Ecce Shnak | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: All right, that is Katie's wart. The band is E K Schnock. We'll see if I'm pronouncing that correctly when we talk to our guests in a moment. But welcome everybody. We have entered our number three New Marrow trace of Matt Connorton unleashed and we are live from the studios of wm NH ninety five point three FM in Glorious Manchester, New Hampshire. You can stream the show from anywhere. I go to Matt connorton dot com slash live for all of your live streaming options, social media links, contact info, show archives, et cetera, et cetera.

0:27 Speaker 1: Today is Saturday, March twenty eight, twenty twenty six, and I believe via WhatsApp we have David Rausch from K Schnack.

0:35 Speaker 2: Hello David, Good morning met and WMNH listeners. Great to speak with you, guys.

0:41 Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on. This project is really interesting. So let's clear this up right off the bat, though, am I pronouncing the name anywhere close to correctly?

0:51 Speaker 2: You are absolutely close. You are totally perfect at K Schnuck. You could not be closer perfect pronunciation.

0:58 Speaker 1: At K Schnock. Okay, wonderful, wonderful. Well, well, so let's get this out of the way. What does the name mean.

1:05 Speaker 2: In a combination of Latin and personal nonsense? AKA, schnock means hey, look at this. In Latin, the word ek means behold, and schnock is a word I made up when I was a young dude that means whatever you want it to. So aka schnock means hey, look at this, or hey check this out.

1:29 Speaker 1: Okay, okay, oh wonderful. So yeah, I'm really curious to ask you about this. I mean, what, how do you describe How do you describe your music? Because this is not something that fits into a particular genre. Obviously, you know, there's elements of metal. When you hear the guitars, you know, that becomes clear. The lyrics are are very unique. And is that you singing? Are you the lead vocalist?

1:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, so that you know, I want it to sound like a weird, scary old lady. So we just pitched my voice up a little bit, but that is me. So yeah. And the music I think of it as an art rock style that has three basic qualities. Like you said, heavy music, there's you know, also pop music broadly defined and classical music too. It's kind of a nephew of Frank Zappa or Queen. So it's an art music with those three main qualities heavy music, pop music, and classical music.

2:40 Speaker 1: Okay, okay, and yeah, So you're really genre blurring there, which is cool because you know it gives you. It gives you an ability to sound like something that's unlike anything else anyone has ever done. I honestly can't think of anything that sounds quite like this project. And is that important to you? I don't know. I don't know if you've done other projects that were more sort of mainstream for lack of a better word, But is it important to you as an artist to really do something that's unique and to stand out and not just be kind of following whatever whatever trends are out there.

3:14 Speaker 2: Not in its own sake. I don't have a goal to do that for itself, but I've always struggled to keep my creative instincts. In one vein, I remember that actually a band I love. I don't know them super well, but but what I've heard of them I really love Will Go. I think the bassist in an interview said something like, you know what, will Go? Albums will sound like we have our our universe that we work in and we're going to stay there, and you know, we'll we'll we'll push its boundaries here and there, but you know, the the the things we do broadly speaking, which is totally respectable, totally that's great if that's the way, you know, you end up becoming creative world.

4:23 Speaker 2: For me personally, I've never been able to exhaust my interests as a songwriter by staying in one genre. So I jump around from one genre to another, like I'm playing with boats in a lake, and you know, jumping in one boat and then letting a friend capsize it, and then jumping in their boat and capsizing theirs. I look at them more like that instead of a space that if I leave my spacesuit, my eyes explode or my blood vessels burst or whatever happens in that circumstance.

5:04 Speaker 1: So right, Yeah, it sounds like you would kind of get bored if you were in a project where it was like you had you had certain parameters that. Yeah, that's always interesting too. When artists they obviously as they become more successful and they kind of develop a formula for what seems to work for them. Commercially and that does create sort of those parameters, and some artists can push the boundaries. Some artists have to stay locked in, you know, like if you know ACDC, just as a random example of that, right, you know, they've got a formula, They've got a template, and if they venture out of that, people are going to be very confused.

