Speaker 1: How catchy is that? Wow? That is I didn't hear
what you said. The project is Audio Guest and let's see.
We have Chris Evans from Audio Guests here with us
via Microsoft Team.
Speaker 2: Hello Chris, Hello, how are you doing? Good?
Speaker 1: Good? Welcome to the show. I love that song. I
love the whole album of course, that is from Falling
from Down, and it's just so like, you know, it's
the kind of song you tell people, at least I
tell people, you know, if that didn't make you move,
you know, to check your pulse, you might be dead.
It's just really really catchy. And I love the vocals,
the layered vocals, everything about that. It's just it's just
really good. I love that.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate that. That is a fun song.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. And you are in Seattle, is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Just outside of Seattle.
Speaker 1: Just outside of Seattle. Wow, quite a music scene there. Yeah,
absolutely absolutely. What can you tell us about the album
Falling from Down? I did listen to the whole thing.
I really really like it. Like I said, I love
what you're doing sonically, and there's nothing that I've heard
recently that sounds quite like it. But what can you
tell us about it.
Speaker 3: This is my third album, that one this year, and yeah,
it's sort of it's it's it's sort of a song
about the times these days, basically, like with all sort
of angst and and and sort of sort of angst
about communication, about what's going on in the world and
things like that, and then how people are pretty stressed
about this. And it starts off, you know, with just
sort of a set of a darker set of songs
and than all my previous albums, I think, songs like
Isotope and Falling from Down, and then it hits a
song called Easier, which is sort of it's sort of
a reflection of the whole album, which sort of asked
the question, man, it seems like it would be easier
if I didn't know what was going on, like if
you weren't paying attention to the news and things like that.
Seems like life might be easier. But yet you really
can't avoid it because it sort of keeps coming back
to you. But then its whole sort of shift in
that song where it goes from being this sort of
introspective thing to the sort of pop punk banger of
a of a of a Ridge, and then it comes
back into the sort of the final verse there, and
then the whole album sort of shifts at that point
where it sort of goes into hey things a little
bit more. You know, it's as if you weren't paying
attention to all of that, and we could just sort
of get back to songs about people and about relationships
and about the way you feel. And that's sort of
where you know, I didn't hear what you say comes
in sort of in that middle part of the album, right,
and then it sort of slides back towards the end
of the album. So it's you know that the whole
album is sort of a reflection of the song Easier
written Large.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, yeah, well we'll play that one at the
end of our conversation because that's another great track. Like
I said, I like the whole thing. But but yeah,
it's interesting too, how you know you're able to take
these themes of of angst and and all of it
that that people feel and but but do something that's
actually fun and interesting to listen to, you know, because
it's it. It's if you can take something that's dark
or negative or however you want to think about it,
but make something positive out of it. You know, that's
that's the best way I think to be able to
relate to people and and say here, here, here's what
I'm saying, but I'm putting it in a package that
that you're going to enjoy listening to and maybe we
can kind of connect and relate on that level. And
so I think it's great. You know, it's yea melodic
and like a lot of these tracks are really fun.
What about now, specifically that song, I didn't hear what
you said. I'm curious to know more about that. It
seems to address, as is evidenced by the title, you know,
miscommunication and misunderstanding. And was there something specific that that
sort of pushed you to write that or maybe just
more of a general.
Speaker 3: Thing, like like many people, I'm a bit on the
ad D side, and and I've certainly READD issues where
my head, you know, sort of my mind wandered in
the middle of a conversation and I realized that I'm
not quite paying attention to this person that I'm supposed
to be talking right now. They don't know this yet,
but it's true, and so I am sort of nodding along,
and yet my head is somewhere else, just sort of
like in the beginning of that song where it's like
this sort of persons just started talking to a girl
and sort of daydreaming and thinking about her and looking
at the you know, the necklace that she's wearing.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I got that for her back. What was that?
When was that back in June? I think it was.
Speaker 3: And then she's saying something and you're realizing I'm not
hearing this, and in the song, she realizes that she's
not being listened to, and yet she's looking right at
her right. She gets a little bit upset about it,
which is understandable, and he feels bad about this. I
feel bad about this, but it's it's not a it's
not on.
