The Town Heroes - ECMA Interview - Apr 14/12

 I had a chance to sit down with Mike Ryan from The Town Heroes to talk about ECMA and about the band in general.  They played a showcase at the Oxygen Complex on Thursday night and also played an acoustic set at the Spincount, Audio Blood, and Broken Chord showcase in the Member’s Lounge on Friday evening.

1. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

- My name is Mike, I play in a band called The Town Heroes, I’m from Cape Breton and I live in Halifax now.  We’ve been a band for just over two years we play as a two piece band with our other member, Bruce Gillis.

2. Tell me about your most recent album.

- The album feels a little old for us now; it’s been out for a little over a year so we’re getting to the point where we’re just finishing up a new album actually.  The first album, Birds and Fear, was recorded with a friend at his home studio.  We did 11 tracks there, and I did 2 tracks while I was in school for audio engineering at NSCC.  So far we had 3 singles off of it, one of them won the Radio Star Songwriting Competition last year for the East Coast; we went to Canadian Music Week and got to perform on the Tiki stage because of it.  We also got a couple of top 3 rankings on the East Coast Countdown from the album as well.  Our next album will be releasing in the early fall, so that’s our album status right now!

3. What’s the best part about being a musician?

- Probably the free sandwiches we get at stuff like this, haha. I mean as soon as we’re done this I’ll be heading down to the registration room and will stand there and eat for about 20 minutes straight; sandwiches, granola bars, pop, coffee, and everything I can handle!  I actually think the best part of it is meeting other bands, and you just swap albums with everyone you meet so you have a giant pile of albums you can listen to on road trips.  You get to meet so many cool people, get to hear everything they’re doing and learn from them as well.

4. How has playing in a two-piece band been, since you don’t see too many two-pieces around?

- Myself and Bruce played in multiple bands before we put this together.  We lived together and were always playing music.  I had a bunch of songs written and we were rehearsing them together just the two of us.  We actually did originally try out a few musicians for a bass player, but they just didn’t really fit our dynamic so we just decided to try it as a two piece band.  We had to rearrange a lot of our songs to try and make them fit for a two piece to be able to play live.  The songwriting changes quite drastically when you want to be able to have a full sound as two people on stage.  Travelling is pretty easy since we can fit the two of us and our gear into a mid-sized car, and when we traveled to Germany it was just two flights instead of say five flights.  It’s just a lot of convenience for sure.  There are lots of pros to it but obviously there are some cons because we can’t sound as full as a six piece band, but I don’t think anyone expects us to go up and sound like that.  I really like playing as a two piece band; it’s a lot of fun.  You just pray that you don’t break a string because that never ends well!

5. How has ECMA been so far for you?

- It’s wonderful!  We played at the Oxygen Complex and had a great showcase there.  Everyone in Moncton is incredibly friendly just like everyone on the East Coast and I got to see a lot of our friends play.  There are also bands I’ve never seen before that really impressed me.  I’ve met a lot of new people, I’m having a lot of fun, and it’s been a great time all around.  You can never complain about anything happening music-wise on the East Coast; it’s always a blast!