Matt Connarton Unleashed: House Lights

Because these guys are coming in. I'm gonna play I'm gonna play the new

single no Longer Myself from the band uh house Lights. And I did see

Sam Beechard in the hallway holding up. It's hard to do when all these

thoughts fall through your fingers, the worst single on your side see through blad

some staring into this casting side, Tanklaia, where y'are crap? So time?

Row? Are y'all black? And y'all where your chersey? No?

Y'all jell every day years a new days the same day as yesterday? Am

I crazy? My calling is say, Tanklaia, where y'are? Time?

Row? Are y'all black? Y'all your jersey? No? John O?

The side side the clay well, outside the place says outside Fili show show

you listen my john O that side. We've got got some musicians in the

house. So at the news desk, Sam Beechard returns. Hello Sam,

Hello, welcome back, Thank you, thank you for having me, and

I will let you introduce the the new gentleman who I'm just meeting for the

first time today. All right, well, yeah, this is Matt.

He is the guitarist for house Lights and writes pretty much all the music.

Well, welcome to the show. Thank you, glad to be here.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing you guys play. And uh, you

guys have worked together for how long is this? Uh we met So we

met in college at Hesser College in Manchester way back in two thousand and eight.

Yeah. Probably. Yeah. So we've been making music off and on

ever since, you know, several hiatuses throughout Uh, you know, life

gets in the way, and but we keep coming back to each other.

We work really well together, and uh, you know, this is some

of the best music that I feel like we've ever made together, for sure.

So yeah, yeah, and I love the new single. We just

gave that a little gave that a spin there that no longer myself. That's

great and that just came out Friday. Correct, yep, excellent, excellent.

Well, you guys are gonna play something for us. What are you?

What are you gonna play? Yeah, we're gonna play a song called

Speaking Tongues. Uh. It's second single off our album. It's coming out

of September. First called what it Means to Feel. Yeah, and the

song just give you a kind of a uh you know, synopsis on what

it means. It's kind of a song about being really having having difficulty being

able to communicate, whether it be in a relationship that you have with anyone,

you know, a personal relationship or work relationship, whatever it may be,

trying to get the right words out and just can't do it. So

I think, you know, I can certainly relate with that. I communicate

best through music, So that's why I wrote the song. And yeah,

all right, very cool. Well, whenever you guys are ready, I'm

looking forward to this. It's a lot. We have a house lights here

with us live in studio. Talk to you today before the words escape?

Where do I start strain from my heart? Thoughts fall apart? You're not

understanding what's making you so angry? I'm messing up so badly. But in

the tank to make you happy, you gotta fight for something. There's no

progressing pretending everything's just fine. Kids, turn back time. There's no rewind.

I took abuse today, could not artic you late what I'm feeling inside

this fragile mind. I'm trying to hide what am I not understanding? What's

making me so angry? I'm messing up so badly? Wanta it take to

make me happy. We've got up, but for something. There's no progress

and pretending everything's just fine. Can turn back time, there's no rewind.

We can't over run our feelings. Have to face them to find healing.

If we draw the line, we may just find will be all right alone

away from you, knowing nothing can be perfect, or if it's even worth

it. But I'll try it anyway. Didn't I still make you nervous?

I can only dream of matamorphous hope for a dress on the surface, breaking

through the other side. How could I be so stupid? I lost you,

chipping away and my old habits today. Thought I needed help on away.

I let us astray, chipping away and my old habits today. Thought

I needed open my way. But now I'm okay. We're here to stay.

You never understand me? Is that why we're so angry for messing up

so badly? This time? My kids make you happy? We've got it

bore something. There's no progress in pretending everything's just fine. Kids turn back

time. There's no rewind. Can't feelings have to face them to find feeling.

If we draw them nine, we may just fine. We'll be all

right? Is it on us stop to speaking songs. You're holding your breath

saying that is enough. Come home, dang o bread very nice, very

nice. We've got the guys from House Lights here with us in studio,

if you're just joining us, and that is called speaking tongues. Yep.

That was the second single I can single yep off the new album. Very

good, very good, Thank you. Yeah. So so the album comes

out is it September one? Very good? Yeah, just some time for

Labor Day. You can spend your weekend jamming it wherever you're traveling. How

many how many tracks? Eleven? Eleven? Very good And we actually had

fourteen that we could have recorded and we uh so we have some potential material

for the future, but a few that just didn't quite make the cut.

