Post by uiuctoo on Dec 31, 2005 21:21:18 GMT -5
Interview with Suize and Tara.
www.socan.ca/jsp/en/news_events/feature_stories/RockStarINXS.jsp
SOCAN members Tara Slone and Suzie McNeil didn't live a life of leisure in the Hollywood Hills mansion where they were holed up as competitors on Mark Burnett Productions' Rock Star: INXS this past summer. Both Toronto-based singer-songwriters say it was fertile ground: When they weren't involved in an exercise or test for the reality show, they were writing songs anyway.
"We did tons of songwriting," says McNeil, who placed fourth in the Australian rock band's search for a new singer, before being told she's not right for INXS. "It was a really creative environment and there weren't any pretenses of anyone being better than anyone else. Some people were definitely more creative songwriting-wise than others, but they wouldn't judge anyone and just let the creativity flow and help people along.
"There was a lot of songwriting going on all the time, like little joke songs. Actually, I helped out with one – a 'You're A Rock Star Now' jingle, just as a joke," McNeil adds, co-writing it with fellow contestants Neal Carlson and Mig Ayesa.
Tara Slone laughs when she recalls how she and Carlson formed a mythical project called Slone & The C, completing two songs and starting a third. "Who knows? we may actually take it somewhere," she says.
"We started writing some sort of, kind of, fun sort of… (she laughs, as she struggles to explain exactly what it is). Like [the band] Heart – I wouldn't give us that much credit – but Heart meets Zeppelin meets Spinal Tap, a lot of fantasy, mystical, Valhalla type of stuff," she laughs again.
"Even though we were writing them just for fun, they were well-constructed songs and Ty [Taylor] helped us with one of them called 'Fantasy Medieval Gypsy,'" Slone adds, laughing even more.
Slone used to front the rock band Joydrop, which released two albums for Tommy Boy/BMG, 1998's Metasexual (containing the hit "Beautiful") and 2001's Viberate. The Montreal-born, Halifax-raised singer and actress (Foolproof, La Femme Nikita, John Woo's Once A Thief, The Newsroom) has a solo album in the can that was produced with Blinker The Star's Jordon Zadorozny.
In the mansion, Slone says she did work on some solo songs that weren't jokes, but when she was dropped from the show, Mark Burnett Productions confiscated the devices she'd used to record them. "I guess they technically own the [master recordings of] stuff from the show, so there were a lot of unfinished songs on there, but that's okay. They're not going to use them; they'll find their way back to my brain," Slone says.
Both McNeil and Slone, now friends, say being in the presence of many other songwriters (it started with 15 in total) was inspiring and motivating. And without access to television, phones and the Internet, there wasn't much else to do.
"Certainly, not having that many distractions helped us that way, but there were guitars everywhere, and everybody's musical, so it was a very rich environment," says Slone. "Often, somebody was playing something and then somebody else would add something else and there was just this spontaneous music.
"It's a matter of just not being afraid," says Slone, who wrote some other songs with Ty Taylor. "It can be intimidating and writing with other people is not always easy, but it was a matter of just jumping in, even if your ideas were stupid and it gets thrown away."
McNeil also gravitated right away to writing with Taylor. The first week they co-wrote one song, and ended up writing about four together before Taylor was dismissed from Rock Star: INXS. One of the songs was "Soul Life," which McNeil performed on the television show.
"I've learned even before the show, and in the show, and since, that songwriting is such a unique experience – especially co-writing – that you basically either click with someone or you don't," says McNeil.
A Toronto native, when McNeil landed the coveted spot on Rock Star: INXS, she'd been touring all over North America as part of an ABBA tribute act, in addition to fronting pop/rock band Fourstar, for which drummer Alison MacLean wrote the songs. She also co-wrote her own songs and sang with Jackrabbit, a band that includes her musician boyfriend Sean Cotton.
McNeil, now working on a debut solo album, says the task of picking a classic song to cover each week on the television show didn't make her re-think or dissect the structure of a great song – only ask herself if she could sing them.
"We were definitely, week to week, waiting for the songwriting clinic," she adds. "I remember the first clinic we had was a fashion clinic and everyone was complaining, 'What is this showing about music?,' where the first clinic we learn on the show is about fashion! And we were all waiting, and the second one was 'performance' and it wasn't until the fourth or fifth that it was 'songwriting'. We were all waiting for that because to all of us it was pretty important in the process of being an artist and a performer."
Slone, who did leave the show fairly early in the series, says the whole approach of singing covers did give her a different perspective after all these years, not forcing her to assess what her strengths and weaknesses are, but where she was meant to be in her career.
"It was actually an affirmation that I'm doing the right thing, for me, which is writing and performing my own music," Slone says.
