Review Fix chats with Michael and Carter Ponce, who discuss their new EP, as well as their goals for the future. Twin brothers with a life-long love of music, their dedication to their craft is admirable and makes them a unique combination.
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Review Fix: How did the band get together?
Michael Ponce: Carson and I (Michael) are twin brothers and both started playing our respective instruments at age 12. Carson wanted to play guitar and I wanted to play drums so building a band from that just kind of fell into place. Haven’t stopped playing since.
Review Fix: What makes your brand special?
Michael Ponce: Being twins definitely adds a unique twist to the brand and music. And part of that brand is trying to write catchy melodies then add our twin harmony to create something very distinctive.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Michael Ponce: Inspiration and creativity definitely can hit at anytime, but I try to think of it less as lightning and more like a job. The more you work at something the better you will get at it, and writing is no exception, same with producing. There’s a really good book, “War of Art†by Steven Pressfield that touches on the duality of the creative process, but also the hard work and dedication that is equally if not far more important than creativity. I think they’re pretty much the same thing.
Review Fix: What’s your standout song on the album How was it written?
Michael Ponce: My personal favorite is ‘Surrender to the Night’ off of the EP. It originally was written from this Romeo & Cinderella against the world perspective, with a sort of heartland rock sound to it.
But then I met this girl at a house show/bonfire last winter, talked a bit about same interests and bands and such, and we didn’t really talk again much. But this new concept came to me the next day, and the whole bass line and melody for the song happened during a 10-minute shower (My go-to creative lightning time) and I pretty much had the whole song turned upside down within 2 weeks.
It’s a basic concept, couple meet, is it fate? Should we take this chance on love? What if we don’t? Etc. But I really wanted to get vivid and creative over the lyrics, and create this cinematic world within the song. So yea it’s my fav!
Review Fix: What are your goals for 2017?
Carson Ponce: A huge goal for 2016 was to get management, which we did (shoutout to Innovo Management!). 2017’s goal is to get a booking agent. We believe in this record and believe in our live show and think we can gain some serious traction the more cities we’re in and the more people we’re in front of.
Review Fix: What makes your latest album special?
Michael Ponce: I think the way we made it and the people we made it with are what makes it special. Carson had these songs, some nearly finished and some barely started, that we brought to our eventual producer and Omega Swan front man, Marcus Garceau and our engineer, Edsel Holden and asked them to lend their writing, composing and ears to the tunes and really produce them. What we got was 8 months of fine-tuning and a batch of songs we don’t think we could make any better.
Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?
Carson Ponce: It sounds cliche but we just want to make music that somehow improves a person’s life, even if it’s just for three and a half minutes. It might be a song you want to dance to, roll the windows of your car down and drive to or maybe one of our songs might give you just a little bit of hope in whatever you’re going through. We just want to make banging songs people can relate to.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Carson Ponce: We’re releasing our 7-song album in late Spring but already have four or five songs written and some even tracked. We’re not really a band who currently adheres to the whole album cycle thing. We love guys like Ryan Adams who just put music out at will. That said, we’ll be busy this summer on weekend tours focused in the Midwest, Southeast and Northeast.
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