#066 - FLOOD SONGS PROJECT - pt II: Introducing Brett, Cheyenne, Shannon, Saphia and Nathan

Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Welcome to the Production Talk podcast with me, Yarn, of mixartists.com.au. In this podcast series, we celebrate the modern way of producing music. We want to talk about all things related to songwriting, recording at home and music production. So, if you produce your music at home, this is the place to be. Please subscribe and recommend this podcast to all your friends. This is the Production Talk Podcast episode 66. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Welcome back to another episode of the Production Talk podcast. At the beginning of this episode, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the country that the following conversations are recorded on, the Arakwal people of the Bundjalung Nation. I would like to honor the First Nation's people's culture, connection to land, sea, and community. And I would like to pay my respects and express my gratitude to elders past, present, and emerging. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Today in the second part of the Flood Songs compilation project episode, I would like to introduce the remaining three artists that we didn't find time for last week. And in addition, of course, I would also like to invite the producers and Nathan Stanborough and Saphia who also contributed to this. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: So the first person that I would like to introduce today is a local artist from the Lismore area by the name of Brett a Kelly Brett recorded his song with Nathan on the controls and they pretty much knocked it all out in one go. I mixed the song later. And interestingly, Brett is the only person who I haven't met in person yet. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: So Brett, if you are listening, let's change this and catch up at some stage. It would be great to meet you finally in person. So when I received the files, I ordered pretty quickly that it must have been a really effective and productive recording session with you and Nathan. The vocals were just the most important thing, of course, of the song that really drew my attention. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Then there was, of course, you know, other instruments like guitar and so on, as well as percussion that came in a little bit later and the song and really added some power to it. One of the highlights of the song was the little hidden vocal percussion that you added to that . And that particular element was a lot of joy for me to mix. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: So without further a, you let's hand. And let Brett Kelly introduce himself over to you. Brett Kelly: Hi, I'm Brett Kelly and I'm one half. A duo called Brett Kelly and that bloke guy. And that bloke guy is my good mate. Guy Jensen, who plays sly guitar and stomp with me playing guitar and harmonica in a duo that, well, we play blues, folk country and stuff. And just recently we were asked to be part of this flood song Combin. Brett Kelly: Which was a great opportunity to put our experience of the floods that happened in the Northern Rivers earlier this year, 2022. My experience was pretty, pretty soft landing really. We were in ball in east ball. We had the water was rising, but I was helping friends that. being confronted by rising water on the, on the waterfront in West Bena, and we were sandbagging and delivering sandbags to them until the water got too high. Brett Kelly: I heard of the experience of a lady called Lucy in Lismore, who spent two days on her roof waiting for help to come, and I wanted to put that experience into a. And just the whole thing impacted everybody that was in the neighborhood, in the area. And I just wanted to try and put some of the feelings that people were experiencing at that time. Brett Kelly: And so when Yarn asked for songwriters to, to put something forward, that was a great opportunity to record something like that. And I'd like to really thank Yarn and Nathan who helped us at. For the work that they have done so far in, in getting this going, I really hope that he gets legs and people get to hear all the experiences of the songs and the different song and different genres that are being recorded. Brett Kelly: Yeah. And so look out for us Brett Kelly and that bloke guy who buy this on Facebook quite easily. We've got a page there that'll. All the gigs. We've recently just come back from Great Ke Island doing gigs up there. We do gigs at the Mera and Ball and, and everywhere from Ballina to the Sunshine Coast regularly. Brett Kelly: But yeah, check us out on Facebook and once again thanks to Yarn and Nathan and also for yeah, lending your ears to our. Okay. Thank you. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Thank you, Brett. I really appreciate your kind words and thank you for the music. It's really amazing, heartfelt rocky blues with a lot of attitude, and I reckon everybody check out Brett Kelly if you get a chance to see him live. Let's talk about the next artist. His name is Cheynne Murphy, and this might ring a bell to regular listeners as Cheynne was actually our guest a long time ago at the beginning of this podcast series, an episode 13. