EagleWolfSnake Tell Us Whatever They Say

EagleWolfSnake1

EagleWolfSnake bring a pop edge to indie rock with their first single, ‘Whatever You Say’. It’s a dance number with high energy vocals, catchy guitar hooks and just full on fun – taking something familiar and making it their own.

“Our single was the first song that the band wrote when we began the initial jam sessions. The idea behind it was people who are blind followers, possibly following someone out of love but also out of infatuation.  We saw a cult like scenario with members wearing bow ties and staring into the sun, hence the idea for the video which eventually led us to wearing the bow tie cult look on stage for every show.” – Songwriter Eli Meyskens, speaking about ‘Whatever You Say’

The first single off their upcoming album, ‘Zang!’, ‘Whatever You Say’ is a nice taster for an album which must be heard in its entirety to be fully appreciated.

“We want all of our music from here on out to speak to us and have a very strong vibe, if it doesn’t, it goes in the rubbish bin. We think this song has a very strong vibe and a feeling that we’ve really built upon and written most of the rest of the songs hoping that they would be as good as this one. I think the song and orchestration harkens back to a day when rock was more prevalent and not everything was sequenced with big electronic beats behind it (not that we mind those songs as we like all that big electro stuff too!) We’re all big fans of early Police and a lot of the shouty vocals, harmonies, song structure of this song was a kind of an homage to those guys and other great bands of that era like The Clash.” says the band of their upcoming album.

From San Francisco, EagleWolfSnake formed in March last year when their previous project, Music For Animals, came to an end. In fact, Eli Meyskens, Nick Bray and Ryan Malley had all been writing new songs on their own before the the official demise of the old band – and EagleWolfSnake was born.

As the band adds, “This project was born from the pure love of music. We have played together for years in previous bands, writing albums, touring the US and Europe. After having a brief brush with the major label record industry, we have seen that nothing is as important to us as the music. If we are not playing what comes natural and intuitively then we’re not making the right kind of music. This band wants to make music that makes us feel good and hopefully it will make others feel good too.”

EagleWolfSnake will release their debut album Zang! this October 2015. We got to chat to the band to find out whatever they say…

EP: It’s an interesting name for a band – what’s the story behind that? There are three of you – is one an Eagle, one a Wolf and one a Snake?

EWS: The name has a couple meanings but it mainly coming from one of our member’s nickname being Eagle, which naturally led to the wolf and the snake. We also were all in a band together before called Music For Animals so we thought it fitting that we would be some of the animals from that band. Everyone doesn’t necessarily identify with one animal or another, we kind of let the crowd take care of that because after the show they always have their own ideas about who’s who.

EP: Tell us about your musical influences.

EWS: The 3 of us have pretty different music tastes but we also like a lot of the same stuff. We’re all big fans of The Flaming Lips (old and new) Talking Heads, Built to Spill, The Police, Arcade Fire, Helio Sequence, Modest Mouse, The Kinks, The Clash all that great stuff. For this project we drew a lot from bands that were doing it with just 3 people and their instruments.

EP: Who have been your inspirations, both musically and in your life in general?

EWS: The two Daves: David Byrne and David Bowie are probably the top two that come to mind, Wayne Coin too. We love music and the art that goes along with it, we’ve long been fans of trying to make our shows as much as an experience as possible with projections, outfits, lights, confetti, holi powder, whatever we can get our hands on to get the vibe going.

EP: Top 3 songs/artists that you couldn’t live on a desert island without?

EWS: Unfair question but we’d probably have to take the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, which leaves an impossible spot to fill….at the moment probably Tame Impala.

EP: Do you have any advice for those just starting out in the music industry? What’s your take on the current state of the music industry?

EWS: The best advice we’ve ever got is to never stop making music. I used to think that just applied to age and as you get older never stop making music but through our brief experience with the industry types it also mean DON’T STOP PLAYING MUSIC! When we had our “shot” in earlier bands there are a lot of people around telling you what to do, what to wear, what to write songs about, etc…We learned as we went but now we know, fuck all that just make music. If you are writing and playing music that you like and you believe in then you are doing the right thing, keep doing that. This project is steeped in our history together and our philosophy is to do what we want to do, make the music we like, if people like it…..great!

EP: Talk us through ‘Whatever You Say’. Do you feel the music industry encourages blind followers (ie. it’s easier to have fans who don’t think than ones who question everything)?

EWS: That’s an interesting idea which you could apply to the song but we wrote it more abstractly. We like to make up stories in our music and in this one we used a Jim Jones type character with a love interest twist that inspires a blind following of those too obsessed to see straight. There’s a little nod to The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” too. To answer the last question, I think the current music industry is more about money than ever, because let’s be honest the commercial music industry has always been about money. Tom Petty had a great statement a couple years back about American Idol and how it was the death of a bunch of people just getting together in a garage and making music, which was in his opinion what it was all supposed to be about.

EP: What’s the best venue you’ve played at? Best festival?

EWS: The Great American Music Hall is definitely the prettiest but our old favourite Bottom of the Hill club in San Francisco definitely has the most vibe, we’ll be doing our album release show there. It’s one of the many venues in San Francisco that’s on the endangered species list with all the new condos going up for the Tech Community so it will be a really sad day if/when it ever closes. This band has only been together for 9 months so in that time the best festival we played was Bottlerock in Napa, Ca. We had long had the idea that if we ever got to play an outdoor festival then we would use the coloured Holi Powder from the Indian Holi Festival and cover ourselves in it at the end of our set. We did it and it looked spectacular but we did have some apologizing to do to our stage crew…..

EP: Do you feel it’s important for artists to retain creative control over their work?

EWS: ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY

EP: What will you be doing in a year’s time? 5 years?

EWS: Making music, hopefully sometimes in clubs in Europe…Denmark.

EP: What question do you wish someone would ask you in an interview but nobody ever does?

EWS: What’s our favourite movie? for some reason it’s never come up, I’d be curious to see if we could agree on anything, it’s kind of an unfair one like your earlier desert island scenario 😛

‘Zang!’ is out on 30 October, with an album release party at Bottom of The Hill, San Francisco, November 12. Find them on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Soundcloud.

Whatever You Say OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO by EagleWolfSnake

About the author

Lisa has been writing for over 20 years, starting as the entertainment editor on her university newspaper. Since then she's written for Popwrapped, Maximum Pop, Celebmix, and ListenOnRepeat.

Lisa loves all good music, with particular fondness for Jedward and David Bowie. She's interviewed Edward Grimes (Jedward), Kevin Godley, Trevor Horn, Paul Young, Peter Cox (Go West), Brendan B Brown (Wheatus), Bruce Foxton (The Jam), among many many more. Lisa is also available for freelance writing - please email lisa@essentiallypop.com

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