Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

The Inoculated Canaries – Who Are We?

I started listening to Pink Floyd heavily when I was about 12 years old. My dad sat me down and had me listen to The Wall in its entirety. My favorite thing about Floyd, is that even after you’ve heard one song a hundred times before, you’ll still find something new everytime you listen to it. There might be small musical inflection or sonic moment in time you missed where the band really does something special. I think much of that is due to the fact that every part of the process was analog. Natural accidental frequencies are bound to find their way onto a record when you’re dealing with tape and with wood and strings and various other sound making machines. And the dynamic of a tight band can’t be replicated when everybody plays their parts separately. Our approach with The Canaries has always been to capture a moment in time rather than to make a perfect recording. That’s really what all of those old songs we love were; moments in time that we can look back on to feel some certain type of way. One of the central tenets we have always stuck to as a band is that everything always has to be real. The band always has to be live, and the words always have to mean something.

One of the main themes in our songs is self-reflection. We live in a world where people spend much more time pointing a finger than they do looking at a mirror. If one of our songs resonates with somebody enough to make them feel just a little bit more vulnerable I would consider that a huge win. One girl reached out to us on Instagram told us that she had The Canaries on repeat during a really difficult point in her life. I think that’s probably the highest compliment we could ever ask for.

I met James when we were like, 14 years old. I always thought it was weird that he played the drums left-handed. Dylan and Brian came along later but it feels like we were always meant to do this together. We’re at the point in our relationship where we really don’t need to communicate with words anymore. Everybody has their specific roles. I write most of the music and lyrics, Brian is a wizard at coordinating vocals, Dylan is great at arranging, and James will throw in a good idea every once in a while. We don’t let James speak too much, it’s just better for everyone if he doesn’t. Something that has always been cool about this group of guys though, is that everyone has such eclectic music tastes. I’ve always been strictly about the classics, James is into Green Day and Streetlight Manifesto, Dylan was a Jazz kid in high school, and Brian always ended up playing Rent for theatre productions. Granted, he hates Rent but he still played through it a bunch. The biggest thing we had in common was that we were all really weird in high school and making music made us feel less bad about being weird.

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