The Mieka Canon October 27, 2009 at 88.9 WERS

October 27^th, 2009

The start of winter in Boston is never pleasant. The beautiful fall days seem gone forever, and the only thing that greets people on the street is the stabbing-cold wind. Despite the nasty weather, The Mieka Canon arrived at WERS laughing and cracking jokes. Even the gray sky that looked like it could start pouring anytime could not stop the band's jolly energy.

Mieka Pauley, the front woman of The Mieka Canon, is not new to WERS. She not only went to school in Boston, but she's a frequent WERS in-studio performer. She looked extremely comfortable setting up and sound checking, and the band members seemed to be more relaxed than nervous.

The Mieka Canon is Mieka Pauley's new project with Brian Cassagnol, Andrew Morgan, and Gabriel Hayes. Pauley has been playing as a solo acoustic artist for some years, but she sought for a different way to express her music with a full band. "I think I wasn't satisfied with my solo work," Pauley said. "There were people who told me that they liked it, but it's not enough for me to be happy with, and then Ryan and Andrew brought to me the music that I've always wanted to play."

The band started off the set with "Faster," which is a medium tempo tune layered with Pauley's appealing vocals. Pauley's voice was simple yet touching, and the band added filled in the blanks that Pauley's acoustic sound might have been missing.

Pauley had a hard time defining her hometown when asked where she was from. She's lived in Kentucky, Colorado, and South Florida. Her eclectic sound perfectly represents her backgrounds, which also allows her to play with many different artists such as Citizen Cope, Ben Kweller, Eric Clapton, and even Natasha Beddingfield. "Mieka is kind of bluesy, kind of R&B," said Cassagnol. "… [Citizen Cope] is so much funkier, and yet it totally works because Mieka has got that down. But then we can get on stage with Ben Kweller and we can bring out more of rock and garage sound, so it can work with Ben Kweller."

The Mieka Canon finished their set with "We're All Gonna Die." Cassagnol's back-up vocals added a spunky spice to the song. With the band behind her, Pauley seemed to be more confident and comfortable letting her sound out. It was a great idea to get a band together on Pauley's end, considering how much more versatility Pauley's music carried with the band.

-Words and images by Lily Jeong

Why Do I Get Lonely?

I remember when I was thirteen years old. I believed I was one of the unhappiest cat in the world. The social norm and conformity that Korea puts on me was killing me inside and out. I was convinced there was no one around me who understood what I was going through. I guess some people can justify that as a common teenage behavior, but when a free soul is stuck in a cage like South Korea, the soul-fire dwindles, and one finds oneself dying. That is what I was like. I was dying inside, and no one was there for me.

I am not afraid to say that moving to America saved my life. As soon as I settled in Colorado, all my suicidal and depression behaviors went away. People here were different. People here see the difference and accept it. I had good friends who were willing to hear me out and caress my tears, which was something I never had in Korea. It's not an exaggeration if I say I learned what friendship was after I came to Colorado. Maybe it's just a more grown-up thing as well.

Thinking about how lonely I was back in Korea is painful. Getting through early teenage years in Korea was the worst experience I have ever had, and I would do anything to never ever feel like that again.

But why? Why are human beings so selfish and ungrateful? As a college student and a beautiful apartment in Boston, great friends who I love with my whole dear heart, and basically living a life that I have dreamt of when I was thirteen, I am lonely. I am fucking lonely, all over again.

It's not the matter of someone not understanding me or knowing me. I am lucky to have some fantastic people in my life who are great companions in this journey. But I can't help but to wake up every morning and wonder why I am in my bed by myself. I can't help but to wonder why I am cooking dinner for one person only, and I can't help but to wonder what good life is without that person who will make me smile randomly throughout the day.

I mean, think about this. I was walking around the Commons one day and thought, 'would I rather have many relationships throughout my life and never find the one I want to be with, or have nothing at all throughout my life and find my match right before I die?' It's a hard question to answer. I believe in true love - or at least I want to believe in it - and I do not want to imagine a life without it. But is it worth it to not even know what love might feel like? Meeting my true love in my death bed. It sounds romantic but in reality it really isn't.

That is an extreme example, but it's basically how I feel. I know I am only twenty-one years old. I am not even a quarter-way through my life. But it is human instinct to be impatient. I guess me whining about being lonely in my wonderful life is just my impatience screaming for attention.

