| ADVERTISEMENTS RELATED LiNKS: WWW.SHiROCK.NET OTHER ARTICLES:  BERLiN  FiNAL GRAViTY  SCARLET SiNS  THE WAiLERS  THE HOOTERS  LUCiANA SOUZA  FACE TiME POLiCE  THE BELiEVERS  JOETOWN  THE MOTELS |
ROCKWiRED iNTERViEWS SHiROCK SO HAPPY TOGETHER A word like ‘hope’ has been proven effective in winning a U.S. presidential election and - depending on your political leanings – can help bide the time when times are rough. In a time where people are starved for hope amid rising doubts that a change is gonna come, the time couldn’t be better for a band like SHIROCK. Group founders CHUCK and PAP SHIROCK were high school sweethearts brought together by the desire to make music. Ten years later, this musical/romantic partnership has blossomed into the band SHIROCK. The band’s rousing and anthemic rock elegies are on full display on their JAY RUSTON-produced debut LP ‘EVERYTHING BURNS’. While rock n roll with a big heart and high ideals is certainly nothing new (do I have to name that band from Ireland?) the songwriting partnership between CHUCK and PAP is what sets SHIROCK apart. It is a partnership that couldn’t have been scripted more perfectly. Both were children of missionaries and spent a great deal of time living abroad before meeting each other in high school. The need to make music was inescapable for both of them. “It’s pretty amazing to travel and perform and do all of this stuff with our best friends and spend all of this time together.” says PAP SHIROCK “The fact that we are both passionate about music is definitely beneficial. Music is the way that we really want to leave our mark on the world. It’s pretty amazing to be able to do that together.”CHUCK AND PAP SHiROCK OF SHiROCK TALK TO ROCKWiRED ABOUT THEiR DEBUT CD EVERYTHiNG BURNS COMiNG TOGETHER AS SONGWRiTERS AND GiViNG LiSTENERS A SENSE OF HOPE  iNTERViEWED BY BRiAN LUSH ROCKWIRED spoke with CHUCK and PAP SHIROCK of SHIROCK over the phone. Here is how it went. How do you feel about the CD now that all of the work that is behind you? PAP: We’re excited about it. We’re happy with the way that it turned out. It was a long time coming. CHUCK: We are very excited about it. When PAP and I write, we tend to imagine the whole finished product in our mind. That’s how we approach the songwriting process. We hear the guitars and the drums and all of that. It’s really exciting for us to hear the songs the way we imagined them. It’s a cool thing for us to be able to do that. The two of you sound like you’re joined at the hip as songwriters. CHUCK: PAP and I met when we were both in high school and very early on she started singing with me on demos that I was doing and then when we were in college she started playing piano. As I grew in my own songs and we grew together we continued to write more and more and it evolved very naturally from her just singing on stuff that I was working on to becoming a full collaboration. Everything we do comes from us writing together. Talk about how music began for each of you. PAP: I grew up in a very musical family. My grandmother had gone to college for classical voice and my dad and a couple of his sisters had all gotten their Ph.D.’s in classical piano or voice or some type of music, so I definitely had that sort of classical background and started playing classical piano when I was very young. It was probably around middle school that I was getting my first CDs and that inspired me to pick out my own melodies on the piano. It was the beginning of writing my own stuff and exploring that whole world of hearing melodies in your head and making them happen as opposed to just playing what was on the page in front of you. Describe the writing process a little more for me. CHUCK: It depends on the song. The majority of the songs are started with me. The beginnings of it always happen very quickly. It’s always a melody idea or an instrumental idea. I’ll be on the piano and come up with some melody and very quickly I start imagining the lyrics and jump way ahead of myself and start imagining the finished product and where the idea could go. With different songs at different points, PAP jumps into all of that and a lot of times - very early on in the process - I’ll show her the idea that I have. She is always a great gauge for me in seeing if an idea can go somewhere. PAP is the reason that I believed that I could ever do this. My parents were always supportive of my music but she is the first person outside of my family when I was in high school that really started believing in me and as a result of that she has always been the thermometer to see if an idea is going to go somewhere. If it moves her, I believe that it’s going to be able to move other people. Some of the songs like ‘I’LL TAKE RAIN’ and ‘SILVER’ are the songs that she sings on the record and those are approached differently. She started the process on those songs and often times she takes it pretty far and then I kind of come in and we both start tweaking stuff. PAP: The process is pretty much the same with whoever comes up with the idea first. We start working on it as soon as there is enough of an idea there. We start imagining it together and then we flesh it out to see what it looks like. What are the benefits and the challenges of being a musical partnership as well as a romantic one? PAP: There are obviously a lot of benefits to