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The Dyadics – Emerging Artist Spotlight

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Kevin Kennedy of The Dyadics

December 18, 2012 – T-MAK World was at the Bovine Sex Club on Friday, December 7th to see one of favourites The Blue Stones (who were great as always). And, as very often happens at the Bovine, you get exposed to some great music from other great bands also on the bill.  That’s what happened when The Dyadics and Goodnight, Sunrise (who were also great) followed The Blue Stones. However, in this case though, The Dyadics wasn’t unexpected, this time we were there as almost as much to see them as The Blue Stones. The Dyadics is a duo of guitar and drums, but drummer Matt Weston also plays bass while drumming through the use of a device called an Octapad. Weston uses some bass distortion and sustain to get some cool techno bass sounds. Add to that some cool digital delay guitar effects a la The Edge of U2 and throw in some ridiculous musicianship from both players and the result is an unexpectedly huge sound. We loved their sound and wanted to get to know more about them so we talked to them after the show to set up an Emerging Artist Spotlight. So today we set our focus on Toronto band The Dyadics. All bands we talked to are asked similar questions to each other so we can get to know them better. The description on the band’s website reads:


Kevin Kennedy, fresh off a national arena tour with Neverending White Lights opening for Our Lady Peace, decides to start a new project. Matt Weston, a longtime friend, drummer, and studio engineer is called in to help produce and most likely play drums on the project. The project hits a snag, or what was thought to be a snag, while auditioning bass players. The right mix of feel, ability, and reliability was not found. As an experiment on the first song, Weston hooks up his Roland Octapad to a bass amp and programs the root notes for the chords. A period of relearning how to play the drums while also playing the bass ensues and the rest is history! 

The Dyadics are formed and rehearse a full album’s worth of material. Live shows between London and Toronto are played, reactions are analyzed, demos are discussed with a Juno winning engineer, and recording the debut album finally begins.

Following a successful independent release of the album and promotional shows and interviews, the band becomes busy with other projects. Kevin has another duo receiving airplay from CBC called The Marrieds, and Matt continues to produce successful indie bands such as Amity Beach. This left only a little time for a followup, so it is decided that an EP will be built around a new song, Dead and Gone. The rest of the EP is rounded out with a simultaneous bass and drums solo entitled Get Down, a reworked version of a tune from the first record, and three cover songs from STP, Hendrix, and Zeppelin that have become favourites at shows. 

A music video is shot and released for Dead and Gone. The band performs at the Jack Richardson Music Awards and begins playing larger shows with the likes of Die Mannequin, The Balconies, and Faber Drive. 

The Dyadics are now working on material for their third release and attempting to make more headway with radio. Dead and Gone has been delivered to Rock Top 50 and all college/community radio nationwide. New songs will start popping up in upcoming shows, and the crowds will keep growing.

Matt Weston of The Dyadics

Here is what Weston had to say to us:

Hey Matt, thanks for taking time out to talk to us. Let’s start off with the obligatory introductions. Who’s in the band and what instrument does everyone rock? 
MW: Kevin Kennedy plays guitar and sings lead. He is also the primary writer. I play drums and bass (at the same time), backup vocals, and the occasional theremin. I am also the band recording engineer. 
How about the history of the band, when did you get started and how did it happen? 
MW: Kevin had a bunch of song ideas in the riff rock vein and had been in the process of jamming with different people over the course of a couple years, refining his work. We finally got together in July 2009 with the intention of me engineering the record and possibly being a part of it. We jammed with me on drums and a couple different bass players. We were excited about the feel of the songs with just the two of us. Some players didn’t fit musically, and one we were after was pretty unreliable in showing up to rehearsal. So after losing patience with him I mentioned that I used an octapad for recording bass on some of my previous recordings and that I might be able to hold down root notes during his guitar solos. This turned into me relearning how to play drums and thinking more melodically while trying to also perform bass lines. We demoed about nine songs that summer and then spent the next 8 months or so refining and practicing before playing a live show. After a handful of live shows we demoed some more and then finally started recording the debut full length in the summer of 2010. That album came out in December 2010 and the machine keeps on rolling along. 
Kevin Kennedy of The Dyadics
Who are some of your musical influences? 
MW: Our individual influences and the band’s sound are not always that compatible. The concept for this band was to be a riff rock band you could dance to. Kind of along the lines of Death From Above 1979 or Die Mannequin, which are big influences to Kevin’s writing. He also grew up listening to Metallica and Pantera. We’re both into Zeppelin and Hendrix as you might expect. But my biggest influences growing up were The Tea Party and Big Sugar. So we have some overlap but we definitely have different taste. 
So based on the above how would you describe your music to someone that has never heard it? 
MW: Melodious riff rock with dance grooves played by real people! 
Why should a music fan come and see your show instead of all the other choices available to them on any given night? 
What I do on the drums and bass is pretty unique. There’s maybe a couple other bands that do something similar in the whole world, but none of them quite like this. But more important than that is that we work hard to give the audience the best sonic experience of any band out there. Lugging way too much equipment for two people. We often bring our own lights and lighting guy as well. You won’t see that from other bands at our level (ie. no manager or agent and doing everything ourselves). We work damn hard and we want to look and sound our best.
Matt Weston of The Dyadics playing drums and Octapad

What is your favorite single line of lyrics the band has written and why? 

MW: From the song Remember: “Remember the feeling when you make that sound.” It’s referring to the memories you create when you play music with other people. That has constituted a lot of the time well spent in both our lives. It’s nice to remember the good times and also to think about how far we’ve come. 
What does 2013 hold for you? 
MW: We’re going to spend a good amount of time working on new material – rehearsing, demoing, recording. Hopefully we’ll have something to release before 2013 is up. We’re also playing CMW in March so we’re excited to play and take in the conference. 
Imagine that you were asked to be the opener for any band’s world tour (both current and historical). Which band and tour would be your dream opening gig. 
MW: I’d probably have to go with Jimi Hendrix. Just because I’ve seen a couple members of Led Zeppelin in concert already and seeing Jimi would probably be one of the most electrifying shows I could ever imagine.
Kevin Kennedy of The Dyadics
What is the future of the music industry? With the concept of the album and physical CD’s facing extinction, how will we be consuming music in 10 years? Are the economics feasible for emerging artists? 
MW: I don’t think the physical medium will go away completely. If other music consumers think like me (which many do), we want to leave the show with a souvenir. We want something tangible to hold and some liner notes to read. We want to know more about the band and experience the music in the way the artist intended. With that being said, for independent artists, there is a huge cost associated with that. Not only in the manufacture of CDs and vinyl, but in the recording, mixing, and mastering process. And there is still a huge difference in quality from the hobbyist home studio and a professional engineer in a professional facility. I think people will still be willing to pay for artists that spend the time to do things right and release a professional sounding and looking project. 
Where can people get your music/CD, is it being sold anywhere? 
MW: Downloads of our music are available at dyadics.bandcamp.com (the first album is also available on iTunes). Physical copies are available at Grooves in London or at shows. 
At the end of 2011 we did our picks for top 10 albums of 2011. What album do you think we should include in our top 10 albums of 2012 article? 
MW: I bet the new album Meet The Walkervilles by The Walkervilles is gonna be awesome! It comes out December 21. King Animal by Soundgarden. Albatross by Big Wreck. 
Matt Weston of The Dyadics
The Dyadics at The Bovine Sex Club

Thanks so much to The Dyadics. We hope that you can see them live. They’re playing Arnold’s Sports Bar in Oakville on a great bill with A Primitive Evolution and The Bloody Five on Thursday, December 20th. That’s a must see show if you’re in the area. You can count on hearing Dead and Gone. Here it is from the Bovine show.

The band’s website is thedyadics.com. You can follow them on Twitter at @dyadics and Facebook at facebook.com/dyadics. In the meantime check out their music video for Dead and Gone below.

Article and photos/video by Steve Mallinson
www.tmakworld.com

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Steve Mallinson
Author: Steve Mallinson

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