Meet Casey Smith Project

By Manuel A. Melendez

Before his March 30th show at The Pub, I sat down with Casey Smith of the Casey Smith Project to ask a few questions about his music, his origins, and his hopes for the future as an artist and musician.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  All photos provided by Casey Smith.

Manny: So my first question: you've been around the Alaskan music scene since 2016, right? That's almost eight years–a long time. How have you stayed together for so long? And how do you feel your music has evolved since then?

Casey Smith: Sure. So, 2016 was like the release of my first little solo EP that came out. I didn't even have a band at that point. It was just music that I put together with a friend. That kind of started the band, in a way, and then over time, it evolved to the Casey Smith Project because I was trying to figure out a band name, so that took a while. Speed forward a bit–I performed on the Alaska Live program with Lori Neufield. I talked to her, and she’s like, oh, well, you should get a band if you have one to put one together. That was the first arrangement of the band.

Manny: Mm-hmm.

Casey Smith: And those guys aren't even in the band anymore, but doing that just kind of snowballed, and I assembled a band to play those songs that I recorded, play some live shows, and then I just found it a lot [more] funner to play with a band and assemble a band. The lineups changed significantly–like, I've probably had four or five different versions of the band at this point, so it's pretty much still a solo project. I do the majority of the writing myself, and then I have two guys down in Anchorage that I collaborate with when we do recordings. Derek Haukaas, who works at Frostline Studios down there, and then Scott Joyce, who used to live in Fairbanks, and he was in this band called Good Hank, with his wife, Makeala. He’s since moved to Anchorage. I'll get some songs together, then record them down in Anchorage, and those guys help me out in the studio.

Manny: Great! You also kind of [just] answered [my] second question, which is that the Casey Smith Project, as you said, is really you, Casey Smith, and then a band that you collaborate with. But artistically, would you say that it's mostly just you coming up with the songs and the melodies or is that also a collaborative effort with the current band?

Casey Smith: We kind of do it by album. So the first album was the EP called Talk Memory and that came out and that was just me. I played everything but the drums on it. The only person I collaborated with was Josh Paul, who is in Valley Below now. That was my collaboration. Alongside the producer and engineer. And then the next album I put out was called Lose Face. Again, I had a bunch of songs, and I collaborated with the drummer, and we finished the songs together. We play the songs together and see what's working and what isn't working. Then, you go to the studio and record them. They're fairly similar to the version you play live.

Manny: Nice. Have you ever thought about the Casey Smith Project being more of a collective, like, let's say, Broken Social Scene? Or do you enjoy the intimacy [in] the rotation of band members that you have now plus yourself?

Casey Smith: I've never really kicked anybody out of the band, per se. It's more or less just people come and go, you know, move or change their life or whatever. I would love to have steady players or a larger band. It's just more to manage, really, because the smallest is obviously a solo, but then, like, I think the biggest, the most functioning is like a four [or] a three-piece band, something like bass, guitar, and vocals, and drums. And that's the most affordable to go play with. The more you add in, the more you gotta pay and transport, and buy tickets. I don't really enjoy playing solo as much. So I try to avoid that. But sometimes, when there are good opportunities, and the band doesn't want to play out, I'll still play regardless.

Manny: Would you say that's rare in music: to have a band that you play with but also has its own agency? Like, if they don't want to play, that's fine. Whereas, you know, if Nirvana doesn't want to play, and Kurt is on his own, like, that wouldn't have been the norm.

Casey Smith: Well, we play a lot with this band called SunDog. They're a three-piece [band], and they write together. But essentially there's one main writer and then there's still a band and all play their parts. There are other bands like Matt Hopper & the Roman Candles or Medium Build, [who] gets various people to play on his albums. And so there's definitely all kinds of bands out there. I'm not opposed to having a traditional band and sharing, but [it] just always seems to default back to me being the primary.

People don't want to take on the responsibility of booking shows. Or dedicating the amount of time it takes to write a part for a song. So instead of, you know, hounding people, I just keep it open. I try not to harbor that as negative and just say, “Oh, well, I'll write the parts.” And so it's just been easier and easier to write more and more. But, you know, the hardest thing for me is the drums. I can play the drums, but do I want to record that forever? (laughs)

Manny: (laughs)

Casey Smith: Even the producing, I guess, the side of the engineering, that's becoming something I'm taking on more responsibility. So, developing demos to go to the studio. They're getting better and better, so at some point, I see myself kind of phasing out or working with better and better producers. Who knows, but right now it's working with the system I have, which is to kind of get a song together and then share it with people and then they put on what they can.

