A set of questions I sent to and answers I received from Dax Beaton for the purpose of an article for one of my internships. I sent out the questions to several musicians but found Dax's particularly amusing.
1. Are you majoring or minoring in music? If so, what.
I’m currently minoring in music. Or…I’ve acquire my minor, anyway. I mean not like officially or anything…do you have to graduate before you can actually say you’ve minored? Whatever. I play piano.
2. What are your music goals ? Do you want to pursue music as a possible career, or do you just want to pursue it on the side?
I certainly want to pursue music as a career, though not in the sense that someone majoring in music probably would. After I graduate in the spring, I’m moving in with my four other band mates into a house somewhere in Chapel Hill or Carrboro since all of us but Nasir will be graduated. We’re going to stay together until as long as…well, we feel like it. All the money we make from playing shows is immediately put back into a band fund that we use to improve our sound or our practice space, so we’re all starting to think of it as our primary job.
3. Within the academic musical environment, what music or music-related activities are you participating in?
We’re on a student-run record label called Vinyl Records. They received a matching grant from the university to help them fund their label and are currently doing a lot of awesome work to match…the grant.
4. Outside of the academic musical environment, what music or music-related activities are you participating in?
I’m in a band called Lake Inferior, and no I’m not sure what kind of music we play. Right now I’m devoting pretty much all my musical endeavors toward the band aside from learning some video game music in my spare time. That’s right, I said it. The Final Fantasy series has some incredible scores composed by Nobuo Uematso, mostly all for piano!
2. Do you feel that UNC-CH is fostering your growth as a musician? If yes, how so. If no, why?
Not really. We were asked this question in an interview the other day, and it keeps going back to the fact that we never really felt like part of the whole UNC Band…thing. We were never invited to all those UNC events featuring a lot of local music, and we don’t really hang out with other UNC bands much…in fact, we’ve never played a show with the same band twice aside from The Rosebuds. Though if you count all the awesome help Vinyl Records has been giving, I guess that’s UNCish. Also, being a band in a university helps immensely with getting people to hear your music. We’re surrounded by people our age who are young and very interested in new music, so we’re lucky that we can always depend on a decent crowd. Always a handful of new faces at every show…word of mouth spreads quickly on a campus. So to answer the question…in certain ways being at UNC as really helped us out, but at the same time we’d like to believe our music speaks a lot for itself as well.
3.Do you feel the the academic community alone would be sufficient to help you achieve your musical goals?
No ma’am, no way. After (if) we get a full LP recorded, I think we’d all love to move somewhere new for awhile. I don’t think I would like to stay in one place for too long...my surroundings have such an impact on my writing, and there’s only so much I could say about my life at the university. I mean, I’m not literally writing songs about college, but I’m writing about the feelings and experiences that have come from living here, whether they were influenced by the university or not.
4. Before choosing to attend UNC-CH, were you aware of the musical scenes/communities in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area? What did you know about it?
I really knew nothing about it, honestly. Hell, I only applied to UNC-CH because my mother made me. I got deferred from NC State, but I think UNC-CH really loved my essay or something because they let me in no problem. I wrote about the time I was in a hand-farting five piece in high school called The Groach.
5. Do you feel that the there is a music scene in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area that caters to your specific musical endeavors? In what ways does it help you?
Most definitely. The music scene in Chapel Hill/Carrboro is just lovely. There are always new bands to play with, new artists coming through from out of state, and this small area alone has so many different venues to play music in that it’s not even so bad not being able to tour because of school at the moment.
7. What specific musical communities, if any, are you participating in within the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area.
The Lake Inferior community. I think we get so wrapped up in working with each other that sometimes we forget that it’s important (and fun!) to go out and socialize with other artists who are doing the same thing.
8. Is there anything major in regards to your musical goals that the area has helped you with?
Fans, venues, and a label. We’re trying to handle the rest of it.
http://www.myspace.com/lakeinferiormusic
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