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Not only is Cheynne a really amazing and successful musician, but he's also a bit of a marketing specialist. And if you want to learn more about marketing Mu your music and promoting your music, I warmly recommend to rewind back to episode 13 where Cheynne shared all his knowledge about how to market your own band. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: But let's talk about Cheyenne's song, Same Side. We're Fighting at the same Site. After All, is just something that resonates really dear with me personally for this song. We took a very simplistic approach in the product. Cheyenne gathered two more singers around him which were just amazing singers by themselves and a piano player. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: And then we basically had three singers gathered around a piano, and that was it. I remember I placed a couple of microphones on. The piano wasn't much. If my memory serves me correctly, it was a mid site stereo t. On the piano, I had a room mic at a greater distance, and then I gave each singer just a dynamic microphone. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Not even a condenser, just a dynamic microphone. And I tried to sort of match the tone of the mic to the voices, and then I let him do the thing and I just gain stage it nicely. And yeah. Look This song still gives me the goosebumps when I listen to her today. So it's some musical magic that happened there. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: So thank you, Cheyenne, for your song, Same side, and for Performing for us. Okay, so let's head over to you, Cheyenne. Cheyenne Murphy: Hi, this is Cheyenne Murphy. I'm a folk rock singer songwriter from the Northern Rivers. Been writing songs for a long time when the flood hit Feb, 20. I was west of Kingscliff in amongst it all, but we could still drive out of the the driveway. And we witnessed him listening to and firsthand information about all of these villages, local regional communities, all going under. Cheyenne Murphy: Quite struck by that. We ended up going to the evacuation center at the Kingscliff. Before all of the support services were in place, it was about 800 or a thousand displaced people there. It was very emotional, It was very raw. A partner who's an age care worker was working with all of the elderly people, and that was really, it was really confronting. Cheyenne Murphy: Everything was really quite, sort of shocking in a way. So we did a gig the second night that we were there at the back center. I brought my PA down, I met some of the local crew, got some of the locals that were going through what they're going through, whether you're playing tambourine guitar, having a, having a song, and yeah. Cheyenne Murphy: And I heard about the, the Mud Army and just considering all the volunteer help, I, I just had to write this song and I just wrote it. You know, I don't know, 24 hours or something called Same side, recorded the song with a lot of local musicians, a big, a big sounding version of the song. And then when I saw Yarn and his team mixed artists and, and, and, and the team around that wanting to do the compilation, I thought this song would be great if it was stripped back. Cheyenne Murphy: No rehearsals. Grabbed Kelly Knight backing vocals who sings on the, the original version and Pete Cook. And we, the original idea was to sing around a piano. The feeling of, of this song, which is really about celebrating the volunteers probably more than anything. And yeah, laid it down. Cheyenne Murphy: It's very raw, but very, Yeah, so the next, you know, just, just get it out there. I just think music heals, music supports, and if you're a musician that's probably the best thing you could do. You can check out my music, www.cheynnemurphy.com, c h e y n n e m u r p h y dot com and all my stuff's there. So all of us for the project and and honor to be part of it and a lot of empathy and consideration for those who have suffered through it. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Thank you, Cheynne. I really appreciate you sharing all of this with us. We kept the loudest band for last. Let's move on to Mr. Shannon Locke from Tweet Head. And his metal band emotion killer. So musically, this has been a fair bit of a rollercoaster, and Shannon's song is definitely the high energy of this compilation. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: We got the local drummer Den Brown to perform the drums, which was not an easy part. Shannon was there to help out with the arrangement and, you know, give cues and so on. And I recorded Dan in. Yeah, just a handful of takes. Interestingly, rather untypical for metal. There was very little editing involved in the drums. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: We pretty much decided for one take and just exchanged a couple of tiny details from the previous take. I think we recorded about four to five takes all up. Also very unusual for a metal product. No samples and triggers were used in the mixdown of the song. It was just the way it came out of the drums, and then you really performed your heart and soul out. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: The only production trickery that we used was at the end of it where we just over upped a couple of crash simple hits just so that. We added a couple of accents to the vocals where they were needed, and that wasn't actually done in the live take, but just blend it in later. If I hadn't told you, you probably wouldn't even notice the other instruments. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: The guitars and bass were recorded by Shannon himself in his home studio. He brought in the eye signals, which we then used in the studio and. Yeah, we used amping techniques different a techniques. Doesn't really matter how we did it, but ended up being pretty powerful, I reckon. And then Shannon also took the rough mix home and sang all the vocals at home, recorded himself I believe with a bit of help from a friend. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: And that was pretty much it. I received all the files. I put all the. The different sessions into one and started mixing. It was one of the easiest songs to mix when it comes to metal. I've had productions before where I've found that mixing metal was very time consuming, but in this case, it's an earthy song. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: It's honest. It's just the way it came out of the musicians with yes, some very nice lyrics from Shannon. So, over to you. Here go Shannon. Shannon Loch: Good day. My name's Shannon Loch and I'm the front man of Tweed Head's Modern Metal Band Emotion Killer. We've been around since around 2017. We started our first shows around 2019. We dropped our last Dep, Tragic Life in the Modern World in 2020, right in the middle of Covid. I've also recently joined Northern Rivers Metal Band Mines and on guitar. Shannon Loch: I'm super excited about that. So I talk a bit more about the, the Flood Songs Project and my experience with the floods and what the song, The River's All. So when the floods hit around the 28th of February, I was at home with my partner in Tweed Heads. We got cut off for about three days by flood waters, so there was about waist high water outside, and it got up to our front door step at our unit. Shannon Loch: So luckily nothing inside. It was touched, but we had to move all our, you know, neighbors cars up to a construction site, higher ground, cuz that would've been all flooded out outside. So otherwise we were incredibly lucky, you know, because I think it was a lot of other people far worse off, like tweet headss do get affected and it was severe. Shannon Loch: They were stuck for free days. Which I think the people around us were in good spirits. You know, all the neighbors, all the people in the street were coming out to have a look and talk to each other, and people were making the most of it, you know, paddling, canoes up and down the street and, you know, they, four drives would go past and boogie boards being towed and had to go and get groceries on my push bike and ride it through like waist deep flood water. Shannon Loch: So, Some of it, you know what I mean? Like, it was certainly . Interesting. But what got, you know, to me was seeing all the horrible stuff on the news and around just knowing that people were stuck on their roofs you know, scared for their lives. You know, they've lost all their property. Their homes are people trapped in their houses and they was just seeing that the whole time. Shannon Loch: And after, you know, being stuck for free days and the the water finally went down. Luckily I was, you know, there's not much of my stuff, it got damaged, so I'm very privileged to escape the worst of it Where I was, that there was some people down the street, their whole houses, You know, waist deep through their living room. Shannon Loch: You know, people's cars were flooded out and wrecked in the middle of the road, so just a few doors down, you know, it's a very different situation. So I felt like definitely one of the lucky ones. You know there's a, what got to me as well is. There's not really much I could do to help. And in the day after the flood, or one of the day, like it was the day after I left the house, met up with some friends, checked out how they were, and then the day after I got, I tested POS for covid. Shannon Loch: So I spent another week in isolation at home with Covid after spending free days inside of the, you know, stuck, you know, In the flood water. So I guess I felt more isolated and I got a bit depressed just being in the house for almost two weeks. So when I got out even a couple weeks later, my, my father and my uncle and Lismore, so I drove down to visit them. Shannon Loch: And was this, even though it was that month after the flood hit, they, it was starting to clean. Was still a right off of, you know, disaster zone. It was cars wrecked everywhere. And just seeing that it really hit in, you know, how serious it was. You know, like this is not gonna be, you know, you know, things aren't going back to normal any time soon. Shannon Loch: This is gonna leave a lasting impact and people aren't gonna be coming back to rebuild the area. Cause there's so many shops are closed down. Homes just written off and was just sort of setting in. Once I finally did get, get outside my house and go for a drive in the CD area, like down the embar the Northern Rivers, like it was just rubbish and piles of garbage in size, all the streets, and