Speaker 1: Purpose, right, right exactly.
Speaker 2: And then the second verse is the same thing happens
except for your work.
Speaker 3: Right. You're in a meeting somewhere and you're just sort
of daydreaming. You didn't expect anybody talking to you in
the first place, and so you're just sort of in
some meeting and then they ask you a question.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, wait, what what he was talking about?
Speaker 3: And you're sort of, you know, sort of embarrassing to
get caught in one of those moments there of you
were supposed to be paying attention and you weren't.
Speaker 2: Totally everybody knows this now and what are you gonna do? Right?
Speaker 1: And it's and it's universal. Everyone's been in situations like that,
it had been you know, it's all stuff that happens
to everybody. Absolutely, But yeah, in the moment though, it
feels it's such a terrible feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm curious too about your history. So you you were
you played guitar and bass in some eighties bands, Is
that correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I was in a few bands back in the eighties
actually a little bit in the end of the nineties
as well. Okay, and nothing big though, I mean, you know,
just we were all sort of learning and getting better
and playing things and playing clubs and and uh this
is like back in Ohio and Michigan and places like that.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, uh yeah.
Speaker 3: And then and then it sort of you know, once
I whence they finished university and uh at to Michigan,
I was, you know, we're trying to do something interesting.
Speaker 2: I wanted I wanted to do a recording thing.
Speaker 3: We started a company doing podcasts, but it was a
little bit early for podcasts because it was the late eighties. Wow.
Speaker 2: So yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean the thing we made were if you listen
to the now you go like those are podcasts, but it.
Speaker 2: Was wow, way too really for that.
Speaker 3: We shipped them out on audio cassettes to like the
company communication.
Speaker 2: Kind of thing is okay, but it was definitely too
early for that. So I sort of shifted into writing software.
Speaker 3: And uh, you know was in this is in the
Massachusetts actually this is in Boston and Cambridge area. Oh
and uh yeah, So I worked you know for a
company doing you know, router tech support and then writing
code and building applications and building things in the Mac.
And then eventually one of the things that we did
caught the eye of Apple and Microsoft, and they flew
me out to California and ended up working for Microsoft
for twenty years off and on, wow and uh and
some other places between some startups and some personal projects.
And then a few years ago I finally finished that,
uh and said I want, I really want to do
the music thing again. Uh and so yeah, I sort
of left uh Microsoft and software at that point and
started writing songs and uh, that's what the last it's
been pretty much for the last three years.
Speaker 1: Oh, excellent, excellent. Now, was that always kind of in
the back of your mind that that you would end
up back with doing music, or or was there a
moment of epiphany where you realized you had to get
back to it, or how did you, like just kind
of mentally, how did you get back to a place
where you said, no, I need to I need to
really jump back into this full force, I need to
do music.
Speaker 3: I'd always I'd bounced back and forth doing music at
different times during that the you know, the software times,
so you have you never would.
Speaker 1: You never disengaged entirely from it.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean there were years where I did almost
nothing with it, and the guitar sort of stayed in
the closet. But I had the guitars, and then every
few years I would sort of, you know, open up
like logic pro and try to figure out some more
stuff on it and maybe do a few songs on it.
And then and then stopped for a while and sort
of would it would come and go. And we had
you know, in a family in there, we had kids
in there, so a whole bunch of things happened. But
I always loved that, and there was an aspect of creating,
writing songs and creating songs and recording them and doing
the whole thing that that I loved. And you know,
back in back in the University of Michigan, I ended
up in a dorm that had a recording studio in
the basement, the student run recording studio, and learned a
whole bunch of stuff back then about doing this on
you know, build a real tape recording and things like that,
and I just loved doing it. And so every once
in a while I would, you know, do with some
more of that. And then it was the point where
it's like I've I think I'm done with the full
time software thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it wasn't more that I really wanted
to get out of it.
Speaker 3: And and during the pandemic, we bought a place up
here on Midbey Island and it had a four car
garage and I don't have four cars, so took half
of that and made it into a little studio.