So what do I do? I just live. The past I have no control over, and the future is the same. I live the moment and see what is about to become of it. I will still feel very cold and alone in the morning, at my dinner table, and in lazy Sunday afternoons. But at least I will know that it's okay to feel that way. Hell, I went through teenage life crisis - this is nothing compared to this. Life is beautiful always, especially when you can actually recognize the beauty of it.

Ben Folds September 13th Symphony Hall

October 13, 2009

When news broke that Ben Folds was playing with Boston Pops at Symphony Hall, it did not come as much of a surprise. Folds' songs are all about dynamics and expressions, which is what an orchestra does best. Because of the expressiveness of his songs, Folds is also one of film industry's favorite pop artists to work with, not to mention he wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to music.

On arrival at Symphony Hall, the wide range of the crowd was surprising. It felt like a representation of Boston population. From skinny jeans wearing hipsters to mid-age men in suits, the show seemed to have attracted every kind of demographic from every age group.

Folds walked out on the stage in all-black attire that matched the orchestra's tuxedoes, and the crowd cheered out loud from their anticipation and excitement. During the first a couple songs, Folds explored the space he had in the orchestra. Although they were his songs, his melodies, and his words, Folds did not try to take over the stage. Instead, he shared the show with Pops as if it was a giant band. His emotions and stories were coming out in the most modest-yet-honest way, and the crowd reacted instantly by cheering and singing along.

Into his fifth song, Folds' presence started to take over the stage. He played songs that had personal anecdotes to them such as "Ascent of Stan," and "Landed," and the Pops took the dynamics of Folds' songs and amplified them magnificently. By the time he was playing a song for his daughter, "Gracie," Folds had complete control over the crowd. He had the evident power to move the crowd, and as if hypnotized, the full-house audience laughed and cried to his words. During "Not the Same," Folds even taught the audience the three-part harmony from his song "Not the Same," letting the crowd experience the song as a full.

About three quarters through the set, Folds shared with the audience that he had been working on a new album with High Fidelity author, Nick Hornby. Boston Pops members put their instruments down to let Folds play two new songs from the album by himself. Even though the full sound of the orchestra was gone, the energy of the previous songs carried on, and left listeners with the impression that Folds' music inherently has the power to move people. A symphonic orchestra helped Ben Folds express his sound, but it was ultimately the presence of Folds himself that enticed the audience.

Folds ended his set with "One Angry Dwarf and Two Hundred Solemn" and retired to the backstage. However, the audience kept calling and cheering for him, encouraging him to come back out without Boston Pops to play some fan favorites such as "The Luckiest," and "Army." The encore brought out the rock 'n' roll side of Ben Folds' shows that the Pops were covering up, and everyone got up and danced in order to let out the energy they had been containing the entire night. The audience energy peaked during the last song of the night "Rockin' the Suburbs," highlighting everyone's night by dropping the F-word on top of their lungs in Symphony Hall.

Attendees left the venue feeling both energized and inspired. Ben Folds fed his crowd a genuine, raw musical experience that only comes to town once in a while.

-Lily Jeong

Korea. Colorado. Boston. And Colorado.

My life has been a desperate search for that one perfect place to live in. I was born in Korea and was raised there until I was sixteen, but it did not take me long to realize that I didn't really belong in that country. Once I entered middle school where they required me to wear uniforms, cut hair, and even talk like everyone else, and I just could not stand it. I needed a place that would accept me as who I am, and Korea was obviously not that place for me.

I went to high school in a small bubble town in Colorado called Carbondale. Colorado Rocky Mountain School was this perfect private school world with a bunch of hippies, and as a confused teenager who was a half snobby Korean chick and a half hippie at heart, I did not know how to act, and all these idealists that were around me never understood my identity conflict. Being sick of living in a bubble filled with people thinking they can live in a perfect world, I craved for some brutality. I wanted a city - an east coast city. I wanted the coldness and the sarcasm of New York. The fact that all the colleges that I applied to except for one were all in the east coast says it all.

The summer before I went to college, I had a lot of time in my hand. I read a lot, meditated a lot, and became quite religious (I grew up in a pretty strong Buddhist household), which finally led me to accepting the fact that I really am a free soul at my heart, and the yuppie Korean side of me has nothing to offer to me. Also, when I finally got to Boston for college, I had the hardest time finding people to get a long with. Everything was different from Colorado, and it was a big of a culture shock as when I came to America for the first time. I longed for the friendliness of Colorado, and contemplated on transferring everyday. I did not regret my decision to come to the east coast though, because I probably would have not known my passion towards Colorado if I were still in Colorado. I sought for every chance to go back to the mountains, and when my summer of 2009 was settled and stoned for Colorado, I counted every second until I was breathing the mountain air.

