Canada’s Billy Moon is readying his Punk Songs LP for release on September 14th via the Ohio-based label Old Flame Records. The work of musician and artist Graham Caldwell, the album was recorded in 2016, but due to life’s extenuating circumstances, the release had to be pushed back to the Fall of this year. Displaying Caldwell’s exuberant DIY spirit and reflecting on his upbringing in rural Ontario where he “wasn’t even the weirdest kid, but always felt like it,” Punk Songs is a gritty but whole-hearted embrace of life’s thrills and spills. This week Graham took some time to answer our questions about the upcoming LP and his musical influences while providing a peek behind the scenes into his creative process. You can check out the interview below and stream the double single “White Shoes“/”Dingus,” as well as his recent animated video for “DWTBA.”
LETV: Congratulations on the upcoming release of Punk Songs. Before we delve into the new record, what can you tell us about your musical upbringing? From a creative perspective, what was it like growing up in rural Canada and how does that influence your music today?
GC: Thanks! Growing up in a rural area is weird because you don’t realize how different you are culturally from city kids until you’re actually living around them. I grew up learning piano, and in about fourth grade my teacher taught me how to play G and D. When I first left for university it was a really strange experience and I realized I was living in the most population dense place I had ever been. I went home for a weekend and all of a sudden I remembered what it was like to be around fields and quiet. Can’t see or hear anybody. It’s nice to come back to. Musically, I think the quiet and living at a distance (amongst other things) made me develop a much deeper relationship with music growing up. I wasn’t a traditional “rural kid” so I had to find other ways to spend my time.
LETV: When you announced the release of Punk Songs this past July on Facebook you said that the album had been recorded “awhile ago” and you were just happy it would finally “see the light of day.” Can you tell us a little bit about where and how the tracks on the album were recorded and how Punk Songs finally came together as an album? It seems like there might be some backstory here…
GC: I mean… not really. We recorded in Boston at Rubber Tracks in the fall of 2016, we hoped that we’d be able to put the record out in the Spring but I’ve had this crazy plethora of incidents happen in my life over the past… 8 months or so, so the release was pushed back.
Doing it in the Rubber Tracks studio was really great, everyone there was super supportive and kind. We got to use some of the best equipment, it felt like a very “rock star” experience. Some of the songs are much older, and one or two I’d recorded years ago, but it felt like it was time to give them the real-deal studio treatment.
When I wrote that, it wasn’t so much about the record as it has been the whole process of being in a band. I’ve been moving around a lot. My dad had cancer so in the past couple years my brother and I were living at home so we could take care of him before he died. He was a big influence on me musically and I have to credit him with sort of nudging me towards the weirder side of music.
It’s just been a long couple of years.
LETV: As far as the writing and recording of your music go, is Billy Moon a solo project or are you aided by other band members? How about playing live?
GC: I’m incredibly grateful for my bandmates, but for the sake of most things, I consider it a solo project. I’ve had a couple different iterations of the band. The first time I played a show, it was a trio, then it was a duo for about 2 years. Then I played with a couple different drummers. Then a bass player, then we got a different bass player, and now a lead guitar player. Everyone I play with is amazingly talented and they help me put on the best possible show that I can. As a four-piece, we’ve been playing some of our best shows, and they’ve been going great.
LETV: Take us inside your creative process if you can. How do you approach writing music? Your music often seems very lyrically driven. Do you write lyrics before working on the arrangement of a track or the other way around? How about in the early phases of writing a song. Do you record to a DAW as you handle the arrangement of a track?
GC: Honestly dude, I feel like I don’t even have a real creative process right now, shit’s been so weird these past couple months.
I’ll get a melody in my head, maybe do a voice memo on my phone, sometimes a little riff or a line with a melody will happen and I realize that in order for that one thing to sound cool, I’ve got to write a song around that one idea so it can be good. But, you know, REALLY good.
Eventually, I’ll sit down with a bootleg copy of Logic X and a crappy pre-amp and I’ll try and get all the parts/harmonies/structure figured out. Once that’s happened I’ll send the demos off to the other guys in the band and we’ll work them out through jamming. You can only do so much with a song when you’re recording it alone, having someone else in the room lets you play with the dynamics and the structure. I wouldn’t know how to write drum fills, so thankfully there’s someone who can write and play some good ones.
