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CKMS Community Connections, Shows

CKMS Community Connections for 23 June 2023 with Matt Lam and Aaron Liang of Waterfowl

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Matt Lam (a man with dark curly hair and glasses wearing headphones in front of a microphone with a flag "CKMS 102.7 FM", the background is black acoustic tile)
Matt Lam
Aaron Liang (a man with dark hair and a Vandyke wearing glasses and headphones; a socked microphone is visible on the right, and a CKMS-FM poster is partially visible in the background)
Aaron Liang

Show Notes

Aaron Liang and Matt Lam join Bob Jonkman to talk about their band Waterfowl, how they turned from a studio band into a live performance band, composing their music and writing their lyrics, and dealing with the many instruments and changeovers on their live gigs.

The interview starts at 1m44s.

Online:


Lost Faculty with Waterfowl and Housecat | The Yeti | 14 Eby St. N. Kitchener, ON | Sunday Sept 10 (2023) 8pm Doors | $10 Advance $15 At The Door (four men wearing dark sunglasses standing in front of brightly coloured row houses)
Lost Faculty with Waterfowl and Housecat

Upcoming Events

Podcast

Download: ckms-community-connections-2023-06-23-episode-131-Matt-Lam-and-Aaron-Liang-of-Waterfowl.mp3 (51 MB, 55m27s, episode 131)

Index

Time Title Album Artist
0m00s Theme for CKMS Community Connections ccc CKMS Sunflower logo (yellow petals surrounding a black centre with white wavies all on a teal background)
CKMS Community Connections 		Steve Todd
0m30s Intro (watercolour illustration of a pink flower with green/blue leaves partially underwater. There are fuzzy clouds in the sky background. The viewpoint is half above and half below the waterline.
Habitat 		Waterfowl
1m44s Introducing the band, from both Toronto and Kitchener. There are other members, Ben Easton and Calvin Wu. There are lots of instruments, everyone plays keyboards, and there are many guitars. They’ve been playing live gigs, but made their album Habitat first. Adapting the recorded sound to live performance, the music wasn’t written with the idea of playing it live. Aaron and Matt had written music and played in bands before, while in high school in Toronto. There are recordings, but not for public listening yet. The Habitat album was intended for friends and family, with limited distribution. They used some online web services to get some press, now it’s just on the streaming services. Both Matt and Aaron have day jobs, it’s tough finding time to play and record music. Now that they have a live band, the next music will be written in a more traditional way, workshopping the songs during live performances. Some songs on the album were released individually, like Open Up. It was based on a Lesley speaker sound effect. It was much more difficult to produce this song than to come up with the music in the first place.
12m05s Open Up (watercolour illustration of a pink flower with green/blue leaves partially underwater. There are fuzzy clouds in the sky background. The viewpoint is half above and half below the waterline.
Habitat 		Waterfowl
15m59s Analyzing the sampled vocals in Open Up. Music first, lyrics second. Matt does more lyrics, Aaron does the songwriting. Start with a melodic progression, then form some words to it, altering the melody to stay within their vocal range. We got a sneak peek of the entire album, CKMS-FM aired it before it was released. Matt and Aaron had some excitement during their album release, when the venue caught fire. They’re no longer calling their genre “Dream Pop”, their style is more varied than that. Talking about the theme of the album, “water”. They started their band in the middle of Covid, there was nothing else to do. They’ve already had some personnel churn in the band. How the other band members got the music. Introducing Ascending.
28m20s Ascending (watercolour illustration of a pink flower with green/blue leaves partially underwater. There are fuzzy clouds in the sky background. The viewpoint is half above and half below the waterline.
Habitat 		Waterfowl
34m58s Talking about the instrumentation on Ascending, and writing for a particular instrument, or a particular effect. Playing covers to fill in a live set, and arranging the set list to accomodate instrument changes. Talking about upcoming gigs, no gigs in Kitchener-Waterloo yet. But they’re looking for new gigs! They’re adding more original music to their live sets, then record and produce them. Talking about their recording setup. How they named the band, Matt is a novice birder and was looking through birding books. Introducing All My Time.
46m04s All My Time (watercolour illustration of a pink flower with green/blue leaves partially underwater. There are fuzzy clouds in the sky background. The viewpoint is half above and half below the waterline.
Habitat 		Waterfowl
49m58s All My Time is the song they close their live sets with. How they promote their music, using some online distribution services and music review blogging sites. Bob talks about the NCRA‘s !earshot Digital Distribution System to get their music to all campus and community radio stations in Canada. Talking about touring. Reviewing Waterfowl‘s contact information and streaming services.
55m05s Bob gives the end credits.

CKMS Community Connections Hour One airs on CKMS-FM 102.7 on Monday from 11:00am to Noon, and Hour Two airs alternate Fridays from 3:00pm to 4:00pm.

Got music, spoken word, or other interesting stuff? Let us know at ccc@radiowaterloo.ca or leave a comment on our “About” page.

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Bonus Video

YouTube: CKMS Community Connections for Friday 23 June 2023

Show notes and podcast interview content is Copyright © 2023 by the participants, and released under a CC BYCreative Commons Attribution Only license. Copy, re-use, and derivative works are allowed with attribution to Radio Waterloo and a link to this page. Music selections are copyright by the respective rights holders.