Exposed Vocals Interviews Century Thief
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Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?
Century Thief: Most of us grew up in Ontario, although Mike is from Nova Scotia. We all grew up playing music and practicing different kinds of art, Kathryn went to school for visual art, Mike grew up doing theatre, most of us played in bands in high school.
Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?
Century Thief: We were called Bury the Hatchet for a long time, and despite our intention of promoting forgiveness people mostly associated it with violence or metal music, neither of which really represented us. We brainstormed for a year, we’d sit around drinking and pitching ideas, we played word games, debated and associated endlessly, and then Century Thief, a combination of two seperate ideas we liked, came out of it. We just liked the sound of it.
Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?
CT: We are all spotify premium users. It’s pretty incredible as a consumer. It underpays for sure, but it’s amazing to have the ability to reach so many people. We give away some stuff for promotion, but we try and make sure we don’t give everything away, because we invest serious time, energy and money in making our music. However we mostly are trying to get our name out at this point. It’s a line we are trying to walk.
Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?
CT: Go to shows and find local bands that are like you and are good. Try to work with artists you like and respect to put on well rounded shows. Find venues you like to go to and that are the appropriate size for your show. Be nice to your soundperson. Get marketing help for your release from someone who knows music marketing.
Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?
CT: Yeah for sure. It’s always best to be as confident going in as possible, so mistakes are minimal, but they happen regardless. Don’t make it obvious when you screw up, don’t make a big face or sink your head and retreat into a dark corner, just roll with it. It’s only a big deal if you make it a big deal.
Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?
CT: Yep. Van madness is a real thing. We have done a lot of driving over the past couple years and have made good friends with the van navigation system. Craziest thing happened in Mike and Kathryns old band, when some dude was staring through the window masterbating during our performance in Niagara falls, and then eventually being beaten up by the bouncer. He was behind the window like a meter away from us. It was pretty uncomfortable to keep playing while we knew his peircing drugged out eyes were locked on us.
Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?
CT: We have several songwriters, so we don’t really have one answer to this. In general life, people, books, movies. One person will bring a semi-formed song to the band and we will mess it up and arrange it, write or change melodies/forms and make it a Century Thief song. Adam (our horn section) will write a trumpet line and make our sad songs sound triumphant.
Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?
CT: Yes, centurythief.com. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, trying to start a snapchat.
Exposed Vocals: What are some really embarrassing songs that we might find on your mp3 player?
CT: Mostly demos of the stuff we are working on, in forms I would never want heard by the world at large.
Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?
CT: Probably build a recording studio and just spend all our time making music and eating takeout. Maybe some gourmet soups. But also touring, having money would take the road pressures off a bit and we could travel a little more freely. If you are offering, we’ll take you up on it for sure.
Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?
Artist: Working with 2 apogee quartets, pro tools/logic/reason. Recently got the Rodes K-2 which is all over our new record. We are using a TLM 49 for vocals, which is pretty lovely. Omar is constantly changing up his pedals and getting new stuff. He recently got the TC Corona which he’s in love with. Kathryn got a beautiful Gretsch guitar. Mike got a TC Sub N Up. Jason is obsessed with his ride cymbal. We love expanding our sound and capabilities with gear.
Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?
CT: We hired PR for our last album which helped us out a ton and allowed us to reach over 200 000 Â listens on spotify. We use social media, really loving instagram right now. Email. That and playing shows.
Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why?
CT: We’ve had this conversation a couple times and it always changes. For the where probably somewhere really cool outside, like a mountain or in space or something. Mike performed in Northern Quebec during the Aurora Borealis once and that was amazing. Although more practically we’d love to play some of the bigger festivals like coachella or wayhome. Probably Radiohead, because they achieved music, like they completed it and are on a victory lap.
Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?
CT: We are working on a few songs we plan on releasing in November, and a full length album we will release in 2017. We did a good chunk of the recording in a farm north of Toronto. Mike engineered it, we isolated ourselves up there for a week and made music constantly. We tried to capture lots of ambience and experiment a bit, we were trying to capture something a little more raw than our last record. You can really hear the cabin fever. We actually filmed a lot of it, we have endless hours of that sitting around that need to be sifted through.
Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?
CT: Eating/Sleeping.
Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?
CT: We try and delegate and help eachother out with responsibilities when possible. This is definately an ongoing struggle, being in an active band takes a huge amount of time. But we love doing it, and we love eachother, so that definately helps.
Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in the next year or so?
CT: New music! Lots of new music!
