I'M BACK! After thirty days of feeling uninspired, I had a moment of brilliance earlier this week over a cup of coffee with... my mom! The end of 2009 is around the corner so I've decided to interview key personalities of the Winnipeg music and night life landscape to see what was, what is and what will.
We start this great adventure with Grant 'DJ RPG' Paley. Grant is a veteran of the Winnipeg music scene and is one of the minds responsible for Moses Mayes and more recently Lebeato. Grant took some time out of his busy schedule as a Paquin Entertainment agent to answer the following questions on Moses Mayes, Lebeato and his slowest year on record as a DJ...
The year 2009 was another step in turning the page on your flagship musical project, Moses Mayes, and ushering in a new concept composed of the same creative cores, Lebeato. How did this come about?
It started out with myself, Mark Penner and Nathan Reimer filling a void of writting new music for Moses and the fact that it became harder and harder to have the full band around as often to compose new music. We found ourselves with our horn section relocating to Toronto, the need for a break from touring and something new musically for us to explore. Not having the band around full time (from a break in touring), we started experiementing with programs like Ableton Live - Nathan was the driving force behind the electonic music being created, which in turn became LeBeato. He came to us one night with about 7 songs he wrote, me and Mark dug it and we got to work on it. We also saw this as an opportunity to start a project with just 3 members, not 8. It was a project where we only had to depend on 3 people to commit and spend time on - much easier to maintain and move forward with.
Was Lebeato the result of a changing music scene, where perhaps the full band of the 90s is replaced by a more contemporary smaller group of creative minds more focused on production and computer driven elements?
Perhaps, this certainly played a vital role in the creation of LeBeato. We received alot of postive feedback like 'Moses is great, don't get me wrong. But this has a lot of potential to become something bigger then Moses could ever be'. Moses has its sound, its loyal fan base and it is what it is. I can confirm that even Moses' sound was evolving into more of electronic based dance sound, but LeBeato certainly embraces a much more contemporay dance music vision. What we struggled with was what LeBeato exactly was - are we a band? are we producers? are we DJ's? The live show, as we saw it, had to encompass something more then us behind laptops pressing buttons (which is part of the show). So we added elements of guitar, bass, keys and turntables to conincide with the Ableton Live sequencing. However, even the sequencing can be changed, altered, remixed, extended....so in fact, its a very live part of the show as well. Really, LeBeato just happened out of need for us to explore something new, not depend on large group of people - however, the wave of electro and indie electronic influenced us all. I can say we have always been into dance music, this was just another exstension we had never explored. It took us well over two years to have confidence in the music we were making and performing it live. I think we really have it together at this point...
You guys have been pumping out a few remixes here and there, released a track on the POP ET CETERA! compilation, opening for some touring bands and such; what's next for Lebeato? Album? Tour?
We have been debating that as we are producing electronic music, yet we are band. The models to expose your music are quite different between DJ/Producers and a band, because of that we struggle with what exactly is the right path to take. We plan on official releasing BBR (on the compliation) soon, along with some other marterial. We just released to the web a remix of a song by Maiko Watson (today actually). An album is certainly a goal, but primarily our vision is to get as much exposure for LeBeato as possible which means releasing singles digitally at the moment as free downloads on blogs, websites, etc. We are aiming to release an EP type record in 2010 with much of the material we have been performing around Winnipeg and plan on getting out to play in other markets - as for a full blown tour, we'll see what happens. We see more one offs of 3 gigs on weekends as more of route to take due to our 3 member configuration - much easier to plan smaller tours with. We have a big show coming up at Festival du Voyageur with the Good Form DJ's and Mr.Ghosty doing visuals the entire night.
On a more personal level, your alter ego DJ RPG keeps tearing it up at parties and venues on various stages. Even though you slowed down, what were the most memorable moments of the year 2009 as a DJ?
2009 had to be my slowest year DJing, I took a little sabbatical from the DJ scene for a good portion of the year to concentrate on LeBeato and Moses, plus taking a position as an agent at Paquin Entertainment took up alot of my time (which I have enjoyed a lot). But the 80's vs 90's parties at the Pyramid have been my fav events, by far.
What are your favorite albums of the year 2009?
Friendly Fires - Skeleton Boy
Empire of Sun - Walking on a Dream
K'Naan - Waving Flag
Q-Tip - Kamaal the Abstract (entire record, love it)
Deep Dark Woods - All the Money I have is Gone
As an agent of Paquin Entertainment, which bands or artists should we be on the lookout for in 2010?
K'Naan
Fat Freddie's Drop
the Angry Kids
Hannah Georgas
Parallels
Joy Orbison
Thanks Grant!
Check out the latest Lebeato remix on Planetshhh and the next Moses Mayes show December 28th at the Pyramid Cabaret.
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