5Q

What inspires Standby Red 5 to continue creating music?

As with most musicians or artists, we are inspired by our surroundings, be it the rugged desert we grew up in or the lush green mountains we have experienced overseas. Traveling is a big part of our inspiration because experiencing new things can birth emotions you have never felt before, that translate to new tasks we want to try in our music. Once you experience something new and powerfully impressionable, it is instinctual to want to express that through a creative outlet. For us it’s our music, and we would go crazy without it.

Your last release, Yearning for Recovery, was a great success, what’s next?

The next step for us is writing and independently promoting our album Yearning for Recovery. We have had a few months of isolation to collect our thoughts and rest our minds after a full length release and over 2 months of touring, which was really the best thing for us to do. Now its time for us to pick up where we left off in our musical evolution, and to search for channels to plug our music into. This can be a daunting task for an independent group with little outside support at the moment.

Post Rock generates creative (and often lengthy) band and track names, how does Standby Red 5 come up with these?

As cliché as this might sound, members who come up with our song titles are often inspired by our dreams. We have honestly had thematic dreams which we were able to translate into not only music, but words that become song titles and even lyrics. Though lyrics have not found their way into the mix yet, there are a few that are behind the curtain. We also find a great deal of song title inspiration from the literature we read. Sometimes to get your own creative mind rotating, you need a jump start by experiencing somebody else’s.

How does Standby Red 5 decide which tracks will be on a release? testing them at gigs, or a different method?

Our writing process is a little hectic and all over the place. It is a very long process full of steps. The best way I can answer how we select songs is to first say that we usually piece songs together like a puzzle. There are times where we pull pieces from shelved song ideas and plug them into new song ideas we are working on, and if the song as a whole is just not clicking with everyone we abandon it all together. The music really needs to pull at everyone’s heart strings if we are going to make it successful. We are our own harshest critics and the songs that we take to the studio or stage are (for the most part) songs that we have all approved and believe in because we have been buffering them for months to years.

What have you been listening to recently that you would recommend to your fan base?

This may be opening Pandora ’s Box here because we all have ridiculously different tastes in music. So rather than go through each member and what they listen to lately, I’ll just give what is probably one of the more random lists of bands that was ever compiled: Colour Revolt, Helios, Caspian, Say Hi to Your Mom, June of 44, Washed Out, Sleeping at Last, Mice Parade, Saxon Shore, Mineral, Neon Indian, Mewithoutyou, Tycho, The Appleseed Cast, Lovedrug and Q and Not U. But none of these bands really represent the tastes of all of us, and they definitely are not necessarily the bands we draw influence from. They have just been finding significant playing time in our cars lately.

The obligatory political question: Can politics (whichever side of the road) solve global social problems? Discuss

We have a strong hope that our music is more of an escape from the world of politics. We want to reflect a universal feeling of peace and comfort s people and musicians. I can not stress enough how much politics do not represent us. We rely on ourselves as individuals and friends. People solve problems and people cause problems, politics do not have anything to do with it. All that stands the test of time is our integrity and our relationships. That is what determines our legacy, the company we keep and how well we keep it.

The obligatory digital media question: We all know that digital downloads (legal or not) are changing the music business, would you say this is a challenge or an opportunity, and why?

We honestly have no problem with music sharing. It is definitely a positive thing for bands trying to grow and who want to share what they create. It may be a negative thing for bands who want the money from their music, but we really just want recognition. We do not think it would be ethical for someone to sell our music to their friends. That just is not what we are about, we would much rather everyone share it because music is to valuable a thing to be used as profit.