Shark Quest has been hunting down melodies together since 1991. They’ve released five full lengths, scored a couple films, taken a six year hiatus, and been beckoned back due to popular demand at least twice–and all without singing a word! Suffice it to say, together (and individually) they’ve been a huge part of the local music movement over the past twenty years, but can one of thier own handle these five questions? Find out after the jump!
1. If your band were a sitcom, what would it be?
Sanford and Son, performed by muppets.
2. What instigated the choice of band name?
I always get the details wrong but I think this is how it went down: Laird and his freinds were dreaming up a band and tossing out names and someone said something that he thought was “Shark Quest” and it was something else… We were originally called “Malachai,” since this band was an extension of his original project “Mordecai” which was this beautiful bunch of recordings he made in 1989 or thereabouts. We had one song on the Cognitive Mapping compilation under that name, but then the Vanilla Trainwreck record came out, and Laird felt like this town wasn’t big enough for two biblical prophets, so he changed our name to Shark Quest.
3. Describe the thought process when composing an instrumental track as a band.
The process for this band was traditionally that Laird would come in with songs, sometimes just some pieces or a melody and sometimes really orchestrated ideas with set arrangements and harmonic counterparts already written that he would teach us. Then we would spend weeks, months, arranging and rearranging them until it was time to record and we couldn’t mess with them any more. When Brett Ingram asked us to score his two films we started working a little differently, and everyone else in the band began to write more independently and bring stuff to the band to work on. I can’t speak for anyone else but I’m not sure that the process is all that different when there are words, because I always get the melodies first, even if they come accompanied by some nonsense words that need to be hammered and forged a bit before I can figure out what they mean. Maybe with instrumentals you spend more time on arrangements because a voice and words tend to upstage the rest of the instruments.
People used to ask us if we ever thought about having vocals in this band. We weren’t opposed to the idea but there just never seemed to be any space for them. There is something liberating about not having to evoke images with words, not having to dictate what a song is about. It connects in a different way, digs a little deeper, I think.
4. Who/what might be a few inspirations or influences that would really surprise people?
I don’t think anybody who knows me would be surprised by my inspirations! I’ll stick to musical ones…it’s exponential, isn’t it? Here is what is strewn around next to my record player at the moment: Alice Coltrane, Low, two amazing CDs worth of ballads about mafia life called La Musica Della Mafia, Crooked Fingers, The Feelies, Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty duets, and Te Deum by Arvo Pärt.
5. What did you dream of being when you were a kid? (How ’d that turn out?)
I wanted to be an actress! Like Katherine Hepburn. But I secretly wanted to be a musician, and that worked out okay.
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Hurry down to The Cave to see Shark Quest this Saturday, Nov 5th. And by all means, give Sara Bell a high five when you see her!