(bright music) So Basic Comfort.

I’ve got the comfort of five men here that do their thing magically.

Give me your first name and why you’re involved.

Oh, Ryan, I’m the basist.

I Sam, I’m the drummer.

Mike, I’m the rhythm guitarist and vocalist.

I am Paul, and I play guitar and sing.

I’m Tony and I play keys and I sing.

Tony, I’m go write to you.

How’d this gang get together?

How did you get started?

Uh, so, I actually started basic comfort in 2017 end of 2017, for my senior capstone at Western.

And it was like a album concept album um that I asked I think most everyone except for Ryan and Paul, I think we were on it.

So, Mike, Sam were, um, and then over time, the group slowly formed into this, and I think since last year, we added Ryan and it’s been us kicking it.

I wanna get to your music, but how much does it matter that you can sit next to each other after a couple of years and and have a laugh?

Uh, getting along super important, and we all we can all pall around, uh we don’t irritate each other too much.

uh, we can tolerate how much we do we irritate each other, which helps a lot.. and we p focus on at each other..

I mean, you got it like it’ I don’t know, it’s fun.

I was living with Paul and Tony at the time and they would practice in the basement, so I’d be up in my room and one of the air ducks went directly down the basement, so I could hear I knew the tunes.

and and Tony just asked me, he’s like, hey, you wanna, you know, just uh, be our subdummer for a bit and feel it out and I sticking and I love it.

I love I love these guys..

I feel like the older I get the more I realize that, like, I only hang out with these guys.

No, uh, it’s just been nice, cause we’re all good friends and we all played music together, and we’ve been in like, Kalazoo for a long time and just kind of like, we’ve gone through the ins and outs of living in a town where we all play music in different bands or go to shows together or hang out together, and like, this just kind of formed a really nice, comfortable basic comfort for all of us.

so yeah, that’s what, you know, it’s been.

I think, like, forming a band is kind of like forming a relationship, like, having a partner, right?

And like you have to be able to, like, be best friends.

if you’re gonna spend that much time together.

like, spend that much time in the car, like in the studio, like, you know, everybody’s going through stuff, like, but we all still show up.

like, even if we haven’t had, like the best day, like, we’re still there at practice, just like, ah.

And then we just like, you know, make some music and jam and the band’s like everybody in the bands like, my best friend.

Yeah.

Maybe it’s a bad thing, but like it’s the people I want to spend time with.

So, describe, like, who you like to play for.

What’s a what’s a what’s a decent gig?

I just as long as the audience is enjoying things, whenever there’s an audience that’s just completely still, it’s always a little bit unnerving.

to to be the disparity between like us moving and like makes you want to buy them a drink.. try and loosen them up a little bit.

Someone said something really interesting to me the like a couple months ago and they said, whenever you play a show, play for the person that, like has come off work and had like either a bad day or something, and they’re coming to see you specifically.

so, like, in my mind, I’m always like, when I play a show, it’s to either give someone a memory that’s gonna help them feel better or feel good and whether it’s dancing, whether it’s like feeling like emotional or enjoying a sound or something like that.

so, like, that’s the crowd that, like, I really enjoy in vibe off of, so.

like, you have to, like, make the audience think that it’s fun and exciting forition.

Yeah, you gotta have fun up on stage.

I like, oh, they’re having fun.

It’s those moments when you’re on stage that you’re like, this is what I do this for.

right?

Like, that’s where it all kind of comes together.

You’re with these guys, like there’s people in the crowd dancing, moving, like the energy is there, like that’s always every time we play a show, I’m like, this is why I keep doing this.

not I don’t like doing it, but it’s like, you know, you have to carve out time every day, like we all work, like we all have other jobs and like, you know, you have to every day, you gotta be like, all right, how am I gonna fit in some music?

and you know, it’s hard.

I think a thing for me lately has been, like having us having fun, intentionally coming to the stage, like, let’s just have fun.

I think I say that before we play any show at this point now, and it was like the intention of why we practice and why we are in like practicing individually and as a group to just have fun.

Why do we do why are we still doing music after all these years?

you know?

It’s not for the money it’s not for the money.

It’s for it’s because we love it.

I think the other thing I want to throw in there is like we we also produce and record all of our own stuff.

So, like, Tony and I went to school for music production and recording engineering as well.

So I think that that kind of plays into that because we we have like we’re not limited necessarily by like time in the studio or budget in that way, so we can really think about like, how we how do we want this song to sound and like, you know, we can really shape things in the way that we want.

like, we have complete creative control of what comes out.

all the way to the max.

So what’s this side of you when it comes to texture house?

Uh, yeah, so texture house Sound and visuals is an audio video production company.

that me and Paul started in 2020 out of necessity to make money during lockdown, but also passion and and dry and um now it’s I would say it’s like a full fled video production company.

um so it’s me, Paul, Angel, Andrews and now Zac Clark.