that was like that for a good couple of months. Shannon Loch: So, Just saw his stories as well, just hearing about, you know, people having to evacuate and people weren't so lucky. My uncle has a little farmhouse on a property in just south of Lismore, and his house was lucky, only got like ankle deep water through it, but his neighbors were just down the hill, flooded out and he had a boat and he was able. Shannon Loch: Rescue a couple of his neighbors on that boat and as they're evacuating on that boat, they, the boat's going over power lines, that's how high the flood waters wore. Like were, It was just ridiculous. So you look at the riverbank and how high their house is up and it's like, you can never imagine it that much water being that high, but, It was like a, a biblical flood, just to put that into perspective. Shannon Loch: But the positive side of things on the tail end of his floods is going back down to Lismore and all those towns and northern rivers, and you slowly start to see the businesses reopen. Every couple of weeks. You might be in a new shop you haven't noticed, or things are getting cleaned up slowly, slowly. Shannon Loch: And it's just, that's been. Nice to see is just things rebuilding, you know, and the support in the community. And people aren't abandoning the, the town, you know, They want to make it work, they want to rebuild and that's been awesome. When I first saw the Flood Songs project, I was 100% keen to get behind it. Shannon Loch: I knew yarn from my time studying a bachelor of audio essay. He mentored me. My major project, which became the Emotion Killer Debut ep. So we don't have a permanent drummer at the moment, but I was really lucky. Secure the services of Dan Brown, who's a technician sa, and he's really just generous enough to volunteer his time. Shannon Loch: So he's a multi-instrumentalist who's played with various local projects over the years, and when Jann suggested his name to reach out to him, like I was, am pretty grateful that. Able to say yes because it a schedule's lined up. So we got a day in the Duality Studio sae, which is the ex 3 0 1 facility. Shannon Loch: It's a amazing room, amazing recording consults, one of the, the best studios I've been in, and it's just awesome to have Dan come in, learn the song, pretty much nail it straight away. Hit all the changes on the fly. You know, we sort of moved things around a little bit and he was just able to just nail everything at his own little creative touches to it. Shannon Loch: And it was just a, a really great experience in the studio that day. So the other elements to guitars, bass and vocals, I was able to record here my home studio. So I was to take my time to get the arrangement right, you know triple track, the guitars. So it was nice just to be able to go over and get all those guitar tracks in sync. Shannon Loch: But a lot of the leads, guitars were taken straight from the pre-production, which I sent to yarn, the rough demo before we went to record in the studio. So that was awesome. Just to have, you know, From his pre-production demo I sort of sent off to realize that in a, you know, real drums big studio and the professional mix yarns done for it, it's been awesome just to see it sort of take off. Shannon Loch: I think I started writing this song around a week after the flood, so it would've been like March seventh. I guess I was feeling pretty depressed and being isolated in the flood and then the covid isolation. So I was just sort of stuck at home seeing all the news and the images and TV and social media and the stories and sort of, I was a bit inspired to seeing some people driving down from Queensland with jet skis and boats to do the rescuing themselves the best they could cuz the, you know, the resources and the government were. Shannon Loch: Fast stretched without that I think a lot of people would've died. So I was feeling a lot of, you know, I just wanted to put something down, you know, I was to start playing those guitar riffs, you know, with those emotions in mind, you know, feeling it. Then I put some lyrics down in the course came first, cuz I think it was just that the idea of people having. Shannon Loch: Lose their homes and have faced with the choice to rebuild or leave forever and cut their losses. It's also a different kind of song I've never done before, particularly for emotion killer. It's almost like a country western kind of songwriting. You know, you're writing a story from a character's perspective, you know, it's. Shannon Loch: Literal, It's not behind any metaphors. It's telling you exactly what's happening, which I was just, it's more very different for something I've, you know, in a metal band to write like that. But I, for it, just be authentic, you know, Just let it come out, you know? Just use the Australian accent. No, best be honest, to be genuine. Shannon Loch: Overall, as a songwriter, this has been a fantastic experience just to write something outside of my own direct perspective, and I would've never really considered putting this out on an official EP release or an album release as a, but I think the Flood Songs project gave me the perfect opportunity. Shannon Loch: Considered doing something like this, which I've, I think it's, you know, it's very honest. Even though I might have not