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Interview with Bored City

Q: Welcome back! It’s fantastic to have you with us again. Since our last review, a lot has happened in your musical journey. To kick things off, could you share some highlights or pivotal moments that have shaped your artistic path lately?

Drew~ “For me after a long time of problems with arthritis in my hands it’s been a period of reconnecting with my guitars. I’m always looking for a special sauce combination of elements that exists primarily in my head and I’ve not been able to add guitar elements as much as I would have liked. But the hands feel for the moment (touch wood) a bit better, and that comes across in the music.”

Lisa~ “I honestly can’t put my finger on one. I can never predict when lyrics are going to “come to” me.  I never sit down and say “Okay, I’m going to write a song today”, it doesn’t work that way with me. I may go for months without writing anything and worry that I may never write again and then some old memory comes back when I least expect it and I’ll write three songs within a matter of a few minutes. Those songs of course are connected by an individual thread that no one sees or suspects but they’re there.”

Q: Can you describe the musical style of Sleeps Under Beams in three words?

Drew~ “Blimey….dense….emotional…..moody?”

Lisa~ Heartfelt, emotional, and evolving.

Q: How do you stay connected with your fans, and what role do they play in shaping your musical journey? 

“I find it difficult to even stay connected with my dog, so I’ll leave this one to Lisa.”

Lisa~ “We have our music listed on several sites where fans can connect with us and give us feedback or ask questions and I always make sure that I answer each one back with all honesty, sometimes I may even give them a slight glimpse/idea of what we’re working on next because they were kind enough to reach out to us.  I actually love connecting with people and interacting with them.  We also have a section on our official website, a blog of sorts where I post our upcoming songs, where I try to give insight on the song itself, and where the inspiration for the lyrics came from.”

Q: You have just released your new single, ‘If A Kiss Could Speak’. Is there a story behind it?

Lisa~ “Everything I write is personal and ‘If A Kiss Could Speak’ is a prime example of that. I once had a kiss that didn’t just touch my lips, it wrapped itself around my entire being, it was the most blissful and intimate experience I could ever have imagined.  It also offered a promise that was never fulfilled and over time living with it, it became torturous. One night I decided I couldn’t ‘live with it any longer’ so I literally put my fingers to my lips, kissed them, blew the kiss back to him and said out loud “I’m returning your kiss back to you!”. I felt like if I wrote a song it would be a finalization for me.  There are so many songs about lost love and I wanted ‘If A Kiss Could Speak’ to be ‘different’ so rather than write it from my perspective, I wrote it with the intention that it be from the kiss’s point of view, what it would say to him if it could speak.

Q: What is your favorite verse or part of the track and why?

Drew~ “For purely personal reasons for me it’s when the first verse comes in. It’s the memory, it was just before Christmas and I was sat down with my beloved baritone guitar with no pain in the hands and then the fact that the first lyric is “Hello, my old friend..” felt very poignant and joyful. I felt like I could paint again.”

Lisa~ It’s hard to pick a favorite part for me but if I had to choose, it would be the chorus.  I make several references to songs by The Cure (I even mention ‘cure’ in the bridge) because that was one thing he and I shared, a love for The Cure.  Should he ever hear it, I want him to know that THAT kiss is speaking directly to him, no one else, and that I’ve finally freed myself from its/his grip on me. Am I being petty, hoping that he hears it?  Maybe, but it’s important for me to believe that he will.

Q: Can you walk us through the creative process of producing the song, “If A Kiss Could Speak”?

Drew~ “We started as usual with Lisa’s lyric and a basic idea for tempo and chord changes. Anna then took that and put a demo of the topline together. From then on it was a question of textures and colours. The demo swims around in my head and I begin to hear in more detail what I feel about instrumentation.  At that point I sat down in the studio with the instruments and started to try to paint that thing I was hearing, to make it tangible.

Q: What has been the most memorable concert or performance for Sleeps Under Beams so far?

Drew~ “We don’t play live. As we’re scattered across 2 continents it would take the kind of budget we just don’t have. Even if we had the budget, I don’t really enjoy playing live. I’m too stuck in my head and live very happily in the studio. For a conventional band that would be a problem but thankfully we don’t have that kind of friction.”

Q: Reflecting on your body of work, each song holding its unique significance, could you share a particular track that stands out to you personally? What makes that specific tune special, and why does it hold a place of pride in your musical journey?

Drew~ “For me it’s always the current one. That sounds like a cliche but it’s a need I have that also motivates me to make each record better than the last. So if I didn’t feel like that, maybe I’d lose the drive. For historical ‘pride of place in the journey’, I would have to say “Like Veronika”, because it was like a puppy in a pound- an old instrumental demo I had had for a long time and the fact that Lisa and I managed to give it a new meaning together, and a home in our partnership, was extra special.”