5:37 Speaker 1: But it sounds like it must be very exciting to approach it the way that you do it, And I'm curious kind of drilling down on that with this project. Do you go when you do this your approach to creating these songs, do you consciously think I have to do something that's different, I have to do something that's unique that's hard to define, or is it more just sort of We're gonna see what comes out here. I'm gonna I'm gonna create this song, but I'm not trying to be different or weird or however people perceive it.

6:10 Speaker 1: I'm just trying to create whatever is in my head that I think is going to sound good.

6:16 Speaker 2: I think it's more the second one. I can't guarantee that everything I make people will love. I hope everybody loves it, but I make it to move people in some way or another. It's not too achieve some arbitrary thing of like I did something out or genre defying or whatever like for its own sake. I think it's more I kind of look at it the way I look at life generally. You know, there's such a range of kinds of experiences one can have, from incredible sorrow to joy, to rage to terror to boredom, you know, and everything in between and other stuff.

7:17 Speaker 2: And I've always thought of the genres as each like kind of paints or something, colors of different paints in that whole picture. And so you know, there's certainly compelling folk music about anger, like Bruce Springsteen or Patti Smith or whatever. Plenty of those songs are pissed off. But you know, in terms of just the raw emotional color of rage, death metal is the angriest to perform. On the other hand, there are converge songs that are love song. It sounds doesn't sound like it the most, you know, maybe the most immediately to some ears anyway, loving sound is something softer, maybe like a folk song or soul music or something like that.

8:20 Speaker 2: So I think of the genres more as just different ways of showing the vast array of experiences we can have. So that's how I use them.

8:34 Speaker 1: And how did this How did this project start? This is it true? That started at Temple University in Philly.

8:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Okay. So I had been actually to go on this thing about the different emotions and emotional experiences and whatever we can have as people. Originally I thought I was going to be a psychotherapist, and I had got and out of college, went to Skidmore College and I graduated in two thousand and seven studying psychology and philosophy, and I had a job as an intake worker in a behavioral healthcare center in South Philly. I saw every major and supporting role of the diagnostic statistic manual of mental disorders schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder, addictions, and you know, kids in a lot of circumstances, in really great despair.

9:38 Speaker 2: And I had thought I was going to do that career, and I had this intake worker position,

9:49 Speaker 2: which I really at first, you know, it was hard, but I got I ultimately, I was able to do it at first because I believed that the world as it is can help these people with a system that we have. And then over the next year, I just got ground down about like, holy crap, this system in which we live is really pitted against people, whether we are people who need care or people who are giving care. And I just got my ass worked and roasted by it. And then meanwhile, I had been writing this weird music as a little twenty three year old guy.

10:40 Speaker 2: And when I eventually said, oh crap, I can't do this anymore. I gotta be on my way and try music out. I went to Temple University and I met a really fantastic number of musicians and still friends to this day. That started the first version of the band with me in twenty eleven. So the beginning of A. K. Schnock was a transition from great uh you know, kind of a personal psychological political crisis, from one walk of life to another, and then meeting like minded thinkers and feelers and musicians at that at Temple University, where I went to study classical guitar, when I changed the course of my life.

11:40 Speaker 1: Okay, okay, by the way, yeah that is interesting to me and I I I know a little bit about what you're what you're talking about, how the system is U is pitted against these people who so desperately need help, and it sounds like you got uh, you know, there's a lot of burnout in that field obviously. Yeah, and it sounds like you you kind of you had the foresight to see what was coming for you if you had, if you had stuck with it. So so that that's interesting. And then I assume so at Temple and you were studying it was classical guitar, Is that correct?

12:14 Speaker 2: Yeah?

12:15 Speaker 1: And that obviously shaped I assume shaped what you're doing today because you know it in terms of being able to do things that are very technical. Obviously, that classical training is very helpful. And then so that was where the original iteration of the band formed, the first lineup formed at Temple.

12:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.

12:39 Speaker 1: And then and that was, oh, so this project has actually been around a while. Then, so that was you said that was twenty eleven.

12:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a long time.

12:48 Speaker 1: Long time. So how was I mean, I assume the sounds changed and evolved over time or I mean, were those early songs that you did, were those also very much genre bending or did it start out a little more conventional?

13:00 Speaker 2: Well, also genre bending, I've been in one project that was more uh, stationarily just one project. I was in an indie rock band that I played drums in and that was I loved that group. But anytime I've ever written music in my own personal musical language, it's always been, uh, you know, the shape shifting sound that it is for better or for worse.

13:37 Speaker 1: So yeah, and then when did you start releasing music with ak Schnack now butchering it you're perfect ak snack all good?

13:49 Speaker 2: When when?

13:50 Speaker 1: When when did that begin? As far as your your first output with the project.

13:55 Speaker 2: I think our first EP was released in twenty fourteen, Okay. It's a tiny, little eighteen minute EP called Letters to Herrmann Vasquez Rubio, which I don't think is on our Spotify, but it is on band camp, okay. And then it was another five years or so before we put out the second two releases, So we have big old gaps between releases.

14:31 Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah, Shadows Grow Fangs as that's your first since twenty nineteen, correct, that's right, okay? And what was the spark that brought this to fruition in terms of because obviously you do take long breaks between recording. What what brought this? Uh? What what brought this to light? Wanting to do the CP.

14:52 Speaker 2: I always you know again, for better or for worse. Some I take a long time to get the full picture of what I wanted a release to be. In fact, let's see Shadows of Fangs the Internet three. Almost all of the songs on that EP are about as old as the story I was saying, Like, I started writing the title track Shadows Grow Fangs on a bike ride home from my job as an intake worker. So I take a long time to finish stuff, and so I think in terms of what compelled it, I was like, Okay, you got to just put this out already.

15:50 Speaker 2: Let's just put these songs out on this EP and make this happen.

15:56 Speaker 2: So I guess the answer is do it. Gosh darn it, David, do it already. Put it out already. You know, you could have a you could have a kid graduating high school with this record. Put it out right.

16:11 Speaker 1: So well, you know, good things take time, right, you know you're correct?

16:17 Speaker 2: Correct? Easy? Yes, yes, I got to go easy on myself.

16:20 Speaker 1: There, there you go, there you go. I also want to know more about your connection with EMF, and yes, EMF for for people who don't remember, unbelievable. I mean, that's like the song that people remember the most. You're unbelievable from EMF. And of course I'm not sure how much music they've released, and I know they have probably quite a bit, that they've been around a long time obviously, but tell us about your connection with EMF and the touring and all that.

16:46 Speaker 2: Yes, so we met them on our West Coast tour this past June, and like you say, I had heard that song and I'd always loved it. I probably heard it when I was ten years old, and you know, hadn't heard the other music until I was put onto it by the fact that we were going to be touring with them. Had no idea what they would be like as dudes, but they were absolutely lovely, lovely you know, to use a British term, lovely books. And that tour was, you know, fifteen days, but it felt like one big day, the best day of our lives, I think, and just you know, constant warmth and laughter and you know, and they're much more seasoned than we are, obviously.

18:04 Speaker 2: Yeah, but

18:08 Speaker 2: we just had so much fun with them, and they saw that we were taking what we were doing seriously and we were supportive in terms of just the brass tacks of people collaborating on a tour and being dependable and all that. So, uh, and we're on this. We're on the same booking agency as they are, and so that's how we, like the simplest way in which we got connected. Our manager pitched to the booking agency that we'd be the opening act for that tour, and they took us up on it, and we proved ourselves and the rest is history.

18:48 Speaker 2: So we're on tour with them this May in on the East Coast for nine days and then six dates in England June.