Okay, Well what goes into that? What goes into that decision? Yeah,

you know, it really depends on a couple different things. So first

we want to pick, obviously the ones that we think are our strongest,

and then you know, you kind of look at like the flow of the

album and what you think is going to make sense. Yeah, you know,

because we'll we'll try to blend up a mix of different genres. We'll

have songs that are more like pop punk, and then we'll have ones that

are more metal, you know, almost hardcore. So it's finally the right

balance between everything. You don't want to skew too much to one side,

at least we don't want to. We want to like kind of show all

the different influences that we've had throughout our lives. Yeah, yeah, and

you guys have so you guys have performed music together for a long time.

Right, So did you have other actual bands before house Lights or yeah,

we were in Our first band was called Horns become Halos. Oh yeah,

yeah, yeah, I remember Sam. I remember you mentioning that name before

and I was like, oh, that's a cool name. Uh. And

then yeah, after that, that band kind of turned into house Lights over

time. We had released house Lights has released an EP it's already on streaming

called Stages. We released that back in twenty fourteen, and that was kind

of like a concept album on how to deal with grief, like kind of

the five Stages of grief or death if you've ever heard of that before.

So you know, that was a kind of a new thing for us doing

a concept album. This isn't a concept album, so much, but kind

of all the songs are linked in the sense that they're all kind of an

expiration and kind of like human emotion. I'm surely the same top more to

that, right, Yeah, I mean, well, you know when we

talked back in April, when I was in the hear of the you know,

promoting all this forward and stuff. But this album, you know,

not necessarily a concept album, but it's all you know, the lyrics are

all related to personal experiences that I've I've had have every day that I have

memories of that I've gone through, you know, So it's it's kind of

a concept album for my my inner psyche. I guess you could say,

you know, just me processing all the different things going on in life and

trying to find a way to you know, kind of you know, put

it, put a spin on them, hopeful spin or or just you know,

come to terms with things and try to move on in any way that

I can. And like Matt said, I mean, music is one of

the ways that we know how to communicate best, you know, and it's

a music is a universal language. I love that music can mean different things

to different people. Yeah, you know, you can listen to you know,

twenty people listen to song and every one of them can find a different

meaning. And that's that's amazing to me, so very very happy that we

could get to do that every day. And Matt, you write the music,

is that? Yeah, I write the majority of the music. So

I'll generally start with guitar and the way I kind of do it, you

know, honestly, sometimes I'll just open up I'll go to my computer,

I'll open up logic, you know, plug my guitar, and I'll I'll

start recording and then play. So I won't even like jam first. I'll

you know, I'll just start practicing, see what comes out, and if

anything sticks, have already got you know, a demo track at least recorded,

and then I can do it a little bit better, you know,

and tweaking, you know, touch it up to how I want it to

sound. And I think, like especially the same and I worked so well

because I think the music as I write it, you know, full song,

I may have like kind of a sadder you know sounding verse or you

know, maybe uplifting chorus, but towards the end of our bridges, we

kind of have like there's a conclusion sound to it kind of like a finite

like kind of purpose. And I think Sam likes really good lyrics that kind

of compliments that. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Now have you

guys played Do you guys ever play out acoustic just the two of you,

like like you did here today or was that a yeah, that was pretty

much the personal Oh that's cool. We uh, you know, we'll get

We used to play around and horns became halos. I think two was our

last show. Yeah, and neither of us have played live. It's been

a bit not original music, you know. I've done a couple of little

things here and there. Yeah, but nothing nothing for house lights yet.

Okay, So okay, we've been we've been working on getting the full band

together. We finally have a second guitarists, so we've been good charging ahead,

you know, practicing, learning the songs, trying to find a space

to practice. Oh yeah, so that's always tough, but you know,

we're we're on the lookout for a practice space so we can all get together

and you know, hopefully my my original target was you know, maybe end

of the Fall may be ready, so we'll see. We'll still try to

try to hit that goal. But uh, you know, definitely be be

ready. As soon as we're ready, we'll be getting shows going. So

yeah, yeah, totally like a non conventional way to kind of build a

band or you know, start something where I just recorded a bunch of songs

first, then we did the vocals, and then we said, hey,

let's just you know, actually record these. Let's get a mixed. We

found this great mixer on the sound Better website, which is a website you

can go to. Finally, mixers, producers, et cetera. He's out

of Argentina, which was awesome. So we got to work with someone really

cool. They mixed and mastered the album for us, and then you know,

now we're obviously trying to put together a live show because yeah, there's

nothing like playing live. It's it's such a thrill. I love it.

Yeah, when you guys were in the other band, uh Horns become Halos,

did you play out a lot? Did you do a lot of shows?

We played a decent amount. Yeah, we played it like and a

lot of these places don't exist anymore, which is ahead, But the Sad

Cafe, Rocos Ground Zero played all those places a couple other places too.