Lisa~ I love each and every one of our songs, it’s really hard for me to pick a favorite, (It’s like asking me what part of myself I like best…lol) however, I too, would have to say “Like Veronika”.  As Drew mentioned, the music was already written and I listened to it over and over before he even asked me if I would like to write lyrics for it, it may sound strange but I actually ‘felt/feel something’ like a strange vibration in my head when I listen to it. Unlike most of our songs, I based the lyrics off of my favorite book, “Veronika Decides to Die” by Paulo Coehlo.  He never wrote a sequel and as a writer I had to imagine what happened once his story ended, I had to tie up the loose ends for myself.  We’re actually working on a new song now, “Love Always, Veronika” that we hope to release in August or early September and it’s a sequel, if you will, to “Like Veronika”.  We’re both very excited about it!

Q: Exploring the diverse creative processes within the music industry is always fascinating. Could you provide insight into Sleeps Under Beams’s unique approach to crafting music? From the initial spark of an idea to the finished song, how do you navigate the creative journey and bring its musical concepts to life?

Drew~ “I couldn’t say whether ours is unique- I doubt it. These days artists find it easier to collaborate at a distance, so in that sense it’s very liberating. I spent a lot of time earlier in my life trying to put bands together and it always fell apart due to one reason or another. Now, because of technology we can come together regardless of physical distance and find that common thing. It doesn’t have to be “oh, is there a bassist or a drummer within travelling distance who feels music the same way and doesn’t drive me insane”. Music is the oldest way we have of coming together as a species and the world is smaller but the horizons are further and further away.
That spark of a song comes from pure chemistry. Lisa’s lyrics and Anna’s voice always speak to me in colours and textures and that enables me to write music from the heart. When we’re working on a new song I won’t listen to any other music at all, not even in the car. That gives me a silence to work in and silence is the greatest inspiration to me, because then I can start filling in the landscape. If I sat down and tried to work it through logically and rationally it wouldn’t work for me. I have to let a set of words and a melody sit in a landscape of silence in my head and then it becomes a subliminal process, incubation over intention. In a world full of noise, waiting for a melody and a fragment of words to sit in absolute quiet means I am letting the emotional weight settle before I commit to any technical execution. That brings anxiety sometimes, but once it settles and the ideas start flowing, that’s a time of joy and I can crack open my studio toys and get to work. But in another sense, the real work has already been done in the background.”

Lisa~ “I think Drew gave a great answer, but another component for me is ‘trust’.  I completely admire both Drew and Anna and I know without any doubt that they’re going to put their hearts and souls into a musical landscape that fully encompasses my lyrics and brings them to life.”

Q: As we wrap up our conversation, looking ahead, what aspirations or dreams do you have, and what message would you like to share with your fans as they continue to accompany you on this musical journey?

Drew~ “Some weird movie soundtrack would be great. Something really dark and eerie. My dream was always David Lynch-based but now he’s sadly no longer with us. So, Darren Aronofsky would be fantastic. Or Jordan Peele. Get them on the blower lol”

Lisa~ Again Drew has given a great answer. As for our fans, we appreciate each listener and I honestly hope that as we evolve that they’ll continue to appreciate our music, recognize the love we put into each song, and move forward with us on our musical journey.

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Interview with Upcoming 100
Upcoming 100: What inspired you to become a musician, and how did you know you wanted to make music a career?
 
Drew: As a young child I found my parents' record collection, all vinyl albums, and I would spend      hours obsessing over the sleeves while not knowing how to work the record player, nor daring to ask. I most vividly remember the other-wordly covers of David Bowie's 'Aladdin Sane' and 'Low'. They made the most impact. Once I heard what they sounded like, I was in love and knew I wanted to learn how to create that noise for myself.
 
Upcoming 100: Can you tell us about your songwriting process?  How do you come up with ideas, and what inspires your lyrics?
 
Lisa: As far as our songwriting process, it varies, depending on whether I’ve written the lyrics first or if Drew’s composed the music first.  If the lyrics are first, I send them to Anna Rea (also our vocalist) and she writes the melody, she then sends the composition to Drew and he composes the arrangement around it.  If Drew’s composed the music first, it’s a reverse process.  He sends the arrangement to Anna, she writes the melody and then it’s sent to me to write the lyrics.  Honestly, I don’t come up with ideas for the lyrics, it’s more like they present themselves to me. They’re like a gift from the Universe and I’m just a conduit.  I can be doing the most mundane things and the lyrics will just start coming to me, sometimes it will just be a really good line, and as soon as I write it down, other lines follow.  Each of our songs carries a piece of me within them though, even if I don’t realize it until months later.
 
