Pop-up songs

From 14 until I was about 24 or 25, I played in bands. All throughout high school, music dominated my spare time. When the band life started taking too much time in university, we slowed down a lot. I appreciated the space it opened, but I did also miss it.

So Philip and I started a site called CULTUURSHOCK — don’t bother looking for it, it no longer exists. Rather than being in a band myself, I started reviewing concerts and albums, and interviewing bands. I met some of my musical heroes that way: Thrice, Oh Sleeper, MxPx, Enter Shikari and Underoath, to name a few.

Philip is a professional art and creative director, so he constantly was coming up with some new ideas. During one of our brainstorming sessions, we wondered if we could pull off rocking up with an acoustic guitar before shows and ask artists to give us a backstage song.

We pulled it off.

MxPx

Here are some of my favourite recordings. At Groezrock, we had asked MxPx if they’d be okay with recording a pop-up song. Mike had to do another acoustic set on day 2, so he asked us to check with him again after that set. We did and he pulled us up the stage. While waiting for the van to take us back to the artist village, we glanced at each other and decided that the drive to the artist village might create a pretty cool setting.

Oh, Sleeper

I was set on seeing Oh, Sleeper before relocating to South Africa (bands don’t pass by here as frequently). When that finally happened, they were gracious enough to record a song with us.

John Coffey

One of the first pop-up songs I ever helped record was with our Dutch friends from John Coffey at Christmas Rock Night. They had such an amazing dynamic.

I Am Empire

At the same CRN festival, we asked I Am Empire to record a song with us as well. They agreed, but first wanted to grab some food so we followed them to McDonald’s. Singer Austin Lyons suggested that we recorded the song while the rest of the band was waiting for food. The neon lighting made it a unique background for a touching song.