have gone directly through the worst of the experience myself, I still felt those emotions and I wanted to channel it to a song and. I'm really happy I've got the opportunity to put this out as far as the future goes for a motion killer. Shannon Loch: We're currently finalizing the writing of follow up ep. Many songs are already in various stages of completion. Some have live drums from our previous drummer, got revamped guitars, tracked bass, some songs got lead vocals. We've done in the last year or so, various home and professional studios, and we've had a few member changes over the year. So we're just kind of looking to solidify the lineup and push forward and we're gonna release one these new singles sometime in the year 2023. So I think some of the best material we've written, we've taken, you know, playing live, you realize what elements of your sound you know, the core elements, what makes you unique, and then you, I'm just sort of cranking it up to 11, you know, and rolling with it. Shannon Loch: So I'm very keen to. Hit a motion killer on all cylinders in 2023. And if you wanna check out Emotion Killer, we're on Facebook, Instagram, we've got all our music videos up on YouTube and our previous EPS on Spotify. Thanks everyone for taking the time to check us out and supporting all the other artists and the FUD songs project. Shannon Loch: We're looking to hit some live shows back up in 2023, so follow us on social media, follow us on Spotify. Keep the loop and be delivering some heavy goodness to your ears real soon. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: We're looking forward to that. Shannon. Thank you. Keep the metal vibes coming. I love metal. Good on you, mate. All right, so this was the last of the seven artists who made it onto the compilation. So thanks to all of you. The compilation will be out very soon. It's in the mastering stage, and then from then it goes straight to the publishers. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: And to rounded all off, I would like to now introduce the two producers who helped me make all of this possible in a little bit more detail. First up, Shi Stone. She was our guest in episode 29 where she spoke about a production of her song. She's an amazing singer and multi-instrumentalist, in addition to being an amazing producer as. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: And then of course in episode 41, I brought her song in I mixed a different song for her and I took the mix apart and broke it into the details. So we have a little bit of history here and I really like how I can sense a bit of community building around the Production Talk podcast, which is something that is really dear to my heart. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: It makes me really happy. Okay, so thank you so far for helping out. Let's hand the microphone over to. Saphia Stone: Hey there, my name is Saphia or Saph for short, and I was one of the producers on flood songs project. I am normally a part-time sound engineer, producer, and just love music as well. So it was a real privilege and honor to be part of this project and to work with such amazing people who, you know, for the benefit of, of, for the greater good they put. Saphia Stone: Beared their hearts and were vulnerable and, you know, wrote about their experience in the hope that it would help to heal other people's traumatic events that they experienced, and also to bring the community together. And I think the greatest part about the floods, even though it was awful, is that it really brought everyone together and. Saphia Stone: You know, it, it, we just sort of had come out of Covid and then the floods hit and it was, you know, the worst timing. But during Covid, you know, we had this catchphrase from the government. We're all in this together, but towards the end of it, the whole vaccine debate, you know, it really felt like. The community was more divided and more split than ever. Saphia Stone: And in a really weird way, the floods actually brought everyone together and made everyone realize we are all in this together. And you know, it was just so beautiful to see everyone in the community coming out to help each other. So the fact that I was able to help record some songs, I think, Tiny and minuscule and compared to what other people did. Saphia Stone: But yet it's still a, a great privilege and I feel really honored to be part of it. So thank you to Yarn Woos and to all the artists on the project that were part of it. Thank you for being brave and courageous and for sharing your talents with the greater good. And yeah, thank you to the other producers. Saphia Stone: Also Nathan and yeah, just to everyone that was involved. Just really fantastic to be part of it. If you wanna check out more of stuff from me, you can go to underscore Audio Girl or otherwise. I think there'll be a link somewhere on mix artists.com, a.au page that's Yarns page. And definitely go check out Ya's new studio in Mellum bi Beef. Saphia Stone: You haven't cuz it's awesome. And that's where I actually recorded the song for the flood flood songs project. So, Have an awesome day. Take it easy, and love you all. All right. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Thank you so much, sa I really appreciate that. We love your musical spirit to keep these musical vibes coming. The world needs you. Next up. Nathan Stan, thank you for helping out. You are deeply involved in the production of Brad Kelly, and also with Coco. Thank you. Let's hand the microphone over to Nathan Stanborough. Nathan Stanborough: Hi, my name's Nathan Stanborough. I'm a freelance engineer and producer. I've been doing this for more than 10 years now in the Northern Rivers. The reason I decided to get involved in the project was that it was a way to help artists and the community come to terms with what happened during the floods. Nathan Stanborough: I thought it was a, a really great way for people to heal, and I thought it. Good way for me to use my skill set as an engineer and producer to help people. I'd already been out and helped others after the floods, and I'm a big guy. I can pick up things, but to actually use my skill set to help get others was a, I thought was a really good way to get involved. Nathan Stanborough: On, I should go back, not on the day of the flood, but the day before the flood, I was at the Lismore P C Y C, and I teach judo there and we. Picking up all the mats and everything that we had on the, on the ground floor and taking them upstairs. And we kept referencing the 1974 flood going, Yeah, it should be about here. Nathan Stanborough: And we all thought it's gonna be a big flood, but if we get everything upstairs, we should be okay. We were very, very wrong. On the day of the flight I was actually here in, in my office and it was a lot. And I could see out the window and I could see the water filling up in the town and, and the surrounding areas, and then watching the news reports and just what, seeing everybody getting involved and helping each other I thought was unbelievable. Nathan Stanborough: Not just how big the flood was, but just the sense of community and that everyone coming together just to make it work that people needed help and it didn't. Who you were, where you came from, if you could help, you helped. And I, I, I hadn't seen that sort of rally of community before in my life, and it was really humbling. Nathan Stanborough: Working with Tom and Coco on this project was, was, was great. We got to get into the studio with Tom Kelly and, and produced something a little bit different to what he envisioned adding some percussion and, and a little bit more production to what he was. what he came in with. It was really good to see that for play out and also just getting to work with Coco and, and trying to find the right fit for her and, and pairing the song down and helping her really dial in to the core of what she was trying to say on the song. Nathan Stanborough: And it was great to be around them and working with them on this project. If you'd, To get in contact with me, you can go through my website@nathanstanborough.com or on Instagram at Nathan underscore St. Music. Send me a message and I'd love to work with you. Thank you. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Thank you Nathan. Yes. If you have any musical projects and you want Nathan to produce you, Would be in very, very good hands. Trust me. I know that for sure. Okay, this brings us to the end of this episode. And just as we finish up I'd just like to point out that we had another big scare here on Sunday night. It was pouring down again like crazy. And again, we had flat warnings left, right, and center. And the wider community up and down the coast was absolutely on edge. There was definitely some flooding around. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: It was not as terrible as we've seen it before, more of one of the normal floods in quotation marks, please. But still I noticed that everybody around us is still definitely on the edge. The flood is still on our mind, and the community still deals with it again and again and again. This would've been the third major flood this year. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: It wasn't major this time, but we were preparing ourselves for the worst. Yes. Okay. On this note, the compilation is in the mastering state. As I mentioned before, we're in the trusting hands of Andy Stewart. That means very soon we should get the results back, and then we are going to publish the result. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: And I need everybody to please do me a big, big favor. We all know that the streaming services pay only fractions of ascend. So once the compilation is out, can you please and can you also please ask your friends? To play the compilation route and route and route and circles for as long as you can, because that's our way how we can shuffle some dollars back into the artist's pockets. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: They need it. The wider community needs it. The wider music industry needs it. They need our support. So let's do what we all can. Please pause the message around. If you want to get in contact with me, of course you can do so via my website, mix artist.com. Dou where of studio recording services and remote mixed on services for everybody who wants a little bit of help getting their projects to the finish line. Jan 'Yarn' Muths: Okay, this is all for today. I hope you have a fantastic dry week. I shall speak to you then. Bye for now.C