18:58 Speaker 1: Oh, fantastic. That's excellent. Yeah, you know, and it sounds like you're having a great experience with them and how they are as people, which is great because obviously you don't always know going into a situation when you're opening for somebody what the headliner is going to be, like, how they're going to be as people, how they're going to treat you, And it sounds like it sounds like they're like legitimately really good people. So that's that's wonderful.

19:19 Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it was awesome. And right there's you know, like life is a mix and people are a mix. Each of each one of us is a huge mix of virtues, flaws and mediocrits. So, like you say, you never know what that mix is going to look like in an individual, in a group of people, in a set of experiences you can have. But with that relationship was just very lucky or blessed however you look at it.

19:59 Speaker 1: Yeah, now that's fantastic. And did you also collaborate on a song.

20:03 Speaker 2: With them, Yes, so on tour they had this basically complete idea for a song that's you know, if people don't know their sound generally, it's it's party music with a little bit of more and sometimes more than a little bit of punk rock energy and tenacity and and then even to some extent, some political import too. So they have dear friends like most of us do, who are in the queer community, and you know, in this troubled world, the queer community is under great attack all the time. And so they wrote a song of solidarity with them called LGBTQ plus Lover.

21:05 Speaker 2: And they had this song that they were gonna premiere on tour, and they did the first two nights, and then when they saw us and heard my singing and the other singer in my band, Bella, this incredible contralto. They said, Holy, holy heck, these this guy and Gal are are really good singers. And they have the beginning of the song basically sounds like a big choral pad, and they had they have a synth pad on the tracks, usually live and on recording. But they're like, why don't we have the opener the two singers from the opening band come on and join us, which we did from the third all the way to the last eleventh show of the night, and then after that because we had so much fun and because audience has really appreciated it, they memorialized that relationship by having us on the on that recording.

22:11 Speaker 2: Uh So, the song is called lgbt Q plus lover and again it's a song of solidarity with gay, transgender, transsexual, non binary other other folks who are under attack and need our allyship.

22:31 Speaker 1: That's extremely cool. I fully support that, and I actually pulled it up. I'm kind of scanning through the lyrics, just making sure that I can play it, because I might. I might play it later in the show. We do have another track of yours that I'm going to play at the end of our conversation, but after that, I might sneak this one in two. I'm just scarning. I'm just scanning through making sure there's no uh no language.

22:50 Speaker 2: And I don't think we have any naughty words. That he does say the word boo hoo. So depending on your audience's sensitivities, maybe I should. Maybe I I'm a potty mouth for saying that.

23:02 Speaker 1: I can assure you I have a highly insensitive audience, so I think. So what I'm going to do is, I'm at the end of our conversation, I'm gonna play another track of yours, and then immediately after that, I'm gonna play this m F track because I found it online. So I think that's awesome, and that's so cool for you like that. That was probably a huge surprise, right when when they asked you to do that. I assume it was.

23:26 Speaker 2: You know, if you have a certain amount of success in any kind of creative or professional thing, it's a sort of naturally human mistake to like deify people. And I'm reminded, you know, this guy's kind of a controversial figure, I think, unfortunately, because I don't personally I think he's a heroic person. Nobody nobody's perfect, but Ralph Nader, the uh consumer advocate, you know, left this gad fly.

24:06 Speaker 1: I'm a fan.

24:08 Speaker 2: Okay, heck, yes, we've got the Ralph Nader crew in the in the building. Ralph Nader says about politicians, he just says, they're not gods. They are people that tie their shoes in the morning and brush their teeth at night. And so you can relate to them just as fellow people. You don't have to feel smaller in there. You know, they're they're You're just as powerful as they are in some respect. And uh, it's you know, it's a bit of a jump of a comparison. But basically when m F said, hey, we see what you're doing.

