shoe.

10th Annual Pop/Rock Album Winner
10th Annual Pop/Rock Album Vox Pop Winner

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Record Label: self-released
www.moreshoe.com

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Home Base: Detroit, MI…although I did just move to Pleasant Ridge, MI. The bands roots are steeped in Detroit. shoe. was formed in Detroit & recorded The Speed of Life in the city. I just thought I would mention it because some people are sensitive about Metro-Detroiters saying they are Detroiters. Yes, it’s silly.

Genre: It’s best described as Piano-Driven Pop Rock, although I’ve described it as MotownSuperPopIndieRock & I’ve also heard Post-Yacht Rock

Category Entered: Pop/Rock Album

Work Submitted: The Speed of Life

Artists Featured: Dustin Gardner, Jamiel Dado, Sean Corcoran are the core of shoe. but, we had a lot of help from Doug Smith & Erik Maluchnik on guitars. Our friend & engineer Chris Koltay helped make it sound as good as it does. He also hooked me up with Michael Krammers, who did most of the horn arrangements on the album & featured his MK Horns. We also featured Abbey Taylor on strings.

Label: The Speed of Life is the 4th album I have produced & self-released for shoe. with no label support. shoe. is kind of like a free agent = )

URLs:
www.moreshoe.com – this website is almost done being re-designed!
www.facebook.com/moreshoe
www.myspace.com/moreshoe

Influences: The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Motown, Radiohead, Beck, Phoenix, Flaming Lips, Strokes

What’s the meaning of your band name? With, shoe., I just picked a noun. I’ve tended to hate most of my past band names, for one reason or another. So I wanted something normal & everyday that didn’t have emotional ties that would cause me to hate it later. Beside the fact that I like lowercase letters (& I was going to do something with the period “.” but…) there wasn’t much meaning behind shoe.

Then, a few years later, I heard the Beatles early interviews & a reporter asks them, “Why the Beatles?” John jokingly replys “It’s like anything really… We could’ve called ourselves shoe for all that matters.” Then, Paul says “Yeah! We coulda been the Shoes.” Then I liked the name.

Describe your nominated work: Musically it’s emotionally driven pop-rock with aggressive orchestration. Lyrically it’s about being humbled by the magnitude and speed of Life.

Why did you choose to submit this work to The 10th IMA’s? When I discovered there was an Independent Music Awards I felt I had to submit our music, & I have for the last 3 albums. I feel shoe. inhabits the entirety of the word Independent. Business Independence aside, I feel our sound is Independent as well. It’s hard to put us in a box… other than Pop/Rock of course.

Did you use any unusual effects or instruments in this recording? One of our unusual effects is a vocal effect at the end of “The Weight of the World.” As I begin singing, through a Boss Looping Station, the phrase, “The Weight of the World. It weighs on me.” I trigger the Looping Station. I sing this phrase twice, & then hit the trigger again, creating the “base loop.” I continue to sing the same phrase 2 more times & hit the trigger a third time. This 3rd trigger causes the Looping Station to begin looping every 2 phrases. This allows me to sing harmonies, as well as, counter melodies over the original “base loop” –that are continuously looping every 2 phrases. The effect causes the listener to feel the growing pressure and uneasy anxiety that one feels when the weight of the world is weighting on them. This one effect is then enhanced, when we take the growing chaos loop, & reverse it -for the transition into the next song “Place We Go.”

Were there any happy accidents while in the studio, or did everything go as planned? There were many happy accidents in The Speed of Life. One in particular is in the song “Sugar Coat.” In the intro/out of the song our engineer took two completely different horn arrangements, written by two different people, and put them both in the song. This H-A created a fuller and richer sounding orchestration for the song.

Did fans help you fund this project? I wish!

Who’s sitting in your audience? The boring people…everyone else is usually dancing.

What makes your fans unique? That they have heard of & listen to shoe.

Are there any songs you wish you wrote? Yes, most every song I hear.

What artists are you listening to that would surprise your fans? Nina Simone

What is your dream show lineup? Honestly, since we all share the honor of being nominated, my dream show would be to play with the other Pop/Rock nominees on a “Victory Lap Tour” playing one another’s home town.

What is your guilty pleasure on the road? Playing in front of people who have never heard of us.

Any close calls or mishaps while on tour? On the way home New York we got hit from behind. We were hit in PA, on I-80, just as we were reaching the highest point east of the Mississippi…literally, by the sign that says “The highest point east of the Mississippi”! He was going so fast that I thought we were going to fly off of the mountain, and, if he hadn’t hit us I believe he would have. Luckily I did see him coming at us all crazy & I had speed up enough to absorb some of the impact & we were able to drive home… with a busted bumper.

Do you have any rituals before you go on stage? Probably more than I would like to admit, but, I do like to get a little quite time alone with the fellas to get our heads right & focused on our performance.

Should music be free? The first ones always free.

How has digital affected your career? Well it would be silly of me to say that it has hurt me, when I wouldn’t have produced as many albums as I have, without it. It’s at least made recording affordable enough for the average guy, like me, to produce 5 albums. Allowing me the time to get better at recording & grow as an artist, which has given me this opportunity.

Are digital singles vs. full albums the future of music? Hopefully, in the future this debate will be answered, because, I feel that’s what we’re currently going through now. I’m constantly thinking of what I will release next, and how I will go about doing it. With a website you are able to release whatever you like, whenever you like. The issue then becomes getting reviews &or press for a single/ digital release. This doesn’t seem to happen as much as without a full album to push. Reviewers & Press want a full & whole package to ingest, promote & dissect. But, sometimes the peeps just want that one jam that they just gotta have & aren’t interested in all the rest of the noise.

Finish this sentence: The music industry is… a theory different in every language & everyone who loves music is always trying to prove something to it or about it.