04.02.06 - Volume 2, Episode #4 - Length 29:35
BrightSideBroadcast.com proudly presents Sean Bendickson. One of the most talented musicians in the Puget Sound region, Sean has great versatility jamming on multiple instruments. Experience his singing and guitar playing and find out which instrument he enjoys the most. Drawing inspiration from Shakespeare to heart break, his songs are well written and great to listen to.
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MP3 27.1 MB
( ♪ Dreamgirl – From the Album Paper Wings ♪ )
Sean: Well, I grew up in Missoula, Montana along with my brothers and we all kinda’ started playing music together. Probably at the root of it all comes from our father. I remember when I was real young watching him play music in the church and all this stuff. As we grew up we took piano lessons and we each sort of picked our own perspective instruments and Aaron is the oldest he picked up guitar, and then Jason was the bass player, and I’m just kinda’ knew I was going to be the drummer. It made the most sense. So that was the instrument that I first learned. Then of course we all sorta’ learned from each other and that’s kinda’ how I picked – learned to play bass and guitar since then. We all have a little background in piano so we were all singing together and all this stuff and decided that probably would be the way to go so started recording our album.
( ♪ Dreamgirl – From the Album Paper Wings ♪ )
Sean: Good things first, I guess. I’ve been told a lot that we have just a great blend when we sing together. Of course the fact that we’ve been playing together for so long let’s us communicate in the musical arena while we are all behind our instruments pretty easily. I know where Aaron’s going to go when he’s working on whatever. We’re going through a progression or just jamming on something, I know what he’s going to do next. Same as Jason playing bass. He and I, him on bass and me on drums, we’ve spent a lot of time doing that. The communication comes pretty easily. But then, you know, the down side is that with any family situation there’s kind of like other tensions that work their ways in. I remember when I was pretty young and we were still back in Missoula just like Aaron getting upset about something and walking out of the rehearsal and me not knowing what to do about it and I can’t really take leadership in the situation because Aaron’s the oldest. So he’s always been the natural leader in the situation. The role in the family which brother has the most say or comes first sometimes takes precedence over who should have the role in the band. I feel like we’ve successfully worked through a lot of those so far due to the fact that we’re still making music together and we’re happy about it. I think that’s probably a good thing.
( ♪ Song – Recorded by BSB ♪ )
Sean: I think most people write songs when they are depressed. I probably am one of those people. I try to write songs about happy things too, but a lot of my songs were fueled by the negative feelings that come out of the down side of relationships. I like how a lot of country songs or even pop songs they have that theme. A lot of people are attracted to that theme of heartbreak. Ryan Adams has done that a lot so I’ve dealt in that for a while when I was working on my music. But then sometimes I try to focus on specific situations or specific scenarios or I’ll take a specific situation and embellish it in my mind. The song, Dreamgirl, on my album was started by a little fling I had with this girl, she’s still a friend of mine but, it lasted about a week and it never went anywhere and I thought she was great and beautiful and we had a wonderful time together and all the sudden it was over. And at the same time I was taking a Shakespeare class and was reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And so I took the situation of the character Bottom. I mean it’s sorta’ an elaborate description of how it all happened. It really happened subconsciously. Sorta’ his role in the play, where he was the Queen of the Forest, Titania, she had a spell cast on her and would fall in love with the first person she saw and she fell in love with this guy, Bottom, who is the idiot of the play. I really felt like an idiot at the time. But he was loving it and eating it up and then there is this particular scene where he comes to, like he woke from this dream of this beautiful Queen of the Forests being in love with him and all this…being like, what the hell was that? There’s a certain, I can’t recall the quote, but one of the sections in the play we studied was just kinda’ that scene of him waking up being like, what was it? I can’t say in my words what exactly it was but it was just a dream that I had. This amazing dream. So, I just drew all these references together and there are certain lines that I refer to the play and certain things I am more talking about the relationship, but I just strung it together. I feel like I take the situations and string them together with other scenarios that I’ve created. It’s hard to boil it down to a specific thing that might inspire me but, other songs that are like probably the pseudo title track, I Can Fly but it has that line, paper wings in it. Is more about that feeling of being high on life or being high in general on whatever the moment is bringing and knowing at that time that you are going to be coming down from that moment. I guess that’s that theme runs throughout the whole album.
( ♪ I Can Fly – Recorded by BSB ♪ )
Sean: The song, I Can Fly had been written. That line, there’s a line in there, these paper wings of mine they’re falling off and broken…something like that. But I really like the paper wings image. We took a step further and worked the paper airplane thing into the album artwork. It was just a line in the song. One of the more sentimental introspective songs of the album so I thought it would be good to focus on.