24:50 Speaker 2: We like it so much, we want you to join us, there was this surreal, like wait what moment of but you But you guys literally helped with with your breakout, world famous single when I was eleven years old. You helped put together the beginnings of my litteral brains understanding of what pop music is and now and now you want me to participate in the continuation of your art. So it was it was pretty surreal and beautiful and but then no, they're just people that put their shoes on in the morning and take them off at night and brush their teeth at night and whatever.

25:47 Speaker 1: So yeah, now that's that's amazing, awesome. I can't wait to I can't wait to play that. So at the end of our conversation, So, like I said, I'm gonna play two things. So at the end of our conversation, I'm gonna play Jeremy. I'm really curious to hear about this, that the Jeremy bout Them song, Jeremy Utilitarian sad Boy, tell us about this, tell us about this song.

26:12 Speaker 2: Sure. So, like I said, four out of five of the songs from Our Shadows Grow Fang's EP, which we released last October, I believe, Okay, I can't. I think so. I think that's right. Four out of five of them are very old songs in my writing history. So when I still lived in Philadelphia, and just around the time that I started going to Temple University, as I was finishing up my changing from a would be shrink into beginning musician beginning musician, I lived around the corner from this really curious, complicated museum called Eastern State Penitentiary, which was a prison.

27:17 Speaker 2: It's the North Philly in the Fairmount neighborhood, and it's this great, big brick fortress in a you know, pretty like relatively nice part of the city. There's like a couple rough spots here and there around it, but like it's sort of nice around there. But there's this but there's this prison museum. And every every Halloween they had this Haunted Prison event, and I would went to the Haunted Prison event and my friends would play prisoners who were also zombies. And then I went there the next day and I learned about this guy, Jeremy Bentham, who was this British philosopher who, at least in our troubled tradition, he was sort of a predecessor to Marx.

28:20 Speaker 2: He believed in the highest good, in the least amount of suffering, the most pleasure, the least amount of pain, for the highest number of people. And he believed that the government can play a positive and real role in that. Wow, big whoop and incredible. It seems sort of obvious now, but for his time it was an important thing to say. And he precedes Marx, so this is all good. But he had this weird idea, which was the idea of solitary confinement. So if you're familiar with the horrible things we do to prisoners.

29:00 Speaker 2: Yes, sometimes we're so brutal as to black people in closet sized rooms and leave them there indefinitely. I have a friend, in fact, named Keith Lamar who has been in solitary confinement for thirty five years. He's an innocent man on death row in Ohio. He's got ten months until the scheduled execution. But you know, so he's an example of this complete disaster of let's say, good intentions creating horrific nonsense. So the song is an exploration of how did you how did you miss? How did you forget to carry the two on this cute little moral calculation you had, Jeremy Bentham.

30:08 Speaker 2: You know your highest good for highest number, you know, kind of imagining something like the social safety net, and these are all good ideas and making sure people have food and housing in basic livelihood and human rights on it. But now you have this idea of locking people in closets indefinitely. Where'd you go wrong? Weirdo? Right? And then the funniest, the last weird coincidence about his story that comes up in the song and the lyric is that he had this idea that when you die, you don't have to worry about death.

30:54 Speaker 2: You can grieve the people that have died, but death is not a harm to the person that dies because they're no longer. There's no harm to somebody who doesn't exist. So don't fear death. And then in relation to the body, well, what do you do? What do you tell people about what to do with your body when you die? He said, I want to he said, basically taxidermy me, put me in my seated position. He was a professor at an Oxford in London or sorry in England, and so he said, just put me in my cool hat with my cane and my professor le garb make me look swell or whatever, and have me seated with a big smile on my face, and just let my body be an image of you know, the the body as a stale instrument was his phrase, like a thing that just comes and goes and no big deal.

32:00 Speaker 2: And you know, my former students, you can even laugh at me or whatever. So there's kind of like this light heartedness, right, but there's also this this weird, grotesque accident where like he's putting his dead body in this in this cell for his students to muse ad and to love him after he's gone, or to laugh at him, or to be growth gross soud or whatever. Right, And meanwhile, his confused, absurd philosophical tradition ends up putting living people in cells. And and those are those bodies are not stale instruments at all.