We make mostly story based stuff, but we me and Paul specialize in posts sound work and production sound work.

And and give me an example of that.

Of like post sound?

Yes.

So, currently we’re mixing a short film.

and we’re, you know, doing the dialogue editing, cleaning it up, sound design, um, and fully somebody else is composing it, so once that’s all together, it’ll come back to us and we’ll mix it and kind of polish up all the sound.

What’s it take to do your job good?

So, you know, I think I think the big thing that I’m realizing is that it takes, like, constant, like, a constant desire to, like, learn and grow.

Even though I’ve been doing this for 10 years now, there’s always something to learn, and even if you go back over the things you’ve already learned, there’s always those like little things that like, oh, yeah, I could try this way or something like that.

So, you know, I think that’s that’s the big thing, is just always being willing to learn no matter where you’re at and your skill level.

and then along with that, I mean, it’s time management and, like, getting yourself going in the morning and be like, okay, I really gotta, you know, not procrastinate kind of give this stuff done, and, right, so, yeah, it’s like learning, time management, and, you know, just like, wanting it.

being obsessed with it, really.

And where do you wanna take this business?

What?

Um, I’d love to keep growing, um, keep making better, um video production projects.

I wanna get more into featuring films.

I wanna get into more, like serious storytelling.

um I want bigger budgets to get better talent in.

And I think back to what Paul was saying is like, it’s a curiosity that is what really drives at least me, and learning new things, but also just like the intuitive um seeking out what what else is there, the why behind it?

Like, I feel like for me, video production and audio production, it was a why, how does it work?

Why are films made the way they are?

Why does music produce the way it is?

Is that in that seeking the answer that made me an expert in the things that I do?

What’s still the big dream?

Ah, I mean, it’d be nice to have this be able to sustain us so that we could just do this full time.

I mean, it’s a competitive scene.

There’s a lot of people trying to do the same thing, and it doesn’t really pay well to be a musician, unfortunately.

but it’d be nice to at least be able to, you know, afford rent and food and just the basic, like Mazlau’s lowest hierarchy it needs.

so at least in the winter, yeah.

Yeah, it’d be nice that basic comfort could provide for our comforts in life.

Like, yeah, you know, like like actually the s. That’s the dream.

That’s the dream, yeah.

What about um Kalamazoo?

I mean, is Kalamazoo, your home is where you like to play?

Maybe there’s a a gig north of town or what what keeps you here?

Uh, yeah, I was born a few blocks from here, and the the music community here is is crazy.

It’s it’s it’s it’s I’ve never found anywhere else that has such a concentrated amount of musicians, especially like divine neighborhood in Kalamazoo.

You can walk around the block and you’ll hear, you know, different bands practice, and it’s just a bunch of different styles.

There’s a ton of house venues and it’s just people who are really passionate about music.

and it’s just great to be in that community and a part of their community.

Kalamazoo, I kind of didn’t know why we moved here, and for all of all the places where we would go, you know, coming from an entire different continent, coming to Kalamazoo is kind of like, you know, it was weird for at first, but then when I got to go the town and I got to be live in the vine neighborhood for a while, I started to see a lot of like, you know, great artists.

and like that really pushed me to be better and like, as far as like listening to music and like enjoying music and like seeing all the different bands.

We I don’t think no, you didn’t live in the house with me, but I lived in the showhouse.

We had shows like just in the basement.

We had different bands from all over, you know, the United States, from California to British Columbia and Canada, to we had a band from France in Toulon and making him and played at our house.

Yeah, no, it was kind of nice.

Yeah, yeah, for literally all over the world, we had a bunch of people, so I got to meet some of like the best people.

Yeah, it made me really, like to even have that in a place like Kalamazoo where they would come to like and all of them every single time they came, they played the show, they would be like, dude, these crowds are amazing, these people love music, they love like coming out to a show.

We get like, you know, 200 people in a basement.

an issue in a fire code did the show but people enjoyed it and they they loved you know, they loved the music and like just, you know, seeing that really always I felt special to be in a place like Kalamazoo where you can get that any weekend, every weekend on a Tuesday night, on a Wednesday night, on a Friday night, like you know, so that’s awesome about a Kalamazoo.

I think we have two albums, really, but we really released our like the album that we put the most amount of time and effort into last year in December called dimensions, and it was sponsored or we got a grant through the arts council of Kalamazoo that really helped push that out.

We also did a music video called All about you, featuring Moorea Masa, and that was also, thanks to the Kalamazoo Arts Council for helping fund that.

And we won the um yeah, music music video award for our Michigan’s R&B and Soul music video Award.

Doing something right.

Congratulations to you all.

Thank you, please listen to the album.

Please listen to album.

find myself so I love you Know that I’ve been away I find myself so I can feel you to find myself so I and love you know that I feel away I find myself so I feel once again again, again, again, again, - Thank you so much for watching.

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