10 QUESTIONS WITH NICK COYLE
10 QUESTIONS WITH NICK COYLE
By Mike O’Cull
Nick
Coyle is a multi-faceted songwriter, singer, musician, and producer
from Berwick, PA who is garnering a lot of notice for the unique sounds
contained on his latest release Sound Makes Waves. Rather than
taking the expected path of a singer/songwriter, Nick takes his
well-written songs and surrounds them with modern electronic-based
sounds and production that only add to the effectiveness of the tunes
and keep him from being one more guy with an acoustic guitar and a capo.
Nick was good enough to sit down with me for a 10 Questions session and
give us all an idea of where he and his songs come from. Be sure to
visit Nick online at www.nickcoyle.net.
1 - How did you get started as a songwriter?
NC
- ‘I’ve been playing since I was 13. I started playing in bands, and
then in bars and clubs. Even at that young age, we were writing songs
and it was always something I enjoyed doing. Over the years, I kept
writing and writing, leading to now.’
2 - What led you to take your songs in a more electronic direction?
NC
- ‘I’ve always been into that style of stuff, like Depeche Mode and
more atmospheric, lush production-type of music. Plus, for so long,
everyone has known me as this rock singer and didn’t really know that I
played instruments and did all this other stuff, so I wanted to show
everybody that there was more to me than ‘Crazy Lead Singer Guy’. With
this, it’s much different.’
3 - Do you perform live with a band or a laptop?
NC
- ‘I have a laptop and a keyboard and some samplers. I’ll play acoustic
and it is a two-mic setup and I bounce back and forth between the
keyboard and the front mic. From there, my one laptop triggers another
one that runs the video projector. It’s this whole audio/visual
experience. I’ve got all this crazy MIDI stuff going on. It’s
interesting. I kind of equate it with the old school one man band.’
4 - Who are your songwriting influences?
NC
- ‘I listen to all kinds of music and I’ve always been a fan of finding
new music, too. I love Pink Floyd. I love Nine Inch Nails and anything
Trent Reznor does. Depeche Mode is a big influence. Some of the newer
things I’ve been getting into are Gotye, Imogen Heap, even down to Bruno
Mars and stuff like that. I think that guy has a little more substance
than a lot of the manufactured pop people. He’s got some skills.’
5 - Who are your production influences?
NC
- ‘The Floyd stuff, the Reznor stuff. I’ve always been a fan of
atmospheric and soundscape-y type stuff within the song, the icing that
takes you somewhere else. I really don’t sit down with an idea of what
I’d like a song to be. As I start recording stuff and adding things in
there, the songs take on a life of their own. I think when you try to
emulate different things, you end up losing some of yourself and missing
the mark.’
6 - Describe your creative process.
NC
- ‘Every song is really different. Some will start on an acoustic
guitar, just playing on a riff. I get a vocal melody in my head and
expand on that. Sometimes, it’s messing around with loops, or something
like that. ‘Never Let Me Down’ started off with some loop-type stuff and
that sparked different ideas and I started layering to that. The
approach is on a per-song basis. There are so many different tools and I
like to experiment around and see what happens. I think we’ve seen
enough of the typical format of the rock band. I just wanted to do
something different that wasn’t in that realm. On this record, I didn’t
feel the need for there to be a guitar on every song. Not having that
approach frees you up to let the song be the song.’
NC
- ‘Although I’m a lead singer, the guitar is what I started on. If I
sit around my house, I play my guitar. I’m not even a guy who sings in
the shower, honestly. (laughs).’
8 - Do you think that the kind of style-mixing you do is where modern music is going? Have all the pure styles been exhausted?
NC
- ‘Yes. I think, after being exposed over the years of listening to
different styles of music, everything starts becoming an influence. The
pure forms of music HAVE all been done, better than they’re gonna be.
There’s not gonna be another Led Zeppelin. But by combining things, it
almost creates a new genre that I’ve never heard before. I think when
you remove the boundaries and limitations on stuff, it lets you thrive
creatively.’
9 - Where do you go from here?
NC
- ‘I just want to continue down this path of not being in a box. I’ve
already started working on some new stuff and I have a couple of
collaboration-type things with a couple of different rappers. I started
doing a new project, a three-piece with me,a drummer and a bass player
and we’re calling it Electric Eyes. There are no boundaries to it and it
is heavily electronic. Instead of having the typical band format, we
have everything hooked together in one brain of an instrument, and we’re
all playing samplers and percussion, so it gets like Stomp sometimes,
but we’re all musicians, too, and we don’t have to go into that
electronic realm all the time. We can start off in dubstep and then
totally bust into a smooth, organic type of feel. It’s kind of the same
concept as what I am doing solo, just with two other players thinking
the same way, so it allows for a little bit more.’
10 - How has the audience reaction been to your new music and approach?
NC
- ‘Overall, it’s been really good. The people who have heard it in the
industry are getting the point of the ‘good songs done out of the box’
approach. I’ve gotten a lot of people saying that this is my best work
to date, and I’m proud of that, because I did all the stuff on my own. I
wrote it, recorded it, produced it, mixed it, did the artwork, and did
the store on the website. When you order a CD, I put it in the box, take
it down to the Post Office and send it out. It’s very fulfilling.’
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