Adrian Bourgeois:The New Face of Pop

By: Amanda Brumfield
Pop- Rock Candy Mountain

When I hear Adrian Bourgeois’s music I can’t help but hope that his particular style of songwriting will be the new wave in Pop. No offense to the Lady Ga-Ga’s out there, but Adrian’s music is the sort I’d like to hear when I turn on my radio. His songwriting is fluid, brilliant, not tweaked to death or over produced. It’s complex and lovely and brings to mind a time when songwriters flooded the airwaves and all was well. Adrian is highly intelligent and thoughtful and in his own way, hopeful. I spoke with him about his music and gained great insight into what helps a songwriter find his own groove.

Pop-Rock Candy Mountain: If you had to categorize your music, what genre or genres would you attach to it?

Adrian Bourgeois: My music at it’s most basic essence is pop if you had to pick a genre. Pop tends to be associated with shallowness by some but tell that to John Lennon, Brian Wilson or Elvis Costello. Some of the most ambitious, adventurous of the past 100 years has been pop music. The thing I like most about pop is that whatever dressing you put over the top of it, at it’s core is a song that just has this universal appeal to it that leaves no one out. It’s world peace in the form of a song!

PRCM: Who are some of your musical/lyrical influences?

AB: My two musical foundations are the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The Beatles virtually invented modern pop music and did in eight years what I imagine the rest of us will be chasing for centuries and Brian Wilson, the music world’s William Blake with his songs of both innocence and experience, gave us visions of the laughter of children echoing the tears of angels. Other huge influences include Elvis Costello who somehow is able to be George Gershwin, Bob Dylan and Arthur Alexander all in the same person, and Neil Young, one of the great improv artists of our time, who should get a Guiness World Record or something for most beautiful stream of consciousness put to tape. Ben Folds is probably my favorite “modern” singer/songwriter and I’ve always had a soft spot for Hanson for being the band that convinced me when I was in fourth grade to not wait until I was all grown up to get working on my music career. U2 has been a big influence not only as incredible songwriters but in using their platform as the biggest band in the world to speak from about injustice, disease and poverty, and are true shining examples of individuals truly using their position as best as they can for the betterment of the world.

PRCM: I read that you mostly produced and arranged your debut album by yourself. Please tell me a bit about the album, what it means to you and let me know where we can get it!

AB: My album was recorded over a variety of times and places between my sophomore and senior years of high school. The first sessions took place at the recording studio at my old church where I worked on them with my dad who has over three decades of experience at just about everything you can be in the music industry. The other bulk of the album was recorded with a local producer/engineer named David Houston who has been making amazing music since the sixties. The album both musically and lyrically definitely captures a specific time of my life where I think I was really starting to come into my own as a songwriter. I had already written close to a hundred songs before I started writing the songs that are on the album but I think these are sort of my first set of good ones. Because of the relatively long span of time that I spent recording this album–most of it was recorded on donated time whenever there was available space at the studio which was sometimes few and far between–there are songs on here about falling in love with someone and then songs about losing someone and they’re about the same person, just written a year or so apart; it’s a little discombobulating for me to hear some of those songs played next to each other on the same album! As far as the production goes, I kind of think this album was similar to the early Beatles albums in that I was really taking a lot of cues from my influences and seeing if I could take my own stab at making some classic sounds. Most of the songs I made demos of beforehand just in my bedroom and would pretty much get the arrangement down. Once in the studio, whoever I was working with would help me polish it up and help me realize it sonically. There’s some things I would change about the album of course if I could go back but overall I’m pretty happy with it for a first effort. You can find it on my website www.adrianbourgeois.com, on CD Baby, iTunes, and a few other various independent online retailers like Not Lame Records and Kool Kat Records.

PRCM: Tell me what playing before a live audience means to you.

AB: I love playing live but it’s a little like taking a test at school. It’s where you put everything you’ve developed and learned up to that point on the line in real time and let the world be the judge. In the studio you can always go back and fix things but live you get what you give. I think sometimes I tie up the the experience of playing live with the stress of actually trying to get people out to shows but once I’m onstage I really do enjoy it. I recently completed my first tour of the US which I did with my good friend and fellow artist Ricky Berger. Playing almost every night in a different city in front of all sorts of different audiences I think really upped our game. It’s the musical activity that I do more than any other, more than recording or songwriting, and is arguably the playing field that in the end matters most. It’s always helpful getting feedback from audience members on different songs or different experiments I try. I love it when someone tells me that a lyric really meant a lot to them.

PRCM: Where do you derive inspiration for your music?