If I didn’t embrace my failures I’d be grasping at thin air. Sometimes I guess I’m really hard on myself. I live with this harsh “unforgiving” self that can make it difficult to move on from past mistakes.
LETV: Your music is very personal in that it seems to be very much an expression of you—or more accurately your personality. Along the way, you seem more than willing to embrace your own failures or awkwardness—and you do it with a lot of good humor. Does honoring the “downside” of life thru humor fit into your creative vision?
GC: If I didn’t embrace my failures I’d be grasping at thin air. Sometimes I guess I’m really hard on myself. I live with this harsh “unforgiving” self that can make it difficult to move on from past mistakes. I think that one of the last “trends” in music was “positivity” which I found to be a really frustrating concept because it was so vague it didn’t require anyone to actually do or even educate themselves about anything. Not like I’m some great, shining example of activism and social justice, but I really hope that if people can show compassion to themselves, they can show compassion for others and from there we can stop this “everyone for themselves” cultural hierarchy bullshit.
LETV: Listening to Punk Songs brings to mind some classic indie bands like Pavement, Sebadoh, and Weezer. Considering you were born in 1992, and were quite young when these groups were around, who have you looked to musically for your influences?
GC: I mean, Weezer is definitely an influence. First I wanted to be a punk band, then I decided I wanted a jangly-er indie-rock sound. Think Los Campesinos or The Wombats. At the end of high school, I completely fell in love with Pinkerton (which I always thought was some “lost” Weezer record, that no one knew about) and Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast. That was kind of the beginning of it all. Then I heard Makeout Videotape, and that made my head spin.
I’m a big fan of Pissed Jeans, Johnathan Richman, Frank Zappa, Parquet Courts… Usually I tell people we sound like the Stooges, just to give them something. Just any band that makes music no one else makes with little to no social media presence. Lyrically, I love Single Mothers, Every Time I Die, Leonard Cohen, The Hold Steady… Richman I’ve only discovered this past year and that man is a living legend.
LETV: You recently released an animated video for the Punk Songs track “DWTBA.” What can you tell us about the making of this video, and for those not familiar, who or what is “The Namma”?
GC: Tru Dee is a very talented CG artist that I was really happy to have worked with. The Namma is just a warm fuzzy little ball. Pure innocence. They’re very easy to draw. They just want the best for you and everyone else. If you hugged them you wouldn’t want to leave. You ever gut hugged by a big guy? Or girl? It’s amazing.
LETV: Looks like you currently reside “outside/inside/kind-of general-area of Hamilton”—which is not far from Toronto. What’s the music scene like there? Is it easy to find like-minded musicians, fans, venues to play at or see music?
GC: Where I live is a little complicated right now… I’m sort of in between 3 different cities/areas. I’m currently living in my childhood home outside of Guelph, Ontario. The rest of the band is in Hamilton. Toronto’s great. Hope to actually live there someday. I think like most music scenes, if you put yourself out there, eventually people will start to notice you as an active member of the community. If they dig your music, all the better.
Years ago when Arts and Crafts was starting out, the Toronto scene was this wavy-gravy post-rock-esque scene (Do Make Say Think, Broken Social Scene, Owen Pallet), but since then bands like Greys, Dilly Dally, and Weaves have been around, the scene has gotten a lot fuzzier. I don’t know what’s on the horizon right now. I saw a kid at a liquor store who looked like Lil Pump without the face tattoos this weekend so maybe in a couple years we’ll get the Mac Demarco of SoundCloud rap and the scene will just follow suit.
LETV: What are you currently working on musically? Any plans to record new music or upcoming tour dates planned?
GC: We got a bunch of US tour dates in October with BIRDS. I haven’t been writing a lot recently but I’ve already written about 2-3 records worth of material so hopefully, once I get some time I can get all those finished and hopefully put them all out next year. All of existence is just matter bashing itself together.
I wish you all prosperity and the triumph of the working class.