Did any of that material make it into this band or is this all no?

Yeah, so funny you ask us. You know, so we one

of the reasons why horns become halos ended is we uh we had an opportunity.

Uh I don't. I mean maybe twenty ten, nine, two ten,

somewhere on there. We had an opportunity to go record with a studio

in Florida. You know, a person that was previously in a pretty well

known band that left to start their own studio gave us an opportunity. I'm

not gonna say names because I don't want to any bed blood or anything.

Uh. You know, it was a confluence of us being young and hungry

and not really understanding how things work and not having our own stuff together because

we were in no way ready. So we went down to Florida for a

couple of weeks, you know, tried to record an album, had some

studio arguments, uh you know really yeah, oh yeah, there was a

lot of stuff we hadn't figured out. Yeah, we were a young band.

I mean most of us were twenty one nineteen. You know, Bobby

and Adam are a little bit younger than we are, and uh so we

didn't really know what we were doing. Ye and each of us had an

idea of how we thought it should go. We didn't iron it out,

and so we got the studio and then the result is we we had a

failed album, essentially, we yea. We ended up with a bunch of

late, half mixed songs and a ton of them weren't finished. More than

half of that album. We recorded a whole album down there, but less

than half of it we released, you know, because we just weren't happy

with the end product. Yeah, but we learned a lot from it too,

so that's yeah, we kind of, you know, decided to start

doing things ourself, and you know, I kind of trained myself to be

proficient in you know, recording everything myself and and mixing a little bit at

least to the point where you know, I get the point across and then

we send it a professional. Yeah. So we so we end up taking

three songs from our previous stuff. One of them was more around when we

first started house Lights. But there's two songs that were on supposed to be

on that Horns become Halo's album, the second one that we have pulled for

this one, and there's definitely more tracks that we're gonna go back and revisit,

yeah, you know, maybe revamp them a little bit, modernize them

a little bit more. But hopefully for the you know, whatever's next is

definitely more material to come from that project. So is any of the Horns

become Halo's stuff online or is that you know it? Actually it's not in

any streaming services. We were just talking about that the other day. Should

we release it because you know, looking back at your old stuff sometimes you

cringe a little bit, but there's some there's definitely some good stuff there,

so we might release it, yeah, and just probably release it under the

house Light's name. Yeah, I mean you can find it now if you

search Horns became Males on YouTube, no kidding. Yeah, there's there's at

least most of that first album. There's stuff out there which was a much

more kind of alternative rock sound, okay, a little bit more experimental,

you know, not as polished by any means, and uh, you know

you'll hear me do some screaming on that. That's the first time I ever

jumped into screaming, kidding. So yeah, it's cool to go back and

see, you know, to see how far you've you've come and where you've

been and in the moment, you know, we definitely had different ideas of

what the music was. Yeah, but looking back at it, like,

well, I used to be pretty like I used to be pretty embarrassed because

my expectation for what I wanted to be was not what we were achieving.

But you know, you go looking back at that stuff, it's pretty solid,

Like some of that still holds up for me, and like I'm I'm

definitely no longer like oh yeah, don't listen to that. Push it off

in the court, like I'm like, no, this is this is what

we did. Like, yeah, I'm proud of all of that music that

we made. Yeah. Yeah, How did that opportunity come up? When

where you you went to Florida to record with Yeah, I mean we had

released a full length album with someone local here at Project two Studios, This

guy Connor had who we've been friends with for forever, you know, he

makes the master that album for us, and then, uh, we were

looking to do a second album and we got an opportunity to work with,

you know, a guitarists from a band that we all kind of liked,

you know. Unfortunately, thing it's just didn't really work out well. But

yeah, you know, you live and you learn. Yeah. Yeah,

Now what about the other guys who were in the band with you at that

time? Yeah, two of them are are you know, still with us.

So we've got Adam Adams the drummer, and he is amazing. He's

a professional drummer. You know, he's practically every night he's off doing a

different gig for uh, you know, he's playing at Wallies. I think

he played at Yeah, he played, he played at Walli's he played,

He's played at Fenway. He played a House of Blues with Andy Brobs.