it. It’s pretty amazing to travel and perform and do all of this stuff with our best friends and spend all of this time together. The fact that we are both passionate about music is wonderful because music is the way that we really want to leave our mark on the world. It’s pretty amazing to be able to do that together. There are always going to be some challenges that come with the writing process when you do have two people that are so close and really passionate about the same thing. We don’t always have the exact same idea so when things differ and one person thinks that something should go one way and the other thinks it should go a different way, it can take a few minutes for things to get on the same page. That can be a challenge if we are thinking different things. Talk about the other band mates what you think that each of them brings to the table both musically and personality-wise that makes this whole thing work. CHUCK: Our drummer is ADAM GATCHEL. We’ve gone through a couple of changes just recently. We have a guy named GREG EVERETT that is playing guitar for us now. The thing that really makes it work with the other band members is their willingness to trust in us and the songwriting process. When we’re writing, we’re imagining a lot of the parts in our head. For some musicians it’s a hard thing to figure out where they fit into that but the longer we play together – like our drummer ADAM for instance – it’s at the point where I’m imagining a drum part in my head and the first time he hears that song, he is playing stuff that sounds exactly as I had imagined it. That is a big part of what makes us work. With this music and within our band, we are involved with a few different things, one of which is a non-profit organization that we started called ‘EVERYTHING BURNS’. Having people that are on the same page with us and doing this music not just because they want to be entertainers but because they want to have an influence on people and want to be a part of something that is making an impact makes a huge difference. It shapes the whole experience and the atmosphere when we are out on the road and when we’re together and when we’re playing. From the CD, what songs resonate for each of you the most and why? CHUCK: ‘STILL YOUNG’ is the song that still resonates with me. In our writing we’re always trying to be as honest and vulnerable as possible. It’s always a struggle to do that in the writing. That song continues to be relevant. There are songs where time goes by and they lose some of their immediacy and their urgency, but ‘STILL YOUNG’ is still relevant to my life now and continues to find new meaning for me when we’re playing it. ‘CALM INSIDE THE STORM’ is another one. It’s a great song to play and once that song gets going, it just takes off. It’s a high point in a live show. The last one is ‘EVERYTHING BURNS’. It’s one of my favorite songs on the record. I love the recording of it. I heard it in my head one way and listening back to it, it was just right on. It was how I imagined that it should be. PAP: The songs we’ve written together can take on different meanings at different times as you go through different things in your life. They are all very special to me in different ways but one of the songs that always resonates with me on a day to day basis is MAN INSIDE because it captures the struggle of all of the stuff that is going around you that starts to bog you down. That song is talking about the journey and the walk that we are on and the need to keep going. And what it is that helps you to be able to do that. Since the band’s inception up until now, what has been the biggest surprise for you? What didn’t you expect to happen? PAP: There have been a lot of surprising things. I was just talking to a friend the other day and you never know how things are going to turn out or what the end result is going to be until you go for it. There have been a lot of different things that were initially ideas and some of them didn’t turn out like we thought that they were going to and that wasn’t such a good thing but at other times it was a great thing. One of those things that turned out better than I had thought was playing some shows at high schools within the past year and a half. Initially, we thought it would be cool to go to different high schools since high schoolers aren’t able to go to a lot of shows. We were really affected by music when we were in high school. We didn’t know what the outcome of that was going to be but it has been really incredible to play some of these high schools. In some cases we were playing the first concerts that a lot of these kids had ever been to. That was really cool to see kids experiencing what a concert is for the first time. We really developed some awesome fans from that experience and affect people’s lives in deep way. CHUCK: There have been a few things that have been surprising actually. One of the biggest things that has caught me off guard is when we meet fans at a high school show or a regular show that are so tied to the music. When we meet people that have this connection to our songs, for me, it is always so special and I’m always blown away by that. I think it’s the highest compliment when someone says that the music got them through a rough time. It’s amazing. I hope that as we continue that that never goes away. |
