SURRENDER
Surrender is a duo of Dave Williams (DW) and Scott, veterans of the Ottawa music scene. They are set to release their debut album soon; in the meantime, give their first single, Hold On, a spin, and read on about their vast experiences in music, top albums, and thoughts on the Ottawa music scene. (Photo: Rémi Thériault)
VITALS
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/surrendersounds
Bandcamp: https://surrendersounds.bandcamp.com/releases
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/surrendersounds/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/davemonomania (Dave)
Upcoming shows: Stay tuned!
SA: How did Surrender come to be as a band? DW: Scott (Surrender vocalist) and I had been playing in the band Crusades for the past ten years, and in early 2018 we all quite amicably realized that the band had run its course. We did a final tour in the UK/Europe, one hometown show, and played our final two sets at The Fest in Florida. Toward the end of all that, with things winding to their conclusion, Scott and I began discussing working on something new together - something outside of the punk/hardcore scene that we’d been deeply involved in for the previous twenty-plus years. We’re both hugely into pop music, and of the synth-driven variety specifically. I had inherited a Roland Juno 106 when my best friend’s father passed away a few years earlier - it was a fixture in the home studio that I initially learned how to record in - and I sorta longed to make something with it. So, I started writing some songs on it at home, sent them to Scott, he sent some vocal ideas, and we were off. SA: What bands or musicians would you cite as the biggest influences on your sound? DW: Whew. I’ll do my best to keep this as brief as possible. There are some obvious touchstones: Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears, all of Vince Clarke’s 80s output - Erasure’s The Innocents is a big one, Eurythmics, OMD, Cyndi Lauper, The Cure... essentially the more ‘serious’ side of 80s synth-driven pop music. Later 80s/early 90s stuff like Björk/Sugarcubes, New Order and the ‘Madchester’ scene, Jesus Jones, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and the other Grebo bands. I probably can’t overstate the impact of the quintessential 80s soundtracks: The Lost Boys, Footloose - Kenny Loggins’ “I’m Free” might be my favourite pop song of the decade. I’m a sucker for some of the big producers of that era too. Desmond Child was unstoppable for a while - Cher’s Heart of Stone is another BIG one. As for more modern stuff, I’m pretty obsessed with a lot of the Norwegian pop scene. Cold Mailman is a HUGE influence, as is Hanne Kolstø, Pyke, the new Misty Coast record, there’s a ton of amazing stuff coming out of that country. Some straight-up dance stuff too: Toulouse, Robyn, Pet Shop Boys, ABBA obviously. And of course, the still relatively-new Synthwave scene has some amazing artists: Kristine, FM-84, Michael Oakley, the whole culture of nostalgia surrounding the NewRetroWave world - music, movies, fashion - certainly runs parallel to what we’re doing, and I really dig a lot of it. SA: Thus far in your career, what has been your biggest success? DW: Hm. It’s safe to say that there are MANY variations on how one might measure artistic ‘success’. Coming up in a community where monetary success was never the goal (or at all likely), I’d say that getting to travel all over the map multiple times with my closest friends, meet and befriend people we’d have otherwise never crossed paths with, and see things most folks don’t get to see - all because we wrote some pretty cool songs - is probably my greatest personal success. SA: On the other hand, what is the biggest challenge you have faced, and how have you dealt with it? DW: I think, for me anyway, the biggest challenge has been balancing my creative life with my personal one. I’m married with three small kids - 7, 4 and 2 - and that can obviously present a different set of priorities than simply hitting the road for most of the year and really pushing a project to its fullest potential. Admittedly I’ve been envious of friends and peers who just throw their gear and clothes in the van and make it happen ‘the old-fashioned way’. But that’s just not the life that I set up for myself, nor is it for Scott or the other folks we’ve played with - and I’m far from resentful of that - it just means we need to take a different approach. Amassing a substantial following or getting the attention of a bigger label isn’t terribly easy when you can’t be doing the literal legwork that other bands can. But I do my best to stay close to the people I’ve worked with all along, to show my gratitude and appreciation, and I work endlessly (to some peoples’ chagrin) on the music we make. SA: How do you guys approach the song-writing process? DW: Since it’s just the two of us, it’s pretty easy to just bounce things back and forth before we actually get together in a room. Basically, I’ll come up with some chord progressions, leads, arpeggios, whatever on my Juno or my wide array of Arturia soft synths, then I’ll record the rhythm section tracks, typically writing most, if not all, of an instrumental song. I’ll send that to Scott and he’ll come up with vocal melodies and record a demo to send back to me. Then I’ll kind of edit the parts around his vocal ideas until we’re happy with the dynamics and how the song sorta lives and breathes. Then we’ll get together at Scott’s with a selection of wine and beer and a pizza, usually with extensive notes on harmonies and how to punch-up the existing vocal parts. We’ll track that stuff, I might do a few more edits at home, and then we send it to the wildly talented Alex Gamble at The Hive in Toronto for