BAND: Mursic
INTERVIEWER: Kayli Ver Steeg (Kayli@bandvibe.com)
INTERVIEWEES: Tony, Mike, and Nick Montemarano, Robbie Hammett
DATE OF INTERVIEW: 2.23.07

BAND MEMBERS:
Tony Montemarano -Vocals
Mike Montemarano -Keys
Nick Montemarano - Guitar
Robbie Hammett - Drums
Brian Ramsey - Bass
Reece Miller - Accordian
Josh Espinoza - Guitar

BV: When did you first form the band?
Tony: 2003 is when I started writing the music and it was about 8 months ago when we started playing it as a band. Nick: Yeah we were just talking about how it hasn't even been a year.

BV: Well Mursic kind of has the whole interesting vibe about it, how did you come up with that?
Tony: When I first started writing, I was using a lot of weird keyboard sounds, such as organs, harpsichords, crazy synths, and weird beats... Nick: I think that's the thing that most distinguishes us apart from a lot of other bands. Tony: Yes, it's very keyboard oriented, it's almost like a digital symphony.

BV: What gave you the overall idea for it though? Like the theme...
Tony:I don't really know. It started, like I said before, with the organ and piano when I began composing "Elves on X" a long time ago. Bach and Beethoven were my biggest influences at the time and I thought it would be a cool sound to put a rock band behind that type of music and see what would become of it.

BV: So how did you meet the other guys in the band? Two of them are your brothers...
Tony: Yes two of them are my brothers: Nick and Mike. Robbie and Nick became friends when we first moved to La Jolla.
Nick: Yeah we've been friends for about 6 or 7 years now and have always played music with each other.
Tony: We met Josh through Mike. Josh and Mike were friends for a while and Mike brought it to our attention that he was a guitar player. We were looking for a guy who knew how to play good keyboards and possibly an accordion and someone mentioned Reece who went to the same school. As far as Brian, I have known him since Autobomb and was interested in the music when I first started writing and wanted to be part of it.

BV: So you've been in other bands right?
Tony: Yeah, my first band was Nobodyzero, in which I played bass. That band eventually shifted around to become A Vital Few... which is essentially the same band, we just lost a singer and someone else came in and I started playing lead guitar. After that I got into Sing The Body Electric, where I then played rhythm guitar and keyboards. That's when I started getting into the keyboards heavy and experimenting with weird sounds. That band didn't last too long after some small tours and the opportunity arose to sing in a metal band so I left Sing The Body and tried out a singing position in Autobomb. It was my first time singing lead in a band. Although that band only lasted about a year or so, it really prepared me for my role in what I do now for Mursic live.

BV: So you're only focusing on Mursic right now?
Tony: Yea pretty much.

BV: So who would be your biggest inspirations? You mentioned Beethoven earlier...
Tony: Danny Elfman, a little bit of Oingo Boingo, Faith No More, some Nine Inch Nails...
Nick: And I'm sure everyone else has their own inspirations.
Robbie: What we tend to do now is we all take our own personal influences and we all share this vision of Mursic and what it is and what it has been and what we want it to be and incorporate the different styles that we all have and then making the music what it is.

BV: So you guys all have a lot of input on it?
Tony: On our newer stuff, yeah. "Twilight Tango" for instance is one of the newest songs that the whole band collaborated on and has an element of each musician to his instrument. Same goes for "Search for Surreal." But before I was doing a lot of the composing, you know? And then Nick really helped me with the decision of getting a band together to learn the parts. The sooner we learned the music, the sooner we will see a stage and start playing shows.

BV: So what is the writing process?
Nick:"Search for Surreal" was actually started as a joke...
Tony: And I think its one of our best...But the process now, we really haven't been writing, we all have lots and lots of ideas. Once someone gets an idea we put it down on this program and leave it to work on later. Kind of like a digital composing notebook that saves our thoughts and riffs that we can later turn into songs. The writing process now starts with someone who has a riff, melody, or beat and then we all put in our own input. The coolest thing is that everyone is now hearing and seeing the same sound and vision that was once only mine.
Nick: Every song is really different but it still has the same Mursic sound to it.
Tony: The next task is to begin writing the final songs for the first album...