Some people might have seen him. So he drums for Live Good. He's

got a lot of other acts that he plays out with down in the you

know, Massachusetts area. He started to branch up to New Hampshire a bit

more, which is good. And he's got like five or six different projects

that he is either in or you know, plays out with or does studio

work with. Yeah, so he's he's pretty incredible. Oh wow, yeah,

excellent. And then we've got Bobby who was the guitarist back in Hornsbycome

Halos and uh he now does all the harsh, screaming vocals in these new

songs. He's also in his own project called Hotel Graffiti shout out. These

guys are awesome. That's a cool name. Yeah. And then then we

just added our new friend Josh Noonan, who is going to be our second

guitarist. So we're pretty stoked. He's been really jumping in, working very

hard to learn the songs, so he had a lot of ideas, a

lot of feedback for us. Yeah, so we're we're excited man to bring

it all together. Excellent, excellent. Uh, let's see, we've got

a couple of questions in the chat room. Jay fed Uh, one of

our friends from Vermont, says, have you ever thought about increasing the lengths

of your beards? Yeah, you guys are well, you guys have a

little bit longer beards than me. I keep mind very trim. I don't

even like having facial hair, to be honest with you, but I look

better with it. But so you guys have a little more length than me.

But you guys don't have the you know, like bearding is a big

thing now where you got the people with the big beards. You guys everything

about having big beards. I mean this is about as big as I usually

let it get. Yeah, I don't. I don't like to manage it,

honestly. Yeah. Yeah, a little bit of the same. So

my wife hates my beard. Oh really? Oh yeah, for the record,

I know everyone else does, that's the thing, but she just she

does not like it, no matter what people say, She's like, no,

no beard. Yeah. I have let it get longer than it is

now before. Yeah, you know, this is this is the longest I've

had one, for sure. It's been a little over a year. Yeah,

but I'm actually like managing it now and taking care of it, so

yeah, it probably not much longer than this either. Yeah. Yeah.

He was the baby face before this. Yeah, back when we were doing

all the other stuff. Yeah. J Fed also asked, uh if you've

ever considered uh oh as a band, do you ever consider the potential benefits

from cold bathing that might have come up before the ice bath guy. Yeah,

yeah, maybe we'll have to. It'll be a social media thing we

can do. Well, we'll jump in an ice bathroom. I can't tried

it. Yeah yeah, yeah, well we'll set that's what we'll do.

We can that can be one of our milestone challenges. We'll come up something

and you know, if we hit hit a certain mouthstone, we'll all jump

in a nice challenge or yeah, some people, some people swear by it.

He says. The health benefits are remarkable. It wouldn't be for me,

you know, the hypothermia and things like that. Melanie law Liberty from

the Great State of Vermont says, I'm picking blackberries as I listen, and

I want Matt to know I am sometimes waist high and shrubs and reaching into

bushes up to my shoulder. Can you visualize the spiders and ticks lurking?

Matt? Yes, I can, and that's horrifying. I don't. I

don't go into the woods myself. I'm like the least outdoorsy human you'll ever

meet. I wish I could just like teleport from one concrete structure to another.

You know, there's yeah, there's there's ticks, there's uh bugs,

there's yeah, yeah, there's the Blair witch. There's all kinds of things

that can get you. Yeah, bigfoot, Yeah, I mean probably not

real, but who knows. And Jay Feed is very excited that you're open

to the uh uh i spath and he also says, ah, the beer

and coyotes. Yeah, coyotes. Yeah, you know, and then sometimes

they're roaming around in a city. Yeah, very very scary. Now,

what's what's going on with Sam with Always Forward? Do you have some uh,

I know, you've got well this swarmy fest you're you're involved in that.

Oh you're not involved in this one. Yeah, so they're they're for

a brief moment, they were you know, we were in conversation. Yeah,

they have uh, you know, they've got things handled. Oh,

okay, they're they're all set there. Uh yeah, I don't want to

take too much from from House Lights. Yeah, just real quick. Yeah,

so Always Forward, you know, I'll be kind of transitioning with how

I utilize my business. I have signed on with Don't Blink Music Group as

an assistant booking agent really, which is very exciting for me. I've been

talking with one of the owners, Colin you know, for quite a while,

you know, and and he and I aligned very closely on our you

know style around booking shows and promoting and that kind of stuff. And uh,

you know this kind of really they are doing a lot of things that

I want to, you know, was looking to grow Always Forward into cool.