( ♪ I Can Fly – Recorded by BSB ♪ )
Sean: My friend Zack and I produced it in a house over in Puyallup. We just setup in the living room and recorded most of the tracks live, me on guitar, my buddy Jeff on the drums and my brother Jason on the bass. So, we just layered stuff on top of that. Tried to keep it real folky. A lot of these same, like the folk rock kinda’ feel we both were really into at the time and tried to keep that sound throughout the album. I’m pretty proud of it. I still think it’s a great sounding album. So even after it’s been out for a year ago this last April when we officially released and I still think it sounds great.
( ♪ I Can Fly – Recorded by BSB ♪ )
Sean: The first time I heard the music of Glen Phillips was when I was in my sophomore year of high school. Somebody had given me a mixed tape, it was actually a girl I was dating at the time, had the song Fly From Heaven as the first song on the mixed tape off of the Dulcinea album. I had never heard their music before, other than just kinda’ randomly over the radio or whatever. But I loved it right away and I went out and got the album and of course as any sort of music fan would go out and find an artist you like, go out and collect every single album that they ever put out. So, that’s what I did and later on I realized he was coming out with solo stuff and then as chances would have it I got to know Jonathan Kingham who’s a singer, song writer up in the Seattle area. We got on the conversation of Glen Phillips and he’s like, Oh, I know Glen Phillips. I was like, Oh, really? Glen is working on our new album and all this stuff and so he burned me a copy of what new songs he was working on. I’m like, WOW! You know to hear the stuff he was working on that was unreleased. And then it was just a matter of months later when Jonathan let me know that he had been asked by Glen to play on his tour and also that Glen was looking for a drummer and a bass player. He’s like, would you be interested in going on this tour? I had really never really met Glen at one of his shows before, but I had never really, you know, it was just like it totally blew my mind that I had the chance to be on the road with one of my song writer idols. I just love his voice and how a lot of his music is acoustic. He has that acoustic guitar in almost all of his music. It’s more than that. The language he uses and the poetry he uses is like, I don’t why, but it strikes a chord with me in the roots of the music I grew up listening to and all of the sudden here I am out on the road with him. It was only for about four weeks, but it was a blast and I enjoyed it.
( ♪ Song – Recorded by BSB ♪ )
Sean: I love playing the drums and that’s been my first passion. I feel like I can really involve myself with in music when I am behind the drum set. For me it’s like, I feel more spiritually connect to the drums because it’s the rhythm, it’s the back beat of the music, it’s the instrument that I’ve spent the most time with too. But the guitar is great because it’s a little, in certain respects, more expressive, especially if I’m trying to be an artist, you know. If I consider myself an artist. Playing the guitar allows me to be more up front so I can sing, so I can express myself that way. I feel like I’ve gotten finally to the point where I am more comfortable up front behind the guitar singing, whereas before it was the most comfortable place was for me to be was behind the drum set. I hope I am always playing the drum. I have a hard time picking one over the other.
( ♪ Song – Recorded by BSB ♪ )
Sean: As many CDs I’ve listened to, I’ve got a pretty extensive collection at home, but I really like, I remember growing up listening to the Carpenters, John Denver, Alabama that’s one of my favorites when it comes to harmonies and things like that. I love that sound. But then more contemporary stuff like Ryan Adams has done with Whiskytown and then into his solo career. I really like that. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the Wilco album I enjoyed that one a lot when it first came out. That came out when I was working on my solo album and so I feel like a lot of the sounds there sorta’ kinda’ got filtered into the sound of my album, not directly, but sorta’ subconsciously and then all the mainstays that are in music today, especially the more folkier acts like Counting Crows. They just have such a cool blend of folk and pop and rock ‘n’ roll. And then you probably can’t go too far into this interview without mentioning Toad the Wet Sprocket or Glen Phillips. Just that sound has always been pretty strong influence in my mind. It’s all available online. Itunes has my album there. We sometimes have exclusive clips on our website. Sean Bendickson dot com. Then I have recently have started posting stuff on, I’ve gotta’ MySpace page . We’ll see how that lasts. I am kinda’ sort of a weird little subculture, those MySpace people. When stuff comes out, especially when we’re finished with the album we’re planning on recording this spring we’ll have it posted online and then you can always order, if you prefer to have an actual album, you can always order it through our website too.
( ♪ Holiday – From the Album Paper Wings ♪ )
"I think most people write songs when they are depressed. I probably am one of those people." - Sean Bendickson
