as well.
“I did some demo recordings for a friend not too long ago which are guitar and vocal style songs which I hope to add to, and have already began augmenting, but we've kinda put that on hold as we're both busy with other things. So I guess it's not like I have put my guitars away in cases never to be used again, it's just more a matter of choosing the right time to pick them up, and while I am enjoying what I am doing at the moment, there feels like there is little need to bother with it just now. I play bass in New Buffalo and have dumped some baselines onto my hip-hop tracks and that's enough for me for the moment.”
posted by Mr Chris | 11:42 PM
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