Manny: That seems sensible. Speaking of engineering, let's talk about the music. Because you talked about having diverse tastes and the list that you provided for me was very diverse. The playlist that I will have this week [on my show] has them interspersed with your music in a tracklist that I made in the way that, obviously, I subjectively heard the connections.

Casey Smith: (smiles) Yeah, I let you kind of arrange it. I could've put them in a sequence. 

Manny: (smiles) And that's part of the beauty of music. How do you see the Casey Smith Project as being defined or undefined by genre? Because you clearly have an interest in just music and the hybridity of it. Do you feel like the Casey Smith Project is a place for you to do that, or do you still feel like you need to funnel yourself into one [genre] slot?

Casey Smith: I do engineering for a living. That's my day job. And I'm an [alumnus] of UAF, actually. So I think my day-to-day is very formatted. I go to work on time and do my job. Music, for me, is like an outlet to be creative and be whatever I want to be– just choose whatever direction I want to go with whatever I'm listening to or whatever I want to explore, and that changes obviously with people that I'm writing with or playing with. Scott and Derek have more of a jazz and soul interest, and that kind of influenced the direction I'm currently taking.

I've played with people who were more into rock and country, which influenced the last album a bit more. I'm really into bands that are kind of pushing it– progressive bands like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. Their album is just a variety of metal to bluegrass [to] every genre I feel like. I don't feel like I can put together a whole album's worth of various genres, but I like to explore that for a song at a time, for sure. And I lost track of what your original question was, but–

Manny: No, you're answering the question. Part of it too is, that I noticed there's a lot of almost gapless playback in your albums. Whereas the next track begins almost immediately after one has ended, which I personally really enjoy, makes for difficult shuffling when you're making a playlist– I like that challenge. Do you have an interest in exploring sudden changes in tempos or what we would consider more jarring or dissonant effects, I feel like some of your music has a whisper of that, like it's about to change the tempo or the tone of the song. The last single you released (“Confess My Love”) has a really interesting outro. That stood out to me as giving a different texture than what had already been presented in the song. So, is this something that you do consciously, or do you think that [it] just kind of happens?

Casey Smith: Yeah, for example, that end of “Confess My Love,” it's kind of the jam out. [When] I write, I do write alone, you know, so I have the verse, [the] chorus, intro, and all those really arranged. And there's not usually a lot of wiggle room within that format, but when I get to the end of the structure, then usually that leaves room for [me not to] overdevelop that part of the song. And then when we get to the studio, we're allowed to jam out a little bit so [it] was underdeveloped on purpose. I can explore that with the band and kind of go wild. I knew it would be a little bit more fun, for sure. I was like, I'm hearing it, it's funny you say that because I was hearing a tempo increase. 

I think some of my favorite bands do that naturally, but, you know, restraints in the studio are you have a tempo, and you say 120 BPM, and then you play your song that way. You can vary that, but normally, you just record a song at one tempo. It varies depending on the feel of the song. Bands like Built to Spill and Modest Mouse did a lot of those tricks, in my opinion. I'm very excited to do that. But the thought of doing that on a demo and then going into the studio without actually rehearsing that sounds a little far-fetched personally. We did try that recently on one of the songs we recorded that's not released yet– it goes from this kind of slow intro to a kind of a sped up almost, you know, heavier feel at the moment, so it's kind of working. We'll see how it turns out. It's actually incomplete. I haven't finished the vocals yet. We've recorded the instrumental part.

Manny: But, that's got to be part of the fun too.

Casey Smith: The scary part for me is that I'm essentially the producer because I'm funding the money [for] the songs, so going in and not coming out with a finished product is a little bit intimidating. It's nice to go in and just, in one day, bang out a song, and then you can listen to it, you can make edits, but you have it, you're done. But when you go in with a loose idea, and you explore that, you may come out, and it's not done, and then you have to figure out how to finish it, and that's more money, for one thing, and two, maybe we scratch it, and we don't use it at all, and then I just waste $600 or more, right?

Manny: (nods) So, related to improving [and] the performance aspect, when you’re playing live– I can't imagine that you're playing exactly the album versions every time because there's an element of surprise at every stage you go to. But what do you feel are the crucial things that you, as the Casey Smith Project, need to bring to a live performance to be able to say, “We knocked it out,” this was absolutely what we wanted to do.