BV: Yeah, when do you think that will happen?
Tony: I'm not sure actually, but we're going to figure out exactly what songs we want to be on it. There's a few that I wrote a long time ago that we don't play currently that must be finished and heard as part of the album. The first song and title of the album will share the same name, "Spawned from a Nightmare." The beauty of having a band around me is that I haven't been able to finish a few of the older but very important songs due to a strange writer's block but now there are 6 other musicians with a similar ear and great ideas who will help piece it all together.
Nick: Such as "Tango" began with Josh playing the main riff on guitar and it ended up being Reece on the accordion. He is the only one that plays the part now.
Tony: Also, "Hole of the Hare" began with Mike playing a piano part over and over and I heard things when he played it so we sat down and arranged and wrote to make it a finished product. Same goes with Nick and "Wind in Her Hair." He wrote pretty much the whole thing on the acoustic guitar and we were jamming one night and he was playing it and I was messing around with a piano part over the top of his part, and we were like damn that's really cool. We then put it into our program and rearranged it so many times into so many different ideas until it is as you hear.
Nick: But it wasn't at its peak moment yet...
Robbie: None of the songs that you hear now are anything like they were when they first started. You can tell when a song is finished when it is played live over and over and it just feels good.
Tony: Let me put it in this perspective, I think the difference between what Mursic is doing and a lot of other rock bands is these are musical compositions. They are being arranged meticulously and if you listen to every instrument individually it's like listening to a symphony. Every instrument individually doesn't make up the whole song...it sounds like it's missing something, but when you put it all together it sounds complete. So what we have done is taken individual ideas and arranged them into quite complex compositions that are more borderline classical rock and roll, than just three or four chord progressions. That's why you can listen to it over and over again and hear something new every time. Such is the same with classical music.
Robbie: If you come to a practice and you hear us without one of our instruments it sounds completely different, it sounds a lot emptier.

BV: So what genre would you classify yourself as?
Tony: It's hard to describe. When people ask me that question I tend to just say a lot of different words like, Italian, Pirate, Gypsy-ish, Arabic sounding. It's very composed and synthesized like a digital orchestrated rock band.
Mike: It can also be very fantasy/whimsical sounding.
Nick: It's hard to classify when you know what we are putting out as an image, such as our artwork and colors. If you go to our website you will immediately get a sense of a dark-gothic aura. Yet we feel it to be more deep than dark. If you had never seen the art or visuals that Mursic is, the music will sound and feel a lot different.

BV: So who designed your shirts and your website and who came up with the overall look
Tony: I designed the logo. I drew the "Soul," the first letter of the logo when I was in a music class a long time ago. I was just sketching and doodling and that image was the result and I thought it looked really cool, but creepy and haunting as well. I wrote "logo?" next to it and pondered for months on what to use it for.
Nick: I'll always remember Tony had it on this little yellow piece of paper. He's like "Dude, look at this thing, I've never been able to re-draw it." I was like "Damn, that's sick, maybe you can use that as a symbol or something, like do some signature thing with it." He also said, "I have a copule of names for what I want to call the music." He read them to me and they were all pretty weird but one of them stood out the best. Mursic was on there, and I was like well, that's a solid name, kind of risky because it's like "music" with just another letter.
Tony: It's not...conceited, but it's very bold. In one of my previous bands we would refer to jamming or playing music together as "let's play some mursic." Kind of slang for music, I guess you could say. As far as the "soul" image fitting in, no one that I know of at least has drawn their perception of a human soul, because you can't see it. A heart is a tangible organ, so it can be easily drawn or simplified to a symbol. But the soul remains to be unseen...I decided it would be my perception of what a visual "soul" would look like in illustration form.
Mike: It slightly resembles the shape of a human, it has a lot of body too, and it is kind of droopy and creepy...
Tony: Mike started to get into the art a lot as well. He took "Hole of the Hare" and created rabbit ears and a vortex/tornado image in which I then re-created in Adobe Illustrator to later put on t-shirts and canvasses.
Nick: All the songs have their own personality to them and you can almost paint a picture while listening to it. There is so much more than just the music.
Tony: Exactly. We're trying to do it with shirts to find logos that represent the songs and wear Mursic. You can listen to it but you can also see it. Most band t-shirts just have their name across the front. It's just so one-dimensional. It gets old. We want our clothing to be our statement, like we're creating a line of clothing that reflects our music, you know?
Nick: Basically when you hear a song and can recognize the music as "Mursic" due to its qualities, the same will go for our art. You see a piece of art or a t-shrit and know it to be "Mursic" for what it is and not just the name slammed across the shirt.