32:43 Speaker 2: Those people are living people with hopes and dreams and fears and emotions and lives they want to live. So uh. And then that's the story of Keith Lamar. Is another important thing that if we speak again, I want to tell you about. But for folks who need inspiration and want to help with an important cause, check out Keith Lamar dot org.

33:17 Speaker 1: Okay, and.

33:19 Speaker 2: You can hear about his story. He's an imprisoned man on death row wrongfully who is an incredible philosopher, writer and fact musician too. So Keith Lamar dot org. And I'm sure you'd be interested in that as well. I really love this conversation and it seems like you are curious about the right things.

33:43 Speaker 1: Oh absolutely. And I'm also someone who my entire life, I've always been very much opposed to the death penalty. One of the few things my dad who passed away not too long ago. It's one of the few things that he and I actually agreed on all the way to his end is politically, one of the few things we agreed on was that the death penalty is egregious and wrong. So yeah, I'm gonna look that up. I am curious to know more about that, and I would like to have a follow up conversation with you on that subject in the future.

34:12 Speaker 1: Definitely. Yeah, that'd be very interesting. So we're going to in a moment, We'll let you go, David, and we're going to play We are going to play Jeremy Utilitarian sad Boy to at the close of our conversation, and then, like I said, I am also going to play that E MF track LGBTQ plus Lover. Very curious to hear that as well. But I want to know, please share with our listeners where's the best place to go online to keep up with everything you're doing, everything ak Schnack is doing, how to spell it for people who don't how to spell it, and and anything else you want our listeners to be aware of in terms of finding you online.

34:50 Speaker 2: Great, yes, for better or for worse. I chose a funny name for this act. I often think of the hip hop artist talib Quality. You know, he could have he was, He's obviously very creative guy. He could have chosen a much more straightforward name for himself. But for whatever reason, some of us, you know, just get attached to challenging names. And he has a whole song about you pronounced the name quality, any questions whatever, So he's making kind of making fun of his of that choice of his own. For me and our band, Uh, the name is spelled e double c e e c c e space s h n a k schnock k schnock e double c e space s h n a k And we got to update it, so bear with us on the on the website.

35:59 Speaker 2: But but certainly websites are are an old school thing to do, so you can check it out there. But in terms of the most immediate things, I think Instagram is the best medium to get the totally most up to date AH updates about us and any any streaming platform of your choice. To check out the music, and then we can certainly send you merch if you fall in love with the music and want some want a vinyl or a T shirt or something. We have a store for that two. And yeah, so I think the the maybe for for Eve, for an odd band, we have more humdrum, mediocre ways of listening to us.

37:01 Speaker 1: So yeah, you know what, though it occurs to me it does make you very googleable, as I like to say, because if someone googles your name, and you know, assuming they spell it correctly, there's not gonna be any confusion. Oh is this is this the correct at? Do I have the right one? You don't have to worry about that. So that's a good thing. Absolutely, Thank you. Well, so we're going to to in a moment. We're gonna play this track Jared Jeremy, I don't know. I have so much trouble with it. Jeremy utilitarian, sad boy.

37:31 Speaker 1: I need more caffeine this morning. But David, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a wonderful conversation. Fascinated by your music. I really love it. Check out the EP Everybody Shadows Grow Fangs really really good and we will definitely have you back. Man, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today.

37:49 Speaker 2: Thank you so much, man, and peace and love to w M n H listeners so much. Gratitude to you, and hopefully we'll see you on the East Coast tour. Boston might be the nearest where you guys are I think so, uh so. Yeah. Much love and gratitude to everybody in the w M n H universe. Piece and love Davy.

38:14 Speaker 1: All right, talk to you soon, my friend, take care, Bye bye. All right. That was David Rausch. The project is k Schnock And check this out. This is called Jeremy Utilitarian Sad Boy from the ep Shadows Growth. Thanks