Your name:
Sam Clark.
Where are you
from?
Eau Claire,
Wisconsin.
Name
of band:
Hounds Before
Lions.
Who
else is in your band?
Andrew Bocher
plays keyboards and sings harmonies, Rick Haneman plays drums, and I sing lead
vocals and play guitar.
How
would you describe yourselves?
Hounds Before
Lions plays bedroom music in a basement setting. Basically, all of our
songs start as acoustic skeletons that I write in my bedroom. Then I take
it downstairs and show it to Rick and Andrew, who add their own twist to the
song. The end result varies; sometimes it's pretty straight-ahead indie
rock, and other times it's more atmospheric and ambient.
Who
are your main influences musically?
That's a tough
question, since all of us come from different backgrounds. Rick plays a
lot of jazz and world percussion, so his drumming is definitely influenced by
polymeters and intense amounts of subdivision. Andrew is a classically
trained pianist and knows a lot about music theory; much of the lead melody
work in our songs comes from him, and he infuses his classical sensibility with
his growing knowledge of all of the sonic capabilities his keyboard has. I'm coming from somewhere in the middle, with most of my influences
coming from alternative rock bands, and even some R&B. Collectively,
we all dig on stuff like Dirty Projectors, How To Dress Well, Radiohead, and
Grizzly Bear, but other stuff definitely sneaks in.
What
do you hope to achieve in music?
That's a good
question. Andrew and I started Hounds Before Lions basically as a way to
get to know each other better; we were about to start renting a house together,
along with Rick, and knew we had similar musical interests that we wanted to
explore. First and foremost, we play music for our own personal
enjoyment. We hope that other people like the end product that we come up
with, and that they'll want to check out our EP and come to a show or
three.
What
has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?
Our career has
been pretty short so far, but my personal highlight was playing a show back in
February at the campus music venue here in Eau Claire. We had a really
fun opening act that brought a lot of people in, and most of them stuck around
to hear us play. Plus, it was our first paying gig, and it wound up
footing part of our recording bill for our EP.
And
what’s the moment you want to forget?
We have this
knack of getting tapped to play fundraisers, which is something we're trying to
get away from. We played one back in April that was for some run
sponsored by campus radio, but we never got the memo that we were essentially
supposed to be background music for a bunch of twelve year-old kids while they
chowed down on some pizza. We all liked the venue (which was not really
associated with the event), but the experience was one I'd like to put behind
me.
If
you had to choose just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it
be and why?
Of the three
songs we've recorded so far, I think Half Moon Lake best represents
our musical goals. It's laid back and heavy on the reverb, the lyrics are
pretty morose, and there's a lot of good keyboard work going on throughout the
song. Plus, the bridge section that Andrew wrote flexes that theory
muscle and shows that we can occasionally put some brawn behind our sound as
well.
Where
can we listen to it?
You can listen
to Half Moon Lake, along with the rest of our Hudson Street EP,
at our Bandcamp page here: http://houndsbeforelions.bandcamp.com/ It's a free download, so you can't really lose in this situation.
Where
can we find out more about your music?
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/houndsbeforelions
Twitter: @houndslions Bandcamp: http://houndsbeforelions.bandcamp.com/
Anything
else you’d like to say about your band that I forgot to ask?
We'd like for
more people to know about us, so if you like what you hear, share our music
with your like-minded friends. Thanks for having us on!
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