“Constance please don’t let my music die with me” – The Restoration
As promised, here is part two of my interview with Daniel Machado about his new project The Restoration! Before getting into this great stuff though, just a word about the show. Come early because Liesl Downey is an amazing artist, The Fossil Record is a great Columbia band, and Transmission Fields is driving down from Charlotte to show some rock love. Those guys are great and you won’t be disappointed. I also hear that The Fire Tonight has a truly special set planned to honor Daniel and his new project. If I said any more then the intrigue would be gone…
Stephen: We love the era-themed costumes and themes, will you stay with this theme for every album or will it change over time? Will it change location from Lexington?
Daniel: Thank you! That’s something I was very interested in developing for The Restoration. To begin, I asked the band members to create conceptualized version of themselves as they may have existed between the late 1800s and 1940s. I then took those concepts and spent the next few months designing and procuring costumes for each member.
Within the music, the era/period piece approach — though not overtly allegorical — is intended to texture and contextualize the songs in a way that will hopefully allow the narrative to serve as the proverbial mirror for the audience and the author. For example, the character Constance Vale helps me explore the struggle of a superiorly gifted woman who finds her voice and talents drowned out by a male-dominated South at the turn of the 19th century. Her son Thomas, on the other hand, is a nihilistic multi-ethnic youth, coming-of-age during World War I and the world’s great mechanization — he is the explosive and vengeful result of the repression and depravity often found in Southern culture.
I’m not sure what we’ll do next with some of the specificity of our current themes — the Southern setting is a core element to The Restoration — however, I hope that we’ll be able to be adaptive as the band grows.
Stephen: Can you tell us a little about each band member?
Daniel: Adam Corbett and I have been playing in bands together since 2005 but we’ve never been able to figure out a good way to collaborate together with songwriting — despite the fact that he’s, hands down, one of my favorite lyricists and songwriters. He’s been writing music with a Southern flair for years, so when I told him about the approach I was hoping to take (Faulknerian chamber-pop and all that) he was excited to work on the project and I realized that we had finally found some common ground as songwriters. I’m excited that Adam will be contributing some songs to the band in the coming weeks and months. You may have heard of his most recent project, The Ghost of FDR. He’s also written a ton of songs and is a very active solo performer.
Lauren Garner is a classically trained violinist and graduated from Belmont with a degree in music business. (We’re trying to talk her into being our manager). We actually were in grade school orchestra together for years and even both toured Europe with the Lexington High School bluegrass group in 2001. When she said she was interested in playing violin for the project, I jumped on the chance have her in the band.
Eddie Lord was in Guitar Show 2.0 (2003-2005) and is actually a brilliant composer in sheep’s clothing. Seriously, Eddie is a secret weapon that can also walk up walls. We needed someone who could do percussion, guitar, piano, vocals and a number of other things, as well as hopefully some writing in the future. So I asked Eddie if he’d give it a shot and he said yes.
Sharon Gnanashekar is another jaw-dropping musician who fits into the multi-instrumentalist category. We wanted the band to feature a gifted pianist who could also switch to other instruments and do percussion. Sharon fits the bill and we are very, very fortunate to have him with us. Ironically, both Sharon and Eddie kick all of our asses on guitar, so hopefully we’re not wasting their talents. Sharon and I also sang in concert choir together in high school. He’ll probably be mad at me for saying this, but he’s also a hell of a dancer.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Other cool people who sang with Daniel in concert choir: Me. Did I just admit that?
See you Friday!!!
