First off, What’s up with your name? Is there a story behind it?
Hello and thank you for your interest! The story behind “Big Scrimps” as our group name is that it’s the name of our text thread. We had finished the entire project before choosing a name, so that was the final piece of the puzzle to put in place. After a few days of throwing ideas around that felt ok, but not really like a slam dunk, I realized that the answer had been right in front of us all along. Dudes liked it so I put it on the cover art and it felt right. So that was that.
Tell us about your musical past, would you tell us about your early years?
This is Big Man Z’s and The Honorable Brother Muscles’ musical debut, but I’ve been writing, recording, and releasing music for 15 years now under various projects. My first project was called goodie and it began with my brother teaching me a few chords on guitar and a friend at school getting me on the songs he was recording on an old laptop with a free software. Armed with those rudimentary tools, a can-do attitude, and a bunch of feelings I had no idea what to do with, I began recording songs on the family computer at the age of 17. I just released an “early years” compilation on streaming platforms in December. In college I was in a band called Exotic Pets. We played shows all around New Orleans and recorded a few songs that made it to Soundcloud and Bandcamp. After college I read a book called Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad and I got really inspired by the independent, underground American Hardcore bands of the 1980s, and started writing/recording songs as Creature Benny about alienation, the sorry state/direction of the U.S., and fictitious, spooky characters. I would say that’s my marquis project at this time. Everything DIY all the time.
How would you describe your sound?
Across my catalog and various artist projects, I would say that the through-line is a DIY approach, and a willingness to follow the inspiration where it leads and let every composition be what it wants to be. “I don’t know why, but I think a West-Coast synth sound would really tie this punk song together.” Fuck it, let’s go. Who am I to stand in the way of inspiration? Far be it from me. I am, but a vessel.
Which artists have the biggest influence on your sound?
On this project in particular, the lyrics had a specific point of inspiration, which was “what if a song consisted entirely of DJ Drama-esque ad-libs, but delivered in an Action Bronson parlance/verbiage?” Just detail-laden, evocative hollering, speaking outrageously with a completely straight face. On the beat side of things, I didn’t have any goals or inspirations in mind. I wasn’t familiar with the songs Big Man Z sent me to sample before he sent them to me, so putting the beats together was a process of listening, selecting sample-able snippets, and letting the chops dictate the song structures. Regarding the stuff I added to augment the samples, I’m from Atlanta and grew up steeped in the sound of Atlanta Crunk and Snap and Trap music, and if you listen to the beats through that lens, the hi-hat patterns and distorted 808s are the natural choice. On the Gil Scott-Heron sample, adding drums didn’t feel right, so I didn’t.
What’s the last song you listened to?
As I answer these questions, I am listening to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot album.
What’s your source for hearing new music?
Speaking generally, I’m not too fussed about listening to new music, but in terms of hearing music that I haven’t heard before, I really like watching interviews with artists and looking up any artists they mention as having inspired them. I am very interested in my favorite artist’s favorite artist. Also, as flawed as Spotify is (and it absolutely is), their algorithmic suggestions usually hit. So floating the river Algo has also been an effective means of music discovery.
Who is your dream producer?
Me when I’m asleep?
If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be?
I like collaborating with my friends. For me, making music is a creative outlet more than a professional aspiration, so what I get out of it is a snapshot of a time in my life and the memories we made along the way lmao.
What led you to music, and what motivates you to keep making it?
My mom put me in piano lessons at the age of five, but for self-expression, my first love was drawing. When I was a teenager with teenage emotions, I picked up a guitar and started banging out songs as an outlet for some of that angst, and I really fell in love with writing and recording music. I love the idea that, if art is the way we decorate space, then music is the way that we decorate time. I love the time capsule nature of creating a song and capturing it in a way that you can listen back to forever after. I keep making music because it’s a cool and fun thing to do. There are no rules and no parameters. Anything that makes noise is a tool, and you get to make a statement, not only with the words you say, but also with the genre and the sonics and the tasty little moments you make. And music is intrinsically tied to time and place and influence and it’s just the best thing there is.
Tell us about the songwriting process. How does it all come together?
I have never done anything quite like this project before, in that every song I’d recorded previously was written before I recorded it. This opposite is true of this project, and that was the premise from the outset, so it was an interesting challenge and the process absolutely shaped the finished product. My emcees aren’t songwriters and the intention behind this project was more about creating some outlandish, off-the-wall shit that made us laugh than about conveying a specific message. So to get these songs recorded, I had each guy freestyle bars over the entire duration of each beat three times so I had way more than I could ever use. And then I went through everything, picked my favorite bits, and strung them together in a way that made me smile. Once I got as far as I could with the material I had from a given recording session, I would send the guys the resulting draft, and together we’d decide what worked, what needed to be re-recorded, and what should be punched up or replaced because it wasn’t quite right. And then we’d schedule another recording session. After eight sessions, we had everything we needed, at which point I made all the recordings match, mixed, and mastered.
How do you connect with your audience? What is the easiest way for them to connect with you?
To be honest, I don’t do a ton. But for this project, we’ve had a few impromptu listening parties, and some friends have liked it enough to show their friends. I’ll get a text saying “hey, send me that link,” and, of course, it’s an honor to do so.
Connect with Big Scrimps:
https://soundcloud.com/big-scrimps
What’s next for you?
Just before Christmas I visited a friend who now lives in Seattle and we recorded a fat pile of improvised drums on 10 songs I wrote back in Jan/Feb 2020 for a band we had just started when the pandemic dropped. We were going to be called Lizard People (after humanity’s Draco-reptilian overlords stationed under the ice of Antarctica, naturally), but the universe had other plans. I spent that April and May recording guitar and vocals for all of these songs, and they’ve lived on a hard drive since then waiting for their day in the sun. Last November I got the feeling that it was finally time to revisit those songs, so I hit my guy and said “Hey, you wanna record an irresponsible amount of drums on too many songs in a very short window?” He was down, so that’s what we did. All that to say that right now I am parsing through everything we recorded, selecting my favorite parts for each section, and sprucing them up with fills I copy/paste from other takes. The process is not dissimilar to the process we employed for Big Scrimps, in terms of picking through a mountain of raw material to find the tasty bits and put them where they need to be. Since we never had a bassist, for low-end I am programming sludgy bass lines with an ugly synth, and that further differentiates it from anything I’ve done in the past. So that will come out at some point and do just a bit to declutter my mind. Also, I have another album’s worth of Creature Benny material to finish and put out, so that’s in the hopper too.
Anything else you’d like to add or let us know about?
Hug your mother! And 10 times out of 10, it’s shout outs to you. Keep it up, Champ.