Speaker 1: Nice Nice made it.
Speaker 3: Soundproof so that when you're recording a song, I think
musician will know this, that you play it the same
part over and over and over and over and over again.
And to anybody who's not involved in that it's really annoying,
but if you're doing it, you need to do that
so you can hear it. Then you're making all these
little fine tweets and stuff like that. So building a
room that was soundproofed meant that I could do that
and not bother anybody else, right, And I could do
that without having any you know, cars or dogs or
whatever it is, barking while I'm trying to record vocals
or guitars or something like that. So once it's out
the space, it was like, okay, wait, I could do
this for real now. And that sort of coincided with
the hey, I'm sort of feel like I'm done with
the software business, and which has an ironic twist on
that one, but.
Speaker 2: We'll get that later, okay, okay.
Speaker 3: And uh yeah, so I started. I just started writing
songs and realized that I can. I can do this
full time now. And I think that's what you know,
twenty to thirty years and software will do for at least,
let's set up we can you can.
Speaker 2: Dedicate time with this. Yeah, I'm very appreciative of that.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, so I started doing this all the time,
and then writing with other people and and getting involved
with you know, a bunch of different songwriter communities and
collaborating and and writing with other groups of people and
and producing the songs. And uh did my first album
very early. Actually, I go back and look at them, like,
there's some songs in there I love, but it's it's
clearly early. Yeah. But then I spent a bunch you know,
I just did a lot of and you do a
lot of it, and you keep you know, keep at it,
and you.
Speaker 2: Get better at it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so the songs have gotten better, the production
has gotten better, the collaborations have gotten better, and uh, yeah,
so I just love that. It's just so satisfying to
be able to come in here each day and just
work on it and write some new songs. And and
the tough part is keeping track of all of it,
because there's a lot.
Speaker 1: Right right, no doubt are you? Are you doing everything yourself?
In terms of the instruments, is all the playing on these?
Is that all you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are all me okay.
Speaker 3: And uh and and I as you'll you know, you've
listened to it. So there's a few songs where I
have some guest vocalists in yeah, uh, and those usually
off off of those people that I write with, you know,
they'll they'll they'll join in for for you know, one
of the songs we collaborate on, But most of the
songs there are just me. I. I wrote to myselves
and produced the whole thing and recorded.
Speaker 2: And it's all me.
Speaker 1: Okay wow. I mean that must be incredibly liberating. I
mean it sounds like you enjoy collaboration. But at the
same time, I would imagine to be able to do
so much of it yourself, aside from you know, guest
vocalists as you mentioned. I mean, that's got to be
pretty pretty satisfying, I would guess, and it is.
Speaker 3: I think it comes from a you know, I don't
maybe not the best place of I don't like getting
stuck or I'm blocked on waiting for someone else to.
Speaker 2: Be able to finish something, right, yep.
Speaker 3: And if it was a point where it's like, oh,
I'd love to do more, but oh this person's I
need them to do this, but they're busy, or that
you know, I can't get back, they won't get back
in touch with me, or those kinds of things, and
I just I hate the idea of being stuck. Yes, yes,
blocked on it, and so by being able to do
any of the parts, I'm never blocked, right, So I
can always finish songs and release them and those kinds
of things, and I'm not stuck behind someone else. But
at the same time, you know, a having there are
songs that I write sometimes that we write that are
songs to be sung by a woman. I can't do that,
and so that's you know, it's it's having having a
group of people that I can write with or or
call on say hey, I think the song would be
amazing with your voice, and having to be able to
jump in is is just wonderful.
Speaker 1: Well with AI tools though, and and you know this,
you probably could. Uh.