The Fairbanks crew, from left to right: Luke, Casey, Morgan, and Eric

Casey Smith: Well, I do have people that are in the band full time, like Scott and Derek, but I also play with people in Fairbanks. Eric Barker, Morgan Hough, and Luke Ponchione, those guys are kind of like my live crew, in a way. We’ve never recorded together. Eric actually recorded on the last song; it's not out yet, but it's called “Poly Love.”

I think the requirement is just that they're proficient, for one, and that they enjoy [and] are good at performing live. So when I met those guys, they're all really good at what they do. In the past, I used a looping pedal to write a lot because I was a solo artist and I was writing by myself and that's the tool I used.

But the last album, Red Lights and Whiskey didn't have any loops at all. So, I'm kind of getting away from writing with a looper, but then that makes me have to use a band to pull songs off. [This] is new territory for me, personally, because I'm used to just being able to play the same songs without their help.

Manny: Is there a live performance that you can remember, that you just had a lot of fun with, that was very memorable to this day?

Casey Smith: Yeah, last year we played down in Anchorage at The Nave, which is a pretty cool venue off Spenard, and it was for the Spenard Jazz Festival, and it was an all-ages event, and that was pretty eventful and high energy. We also played at the Midnight Sun Festival a few years back, and it was like the midnight show, and there were just people chanting along with us and that was– whenever there's the energy from the crowd that really makes it. It's when there's interaction from the audience. I still haven't bottled the magic on how to get that every time. It's nice when, when people do feel that, you know. It's usually kind of sudden. I'm looking down at my feet, and I'll look up, and people are engaged, and then I'm like, whoa. That makes me want to engage more.

Manny: Yeah. There's a reciprocity, right? Yeah. That's awesome. All right. Musical influences, vocally and musically, if there's any kind of difference, or if there's not. But I'm really just curious to see where you think Casey Smith's sound has really originated from– like, the seeds.

Casey Smith: Vocally, I'd say Thom Yorke of Radiohead; big one for a long time. And then as I started getting into doing my own solo stuff, I was really listening to a lot of Tame Impala, so Kevin Parker; I like his vocals a lot. And I like Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys, and his solo stuff is really good. A lot of older soul stuff is influencing me now.

Guitar-wise, in college [I was] listening to early Modest Mouse [with] Isaac Brock playing his whammy bar and doing all the crazy tricks that he does. And you know, Built to Spill was another one. He's very melodic and just [has that] West Coast indie rock [sound]. And then there's another one called Pavement, which is really cool. Dinosaur Jr. [also]. A lot of it is off Sub Pop, the label. And then, I listened to a lot of Kurt Vile; he's really good– kind of Americana, Bob Dylan-esque.

The new album will be more a mixture of soul and psych rock, probably like a weird blend of the two, and a lot of love songs. [The] last album was more, I don't know, heartbreaker stuff.

Manny: Yeah. Do you think that there's a specific sound or sub genre in music that you'd like to tackle or you'd like to try out? Any kind of texture that you want to add to your music that you feel like you haven't yet?

Casey Smith: Well, I'm integrating the keyboard more so the synthesizer, like the Juno-60, kind of that Tame Impala sound. So that's been fun– modulation and fuzz on the bass and then the guitar, and I've been doing that more. I grew up listening to Pantera and with bands like King Gizzard, they play metal but just trying to figure out how to sing over something heavier is intimidating. Without screaming. I [also] like bands like Queens of the Stone Age. They're heavier with softer vocals. I'd love to do that. And I'm already doing soul, but there's plenty of room for that. [My] single “In and Out of View” is very like Marvin Gaye, and it relies on a keyboard called a Mellotron, and it has all these orchestra sounds in it. The Beatles used it on “Strawberry Fields [Forever].”

Manny: Oh, nice. I know exactly what sound you’re talking about.

Casey Smith: Yeah, yeah, yeah! So it's got those sounds in there. They're samples. They're like eight seconds or sixteen seconds of orchestra for each, each note you play and you can pitch it high and low or you can speed it up and get this high production sound, which is cool. So that's “In and Out of View.”

[I’m] writing songs that require keyboards and synthesizers to fill out the sound, which– I don't always play with the keyboard. So that makes it tough. But I guess then there's [always] just slimmed-down versions.

Manny: Great. Well, I look forward to your show, and thank you so much for answering my questions!

Casey Smith: Thank you.