Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with Royal Chant
Hello. My name is Mark Spence, and I am the sole remaining founding member of and singer/guitarist/songwriter for Royal Chant, an underground indie rock outfit from Australia.
What is your earliest memory connected to music?
I was born in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, but we moved when I was only three. I have almost zero memories of that place, but I do have a single “snap-shot”-like memory of being at a neighbor’s house down the street where their teenage son had a drumset in the garage. I remember sitting behind the kit and just tapping a bit here and there, while my Mum looked on and said, “go on.” After that we moved to Utah, where I grew up surrounded by the heyday of MTV of the 1980s, my sister’s dance/art tape collection, a random assortment of genuinely crap country music, and of course whatever else was flooding the pop/rock airwaves. I always loved music and even before I could play an instrument I was always trying to imitate the rock stars I saw on MTV, just using a tennis racquet or a broom as a guitar. Anytime I saw or heard music it always held my complete attention and that’s all I wanted to talk about. I was definitely hooked on music as a fan before I ever started playing.
How did your passion for creating music begin?
I always kind of made up little songs in my head, but with no ability to play an instrument it never amounted to much. In 6th grade I took up the drums, which is still my main instrument and provides 90-95% of my income, but once I started forming random garage bands in high school I realized it was severely limiting to try and write songs from the behind the kit, asking the guitarist “play that chord….no, try that one. Wait….what’s that one again?”, and so on and so forth. Eventually I started dabbling in music theory and once I understood some basics I was able to teach myself guitar, and that is when the floodgates opened. I could just write and write and write, all the terrible songs that needed to come out (and still do), and occasionally stumbling on something that is not quite as terrible as the rest.
What’s the story behind your current music project?
We have just wrapped up recording on our 11th studio LP and the mixes are currently rolling in, much to our delight. We’ve kept everything very much under wraps, not trying to be overly secretive and not that very many people overly care, but mostly because everything just seems so overexposed and over-hyped, like everything is at a constant fever pitch vying for your attention and trying to generate any interest or buzz, whether real or manufactured. Even the album title has been a secret up until now, so we might as well reveal it here: Content. If that strikes you as jaded and cynical that we can assure you: you are not wrong.
We and everyone we know are currently struggling in this age of late-stage capitalism on steroids & andrenaline, working ever harder and getting less than nowhere. Older generations accuse younger generations of being lazy, while nothing could be further from the truth. We are all working harder than ever before, with productivity off the charts yet wages remain stagnant while income and housing inequality continue their unsustainable divergent growth. This album is our response to the modern world through a personal prism, and how it affects our very humanity, including our ability to create art. So this is both an ironic embrace and a complete rejection of the current social, political, and economic landscape we find ourselves in, including the collapse of the creative middle class and our constant state of time starvation. Trying to simply survive in a world of anxiety means that just getting by feels like its own small victory, and happiness and creative pursuits are downright rebellious.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?
Ambitious busted pop songs, run through a fuzz-box blender.
What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?
If you think it sounds good, it probably does, and that is the only thing that matters.
What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?
In my high school and early college years I would record on a little Tascam cassette recorder, or occasionally on a 2-track reel-to-reel with ¼-inch tape you could get at Radio Shack back when those were still a thing. I used to love the tactile aspect of creation. For some strange reason I largely abandoned home recordings and demos for the majority of the Royal Chant years, right up until COVID hit, and now I can’t really imagine going back into a “proper” studio to record. The first album we recorded at home was our Blank Verse LP, and it definitely sounds rough as guts, but I still love it and all of its ugly charms. Every album since then has been a DIY affair, recorded in my home studio (from where I also teach privately), using Ableton and a slowly ever-improving quiver of mics. The speed with which I can record myself makes the thought of going back into a studio and paying someone to press record seem ridiculous since I can do things so much faster on my own, to say nothing of the fact that having entire days devoted to traveling to and setting up and doing take after take sound like pure misery. I really noticed how much the studio became an integral tool in the writing process, and I also noticed the organic way the studio entered the creative process much earlier than the traditional way of doing things, where writing, editing, rehearsing, and recording are often far more separate steps.
Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?
I honestly have had my head in the clouds for almost the past year working on the album, and coupled with the amount of teaching (aka: talking) that I do every single day I often find myself seeking silence. My commute around our small town is also thankfully brief, and often on a bike, so I don’t have access to listening in the car like I used to back when I lived in Atlanta and was stuck in my car 1-4 hours per day.
Having said that, I always have my ears pricked for the latest Guided by Voices album, which means there is always something new to devour, but recently I have been keeping track of Sharp Pins, along with whatever band we are either about to play with or have recently played with. The older I get the more I realize how immediate and personal I want my music to be, so if I have a personal relationship with a band I am far more likely to take note and keep tabs on their output. Some bands we’ve been down with lately: Failsafe, Swivelhead, Second Idol, Korderoy, Suburban Stereo, Nada Surf, Girls At Their Best! (how did we never hear of this band until recently?), Tropical Fuck Storm, Big League, Indigo De Souza, plus old Motown, Bubblegum Pop, & Girl Groups.
How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?
Self-reflection and honest examination are some of the greatest tools we have at our disposal as humans, and the moment we say “that’s it, we’ve got it figured out” is the moment we stop growing. We are both humbled by and extremely excited at the thought of just how much will always remain beyond our understanding. We’d like to think that trying to be better and more kind, caring, considerate, & compassionate individuals will influence how we view and interpret the world, and thus how we want to shape it.
To say nothing of being slaves to the idea of finding the perfect chord, melody, or lyric. That will definitely keep your wheels turning.
What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?
All of them. Honestly, we’re not much of a “message” band as such, but we are very human and all that that entails, the good, the bad, & the ugly. There’s a realness and rawness there, the rage & frustration side by side with beauty, joy, hope, and escape. It’s a big world and there’s an infinite way to explore, process, reject, and express it.
What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?
Keep going. Whether things are going well or seem poorly, just keep going and creating. With time you truly do discover that the highs really aren’t that high and the lows really aren’t that low, and in the end what you have is the sum total of your true self and what you have actually created. It takes some of us quite a long time to learn what actually matters and the true value of things, and they are never what you first think.
What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?
I personally find attending festivals to be so overwhelming that I generally try to avoid them at all costs, but playing them is always nice, so we tend to be happy with anything and everything. As far as venues go, I reckon selling out the Enmore Theatre in Newtown, Sydney (AU) would be hard to top, at least for our meager ambitions.
If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?
Steve Albini seems to have had his head screwed on pretty straight, and his production skills and general music philosophy and instincts were top notch. Ric Ocasek would have been cool to work with, and I guess Robert Pollard from Guided by Voices would be a dream collaborator but I doubt he’d have much use for me. He’s just on another level as a songwriter.
Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)
Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?
Record. Release. Tour. Rinse. Repeat. But hopefully getting just a little bit better and going just a little bit further with each and every time through the spin cycle.
What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?
That we write great songs and they wish they had discovered us sooner.