Upcoming 100: What are some of your biggest musical influences, and how have they shaped your sound?
 
Drew: David Bowie, Joy Division, The Cure, My Bloody Valentine, The Cocteau Twins, in that chronological order. Each of these artists have something which makes my heart flutter, and have planted something inside my creative space. Its been a continuing journey of self-discovery how to fuse these elements together to create something new and in a sense timeless.
 
Upcoming 100: What’s the story behind your latest release/album/single?  What inspired you to create it?
 
Lisa: Our latest single is “My Mister Goodbye” and it’s one of the songs that Drew composed first.  Once  Anna finished with the melody line and sent it to me, the first line I actually wrote was the line, “Staying’s not your style, My Mister Goodbye”. It became the focal point that the rest of the song was written around.  I admit, I did have to dig pretty deep into my subconscious with this one, more than any of our other songs.  It was a bit like digging up ghosts and old memories of things/people that I thought I’d buried.  But it was well worth it in the long run, the song turned out beautifully and has become one of my favorites. 
 
Upcoming 100: How do you approach your live performances? Do you have any rituals or pre-show routines that help you get ready?
 
Drew: We don't ever perform live. I used to perform live with other bands and the anxiety was so intense, to the point that it affected my health. It felt like I was trying to share something so personal and so close to my center, that I just couldn't overcome it. The studio though - that feels truly like I'm at home.
 
Upcoming 100: What do you hope fans take away from your music?  Is there a message or theme you’re trying to convey?
 
Lisa: What I hope fans take away from our music is that we’re authentic, we’re raw, and we don’t necessarily adhere to norms and standards.  We blur genres and we’re a bit difficult to place into any one category.  As for any messages we want to convey, it would be that ~ maybe life isn't always pretty, but if you're lucky, you can still find the beauty in it, and that's what we try to do. We mix the dark with the light and vulnerability with inner strength, not only in our instrumentation, but in the lyrics, and even Anna’s vocals.  
 
Upcoming 100: How do you balance your creative pursuits with other aspects of your life, such as personal relationships or business responsibilities?
 
Drew: My friends and loved ones have long accepted that at any point in time I am working on something in my head, some new idea or half-baked arrangement oscillating in my subconscious. Time away with the family is a welcome break in the end but I admit I have to be torn away from the studio at first. If that's who you are then I think you owe it to yourself to just be that and others will accept it if they connect with you.
 
Upcoming 100: Can you tell us about some of your favorite songs or albums that you’ve worked on?  What made them special to you?
 
Lisa: Wow, that’s a difficult question for me as I love every song that we’ve worked on, I know it may sound cliche but it’s the truth.  If I had to choose one though, I think I’d have to say “Like Veronika” which was on our first album, “Chasing Beauty”.  It was a song Drew had written the music for before he and I had ever met.  We’d been working together for a short while when he told me about his youtube channel at the time, it was all instrumental music but this one particular song just hit me so differently than any song that I’d ever heard before by any artist.  I can’t even describe how elated I was when he asked me to write the lyrics for it.  I wanted to work with it so badly that it was almost an ache, so for that reason, I’d have to pick it.
 
Upcoming 100: What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced as a musician, and how have you overcome them?

Drew: I suffer from arthritis which affects my hands quite badly for sometimes long periods. There's nothing really to do except to try to keep my hands away from extremities of temperature- gloves in the cold, that sort of thing. I've long learned to accept it; if I can play, I can play, and if I can't, then there's plenty of other studio work to get on with. It is frustrating though.
 
Upcoming 100: How do you stay inspired and motivated to continue creating music?  Do you have any specific habits or routines that keep you creative juices flowing?
 
Lisa: Speaking for myself and I think it’s probably the same for Drew.  I HAVE to create.  It’s not a choice, it’s a must, like breathing.  If I can’t create I become depressed.  It’s probably hard for a lot of people to understand the compulsion, the NEED.  Some people in the past have called it my “hobby” and that’s like telling me that my life is just my hobby, writing/creating is not something I do for fun or just because I enjoy it.  I wish it were that way sometimes, but it’s not and I won’t pretend otherwise.  I can’t think of any habits or routines, it’s something that just comes naturally.
 
Upcoming 100: What's next for you in terms of new music or projects? Can you give us a sneak peek into what's coming up?
 
Drew: We already have 2 or 3 new demos on the block and we're very excited about them. For us it's always about the next thing, and we always try to make every record better than the last in some way. We now have our sound and a settled emotional palette. When we start work on another demo it's about listening to what the song is asking of us. At that point a project can go anywhere, in any direction, and I think you can hear that in the way we don't really fit into an old fashioned idea of 'genre'. It's just an expression of someone projecting their own emotional drives onto a page or a musical space.
 