AB: I live in a constant state of inspiration. If you’re not spending every waking hour (and ever sleeping one at that) inspired by something or other, you’re not paying attention! Part of my inspiration for making music is just the profound effect music has had on me. Sometimes I’ve felt like a certain song or album was the only thing that was really connecting with what I was thinking or feeling at a given time. Sometimes the melodies spoke ever greater truths for me than the lyrics. I remember seeing Paul McCartney in concert for the first time when I was 14 and for three hours, the spell he cast over 30,000 people was just magical. Experiences like that just really inspired me to want to somehow create similar experiences for others and try to spread a little magic of my own. I’m also inspired by a want to influence and change society. For some reason, besides politicians and people in law based professions, the occupation that is arguably given the most power to influence culture and the biggest voice to speak with publicly is the entertainer. I don’t know if entertainers were a wise choice to be their generation’s spokespeople–teachers and doctors probably would have made much more good of their celebrity status than musicians and actors–but circumstances being what they are, being a musician seems like a pretty good thing to get into if you want a soapbox to stand on to start getting people to think differently. There are a lot of whole schools of “rational” thought, and unspoken prejudices, and societal patterns that have just gone unchecked for years…centuries probably. I’m not saying I’m the only one who could start talking about this stuff–a lot of people are already touching upon it–I’m just saying I’m willing to add my voice if someone will give me a big enough megaphone.

PRCM: Anything else we need to cover? Upcoming albums, shows, etc.?

AB: I’m going to be releasing my first my first new professionally recorded song in three years in the next month or so, called “Time Can’t Fly A Plane”. I’m in the process of working on my second album…or collection of songs…or however people our compiling music these days. I play pretty regularly in and around Sacramento and Ricky and I are planning on going out again for at least a short tour before the end of the year.

Comedy Death-Ray- Live From SF Sketchfest: Chris Hardwick

BY CHANTEL WILLIAMS
Pop - Rock Candy Mountain

Chris Hardwick is a stand-up comedian and is also one half of the musical comedy duo Hard ‘N Phirm- who recently finished the soundtrack for the new Rob Zombie animated comedy, El Superbeasto. He was host of PBS’s series “Wired Science”, he writes for Wired magazine, he is a regular on G4’s “Attack of the Show”, he is the voice of Otis on Nickelodeon’s “Back at the Barnyard”, and now he has started one of our new favorite websites, The Nerdist, where he writes about various tech related funnies, wacky stories he finds on the internet and conducts hardcore tech related product reviews. (from which no one, even the mighty iGiant, is safe.)
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Rob Delaney: Stand Up Guy

By AMANDA BRUMFIELD
Pop-Rock Candy Mountain

Rob Delaney is a stand-up comedian, actor, singer, husband, and athlete. (He recently beat J.Lo’s time in the Malibu Triathlon) He is hysterically funny but he is also remarkably eloquent and when speaking with him you would almost expect that he was a poet or a novelist. Rob Delaney is a great storyteller, a painter of vivid images.

He also tells a mean fart joke.

Pop-Rock Candy Mountain spoke with Delaney about his passion for comedy, his near death/ almost menage a trios experience, and his mildly disconcerting obsession with all things feline.

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Grant Imahara: The Coolest Geek on Television

By Amanda Brumfield
Pop- Rock Candy Mountain

I realized right away when trying to summarize Grant Imahara’s career that I would be unable to do him justice. I can’t seem to get past, ” Grant Imahara is one of a handful of people who have operated R2- D2 for Lucasfilm…

He operated R2- D2.

THE R2- D2…”.
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Mudhoney: The Lucky Ones

By Amanda Brumfield
Pop- Rock Candy Mountain

Mudhoney, a grunge band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1988 (Mark Arm – vocals, Dan Peters – drums, Steve Turner – guitar, Guy Maddison- bass) is back with a brand new album entitled The Lucky Ones.

From Jay Hinman At Subpop:

“Mudhoney has always had a smidgeon of that weird-ass, psychedelic Thirteenth Floor Elevators “eye mind” about them, and that too crops up in weird places on The Lucky Ones, just when you thought it was safe to cut your hair and start a pit. The grand majority of these numbers were intentionally written “from the rhythm up” instead of from the riff and the lyrics down, if you know what I mean. The effect is to thrust out the bottom-end rumble of drummer Dan Peters and bassist Guy Maddison, and to bring about a cohesive whole not entirely ruled by the almighty riff—although you certainly don’t have to look hard to find ‘em.

Opening The Lucky Ones, the band defiantly looks twenty years of heaviness and critical hosannas in the eye and spits out the anthemic “I’m Now,” an existential place where “the past makes no sense, the future looks tense.” Finding eager new converts locked firmly in the present who’ll agree should not prove difficult.”
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Icon: Andy Kindler, One Man Shtick

By Amanda Brumfield
Pop- Rock Candy Mountain

When Pop- Rock Candy Mountain spoke with Andy Kindler, he was in the midst of killing time in Fargo, North Dakota with Marc Maron and Eugene Mirman. The three were waiting on a flight out of Fargo to their next destination on the Stand Uppity Tour, the brain child of Mirman and sponsored by 23/6`(Some of the News, Most of the Time).
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