Live music and touring have been on lockdown and fans as well as artists are going through withdrawals. We wanted to come up with something fun to help bridge that distance between fans and artists right now. What we came up with is something called The Lockdown Lowdown and it’s a Q&A session with fun questions for artists to answer. They’re not your typical interview questions, so it gives you a peek inside of the artists themselves. We’re big music nerds here at I’m Music Magazine and we love learning things like this about the artists that we love. We’re pretty sure that you’ll get a kick out of these, so we hope you’ll take the time to read them. In this installment, we spoke with Aidan Hargis (vocalist) & Jake (rhythm guitarist) from Conway.
1. How have you been doing during the pandemic and how are you spending your time?
Aidan: I’ve been all over our social media recently, the lockdown has really opened me up to getting to know our fans who follow us and reaching out to new people. Other than that it’s been practicing instruments, working on recordings, playing video games, and just doing anything I can to pass the time without going outside.
Jake: I’ve been hanging in there. I recently graduated from College in May so most of my last semester was online. Since graduation I’ve basically been doing some home recordings of covers of songs that shaped my music taste. When I’m not doing that I’m hanging out with my son.
2. Have you been working on new music?
Aidan: I’ve been writing a variety of different stuff to keep busy, mostly music I’m working on outside of the band. We have laid down some tentative tracks for new music, but it’s a long way off from being done, I’d recommend listening to Something Wicked in the meantime.
Jake: I haven’t been in a headspace to write new music, so I’m focusing on those covers and trying to draw back some of that inspiration for my own songs.
3. 5 albums that changed your life
Aidan: No order but here goes:
London Calling – The Clash
Bleach – Nirvana
American Idiot – Green Day
The Sinister Urge – Rob Zombie
Suck It And See – The Arctic Monkeys
Jake: In no particular order:
21st Century Breakdown – Green Day
A Hangover You Don’t Deserve -Bowling for Soup
Infinity on High – Fall Out Boy
Last Young Renegade – All Time Low
Take Off Your Pants and Jacket – blink-182
4. 5 artists that influenced you as a musician.
Aidan:
1. Joe Strummer of The Clash
2. Billy Idol
3. Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance
4. Lemmy of Motorhead
5. Stevie Ray Vaughn
Jake:
1. Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day
2. Mark Hoppus of blink-182
3. Bono of U2
4. John Feldmann of Goldfinger
5. Tim Mcilrath of Rise Against
5. Your 5 favorite live albums
Aidan:
1. Live at Montreux – Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble
2. From Here To Eternity – The Clash
3. NOFX – I Heard They Suck Live
4. No Sleep til Hammersmith – Motorhead
5. MTV: Jaded In Chicago – Green Day
Jake:
1. The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show – blink-182
2. Under a Blood Red Sky – U2
3. The Black Parade is Dead! – My Chemical Romance
4. Bullet in a Bible – Green Day
5. Older, Fatter, Still the Greatest Ever – Bowling for Soup
6. Life on the road; 5 of the craziest/funniest/scariest tour stories
1. (Jake) We played Midwest Original Music Fest in Wisconsin. Riley, our guitar player, and Mitch, our bassist, were moshing to a band who played after our set and Mitch nearly cracked a couple of Riley’s ribs by crashing into him.
2. (Aidan) We were playing one of our first out of town shows in Indianapolis, it was a small show with maybe forty or so people there. Some guy who was absolutely hammered got onstage, danced for a bit, then stage dived onto absolutely no one. I thought he was gonna hurt himself, but he popped right back up and kept jamming, what a legend.
3. (Jake) Another festival downstate, our late social media manager Coren and I ran to do a liquor run and when we got back they told us that it couldn’t come into the park where the festival was happening so we killed the case of beer and bottle of Jameson in the parking lot.
4. (Aidan) One of the shows we played at with our buddies from the band Blaqrock had a green room upstairs and you could walk out on the rooftop and we played soccer up there for about half an hour before our sets.
5. (Jake) This one is actually from the first show I ever played with Conway. Aidan had asked me into the band about week before a show we were playing and we had one rehearsal with me and I still didn’t have the songs completely nailed down yet so for the majority of our set I had my volume knob all the way down and I just pantomimed the songs and ran around in front of the stage basically just being a hype man.
7. 5 favorite movies
Aidan:
1. O Brother Where Art Thou?
2. Primer
3. Safe In Hell (1931)
4. Unforgiven
5. The Bourne Identity
Jake:
1. Forrest Gump
2. Step Brothers
3. Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny
4. Mr. Right
5. Doctor Strange
8. Best and worst advice you ever heard
Aidan: The best was when I made the decision that I wanted to pursue music instead of baseball, my other passion, my dad (who, while not a musician, is a superbly smart man), told me “You have to have the same tenacity you did on the field. If you do, you’ll find a place you’re happy with doing something you’re good at.” The worst was a fellow musician who shall remain nameless who said “The best thing you can do is not take music seriously.” I never forgot that, mostly cause I was so baffled they even have that attitude.
Jake: As for the best, it’s either “You’re only as good as your word” or “if you have the spins after a night of drinking, put your foot on the ground while lying down to not throw up”. The worst would probably be from a guy I went to a few classes with “Anytime something gets hard, I just get someone else to do it”
9. Strangest thing you ever autographed.
Aidan: I signed someone’s hat. It wasn’t our hat or anything, it was a Cincinnati Reds hat that she just happened to be wearing at the time. She said thanks and walked off, I still wonder if she decided to keep wearing it around or put it somewhere safe.
Jake: The back of a bar receipt for a guy who just watched us play and then he proceeded to lose it minutes later.
10. If music was over today and you had to go into professional wrestling, what would your wrestling name be?
Aidan: I’d go with Mark May, Mark for my dad’s name and May because my mother’s maiden name is Summers. I’d dress in a varsity jacket and basketball shorts and be the biggest, hammiest, most loudmouth heel I possibly could be.
Jake: I would probably do something to go with my Irish heritage since I’m first generation Irish in the States. Maybe something like “Celtic Rogue”. The rogue part since that’s usually the play style I use in video games.
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