Grooveshark Artists

Last Halloween, we had the opportunity to meet & mingle with several artists during the Fest 9 and our first annual “Grooveshark Sessions”. Around 17 artists met up with us at Medusa Studios to record one live, acoustic track and an interview to be exclusively released via Grooveshark. After months of unwinding, editing, mixing, mastering, etc. - the tracks and interviews are here!

Next is Carpenter, an indie/punk/rock foursome from Vancouver. The following interview was conducted with Daniel Sioui, who sings vocals and plays “out of tune guitar” (his words, not mine). Carpenter’s interview and sessions was especially amusing considering how hungover the group was from the night before. Luckily, we had plenty of PBR and whiskey in stock to liven the group up!

Is this the first time you’ve played the Fest?

This is actually our second year playing the Fest, but I think the partying has definitely increased this year. I actually went to a show in a hotel room last night – Fest is amazing. It’s so crazy how international it’s become – literally every corner of the Earth is coming here for this one weekend to celebrate.

Can you name me a favorite city to play in?

We have a few, but as far as the US is concerned  - Philadelphia has sort of become our “adopted” city. We had so many friends there and the city really seems to have embraced our music. We know so many amazing bands from there too.

Do you guys play a lot of shows in Vancouver still?

Yeah! We play really often. A week after we get back we’re doing this thing called the Bro Show – it’s us, Living with Lions, and a few other bands. It’s literally just a party – our little Fest in Vancouver for just this one night.

How’s the scene in Vancouver?

It’s great. It literally feels like we have a real community. It seems like a lot of cities are lacking that – bands don’t really support each other and it seems way more competitive. In Vancouver, we’re really all friends and really supportive of each other. We do whatever we can to spread the word.

Can you name any bands you’re friends with in Vancouver that you would recommend our readers to check out? 

Definitely Living with Lions – who are sort of already well known – but they’re really great friends of ours. There’s another band called In Bear Country that are great. There are so many bands just starting that don’t even have names yet, but I know they’ll be good because all of the members have been in awesome projects before. It’s great to see Vancouver bands getting recognition again.

It’s funny – we used to have this thing where they had to play a certain percentage of Canadian content on the radio to support the arts. At one point, it was kind of hard for us to fill it with good, local bands. But now, more than half the bands I listen to are Canadian, they’re all over the radio, and bands like Arcade Fire are selling out huge arenas. It’s so crazy. It’s nice to see Canadian bands doing so well.

Any questions for us?

No – I just want to say just thanks so much for having us! It was really fun. Fest is so awesome – like you said, it’s great that  there’s so many people here  doing stuff to spread the word and get good music out there. There’s a lot of good music to be found.

I’ve probably seen about 80 bands play at the Fest, and they’re all good bands. Which is hard to do – there’s a lot of shitty bands out there. [laughs]

Do you have an album coming out on P+P anytime soon?

Yeah! We have a new album called Sea to Sky, it’s available on CD now, at goldstockrecords.com, and on Paper + Plastick’s website.