So here I am, spending my dream summer in Colorado. Do I love it? I do. I run into people with Patagonia gear and ohm tattoos everyday. I see people with YMSB shirts, and people wear crocs to work here. Am I happy? Yes. But I do miss Boston a lot. I miss the business of the streets, drunk people flooded in the T, crazy homeless people, but most of all, I miss my friends I made in Boston. They know me as exactly as who I am. They know how to make me laugh just by saying one word. And it is not until now that I realized that it is not a certain type of people - dread-locked hippies who listen to jam music and meditate on pot - that I need around me, or it's not a certain type of place that I need to be at to make myself happy. With any situation I am going to face in my life, there are always going to be ups and downs - there is no such thing as perfection. It is all about what I make out of it, not what it makes out of me. Only I have a complete control over my happiness, and I should not be seeking it from a place or a type of a person.

Yet again, this summer has reminded me of the most valuable lesson of my life. I land in Boston in a week, and I cannot be more excited.

WECB Showcase

Free food + free music + free fun =WECB Showcase!



WECB Showcase is a FREE live concert at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square!

This is an Emerson only event. You will need to bring your Student ID to get in! You may bring up to 2 non-Emerson guests.

The Line Up:

The Groovers: State Your Mind (http://www.myspace.com/stateyourmind)

The Eclectic Army of Folk/Indie Rock Pop Musicians : Ferris Wheel (http://www.myspace.com/ferriswheelsongs)

To keep you dancing all night long (Oh my god! He's playing the Jonas Brothers!? Nelly? IS THAT QUEEN?): SymondSaid (http://www.myspace.com/symondsaid)

We'll also have $1,900 worth FREE of food and drink! Come join us the night before Patriots Day and get your groove, rock and dance on! (You can even go out an party after the show is over at a timely 11pm!)

Some food we'll be serving:

Quesadillas (con pollo tambien!)
Fried Calamari (Whoa!)
Chicken Tenders (Tenda)
And Burgers! Hells yeah!

(There are some veggies and cheese for you vegetarians too!)

We'll also be having a live stream, so come be apart of live WECB action! http://wecb.emerson.edu

The Everyday Visuals To Release A Self-Titled Album Soon

The Everyday Visuals are frequent visitors to WERS. Lead singer Christopher Pappas and Eli Scheer (guitar / keyboards) sat down with WERS.org to talk about the band’s new self-titled album and their new website.

Interview conducted and transcribed by Lily Jeong

What have you guys been up to since your last visit to WERS?

Christopher Pappas: Making the record.

Eli Scheer: Totally just working on the record as much as we can until it was done.

CP: Now it’s done, and now we are here promoting it, putting it out among the airwaves.

Tell us a little bit about your new album.

CP: It’s self-titled, and it’s going to be out on April 14. We are really proud of it. I feel like we’ve learned a lot from making the last two records on our own, so the third one, I think we really have gotten in synch with what sort of vibe we want for the record. You know, what sort of production things we wanted to do, and sounds and all that.

ES: I think the last a couple records had a whole bunch of elements that were really representative of us in terms of: here’s one, here’s one, and here’s one. Like we said on air, it’s kind of a schizophrenia thing sometimes. This one to me – and I think we can speak for all of us – it feels more like allover representative, and it totally feels like us. From front to back, all of [the songs.] Some of them are still rockers and electric stuff, and some of them are more of the acoustic side of what we do. But they all somehow represent us more.

CP: It’s like somebody has split personalities and you’d have to combine all of them together make one person. It’s distilled. It’s like fine liquor. It’s like nice scotch. It’s like a nice blended scotch. Although my favorite is malted scotch so this analogy is bad, but a very good blended scotch could be awesome, and especially if you blend them right. I think we blended them right.

Is there a reason you waited out a couple albums to make this one self-titled?

CP: The self-titled was kind of Eli’s idea. I think all of those reasons I’ve mentioned before, I think this album truly represented us. The previous records represented us but it was disjointed. It was like, oh here is their acoustic side, and here is their electric side. But this record we combined them into one big sonic experience, you know? So I think Eli really hit on it and said, ‘This record is so us that we should just self-title it.’

I checked out your new website with your blog.

CP: Blog, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube…

ES: You can pretty much log into our website. You can almost [log in] if you have Flickr and YouTube accounts. We try to make it as inclusive and possible and stay connected to whoever might be visiting us.

