Music's Week: What inspired you to become a musician, and what was your earliest musical influence?
Bryne: Coming up through the Church and listening to all the great musicians was a huge influence on me. I had an older cousin that was an accomplished saxophone player in the church that made me fall in love with the saxophone.
Lawrence: My Mom taught me to play the piano at a young age. But I didn’t realize it could be my profession until I met other people that were professional musicians.
Music's Week: Can you tell us about your creative process when writing new music? Do you have any rituals or habits that help spark inspiration?
Music's Week: Can you tell us about your creative process when writing new music? Do you have any rituals or habits that help spark inspiration?
Moe Flavour: There are two ways we go about writing. Sometimes Bryne is inspired by a song he hears, and we work together to build our own song with the same feel as the cover. Other times, Lawrence dreams up an idea from scratch and sends Bryne the chords. Then Bryne creates an idea for a melody to match the feel. Then we get together and finish the song.
Music's Week: Your latest album/song has been getting a lot of attention. Can you walk us through the story behind it? What inspired the themes and lyrics?
Moe Flavour: We play at several venues where the audience dances. Many times, there are steppers in the crowd. Steppin Sauce came from the desire to provide our Flavour of steppin music for those dancers.
Music's Week: How do you balance your artistic vision with commercial pressures and expectations from the music industry? Do you ever feel like you're compromising on your art?
Moe Flavour: We sometimes struggle finding the right Genre of music in the mainstream. We don’t exactly fit Jazz or any of the other common genres. So we came up with our own genre and we call it Groove Jazz to better fit our music style. But it does make it harder to promote.
Music's Week: Who are some of your favorite artists or influences, and how do they inspire your own music?
Bryne: Kirk Whalum, Boney James, Euge Groove to name a few.
Lawrence: Brian Colbertson, Herbie Hancock, Kiefer and many others that are not as well known.
Moe Flavour: We learn its OK to be yourself and not try to mimic or ‘Sound like’ others.
Music's Week: Have you had collaborations/remixes with other artists? What do you look for in a collaboration, and what's been your favorite collaboration experience so far?
Music's Week: Have you had collaborations/remixes with other artists? What do you look for in a collaboration, and what's been your favorite collaboration experience so far?
Moe Flavour: We have collaborated with Gregory Goodloe, Daylin Bradley and so many local accomplished artists. We look for a groove and feel in the person as well as their music to match our own.
Music's Week: What's been the most challenging part of your career so far, and how did you overcome it?
Moe Flavour: We can’t say we have overcome it yet, but the most challenging has been getting heard by the right people. So many times, we hear things like “you guys should be on a big stage” but we have not broken through to the big time yet. We hope this promotional effort will get us past that barrier.
Music's Week: How do you stay connected with your fanbase and engage with them online/social media? Do you have any favorite fan interactions or stories?
Moe Flavour: We have a weekly live show on Facebook and YouTube called the “Sunday Morning Saxophone Devotion”. We interact with our Facebook followers live on that show. It’s a positive and upbeat show and we debut potential new music many times to get feedback from our Fanbase. Our FaceBook page has over 35k followers. We are just starting to build our YouTube following so its not as big.
Music's Week: Have you performed live? What do you love most about performing live?
Moe Flavour: As mentioned before, we gig live in the Phoenix area live regularly as well as travel when the opportunity arises. We love the comradery of working with other musicians and the great feedback and love we get from our audiences.
Music's Week: What's next for you in terms of new music, projects, or goals? Any secrets you can share with us?
Moe Flavour: We have 3-4 new songs we are putting the final touches on and will come out before the end of the year. The secret to our recipe is to be sure to throw enough spice in the pot to give it the right Flavour.
COMMENTS
Leave a comment