Speaker 3: I've played around with that a little bit, but I
don't like. I don't like the results. I mean, they're
getting better, but it's there's something that's that definitely feels more, uh,
you know, connecting, Yeah, an actual person singing it with
the A. I mean sometimes the A voices are a
little bit too perfect. Sometimes they're you know, they don't
they don't breathe because they don't have to breathe the
way that they sing something, you know, it starts to
feel something just a little bit off in it, and
so yeah, it's it's you know, so I've tried it
and and for you know, when if I'm writing something
for a film or a TV show or something like that,
then you know, something for for a sync opportunity. It
doesn't quite matter as much if you use some of
those things sometimes. But yeah, but if but if I
can get it, you know, actual person seeing it, it's
always going to feel a bit more connected.
Speaker 1: Right right. Have you been surprised by by the reception
I saw Let's see I saw something here from Spill
magazine said it's infectious, feel good rock, introspection and hope
A Sonics Morgas Sport. That's pretty cool. That's that's that's
definitely I praise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it always been great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been just a little over months since the
album came out, uh, and yeah, it's been really just
wonderful to see you know, the the reviews of it
have been great. The people I've heard from who've listened
to it, I've really enjoyed it. It's it's a there's
a lot of different sort of it's a little bit
more stylistically diverse in my second album, which is a
little bit more sort of power pop pop, you know,
uh pop punk type stuff. Yeah, and this album has
some of that certainly, but you know, with with songs
like you know, Isotope and Falling from Down, which are
definitely harder rock kind of songs, which and I come from,
you know, in in in those bands in the ages,
we've played a lot of you know, hard rock metal
songs like Black Sabbath and yeah, you know whatever, and
so I love a good crunchy guitar part. Yeah, uh,
and so I was really I loved doing those tunes.
But then songs like You at My Door, which has
Leleana Tani singing on it, is you know, a more
sort of traditional piano ballad song but with a bit
of a shift in it, twist in the story, and
that's you know, that was sort of a different thing.
But I just loved that song so much that that
parton was like, I just want to have it on
the album. And then when I and I got her
to singing it was great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious too. I have to ask you, and
you probably got this question a lot, but being where
you are geographic, I mean, has that influenced your sound
at all? Or I mean being in Seattle or Seattle.
Are you actually in Seattle or even one of those suburbs.
Speaker 3: I was in Seattle. I lived in Seattle. You know,
we lived in Seattle until so we brought this place
up here and and uh so, and I you know,
I've been in the area for since the nineties, so
it's yeah, we've been all over the airplace in the
area basically. But yeah, we were in in in Seattle
proper for a while, which was great.
Speaker 2: Uh until the pandemic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, yep, less so, I mean it was still fine,
but it was you know, you couldn't go do a
lot of the things that that were great about being
in the city, right uh and uh yeah, so I
mean I I you know, I love the Seattle bands,
particular from the nineties to Pearl Jam and and and
Nirvana and Sound Garden and you know, all of that
sound is just you know, was huge, and there's a
lot of nineties sound in what I do. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
so yeah, absolutely, you know, it was it's a huge influence.
I wasn't actually here for most of the nineties, so
I wasn't here during the early nineties when all the
stuff was happening because I was in Massachusetts then, but
it was uh, yeah, it's it's it's still part of
the feel here. Going to go to the airport and
there's all sorts of you know, pictures in the airport
of of Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I can imagine, yeah,
Hendrix and and all these you know things, because it's
just a big part of what Seattle is and uh
and the feel is still there.
Speaker 1: For that, yeah, yeah, no doubt. Well, by the way,
where does the name audio guests come from? What's the
meaning behind audio gusts?
Speaker 3: So I guess there's two parts of it. One, I
can't use my regular name, Chris Evans, because there's an
awful lot of them out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, common common name, one of them being very famous,
some of them.
Speaker 3: Are very well known. Yeah, depending on where you are.
There's another one in England who's very well known.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And so I needed to have an artist name that
was something else. So audio gust is a it was
something that I could that I could get that was
you know available.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, there weren't a lot of other
people doing it.
Speaker 3: But you could think of like singing as just sort
of a combination of wind, air and sound. Yeah, and
all sound really is sort of waves and it's just
sort of vibrations through the air.
Speaker 2: So it's you know, it's moving air. It is is
sort of a sound, it is motion, it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just sort of a cross of of of sound
and motion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense, makes sense. I like it. It's
a cool name. Definitely a cool name. We're almost out
of time, Chris, it goes quickly. What's the ironic twist
about your software career?