CP: Right. And also, it’s just an easier update. We are not like web junkies. Our last website was all HTML, so you needed Dreamweaver to update it, so Eli and I were constantly trying to update it and keep up with it, but it was such a hassle. Now this one, I mean, I posted news items from my phone, because it’s a blog. It’s really awesome and it allows us to be current, and keep our website more relevant than our Myspace. That was our goal: trying to phase out people finding the news and tour dates from Myspace, even though Myspace is great…

ES: Hopefully people will sign up for our mailing list instead of clicking to be our friend on Myspace.

So I read your blog about asking people about weather you should play an acoustic set or an electric set for the opening acts.

CP: What do you think? Have you heard our electric set?

I have.

CP: What do you think? What should we do?

I want to say acoustic.

CP: Interesting.

ES: There is no right answer to this, because it’s an internal quandary that everybody has a different opinion on. Somebody actually commented on the blog that you were referring to on our website – they just did it today, I think – and I was reading it and it said, ‘I just saw you playing at the Paradise acoustic this last weekend, and I saw you there for the first time ever and when I bought the CD the next day I went home and heard the electric side, and I was blown away by the acoustic thing having never heard of the other, and then I went home and it was a wonderful surprise to hear the electric side of it.’ So I was like, wow. We won him over. But then he finished up by saying, ‘Not to be any help, but it doesn’t matter what you play because I am going to show up anyways the next time.’

What are pros and cons about opening acts?

CP: I think up until this point we used those sets strategically. If we are opening for a quieter band, we use the quieter acoustic set, or if we are playing in a small space like this we play acoustic. But ideally we would just love to be able to combine both of them. It goes back to the record too. We combined our identity and really distilled our identity on this record, and we wish we could do that live. Pros, you get in front of their audience, and you get new fans and new listeners. Cons are definitely that for a band like us that is so meticulous and very conscious about the way we sound, it’s hard to skimp on that aspect of a show: getting the bummer on the sound check, getting the short-end of sets, you know. But I mean, obviously we would much rather headline but we are not a type of band that snubs our nose at opening shows opportunities. We know it’s always one fan at a time and whatever gets us in front of people we love doing.

You guys do have some headlining acts coming up in New York City and DC though.

CP: We do. That is true. And hopefully Boston too. I think we are gonna do a Boston show, and try to get back up to our home state, New Hamsphire, too. We’ll see what happens.

Jen Kearney & The Lost Onion at WERS

Jen Kearney & The Lost Onion at WERS

Jen Kearney playing keys at WERS. (Ross Dallas/WERS)

(Ross Dallas/WERS)

By Lily Jeong

It was a typical day of March in Boston. The grey sky had been sprinkling raindrops all day, and the air was a bit colder than people preferred it to be. Everybody seemed to be dragging their feet and trying to stay motivated, but the gloomy weather did not help the lazy vibe floating around the station. Given the lethargic vibe, Jen Kearney & the Lost Onion’s organic sound was a wonderful surprise.

When the band went into their first song “The Year of the Ox,” Kearney’s powerful voice instantly brightened up the low-key atmosphere of the studio. It felt as if the band was loosening up my stiff joints to make me sway to their groovy sound. Kearney’s scratchy yet driving voice reminded me a lot of Susan Tedeschi’s vocals; it blended with the band’s mellow and sentimental instrumentals.

Although it was her first time performing on-air, Jen Kearney seemed to be very relaxed and content. Her second song, “To the Moon,” really showed Kearney’s songwriting skills as well as her ability to express her emotions freely through performing. Peter MacLean’s crisp drums topped with soul-infused piano riffs made a great rainy-day song, maintaining a good balance of soft and hard.

“I grew up listening to a lot of Otis Redding and old soul music like Aretha Franklin,” said Kearney when I asked about where she got her soul influence, “I was a freak about it, and I listened to every little bit of it… My mom had a bunch of cool records as well.”

Indeed, Kearney’s last song of the set, “Prime Meridian,” had a strong taste of old soul. The waltz rhythm piano intro slowly lead into a jazzy tune, and the band stayed with the free spirit throughout the entire song. Carl Johnson and Kearney rocked out sharing solo spots and creating an instrumental conversation. The seamless flow of the energy made it feel like they were improvising the song on the spot.

Kearney has taken such sonic experience all over the nation: northeast, Colorado, and even Georgia. However, she plans to stay local for a while because she feels like she needs to be stable until her new album release.

“We are gonna be very busy, I think,” said Kearney, “because we are releasing a CD in May. We are looking to book a ton of shows locally, and see how far we can get with it!”