Tuesday 27 August 2013

Aftermidnight Q&A

Your name: 
Ashkan Karimi.

Where are you from? 
We're all originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma - I have been one to move around and I moved away but eventually ended up back here, home.

Name of band:
Aftermidnight.

Who else is in your band? 
Ben Blount, Austin Donoho and Patrick O'Meilia.

How would you describe yourselves? 
We all like to have fun, and play music of course. On a more personal level, I kind of tend to reflect and observe a lot what goes on around me...I'm a people watcher, but then again I write most of the lyrics to our music - it all tends to come from me observing what's going on around. I met Austin a while back and as we have continued to get to know each other I've discovered between him and Ben that they're the energy of the band...they know how to have fun and joke around...It's good, it keeps things light, keeps me form getting too deep or being serious all the time. Patrick is our newest member, he's a good friend of us all that we have known for a while. We're both similar in the fact that we're thinkers and kinda dig deeper than the surface level of things. He's a super practical guy, good about keeping our focus on what the next step is which is good cause we can get so caught up on the big picture we forget what's next to get there...Outside of that..We all love to play music. It's something that resonates with us, we all seem to get a healing or 'therapy' out of it, we have a ton of fun at shows!

Who are your main influences musically?
Our musical influences are pretty wide. The four of us are all so different in our musical upbringing but one thing we can all agree on is the classic, older music that we all tend to have our roots in. Some of the older bands we like are Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Police, U2....and then kinda moving into the newer bands we're into Radiohead, Mutemath, Switchfoot, Coldplay, Civil Twilight, The Rocketboys, Jeff Buckley, Kings Of Leon, and lately been really digging some of the more electronic/rock bands like James Blake, Walk The Moon, Alt-J, Boat Club, Metronomy...however that is always changing.

What do you hope to achieve in music?
I think it's all somewhat different for the four of us personally, but we all agree that we want to create great music that everyone likes to listen to. We all want to play big shows, and make a career out of it. It's something that we all take seriously as a profession while at the same time having fun with it too. We are really about creating music that is relatable to the listener and music that could even help listeners through hard and tough times. Times seem to get tougher as life goes on and we all have to learn to grow above it, so if we can even encourage people to hold on and push through whatever it is their dealing with we would consider that a success.
Personally I'm big into also getting people a cause to help people in poverty stricken areas around the world, and providing ways out of the mess they're in. My family is from Iran and seeing the limited amount of rights both women and the men have there while I'm here in America living 'the life' really pushes me to give back and currently have been working on different solutions to help aid them...as unpopular as that may be for an American to do since the majority of culture in America is kinda against Iran...I just think if I have a level of freedom that I could use to help others who have very limited freedoms than it should be used.

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?
I would say the more recent shows we have played. We had the opportunity over the past year to play two different shows where we were able to open for some major musical influences, both Civil Twilight and The Rocketboys! It was a lot of fun both playing before them and getting to chat with them afterwards, and pretty awesome to see some dreams come true. We recently got to represent our city by playing Tulsa's first annual Center Of The Universe Festival which was pretty epic and we're looking forward to playing it again in the future!

And what’s the moment you want to forget?
As a whole we would all have to say every awkward moment we have had on stage in-between songs due to having to tune my guitar. I was playing a guitar for a while that just wouldn't hold a tune and was constantly having to tune up after each song...kinda ridiculous.

If you had to choose just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?
So hard to say but one song that kind of set us on a course towards the sound we're producing sonically right now would have to be our songCurrents. Since then we have written music that is different but that song in particular seems to resonate with us all...it's kinda of like coming home. Another song we would probably say would be our song Scales which is more of a straight forward rock song.

Where can we listen to it?
You can listen to both of them on soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/aftermidnightam



Where can we find out more about your music?
As far as us and our music goes you can find more info on our website, facebook, twitter and iTunes! Also if you signup for our e-news you can get a free download of one of our tracks you can do so right here -> http://bit.ly/10ro685


Anything else you’d like to say that I forgot to ask?
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Also be on the lookout for new songs! We're currently working in the studio on our newest music and we're stoked about it. It's something we've been looking forward to doing for awhile and now that we're working on it we're already getting excited about what is coming out of our time in the studio! Be on the lookout and be sure to connect with us on Facebook and Twitter. 

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