mixing, producing, extra instrumental layers, added drum machine stuff, whatever he hears. That’s pretty much how this first LP has gone, and it’s been an absolute pleasure. SA: What are your thoughts on the Ottawa music scene? DW: I imagine like anyone who’s spent twenty-plus years in a community, subculture, what have you, I’ve got a lot of thoughts and feelings about the Ottawa music scene. My personal involvement tends to ebb and flow as new waves of participants arrive and others exit - years will go by where it feels like home and then there might be a few where I’m not quite as active - but it’s always very near and dear to me. There’s certainly never a lack of quality artists in this sleepy city. I started going to punk shows when I was thirteen - Punchbuggy (featuring a young Jim Bryson) at the Greely Legion was my first show ever - and twenty-five years later there are still a ton of the same faces mixed in with a ton of different ones. That’s a pretty special thing. SA: As I understand it, you guys have been active in other bands of quite different genres in the past. Why SURRENDER, and why now? DW: As I mentioned, Crusades finished our ten-year run this past October. Black Tower, the sorta traditional heavy metal band I play drums in - with Scott on bass and his partner Erin on guitar and vocals - also decided to take it easy for a while, and although I still kinda ‘moonlight’ with The Steve Adamyk Band, that wasn’t happening at the time. Scott had also just wrapped up the “album cycle” with his band The Creeps and didn’t have much on the horizon there. I briefly played in a hardcore band called Power of Fear that did a few shows, but the current hardcore scene is very... let’s say... ‘youthful’, and it became apparent pretty quickly that it wasn’t something I wanted to stick with. Mostly I just wanted to make music with Scott, and based on our mutual love for 80s/90s pop music (and Scott’s equally toned down schedule), we decided to take a crack at doing something closer to the music we listen to the most. And honestly, I’d been writing and playing fast and/or aggressive music for so long, I really just wanted to make something upbeat and positive that people could dance to. SA: A question for fun: your three desert island albums. What would they be and why? DW: Alright, this isn’t gonna be easy. Or brief. Note: these aren’t necessarily my favourite albums of all time (certainly they’re in the Top Ten), but if I’m gonna be listening to these on whatever hi-fi system this hypothetical island has until I wither away, here’s what I’d hope washed ashore with me (also, I’m gonna cheat using a nostalgia loophole):
1. Alice Cooper - Love It to Death / Killer (my Dad’s old dubbed cassette version) These two albums, both released in 1971, were my first love. They were on a single cassette in my Dad’s collection and really still exist as a single entity to me. I always cite my discovery of these two albums, probably at 4-5 years old, as the foundation for my entire musical life to come. Not only were they mysterious and rather frightening, but there was an eclecticism in this batch of songs that made everything I fell in love with afterward - metal, punk, prog, pop, garage, etc. - seem somehow part of the same cloth. Alice and that original band showed me very early on that there’s no need to limit oneself to the confines of a style, sound, genre, whatever. Most important records that ever happened to me.
2. Misfits - Walk Among Us / Earth A.D. / Legacy of Brutality (also a homemade cassette version c/o my friend Judd’s older sister, fully decorated with black Sharpie and White-Out) If early Alice Cooper set me on the weirdo path as a youngster, it was a single afternoon taping CDs in my friend Judd’s bedroom that locked me into the punk rock subculture forever. We’d been Guns N Roses turned Pantera turned Sepultura fans like many a shitty kid of the 80s/90s, and Danzig’s ‘Mother’ was in heavy rotation everywhere at the time, so we were no stranger to that beautiful beast’s howl. When Judd’s sister borrowed a stack of Misfits CDs from a pal at school and explained to us that this was Glenn Danzig’s old band (of course we recognized the name and logo from Rockabilia ads and Cliff Burton photos), we dove in assuming we knew what was coming. We most certainly did not. The Misfits became my favourite band that day and have been for every day since.
3. Peter Gabriel - So Every time I listen to this incredible record, I discover new things I love about it. A perpetual go-to and a true monument to the possibilities within pop music (shout out to Daniel Lanois there too). I was going to choose his Shaking the Tree compilation because it contains my favourite PG track - the piano version of “Here Comes the Flood” - but I figure I’d cheated enough with the first two answers. ...also Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, The Hellacopters’ High Visibility, Cold Mailman’s Everything Aflutter, Cave In’s Jupiter, and The Lemonheads’ It’s A Shame About Ray. This is an unfair question. SA: Finally, what comes next for Surrender moving into 2019 and beyond? Best of luck! DW: First on the agenda is to find an ideal home for the LP. We’d kinda like to step out from beneath the umbrella of labels we’ve worked with in the past, but there are no specific plans thus far. Just release the second single, hope the feedback is good and see if anyone wants to partner up for the long haul. As far as any live performances go, that’s a big question mark. It’s been so great doing this with just the two of us, it’s hard to imagine inviting anyone else into the fold. That said, it’s even harder to picture just the two of us on stage like Yazoo on “Top of The Pops,” so who knows? Thanks so much!
