Meet The Garlics, a pop-punk rock band from Quebec with more than 1 million plays on Jango - They are first out in a series of bands interviewed in our new feature called "Band of the Month". The idea is to give you guys a closer look on how other bands do it and how they've managed to become success stories on Jango.
The Garlics have been on Jango since 2009 and now have more than 20,000 fans. They are currently working on their second album and here is their interview - enjoy!
Describe The Garlics' sound in one sentence?
The Garlics's sound is
unique, meaningful and energetic.
When
were The Garlics formed and where?
We have
been playing music since a very young age. May started to write songs when she
was 4. She was inviting everyone in family reunion to listen to her new songs
and plays. She composed a song in 5th Grade for the 6th Grade who were
graduating from Primary School and everyone but literally everyone were crying
– on videos from that time you see a tissue box going from one person to the
next. In High School, everyone knew who May was. She was participating in
sports activities, music activities, organizing charity events, and acting as
co-president for the student association. She has a Black Belt in Karate (Kyokushinkaï),
Played elite soccer and Volleyball.
Olivier comes from a family of guitarists. His dad
and his uncle were all playing guitar. At a very young age, Olivier was playing
guitar day after day after day, while taking courses. In High School, he participated
along with May, in both the School Harmony and Blues Band. Olivier played guitar,
May played flute. On several occasions, Olivier also played in high school
talent shows and ended up representing the High School with his band to a Provincial
contest. Throughout his teenage years, Olivier worked on finding his sound, not
just working on the performance, but mostly working on the originality of his
playing and the melody that could create.
Jean-Frédéric became a multi-instrumentalist young
musician at a very early age. Influenced by his talented brother who was also playing
drums, JF did learn to play drums but also learned to play trumpet, violin, guitar
and more percussion instruments always looking for new combinations.
Thus in January 2009 while in High School, Olivier
and Will (former member) who were part of The Garlics at the time, recruited
May and JF to be part of the band. They had submitted the band for a battle of
the bands contest in Montreal
a year before. After only 4 weeks of rehearsing they won 2nd place
over more than 60 bands pre-selected.
Name three people who have influenced your music, and
tell us why? Living or dead.
Hayley
Williams (Paramore) is one of the major influence we have because we feel
she is one the best female rock vocalist of our time. The Rev (Avenged
Sevenfold) is an icon for Jeff. He started to drum playing all the songs from
him. Finally, it is difficult for us to name bands because we love a lot of
different kind of music from Pop rock to more Progressive.
How do you connect with fans and get them involved in
your music?
We answer back to every fan
who write to us, we try to get them to participate in every way they can. We
also take a lot of time to talk with our fans at the end of our shows and give
a lot of free EP's, CD's and t-shirts. We naturally use Jango as a vehicle to
expose our material to new audiences.
What do you like the most about Jango Airplay?
We can easily connect with all our fans by sending emails with updates. Our fans can leave comments on our page and it's a great way to communicate with them on many levels : what they like and don’t, share ideas with them, get their feedback and we especially love the stats and who our fans also likes. We have more than 20 000 fans on this site... Everything's good on Jango! Everytime we put up plays in Jango, we see an increase in traffic on our official website and consequently in our sales on Numusix.com and iTunes.
We can easily connect with all our fans by sending emails with updates. Our fans can leave comments on our page and it's a great way to communicate with them on many levels : what they like and don’t, share ideas with them, get their feedback and we especially love the stats and who our fans also likes. We have more than 20 000 fans on this site... Everything's good on Jango! Everytime we put up plays in Jango, we see an increase in traffic on our official website and consequently in our sales on Numusix.com and iTunes.
Is there any recent project you'd like to share with
us? Tell us about it.
We're working with a
new producer (John Nathaniel) and just released our new music video "Burning Bridges" and single "Bottom of
the Sea". Two more songs will be added by September 19th to Jango and that
will likely be all released on a new EP. We plan to have a second album ready
by March 2012.
- The Garlics latest video "Burning Bridges"
- The Garlics latest video "Burning Bridges"
Are you guys playing live and do you have any shows
coming up soon?
We do play live and we love
it. We have the chance to be invited by a lot of bands to play in the best
places/festivals in Quebec.
We are looking to expand our market in Spring 2012 after completing our second
album. We'll keep you updated on Jango!
Want to hear more from The Garlics? Check them out on the links below
http://www.youtube.com/thegarlicsofficial
Many thanks to The Garlics for supporting Airplay and letting us interview them. And of course thanks to all of you for being part of Jango Airplay - next month we'll be back with another band interview.
/The Jango Airplay Team
Many thanks to The Garlics for supporting Airplay and letting us interview them. And of course thanks to all of you for being part of Jango Airplay - next month we'll be back with another band interview.
/The Jango Airplay Team