Interview with Ethan Grim
August 15th, 2008In anticipation of the new Shortwave Dahlia Album coming out, I sent some questions to guitarist/programmer Ethan Grim and he was kind enough to answer them. So here you go, 10 questions with Ethan Grim!
1. When did you first pick up a guitar? I started playing bass at 15. the more I played + wrote songs, I realized how limiting the bass could be for songwriting. Since the guitarists I played with never seemed to play what I heard in my head, I began to teach myself guitar chords to help show them what I wanted. I never performed live on guitar until about 5 years ago when I did so to help out some friends in need. And who were your first influences? as a kid, I liked new wave. but musically, the players I first emulated were predominantly heavy metal. for bass playing, it was all Iron Maiden + Rush songs that I learned to improve myself. on guitar, I have a completely different aesthetic. I really like guitarists who have a certain atmosphere or texture to their sound, like Johnny Marr or Robin Guthrie. for the more straightforward songs, I gravitate more towards guys like Johnny Ramone or William Reid.
2. When it comes time to add your guitar work to a song, do you try to puzzle piece your tracks into what’s already there, or do you try to mold the song to the riff? for the songs already written when I joined, I added on top of what was there, working around the existing song structure. as we collaborate, the song may evolve directly from any idea that’s introduced, including guitar parts or keys or bass or vocals.
3. I can hear the Cure-style influences in your playing, but who would YOU say are the main guitar styles that you enjoy playing? Ringing chorusy stuff? Metallic Shredding? Buzzy Jesus and Mary Chain riffs? I love them all! to be totally honest, I am limited in my guitar playing. I believe my talents lie more in knowing what sounds best for each song and working around that.
4. What types of effects do you feel work best within the Shortwave Dahlia construct? And which ones would you like to toss into the mix? the guitar effects don’t really stray too far from what’s been done before, but you may notice some of the newer songs have effects tweaked into the programming and even the percussion.
5. What other musical avenues would you like to pursue within the band, apart from guitar and programming? that’s really what I signed on for, and I am perfectly satisfied with the role I play in this band. I do have another project I have started outside of SD where someone else is playing all the guitars and I handle the programming, bass + vocals. more on that as it progresses…
6. You added some programming to the latest tracks. Do you find programming more creatively flexible than guitar, or is it just another instrument to express yourself? there’s definitely more range in programming + sequencing, but at the end of the day, it really is just another instrument.
7. Having been in a a few bands before Shortwave Dahlia, do you find that the friction within a band makes for better music or worse? it may give some extra fire here + there, but too much tension without a common goal will kill a band. the bands where one half hates the other tend to have a lack of balance in the entire sound.also, who wants to work with people they do not like?
8. What songs from Shortwave Dahlia’s catalog do you like performing live the most? What covers would you like to do live? “Vara” is one of the few not ’set in stone’ that we actually improvise on live. I programmed a cover version of Charlie the Unicorn’s “Candy Mountain Cave” song and printed the lyrics up for Jack, so maybe we’ll sneak that in one day… [interviewer’s note–SQUEE!]
9. What would you like to see happen for Shortwave Dahlia with the next album? I’d like to expand our reach, promote ourselves further out. we obviously have the internet to shop ourselves around. maybe if we could arrange more performances in more areas, like at least a weekend trip out of state, all the better as well.
10. Just for the gear-heads like me– What guitar would you kill to have, if money was no option? I like the ‘fishbone’ guitar Andy Summers had in the Synchronicity II video…
Thanks again to Ethan Grim for talking to me.