So I've got a really good opportunity to kind of do that, you

know, eliminate a lot of the red tape and the uphill battle. Good

for you, congratulation, thank you. Yeah, and I'm very excited to

be able to get the experience, you know, and learn from people to

have been doing it for a while because it's it's tough. Yeah, I'm

not gonna lie, you know, it's coming coming into it cold and trying

to figure things out on the fly. It was a great experience. I'm

very thankful for the connections I've made and and they're going to continue. You

know, any bands that worked with Always Forward, you know, you'll have

an opportunity to work with Don't Blink as well Excellent. So and does that

mean so, is that the end of Always Forward is so? So,

I'm just gonna be transitioning into uh, you know, different avenue, whether

it be more of marketing, promotions, more of networking as a resource for

bands to utilize, you know, still working on figuring that part out.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely not the end of always Excellent. Excellent,

Always Forward is me. It's my mentality, it's how my brand of how

I work and try to promote bands and grow scene. Yeah. So yeah,

we're just getting started. Yeah, excellent, excellent, Well, let's

do this. I'd like to play. Let's play the first single, Love

and Understanding. I'd love to give give this a listen, and then we'll

come back and chat some more. But for people who haven't heard it,

this guy, and when did this come come out? This was a July.

Yeah, we're in there, right, because I think when you were

on the show the first time, this hadn't come out yet, and I

think this was this was the first place, Uh, it was heard publicly.

But yeah, this is a great song, and sometimes I'll just play

it. Uh, all right, let's give this a listen and then we'll

come back and talk some more with these guys. This is Love and Understanding.

This was the first single from the band house Lights. Check this out.

Where close I know a struggling to day. Everything deals out of place.

It's so easy to forget to struggle that so many facets. You're not

alone's battle, you're fighting, You're not alone. I side you still fighting,

stiffer, comfort, myself, saturation, fiery flower, all what they

say, Yeah, off a right roun through round love. This association turned

pain into motivation. In spite of my creation my hands reaching out above you,

above you love speaking out he love you. I love you my very

day Ray said, get to look down right gay time my race. So

I don't know other this Ral is cat very qui si albody has tall.

But we have joining us here today in studio the members of the band House

Lights. We've got Sam at the news desk and Matt with one Tea is

on the couch. The reason that's so interesting to me is when I was

a kid, people would always ask me, because my name's Matt obviously,

and they would say, is that with one T or two? And I

would always say two, And I'd be thinking, I wouldn't say it out

loud, because I'm unfailingly polite, but I would be thinking, who spells

it with one tea? You'd never see it with one tea? Uh.

And then I think it was maybe ten years ago I started seeing examples of

Matt with one T. I never saw that when I was a kid,

but it started to become a thing. Yeah. Well, and I guess

you know the reason my mom the I'm named Matthew with one T is because

my mom wanted people that call me Matthew. Yeah, I guess that was

a reasoning, And I guess I'm named after Matthew of on Green and of

Green Gables, which okay, I've never even seen it, but I'm named

after that person. Oh but uh yeah, So the idea was, you

know, call me Matthew, not matt obviously as time goes on and people

always call you matt usually if your name is Matthew. So you know,

my family generally calls me Matthew, but everyone else calls me matt Yeah.

Yeah, it's uh so I assume Matthew is with one t yes, yeah,

yeah, no, that makes sense because well it's funny too because even

when I was a kid, I would see Matthew with one tea sometimes,

but then but then it would always be matt would always be with two teas.

Totally. Yeah. These guys playing acoust song earlier for us, and

we just listened to Love and Understanding, which is the first single from house

Lights from the upcoming album September one. It's Outpember one. What it means

to feel Yes, yes, looking forward to that. We have a question

in the chat room. Sonia Laramie uh says, as someone you know that's

my wife, Well, your wife has a question, Matt Love the sound.

Which bands have influenced the sound of your upcoming album? I wonder I

think she knows, but everyone else, Yeah, so definitely. I mean

the first like growing up, I mean, my mom had great musical tastes,

so like she would listen to Atlantis, Morrisette, led Zeppelin, all

these sort of classic rock bands and everything Stevie Nicks like great singers, great

music. So that was kind of the first music I listened to. And

then the first music that really inspired me to play guitar was Lincoln Park.

Actually, like when I remember, I was like thirteen years old when I

heard One Step Closer in the radio and that streaming part that was like shut

up when I'm talking to you, like obviously, like the angsty thirteen year

old in me was like, yeah, that's cool. I want to make

music like that and like express myself that way. So yeah, like Lincoln

Party, a lot of new metal, and then pop punk, so like

Blink when at two uh def tones brand new from like the kind of like

the emo like seeing the style, so you know, all those sorts of

bands that like you would kind of hear on like any anyone that would play

that Warped tour. Basically it was like my style music that I listened to.

Yeah, yeah, what about you, Sam, I mean, you

know, and again that's why it kind of with the recently works so altogether

as Matt and I do have a lot of the same musical influences. You

know. Definitely, Alexis on Fire has been a huge one for us.

