Influenza with D. Kent Watson of Atlatl
Approach Influenza as a series which serves to help give insight as to where music is born; these are the thoughts, influences and the inspirations directly from the mind of the artists. Here, D. Kent Watson of Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Atlatl describes the band’s single “My Devil’s Evangelical.”
I didn’t know how to word this for some time. I have very specific references for most of my songs, but they are scattered. Scattered in the sense that I will pick up different verses from different parts of my life. Unless, say, I’m writing about love, which I try to avoid. I just don’t like to write about love.
(“So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll / Im very sorry, baby, doesn’t look like me at all / I’m standing by the window where the light is strong / Ah they don’t let a woman kill you / Not in the tower of song” – Leonard Cohen).
But when I do I can very easily write about a girl or a moment and continue with a continuity for the entire song. On the other hand a song like “My Devils Evangelical” came to me after experiencing several different things and piecing them together. I guess I believe a song should be about something, or mean something but I don’t think there should be any specific approach to attaining that. I don’t set out to write a song about the economic crisis and then just write it. I will usually get somewhere by accident. By living. By having as many experiences as possible. That’s my favorite approach right now anyways.
“My Devils Evangelical” is about fundamentalism. About not admitting you’re wrong, the necessity to admit your wrong. About not being yourself because its easier to blend in. About being human.
Me and a friend last summer started a project where we visited different churches and listened to the service. We wanted to know why people went to the churches they went to. How much of it was belief? How much of it was comfort and how much of it was convenience? Than we would go to brunch and discuss it. We than wrote responses on a blog called tour of the congregations. We went to a few evangelical super churches. I’d say a lot of the first verse came from that.
It was the first song where I got to be the conductor rather than a player. It was the first song where I got to bark orders in the studio. It was a great learning experience. It’s a lot of fun to play live and I think it was a stepping stone for us.
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