Impact Chats With... Dan Mangan!

Vancouver singer/songwriter Dan Mangan has a certain air of intense calm and openness that permeates any conversation. Before getting into the interview itself, I chatted with him about life on the road, and it became clear that this was certainly not his first time out touring. He spoke the way your favorite pair of old jeans would: warmly, comfortably. We at Impact 89FM caught up with him about his latest album Nice, Nice, Very Nice, the Vancouver scene, and life on the road.

Matt Revers: Your songs are a really interesting blend of poeticism and casual conversation. How would you explain your writing process?

Dan Mangan: Iʼve heard other people describe it as almost like a train of thought. Iʼve never been good at writing things like devotion songs, you know, kind of love songs, so most of my stuff ends up being kind of conversational. Kind of like “here are a bunch of my thoughts in a row,” and sometimes itʼs more serious, and sometimes itʼs a little bit more kind of tongue-in-cheek. In general I just kind of like taking the piss out of humanity. I think that weʼre very fickle creatures, and weʼre doomed to make some of the same mistakes over and over again. I aim to rib human kind without being a jerk about it. I think overall Iʼd like to spread a message of optimism, but I do enjoy taking the piss, for sure.

Impact Chats With... LOCAL NATIVES

5/10/2010 at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor

Nick Van Huis: I know Gorilla Manor was named after the house you guys lived in. How did the experience of living in that house influence the album?

Ryan: I think it definitely shaped the way that we write songs together. I’ve come to find that we are very weird, in that we are so collaborative. I think a lot of bands are centered around one guy who just writes all of the songs and tells everyone what to do. But we would wake up on Saturday morning or whatever and literally just get together in the main room of the house and just write songs together around a piano and two acoustic guitars and we did a lot of the songs that way just hours and hours on end of everyone just putting in their ideas and shaping the song that way.

Impact Chats With... DR. DOG

Recorded at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor on Thursday, April 15th

Nick Van Huis: You guys are from Philadelphia, and usually when bands reach a certain level of fame they tend to defect to bigger cities like L.A. or New York. Has there ever been that temptation for you guys?

Scott McMicken: No. We’re not that kind of people. I think there’s way more than enough going on in Philly for dudes like us. If anything, we would probably be more inclined to leave "the city" altogether. There’s nothing really that compelling to go to like L.A. or New York. We’ve been in the area of Philly so long, we have so many friends and history there that there’s never a shortage of things to do. I think we’re all pretty content in Philly.

Impact Chats With... HOT CHIP

Hot Chip released their album One Life Stand in February of this year to a wide array of critical acclaim. We had the chance to talk to Joe Godard about the process of recording the album, working with other artists, and the different types of shows they play.

Impact Chats With... FIELD MUSIC

Field Music recently came through Detroit in support of their latest album, Field Music (Measure). The Impact was on location to sit down with Dave and Peter Brewis and talked with the brothers about classic rock radio, the benefit of physical music, and recording neo-classical albums with Talk Talk.


Nick VanHuis: In music right now, there's a lot of people trying to sound retro, and I feel like you guys achieve this without it being forced.

David Brewis: One of the things about the way we record things, is that we can only do them one way because we have rubbish equipment, limited resources. We learned how to play drums, we learned how to play guitar, and that's what we want to do.
Peter Brewis: There are a lot of things about modern recording techniques that I don't particularly like. It's not so much that I want to sound like an old record, but it's more that there's such a suffocating quality in new recordings, which I don't like. I like to hear space, and as soon as you do that, it automatically sounds a little bit like a Led Zeppelin record.
DB: That's what we listen to, that's what we basically listen to to get us through the day when we're driving; we listen to classic rock. It's pointless listening to Talk Talk, cause you can't hear it.
PB: Queen, ACDC, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith.
DB: It's just like, let's get stuff on that feels good, sounds good, we can sing along to. We have good fun. We don't get classic rock stations in the UK, so we just flick around and it's hilarious most of the time. If we do tours longer than 2 or 3 weeks…
PB: We get sick of listening to Chicago.

Free Energy on Thursday!

If you're looking for something to do this week, Free Energy will be playing a show at the Majestic Cafe in Detroit on Thursday. The Impact will be there, so we'll have a rundown of the show and some pictures to share.
We also caught up with them at SXSW last month, so you can get to know them a little bit better before checking out the show!

Impact Chats With... WINSTON AUDIO

Winston Audio recently stopped at Mac's Bar on their tour with Death On Two Wheels (and, coincidentally, will be back in Pontiac at the Pike Room on April 29), and came into the Impact Studios to share some tunes and chat with Mike Weber.




Mike Weber: So, “Winston Audio”, how did you choose that name?

Daniel DeWitt: The founding member, and namer of the band, who’s not with in the band anymore, he told me that his dog, Winston, really liked to change the stations on the radio. If he didn’t like a song, Winston would change the station on the radio. That’s it.

Impact Chats with... ROCKY VOTOLATO

Recently, Rocky Votolato visited the great city of Lansing, MI while on tour in support of his most recent album, True Devotion. He stopped by the Impact studios to sit down with Jesse Wiza and talked about the album, his favorite places to play, and the resurgence of vinyl.


Jesse Wiza: Is there a particular part of the country that you really like going to?

Rocky Votolato: Well, I like the west coast, because it's close to home. But yeah, just the whole west coast is really good for me. I've got good crowds over there and a lot of really excited fans. But yeah, I love going all over the country. I really like coming to Michigan, I've got some good friends here in town.

Impact Chats With... GIRLS

Impacter Brian Garcia got the chance to talk with Christopher Owens, lead singer of Girls before their show at the Magic Stick in Detroit, discussing the scene in San Francisco, the sound of their new album, and just why they call themselves something so generic.

Impact: Was it a conscious effort to name the band and album something so generic you couldn’t find it if you searched Google?

Christopher Owens: No, the two things were done probably a year apart from each other. Both times we weren’t really think of anything like that. We liked the name Girls for the band, and that’s the only reason we picked it. And Album, we didn’t have a title for the album. A lot of bands for their first album is self-titled of somehow the debut of, we just didn’t give it a title.