You know, they're one of those bands that melds a lot of you know,

very harsh, aggressive sound, but also they can do the most beautiful

you know ballady just you know, they got chimes and stuff in their music

and like they can take it right down and just you know, bathe you

in amazing sound, just something so tender and gentle. So they're a huge

inspiration for me. You know, bands like Tool Uh you know, I

used to I used to be in another metal band, so you know,

all the all the kind of you know bands back the day, Eventual seven

Fold, that kind of stuff. You know. Uh, Yellow Card is

a huge, huge one for me, like one that I listened to quite

a bit Thursday Thursday. Again it's another huge one. That's where we got

our name from is uh so they they yeah, they have like a live

album called kill the House Lights and so and and and they're also coincidentally,

there is one of our One of the songs on the album is also a

title or the name of a Thursday album, Full Collapse. It's the last

song on the album. Oh okay, so loosely inspired just kind of coincidentally

fell into place. Yeah, yeah, definitely big odd to Thursday. They're

they're amazing. I got to see them for the first time last year.

You know, they've been They've been playing music forever. I was gonna say,

yeah, they've been around a while. They they sounded amazing. Yeah,

I was. I was blown away. They sounded really good. So,

by the way, I'm Miriam banished in the chat room. She really

likes that song, Loving Understanding, She said, she enjoyed it. Thank

you. Can you guys tell me a little bit about the production, I

was commenting off air, the production is really good. It's just, uh,

what's your recording process? Yeah, it's it's really you know, I'll

the engineering is all took place in my room. Basically, I get I

have like what I call the music room or the office in my house where

you know, I just opened up my computer. I've got some studio Ma

Hunters. I've been an audio interface. I just plug in, I record

direct into logic from my guitars. So, you know, I know a

lot of people like you know, recording like amp, miking up an amp

and getting like dialing a tone that way. But I love the flexibility of

like just recording direct, didn't put and then I can change the tone however

I want later on. So that's what I did for this album. I'll

write like placeholder drums because I'm not a drummer. I can you know,

I know how drums should sound. But I know that's the reason why we

have a great drummer is I'll, you know, I'll just write something placeholder

and then I'll send it off to him and be like, you do your

thing on this. That may influence or change what I then do. So

we do all the music first, and then after the the main music has

written and I'll do the guitar and the bass, and then once I get

the drums back, you know, Sam and I will look at it and

explore melodies and and such. It's it's you know, i'd say ninety percent

Sam, but when he comes over to record. We also did the vocals

in my house for this, I'm just using you know, a pretty standard

mic, like a one hundred dollars microphone. And that's why I love about

music these days too, is like you can make something that sounds so good

for so cheap. Yeah, and pretty much anyone can do it. Yeah,

he'll come over and we'll work on melodies, we'll explore different ideas and

you know, record it down there. And like I said, we sent

it off to to this guy and Argentina that did a great job mixing it

altogether. Yeah. We we had talked last time Sam about that that website

what what is it call the a Soundbetter dot Com? Yeah, yeah,

I hadn't even heard of it, and I thought, wow, what a

great uh, what a great concept. Yeah, it's it's pretty amazing that

you know that we live in an era where you can do you know,

you can to place older drums and then you send it to the drummer and

then the drummer. Yeah yeah, I mean it's it's just it's really incredible.

Yeah, and then it's it's just, uh, it sounds really good.

Uh. Is the whole album recorded with that same process? Or yeah?

Yeah? Absolutely? Yeah, and now and again until what Sam was

saying later earlier. We we did a bunch of other songs too as well,

So we've got stuff, you know, sitting in the pipeline that's ready

to go, because I think that's one thing, you know, we've definitely

realized about the music industry is that most people aren't releasing footfall length albums or

that's not how they're getting their start. So it's a bit unorthodox. You

know. Obviously we've been releasing singles and that's kind of been helping. But

we have stuff planned for after this too as well, So we're gonna continue

releasing music. And you know that's kind of how you slowly but steadily build

a fan base. Oh yeah, yeah, you know, we live in

an era when you've got so many different options as far as how you want

to do that. And Chris h is in the chat room from the band

edgewise, he says, offending drummers daily. Yeah, it's funny. I

mean, you guys probably never imagined how could you like when you were in

in the other band and you go to Florida with that horrible recording experience.

It probably didn't occur to you. Now someday we'll just be able to do

this ourselves right well, and you know again not you know, not fully

doing ourselves, you know, but bringing in the right people. Well,

yeah, building building a good enough foundation to get to that point, because

you know, if you just have a bunch of sound doesn't mean you're ready

for an album, right right. That's the thing with Matt is that I've

always tied into his music because he finds a way to it's not just a

guitar riff. It's not just everything that he writes has a feeling behind it

that resonates with me very emotionally, and like I'll listen to twenty seconds of

something he's played and I'll immediately have melodies in my head. I'll immediately have

like an idea for the theme of the song. Okay, you know,

based off of that emotion. Yeah, so you know, keep a good

thing going. Yeah. Yeah, And uh, Matt, can you tell

me about that guitar. That guitar sounds really good. Yeah. It's it's

a brand named Orange Would. They're online only, they're out of Los Angeles.