"I have to say, going into it, I didn't realize that it was going to be so solely based on singing cover songs. I thought that the creative stuff was going to come in a lot earlier and would have a lot more to do with the whole process. That's not to say that I don't enjoy it, but I would say that my strengths lie in writing and performing my own songs. So the whole process certainly clarified that."
www.socan.ca/jsp/en/news_events/feature_stories/RockStarINXS.jsp
SOCAN members Tara Slone and Suzie McNeil didn't live a life of leisure in the Hollywood Hills mansion where they were holed up as competitors on Mark Burnett Productions' Rock Star: INXS this past summer. Both Toronto-based singer-songwriters say it was fertile ground: When they weren't involved in an exercise or test for the reality show, they were writing songs anyway.
"We did tons of songwriting," says McNeil, who placed fourth in the Australian rock band's search for a new singer, before being told she's not right for INXS. "It was a really creative environment and there weren't any pretenses of anyone being better than anyone else. Some people were definitely more creative songwriting-wise than others, but they wouldn't judge anyone and just let the creativity flow and help people along.
"There was a lot of songwriting going on all the time, like little joke songs. Actually, I helped out with one – a 'You're A Rock Star Now' jingle, just as a joke," McNeil adds, co-writing it with fellow contestants Neal Carlson and Mig Ayesa.
Tara Slone laughs when she recalls how she and Carlson formed a mythical project called Slone & The C, completing two songs and starting a third. "Who knows? we may actually take it somewhere," she says.
"We started writing some sort of, kind of, fun sort of… (she laughs, as she struggles to explain exactly what it is). Like [the band] Heart – I wouldn't give us that much credit – but Heart meets Zeppelin meets Spinal Tap, a lot of fantasy, mystical, Valhalla type of stuff," she laughs again.
"Even though we were writing them just for fun, they were well-constructed songs and Ty [Taylor] helped us with one of them called 'Fantasy Medieval Gypsy,'" Slone adds, laughing even more.
Slone used to front the rock band Joydrop, which released two albums for Tommy Boy/BMG, 1998's Metasexual (containing the hit "Beautiful") and 2001's Viberate. The Montreal-born, Halifax-raised singer and actress (Foolproof, La Femme Nikita, John Woo's Once A Thief, The Newsroom) has a solo album in the can that was produced with Blinker The Star's Jordon Zadorozny.
In the mansion, Slone says she did work on some solo songs that weren't jokes, but when she was dropped from the show, Mark Burnett Productions confiscated the devices she'd used to record them. "I guess they technically own the [master recordings of] stuff from the show, so there were a lot of unfinished songs on there, but that's okay. They're not going to use them; they'll find their way back to my brain," Slone says.
Both McNeil and Slone, now friends, say being in the presence of many other songwriters (it started with 15 in total) was inspiring and motivating. And without access to television, phones and the Internet, there wasn't much else to do.
"Certainly, not having that many distractions helped us that way, but there were guitars everywhere, and everybody's musical, so it was a very rich environment," says Slone. "Often, somebody was playing something and then somebody else would add something else and there was just this spontaneous music.
"It's a matter of just not being afraid," says Slone, who wrote some other songs with Ty Taylor. "It can be intimidating and writing with other people is not always easy, but it was a matter of just jumping in, even if your ideas were stupid and it gets thrown away."
McNeil also gravitated right away to writing with Taylor. The first week they co-wrote one song, and ended up writing about four together before Taylor was dismissed from Rock Star: INXS. One of the songs was "Soul Life," which McNeil performed on the television show.
"I've learned even before the show, and in the show, and since, that songwriting is such a unique experience – especially co-writing – that you basically either click with someone or you don't," says McNeil.
A Toronto native, when McNeil landed the coveted spot on Rock Star: INXS, she'd been touring all over North America as part of an ABBA tribute act, in addition to fronting pop/rock band Fourstar, for which drummer Alison MacLean wrote the songs. She also co-wrote her own songs and sang with Jackrabbit, a band that includes her musician boyfriend Sean Cotton.
McNeil, now working on a debut solo album, says the task of picking a classic song to cover each week on the television show didn't make her re-think or dissect the structure of a great song – only ask herself if she could sing them.
"We were definitely, week to week, waiting for the songwriting clinic," she adds. "I remember the first clinic we had was a fashion clinic and everyone was complaining, 'What is this showing about music?,' where the first clinic we learn on the show is about fashion! And we were all waiting, and the second one was 'performance' and it wasn't until the fourth or fifth that it was 'songwriting'. We were all waiting for that because to all of us it was pretty important in the process of being an artist and a performer."
Slone, who did leave the show fairly early in the series, says the whole approach of singing covers did give her a different perspective after all these years, not forcing her to assess what her strengths and weaknesses are, but where she was meant to be in her career.
"It was actually an affirmation that I'm doing the right thing, for me, which is writing and performing my own music," Slone says.
"I have to say, going into it, I didn't realize that it was going to be so solely based on singing cover songs. I thought that the creative stuff was going to come in a lot earlier and would have a lot more to do with the whole process. That's not to say that I don't enjoy it, but I would say that my strengths lie in writing and performing my own songs. So the whole process certainly clarified that."
That part really jumped out of the page for me.