BV: Are their any stories behind any of the songs or any meanings?
Tony:\Well, every song's lyrics have their hidden meanings and twists. Like for instance, "Wicked Words" is about a female that attempted to tell me how to write and compose my own music and that I was "trying too hard to make the music complex or dark...Why does there have to be so many layers? Why are you trying to do it like this?" One day I told her that I had uploaded my music to the internet for people to hear and she said, "Oh, is it even good enough to be for everyone to hear?" That hurt pretty bad because my music is me, it is what I do and what I hear in my head. Whereas, "Wind in Her Hair" is more about love and want and the untouchable.
Nick: It's not a physical love.
Tony: A lot of them are left very vague and surreal, to make you think and perceive the song your own way. People ask me what they are about and I say "Make of it what you will."
Nick: I don't remember writing "Wind in her Hair" but the words kind of put out the image of just this non-existing female and it's like the idea of having this love that it's there but it's not there. It's present in the fact that the love is so ideal and the girl is so ideal, it just can't happen. It's almost like "Tango" too, but that's more sexual and dance-y.
Mike: "Tango" is more mischievous.
Tony: Yeah, it's definitely more sexual and "Search for Surreal" is exactly what it is. It's surreal and vague and eventually I'll have the lyrics up so people can start reading them. It started off as like a vampire song. Living forever and searching for anything out of the normal "world." It also ties into "Hole of the Hare." Our second album will be called "The Transition of Time" and it ends with "Search for Surreal" and right now it starts with "Hole of the Hare" but that's the concept for that whole album is time and the "tick-tock" of change. "The Forge" is about life with a metaphor to pirates. There are a lot of pirate-esque words in there and has a great adventure sound throughout the song.
MIke: It's even more powerful than that. The first lyrics are "Let's set sail from here, set fire to this crying land." So in other words, there's no turning back because you've set fire to your past. And it's forging a life ahead, which I think is great for this generation and any generation. It's a great message.
Nick: So many people are so afraid of change, and one of my favorite quotes is by Refused and it goes: "To live in a fear of change is not to live at all." That's kind of what gave me some inspiration. Always have to be moving forward, always have to be expecting new things. You can't dwell on the past and you can't let the past affect your future.
Tony: And even the lyrics in themselves change. Every verse, every chorus tweaks a little. That's our style. If you read "Wicked" or "Wind" every chorus changes a little bit and it ends up almost like a story. That's the way that we've started writing.
Robbie: We're just trying to push all the boundaries and encourage people by listening. I personally feel like our music is very accessible, really easy to listen to but its also something unique. Our whole message and our whole mindset is that we can bring change and that people can change and not be afraid of it because it's really good for you and not so easy to accept, but that you can always try.

BV: Do you feel you guys have changed and grown a lot since you first started? You have accomplished a lot for it not even being a year...
Tony: Yeah we've done a lot, we're going on our third show now...The first show we played we headlined, the second show we put on all by ourselves, which includes building a 40 foot stage 4 feet to 6 feet high all out of lumber, bringing in a sound system and our own lighting which helped a bit in bringing 330 people to raise money for our friend who was in an accident, and now we're playing our first SOMA show and we're headlining again. It's weird for me because I've been in so many bands. The way a band works is you work your way up from no one knowing you and so far we haven't played first or second, we've always been last. And I don't know why it works out that way but it has just happened. Our sound is very big, it's very epic so I think the expectations are a bit higher, not only for ourselves but for our listeners.
Mike: We feel that we are very motivated in accomplishing something big with this music. We're very organized and we practice close to every day of the week and twice as much on weekends. As much as we possibly can. And it's so important with this music to practice so much due to the complexity and difficulty of some of the parts. It is very consuming and is what drives us to be what we envision.
Tony: It's intense sometimes we can only play one time through the set because it's so emotionally draining. It's very overwhelming and after the practice we sit outside and are so drained because there are so many melodies and so many emotions and layers within the music. It's very intense.
Nick: I don't want to sound pretentious but it must be hard to play after us...not because we "feel" we are really good but because we feel it is a different and refreshing sound and we really try to take the attention of everyone, we want everyone's entire attention when we're playing our set.
Robbie: Like they were saying, we have been practicing almost everyday for about 6 months now and there are not many bands out there that do that. Especially local bands because I've been in local bands as well and this is not something that usually happens in a "band" situation. They'll usually practice a couple times a week and they'll have a show coming up and they'll practice like four times a week to prepare for the show. We are always practicing and preparing ourselves so we can be the best musicians possible. Not just individually, but we want Mursic to be known and we want everyone to know this is what we are; this is what we have been working on for so long...You need to hear this because this is the most important part of our lives. This is the most important thing to every single one of us.
Tony: We're all starting to take up lessons again. Robbie is taking lessons from one of my good buddies. I'm taking vocal lessons here and there, Mike is going to start taking piano lessons, Nick is studying music right now and when he has more time will be taking guitar again. We're just trying to absorb and become our instrument because you'll only become better if you master your craft and you master what you're trying to accomplish.

BV: How many instruments do you play?
Tony: I play as much as I can. I started off with piano when I was really young. I got into saxophone when I was in Elementary School because we had to pick a "band" instrument, so I played that for 6 years and learned Jazz from my grandpa and grandma. Got a drum set, got a guitar, started learning some rock and roll...my dad taught me how to play some Led Zeppelin, and this and that. I got into my first band playing bass and picked up all the other essential instruments needed in any performing band arrangement until this point.

BV: What is your favorite song to play live?
Tony: "Search for Surreal" for me...
Nick: "Tango
Robbie: "Tango" and "Wind in Her Hair"
Mike: "Hole of the Hare"
Tony: I like "Search for Surreal" because I'm constantly doing something with either my feet, voice, or hands, and it's so driving and powerfully colorful.

BV: Is there anything else you want to say?
Tony: Mursic.com

For more official information on Mursic, please log onto:
www.mursic.com
www.myspace.com/mursicmursic

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