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Interview with Music Worldwide Directory

Adult Contemporary group, Sleeps Under Beams!

Sleeps Under Beams is a striking name. Where did it originate, and what does it represent for your music? Actually the name started off as an inside joke between us. When we (Drew Campbell & Lisa A Swain) first started working together, Drew lived/lives in The Netherlands and I lived in North Carolina, USA so there was a six hour time difference between us. I'm quite the night owl and wouldn't go to bed until dawn, after Drew had already woken up. He liked to joke around about me possibly being a vampire because of my sleep schedule and would make comments about me going to sleep hanging upside down from a beam like a bat in some ancient, abandoned cathedral. It seemed each name we liked or came up with was already taken, so I asked him what he thought about calling ourselves "Sleeps Under Beams", it was a bit quirky, it was available, and as we both love goth and alternative music, as well as ancient architecture, it seemed like the perfect name for us. Luckily he agreed so, Sleeps Under Beams, it is.

How would you describe your music to someone who's never heard it before? I guess I'd say we're alternative with a twist. We really don't think we adhere to one genre, though we lean towards alternative, indie, and dream pop. It's more like we blur and blend genres. The lyrics and music take us where they want to go, we're more like conduits for some higher power that directs us.  

What are some of your biggest musical influences, both individually and as a collective? We both love alternative music, especially The Cure, The Cranberries, The Cocteau Twins, and New Order.  Individually, Drew, as the composer and multi-instrumentalist, takes inspiration from: David Bowie, Lou Reed, Chopin, Rachmaninov and My Bloody Valentine. As the lyricist, my influences are Bread, Gordon Lightfoot, and Jim Croce as I find them to be great story tellers and that's what I strive to do with my lyrics, tell a story.

Can you walk us through your songwriting process? Is it collaborative, or does one member typically take the lead? The process really depends on the song, whether Drew has composed a beautiful piece or whether I have the lyrics already written, we work both ways. Most often, I already have the lyrics written. If that's the case, once the lyrics are written, our vocalist, Anna Rea (also from The Netherlands) writes the melody and then Drew composes the arrangement around it. If he has a piece already composed, it goes to Anna, she writes the top-line and then it comes to me to write the lyrics. As far as taking the lead, that's pretty equal I think, we each have our own strengths that luckily complement the other's, a rare and perfect "partnership", really. In all fairness though, Drew does shoulder most of the responsibilities both creatively and technically, and I leave and trust everything to his sonic vision. If he wanted to be boss though, I'd let him...lol!

What are the biggest challenges you face in today's music industry? As as an independent, unsigned artist, I'd say, growing a larger fan base. We're played on some radio and online stations around the world as well as all of the major streaming sites, but we don't really have the budget to saturate the airwaves.  We're also not "commercial" or mainstream, we don't follow popular trends, or feel like we should have to follow "unspoken rules" about song structure, etc. I think that sometimes people in the music industry have a problem with that so they're not going to play, much less promote, artists and bands who go against the "norm". You have to be heard to have listeners, much less draw fans to your music.

Where do you record? Drew has an in-home studio, Subscotia Sound & Subscotia Records, for the instrumentation, while Anna has a separate studio that she goes to, to record the vocals. 

Do you perform live often? We don't have the ability to perform live.  Drew is the only musician, he plays every note that you hear on our songs and there are so many layers to each of them, it's impossible.

Are there any particular themes or messages you hope to convey through your music? I wouldn't call it a theme exactly, more like a connecting thread for the songs, lyrically, each one holds a piece of me in a sense. As for any messages we want to convey, it would be that ~ maybe life isn't always pretty, but if you're lucky, you can still find the beauty in it, and that's what we try to do. We mix the dark with the light and vulnerability with inner strength, not only in our instrumentation, but in the lyrics themselves.

Tell us about your latest project. We just finished and released our fourth track, "My Mister Goodbye", from the current album we're working on, titled, "Glossed Souls".  Though it's a song about love coming to an end, both Drew's music and Anna's vocals are sultry, sensual, and alluring in stark contrast to the melancholy that would normally be expected. Our way of blending dark and light as I mentioned earlier.

What can we expect from you in the future? We have another song that's in production, titled, "Scarred".  It's actually the first set of lyrics that I ever wrote, which was decades ago. They're probably the "darkest" lyrics that will be heard on one of our songs, but I'm not hanging up my writing pen any time soon, so that could change. Both, vocally and musically it will be one of the most complex songs we've done, but that's my opinion, Drew's may differ. Once that song is finished, we have other's lined up, enough for an album.