Kent Hutchison may claim himself to be a Valley Boy, but you'd never think it after hearing Cue the Moon live. After seeing many kickass shows at the Silverlake Lounge, I finally got a chance to snag some conversation with the Cue the Moon frontman over some sake and lo mein.
So, how did you guys meet?
My best friend growing up, Jason, introduced me to Tim James. We started recording tunes together. Basically, we wound up getting a band together with his buddies Ryan and Chris. That's who we released our last record Thought Forgotten Spoken with. That's also when Chris decided to work on other stuff, so we brought Steve, the drummer from The Autumns on board.
You guys have been together for almost a couple years now in several different incarnations. What have you noticed about your following now as opposed to a couple years ago?
Now, there are people that I don't know in the audience. (laughs) It seems like there are a lot of talented people from the area who have been showing up and supporting us.
Speaking of the area, how do you guys see yourselves fitting in the mammoth that is the L.A. music scene?
Well, there are kind of two L.A. music scenes, one being Hollywood, which doesn't count, because nobody should ever have to pay to play. And then there's everything else. Most of the decent stuff seems to be concentrated in Echo Park and Silverlake, and some of it Downtown. I guess we are one of many indie bands in that part of things.
Have you had any label interest so far?
We'll probably be on a new label that's being started by an engineer that we know, who's been working around town for a long time, and a friend of his who's an artist and another friend of theirs who currently works in PR. They're putting something together and they want us to be a part of that.
I see. Do you have any game plan for possibly attracting any major label interest, or are you just going with the flow?
I feel like due to that we all really like doing things more or less how we like to do them, that at this stage getting involved with a major would be a poor choice, because if they had any interest at all they would have enough leverage to probably make some requests to have a lot more control than we might want to give them. It might be a safer bet to put some things out on some smaller labels first and then, if it so happens that what we're doing works out well, then maybe someone will come along and throw bigger bucks at us. Who knows.
Your music and your lyrics become very fragmented at times. What's your songwriting approach?
Basically, I just start playing stuff on the guitar and mumble nonsense over it until it eventually turns into something. I could do a demonstration. (laughs)
Sure, let's hear it.
No, no. We don't want that recorded. That'd be bad news.
You must fiddle around a lot on your guitar because you seem to have a large bank of songs you guys pull from during shows.
You know we didn't, and just very recently we've kinda been on a roll writing a lot of new stuff. We've been introducing at least one new song every show and partially that's because we're trying to release a new album, which we're in the process of working on. We're writing pretty fast, which is fun and exiting to me.
I was going to say, you played a lot of newer material on Thursday, as opposed to material from Thought Forgotten Spoken. Great show, by the way. A lot of this newer material was a little more abrasive. Does this indicate the direction you guys are taking your music?
Absolutely. It's hard not to be abrasive with Steve drumming off like a fucking madman. The idea has always been to do something intense.
So, the kind of trippy, folky days of Thought Forgotten Spoken are behind you?
Oh, I'm sure we'll revisit that. We kinda tend to go in waves. This wave of things will sound more like what you heard at the show.
You said you're recording another album. When do you think that will be out?
We've kinda been going in batches. We'll probably be done with the first four tunes in about a month, and then we'll do another batch. We may actually wind up releasing an EP before another album, depending on how badly we want to get shit out there. I'd say definitely before the year is over we'll have another album done.
Any talks of a possible tour yet, or are you more focused on developing a strong following here in L.A.?
We've been contemplating doing some trips to the East Coast, and maybe doing some small West Coast tours as well. Probably nothing too large, due to the cost. I guess that will also depend on what happens with labels and such, but if we're going to be spearheading it ourselves, they're probably going to be shorter things. I feel like at this stage, one thing I want to try and assist in creating is a network of a few bands that all like each others' stuff that are all doing good things in this area, so that there are places for people to go see several good acts in a night for cheap. I think that probably my primary focus is on doing things that are local.
Cool, then I'm guessing you have some shows lined up for the near future.
I will be putting together quite a lot of shows not too long from now. We're gonna take just a couple weeks first to iron out a few more of these tracks that are either going to come out on an EP or an album. In the coming months, we should probably be playing at least once a week at places around town, either Mr. T's or the Silverlake Lounge or Spaceland, something along those lines.
To completely flip the subject, The Grammys were a week ago. What were your thoughts on that?
I very rarely like anything that's awarded on the Grammys. I don't really watch TV, so I don't really have many thoughts about the Grammys, so whatever vague thoughts I do have are leaning toward the negative.
There's a lot of great bands in this city that are really engaging and carry a lot of potential, such as yours. Ten or 15 years ago, they may have had an easier time breaking in. How do you see the current state of the industry?
Well, I think that because everything is becoming practically free, that you kind of got the people who do in fact have their own tastes are finding out about more and more obscure things and are getting more into them than they probably would've been a few years ago. Then, of course there's the large demographic of people who will listen to whatever happens to be pumped through the shit tubes to them. I feel like creating a sense of community and having people getting involved in a network of artists and people that are doing good things in an area is key to creating something sustainable with the current music climate. Of course I have no idea what I'm talking about.
What can your fans and supporters expect in 2010?
We like to challenge ourselves and we always wanna do something better than the last thing we did. I think that our live show is getting better. I think that our new album is gonna be pretty cool. We're gonna keep pumping out material and keep playing shows and hope that people like it.
I'm sure we will.
by Jory Spadea