Speaker 3: So, as I was writing all of these songs and
and when you write a song, there's a whole bunch
of information you need to track along it, like for
of course, what are the lyrics and what key is
it in? But also like what what do I need
to do still on this recording of it? And you
know where if I registered it with the different all
the different places you register songs with, and what's the
link to it on Spotify versus Apple Music versus whatever else?
And so I did what a software guy does, is
I wrote an app I used to track all of
my songs and all of my recordings and all the
people that I write with and and the current state
of all of them. And I've recently realized after you know,
showing a bunch of people and letting them sort of
play around with it that I need to release this
app because it's a really really useful tool for songwriters
and music producers and such to do this. So sometime
in the next month or two, I'm going to be
releasing this app called studio Notes, which is exactly that.
It's an app for organizing all of your songs. And
and it's not you know, we don't I don't store
the music on there. They's playing a place where can
actually stow the files. But it's yeah, it's all of
the information about all of the songs you write, and
the recordings of them, the current state of them, and
collaborations and who's signed what agreements and all of those
kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Oh, that is extremely cool and very useful, and I'm
sure a lot of our listeners will enjoy hearing about
that because you know, a lot of a lot of
musicians and you know people who make up our audience.
There's a lot of musicians, a lot of industry people.
So that's that's very cool. So it's called studio Notes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and the website is up right now.
Speaker 3: You can't actually the store app is not in the
story yet, Okay, studio is studio notes dot app. Okay,
probably shouldn't have said that, but I did because the
website's up there. The link to go to the store,
of course doesn't work yet because yep, it's not in
the store. But if you know, if anybody's curious, you
can go see what it's about, and you know, send
me a comment or whatever if you're interested, and I'll
make sure to let everybody who.
Speaker 2: Does know when it's actually a up in life of
the store. But I'm sort of finishing it up now.
Speaker 1: Oh, extremely cool, very good, very good, Chris. This is
I wish we had more time. I could definitely talk
to you longer. You're you're an interesting guy, and I'm
very I love your love your music. But but yes, yes,
we are approaching the top the hour, so we'll start
to wind down. I'm going to close the segment with
this track Easier that we were talking about. This is
another another great song from the album. But where's the
best place for people to go to learn more and
keep up with everything that that you're doing, as audio gusts.
Speaker 3: Audio gust dot com is the website perfect sort of
the center of everything. You can follow me of course
on Audio guest Music, on on Instagram or you know,
I'm in Threads and a bunch of those places. But yeah,
the core of that would be allio guests dot Com
is where I usually try keep everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ups dte Yeah, absolutely, absolutely well, Chris, thank you
so much. We're going to play this track in a
moment easier. Love love the love the song, and I
love the album, and congratulations on on everything that you're doing.
And we look forward to having you back when you've
got new music or jeez, we might even have you
back on sooner to talk about the app when it
when it comes out, because like I said, I think
a lot of our listeners would be very interested in that.
But I love the album Falling from Down. Everyone should
listen to the whole thing. It's it's really really good.
Uh So we'll hit that track and we'll let you
go for now. But Chris Evans Audio Gust, thank you
so much and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate that much.
Speaker 1: All right, absolutely, take care, bye bye. All right, what
an interesting guy. Chris Evans. Is project is Audio Gust.
We're gonna play this track easier, and we are rapidly
approaching the end of the show, so that'll probably be
it for this week. Thank you to everybody who joined
us today. Of course the guys from Down Boys, they
were in studio with us. That was wonderful. We talked
to Jesse Killgus and Dots and Moon and a nice
busy show. And uh, let's see if you want to
keep up with everything I'm doing. Sometimes I forget to
plug my own website Matt connorton dot com. If you
miss any part of today's show, it will be up
in just a little bit Wmnhradio dot org and at
my website Matt Connorton dot com. And that's gonna do
it for us for now. We're gonna talk to you
a little bit later by everybody. And here it is.
This is easier and the project is Audio Gust