How did you all meet each other? What’s the origin story for Cave Paint?
So our back story starts in 2009 when Dalton tried out for this pop punk band I was playing drums for at the time. It didn’t work out. I personally couldn’t stand Dalton at the time. Little did I know this person would become my best friend and band mate in multiple music endeavors. haha, I left that band and moved to Philadelphia where I started writing what is now “Ways Away”. I wasn’t playing in any bands at the time and wanted to get something going again. Randomly Dalton had messaged me and asked if I still played drums and would be interested in joining his band The Changing Light. Jump to 2012 (?) we had finished a record that never released and The Changing Light fell apart. I went back to writing more on my own of what became Cave Paint. Dalton and another member of The Changing Light started a band called Navigator and needed a drummer. So naturally I ended up playing drums for Navigator. We released a record called “Soundscapes”. Really sick record. We toured and it went really well and we kind of were at a standstill. The whole time in Navigator I revamped the songs I was writing… presented them to my bandmates and they pretty much encouraged me to come out with the Cave Paint stuff separately. So I began recording the tracks for the Ways Away EP. I also had different members at the time. We booked our first tour in 2016 and thats when Dalton jumped on board with Cave Paint. Here we are in 2018 with our full length record about to be fully done and we are excited for everyone to hear it. It’s called Between The Silence And The Sound.
-Travis
What are your musical backgrounds? I feel that there’s a lot of theory that goes into your music, yet I also hear a lot of pop music sensibilities in your music.
Our musical backgrounds are somewhat similar. We both love death metal. hahaha. My personal musical backgrounds are all over the place. One day I’ll be bumping to some new Foxing and then switch over to Ella Fitzgerald. I feel as if theory plays a part in our writing process but at the same time our writing process is really organic. The pop aspect of it comes with the influences of The Dangerous Summer and The Get Up Kids…. I think. haha
-Travis
Our musical backgrounds, I think, are pretty interesting. We all learned how to play our instruments at fairly young ages, but not all of us took lessons, or trained in an organized way.
-Dalton
What role does technology or equipment play in your songwriting? Do you use a lot of pedals, effects, or other tools during the mixing process?
Technology and equipment certainly have shaped a large part of how we learn and create our music, because as gear videos became more and more popular on social media, we started discovering more possibilities about what we could do. We’ve always enjoyed heavier music, distorted music, and generally aggressive sounds, and once we discovered how, we spent our time saving up for new gear to jam out with.
-Dalton
Our current set up does include a decent amount of pedals. Mainly multiple styles of loopers, delays, reverbs, and overdrives.
I would say the guitar set up is comparable to the guitar player from Minus The Bear, David Knudson. Certainly not as complexed as his. But we do create all of our layers of sounds live and not on a backing track. There has been talk recently about branching into some stuff like ableton for some live stuff.
-Travis
Why did you choose to write instrumental music? Is there a reason you’ve avoided adding a vocalist?
It never really was an option for us. We’ve tried having vocals to the music and nothing ever truly fit for us. Although we have had some special guest appearances at our lives shows.. which has made things fun.. none of those performances were rehearsed before the live shows. So that was exciting to hear them on the spot. A special thanks to James Wolpert for making those performances really exciting. Theres a live session somewhere on youtube if anyone is interested in checking that out where James stepped up on vocals.. ohhhh shit fun.. fucking..times.
-Travis
What do you think sets you apart from other bands who write instrumental music?
I think one of the biggest things that set us apart is the way we create. We’re always trying to let things flow in a way that is natural, and that feels accurate to the things we want to express with our music. Travis will spend countless nights working out a loop and some leads, and once an idea is formed, we build off of it. Hopefully we’ll be using more synthesizers and samples in the material moving forward
-Dalton
Personally we just have a unique take on our writing process…Let me back track a bit… We all have such different lives outside of this band. From living far away from each other… Dalton lives in Philadelphia and I live in Lebanon (near Hershey PA)… When we get together we enjoy that time to be as true to the music as it allows us to be. It’s not like we are sitting down writing songs like “Oh shit I want this to be the next Circa Survive or The Counting Crows” (which both bands are pretty fucking awesome) But its the kind of thing that builds itself, from one idea to another.
-Travis
What inspired your most recent release, “The Sound?”
I travel back and forth to Seattle WA a few times a year to visit some family and to just get away from the everyday, everyday’s. I actually wrote most of the new record out there. But The Sound is based off of the location of The Puget Sound. The scenic views just vibed with me while I was there and I just started writing the parts. It’s kind of my “ode” to the area if you will. That area has a very strong connection to my mind to be able to created these new sonic sounds that we were able to pull off in this new single.
And there you have it! Fans can find Cave Paint at the following locations:
www.facebook.com/cavepaintmusic
- Photo Credit: William Trostel Photography
Check out Cave Paint’s perfomance via Bottling Works Live below!