Yeah, It's it's a Mahogany would And it sounds great, you know.

They I definitely took a chance on it because they only sell online,

so I didn't have a chance to try one beforehand. Yeah, but you

know, it was highly reviewed. I watched some YouTube reviews of it and

sounded great there, so I figured out, give it a shot, and

yeah, I love it. Yeah, yeah, excellent, No, it

sounds really good. And oh, Sam, we had two last time you

were here about vocals and you were what what was it? You said you

were learning how to how to do the the yelley and the growling. Yeah,

I was getting getting my screams back essentially. Yeah, I had done,

you know, sort of developed screaming on my own back and horns become

halos. You know. I ended up being kind of like the primary person

doing that towards the end of our you know band when we were playing.

But I hadn't done it at all in the twelve years that we ten really

ten ish years that we had been broken up before we started working on the

new project. Yea, and this was an opportunity. So I started working

with a vocal clean vocal instructor last year and then evolved into also working with

a extreme vocal coach this year because I I want to be as versatile as

I can you know, the more vocalists we can have. It is kind

of my ideal band is is, you know, three or four different singers

would be great to have all the harmonies, to be able to do as

much as stuff live possible as we can. Obviously, we do put a

lot of production into the songs. We like a lot of harmonies and you

know, kind of backing vocals. Yeah, but it's been cool to see

that a lot of the stuff I've worked with my amazing extream vocal coach Kyle

Farr's in band Late nine shout Out. Dude's amazing. He just guests spotted

for Emotionless and White this past weekend. I don't know him Guilford, Oh

dude, he was amazing. He killed it. But working with him a

lot of the stuff I've learned as far as like mouth and throat positioning and

like the way that the muscles interact is also helped my clean vocals. Really,

I feel like like my falsetto, my high notes are way more crisp

and easy to get to based on like you know, kind of breaking down

what's going on in the vocal tract. So they've both been amazing. Katie

galls my clean vocal instructors the New Market shout out to her as well.

I wouldn't be where I am without both of them, you know, the

best that I've ever been, and I'm only you know, trying to get

better, you know, so we're not messing around with this stuff. Where

ready to go? Yeah? Yeah? So you continue to go to both

vocal coaches? Yes, wow, yep, So I go to them regularly.

Yeah, you know, to just keep keep me honest, you know,

keep me on my game, you know, trying new things. You

know, Hey, I heard this the other day. I mean extreme vocals

in particular right now, are are just it's a vic quickly emerging landscape.

You know. There's a new new thing called the chortal that has been invented,

you know, in screaming, and there's there's a lot of different avenues

and styles you can go down and sounds that can be made. Yea.

You know, it's really uh, you know, people are experimenting very heavily

in it right now. Yeah, it's really cool to see. Did you

ever before you saw an extreme vocal coach, did you ever like hurt yourself

doing that? Didn't hurt myself? Know, maybe luckily that I didn't,

you know, just I I heard the sounds and one of the ways that

I had always learned, you know, kind of taught myself how to saying

was just by hearing other people's voices and trying to mimic those sounds, and

that was my my first experience, so you know, just kind of went

for it day at band practice. It's funny, there's this band, this

kind of like post rock metal band called Giant that I cannot find their music.

If you have any Matt, you need to. It's like there was

a brief time when we first started practicing, when we were younger that they

were like we would listen to them at practice and stuff. I feel like

them. They were one of the first bands that I I emulated. The

screams too, yeah, because it's you know, kind of long drawn out

that you could just one note at a time and you could really, you

know, get a sense of the feel. And so that's kind of how

I learned and evolved when I was younger. And it was definitely a more

kind of raw, you know, mixed vocal sound where they're was a little

bit of my voice behind it that I didn't even know what I was doing.

So, you know, one of the things I've worked on with Kyle

is kind of walking that back, learning the fundamentals, but then rebuilding,

bringing that voice back in to try to get you know, somewhat of that

sound again. Yeah. You know, so the voice can do amazing things.

