Casper-based due Pleasure People will play on Sept. 20 at The Virginian Saloon as part of the Wyoming Artists Showcase. KHOL is a sponsor and beneficiary of the concert.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Evan Ballew: Could you tell me a little bit about the album that you put out last year, “All Black & Blue?” What was the recording process for that one like?
Nick Cantine: Half the songs have come from years past, not like B-list songs or anything, but songs that were waiting for the right people to play them and put them together. We brought those to life at the beginning of Pleasure People, and then wrote several more. We were playing a show at the Griffin Theater in Laramie, and a bunch of people were coming up to our merch table and asking us if we had an album. And Julia looked over at me and said, ‘When will we have an album? May.’ You told everyone that and so we had to have it out.
Julia Rottman: He works better under deadlines.
NC: But yeah, once we had a deadline, I was like, ‘Hey, we got to give them what we promised.’ I have a studio in my basement of my house under the name Harmonyx Audio, and we recorded and produced it all here and mixed it and then sent it off to a friend in [Washington] D.C. to master.
EB: Could you describe what it’s like to be a working artist and musician in a town like Casper and in a state like Wyoming.
NC: We all have these giant dreams with our music when we’re writing a song or we fall in love with something we created with a group of people. And we hope the best, whatever that may be. Maybe you’re hoping just to have fun with it, or maybe you just really love the studio experience, or maybe want to play it for 10,000 people someday on a stage, or maybe want to play it for a coffee house. But if you don’t know what you want, it’s hard to reel in your expectations and be satisfied with the result as you go. I get to work with other artists in Wyoming quite a bit through my studio and playing shows together and just talking with them about expectations and their goals kind of keeps me grounded on why I’m doing this stuff. No, I don’t think there’s a right way or a wrong way to perform music or write music or be involved in the music industry. I’m turning 39 in October. I’m not a young kid, a scene person as some might say.
EB: Would you be able to expand a little bit more on how your surroundings may or may not influence your songwriting?
NC: All our songs are really about experiences with other people. It’s our take on it. You can either go around singing about yourself all the time or bring experiences with the people you hang out with or love, or maybe not love.. I like to write real, personal songs but I try not to write them in a way where it’s just relative to myself. If I write a song about my experiences with alcoholism or alcohol abuse, that wouldn’t be very fun to sing in a bar. We don’t have to be so right on the point about what we’re singing about.
EB: How important of a role do you think songwriting plays in the world today?
NC: I don’t know where I would be without it.
JR: There’s so many mental health issues, just being able to find a relatable song or something that really speaks to you. You can do that for free or you can get that feeling. It’s its own form of therapy. And I think without it, it would be a scarier world.
NC: It is scary right now for songwriting because all this AI stuff coming out. Cheating a little bit and getting a little help from AI is something I disagree with when it comes to songwriting or creating music, but it’s going to happen.
EB: What’s one piece of advice that you’ve received as an artist that you can always fall back on?
NC: A friend of mine had worked on several records and at one point he was encouraged by a label to make certain decisions to give the people what they want. It may have worked to some extent but it didn’t work for him. A lot of the love for it wasn’t there and so his advice was always make the decision to whatever you think sounds best or feels best. What you like about it is what you should do. Don’t write a song because you think there’s millions of people that like this style of song.
JR: I feel like my expectation was to make music and have fun and it’s exceeded it. It keeps growing and growing. And I think that if I went into it being like, ‘Oh, I want to be huge, it would just not be fun.
Listen above for KHOL’s full conversation with Pleasure People.