Yeah, it's pretty wild once you start breaking it down and you'd see

how everything works together. Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's kind of how

I came by it. I just started doing it, yeah, because I

remember we talked to before about how one of the things that's really important if

you're going to do that is just learning how to do it safely so you

don't hurt yourself, because some people do. Yeah, we've seen so many

great streamers lose the ability to do it over time. You know. Uh,

Chino from Deft Tones and all has, you know, lost his voice

and then went through you know, revocal coaching and you know built it back

up. So yeah, it's it's difficult to do properly, yeah, because

it's not considering. I think there's kind of like, you know, a

little bit of taboo to it, you know, because it's it's it's not

conventional. A lot of people don't do it. A lot of people don't

know how to how to properly scream yeah, yeah exactly. Now. Uh,

the so the new album, So that's that's coming out September first,

and then do you guys do you guys have any kind of a timetable as

because you mentioned that you've already got more songs sort of ready to go.

I mean, are you gonna do you have a long term plan as far

as how it, uh you space it out. I think it's important to

like find the right spacing where you don't want to, you know, lose

your audience and you want to you know, keep a study momentum going.

Yeah. So you know, I've kind of always looked at as like,

I think we the speed at which we can produce music is pretty quick nowadays

with with all the technology and everything, and so I you know, I

my goal would be to maybe release a single every month or so, you

know, even after the album comes out. I think it's easily doable,

whether that be you know, things we can experiment with two you know,

one one month, it might be a cover, it might be an original

song something like that. Yeah, do you guys do any do you guys

know, any covers they you've played together. We haven't done anything officially.

We actually just start working on potentially a cover that we might be you know,

releasing later on. Yeah, I think we want to try to find

like the right the right song to cover. It's you know, whether that

be something that is brand new, recent in a totally different genre that we

want to put you know, our spin our style onto, or take something

that's you know, a much older song from some like maybe Kiss or The

Who or Aerosmith or something, you know, some classic rock band and and

put a modern, you know spin on it too. Yeah. Yeah,

very cool, very cool. Now, what's the So you guys don't have

any you don't have any shows coming up right because you're still kind of putting

the band together. But you said, uh, Sam, I think you

said, well, like end of fall, you're I would I would like

to be playing shows by end to fall, and that's all. I mean,

that's a very loose timetable. Yeah, you know, you know how

hard it is to wrangle band members absolutely together. So you know, we're

going to be doing as as much as we can to try to you know,

get ready in time for that. But you know, we'll see if

we get there. Uh, we want to do it right too, you

know, like we don't want to go out there and you know, you

know, be a colossal failure. Like we want to make sure that we

we're really tight and we give the audience what they deserve. Yeah, we're

not looking to you know, jump on and do any like you know,

twelve minute sets and that's all we got right twenty just talking. We want

to we want to come ready with a good you know, at least twenty

five thirty minute set that we can play start to finish. That's gonna give

people, uh, the experience of the album, you know, that's it's

intended to be heard and played. Obviously will be some variation for for live

shows, but yeah, you know, we want to be able to back

up the production that we have and the quality of the music. So Adam

Boss in the chat, Dam that's not our drummer. We know him,

Okay, we all way back. He says that you have always been one

of the most talented musicians he's ever met. I appreciate that very nice.

I love you, Adam, although he did spell it with two teas,

so maybe he means me. No, he definitely, No, he definitely

doesn't. He definitely doesn't mean me, No, he means you. Yeah,

no, very nice. So he's but he's someone you've worked with or

yeah, he's he's a guitarist as well. I think okay, he might

have briefly been in Hornse Become Haloes for a few moments. Oh yeah,

we had a couple of lineup changes. But yeah, yeah, and we

went to high school together. So oh, very nice, very nice.

Is he in a band currently? I don't think so okay, okay,

very good. Now where should before we run out of time and I do

want to, we'll end the show with I'm gonna play No Longer Myself Again?

Uh, the the newest single. But where should people go online?

What should they know about to keep up with everything you guys are doing.

Yeah, there's a bunch of places, I mean, check us out on

all the normal socials. So we've got a Facebook page, Facebook, dot

com, slash Houselights, we got TikTok account, we've got Instagram. Pretty

much everything is at House Slights. We try to, you know, cover

our bases there and get that name. But you can also go to our

link tree, which is link tree it's tr dot e slash house Lights and

that links you to all of our other websites. We've got merchant two.

We just got shirts made too, so actually, if you want to help

support the band, feel free to buy a shirt and then buy a stick

or two and yeah, absolutely that will help us out a lot will be

You will be streaming in all platforms you know, Spotify, Apple Music,

band Camp, SoundCloud, Yeah, you know, whatever, any other one

name. There's a million. There's some I have no idea what they are.

Thank you both so much, Sam and Matt from house Lights. This

has been one her fault