Today, we sat down with Versa to discuss their inspiration to write music, type of music growing up, and much more!
Interview:
What is your inspiration to write your music? Is it your
surroundings?
Our surroundings definitely play a part in the sound of our music – we live in Victoria, on the southern end of Vancouver Island, which is a really beautiful place, with massive, towering douglas fir trees, rocky beaches, mountains, and a lot of rain. I think you can hear those surroundings in a lot of our music.
What type of music did you listen to growing up?
I listened to pretty much just classical and classic rock growing up. My mother was a classical pianist and my sister and I took piano lessons, and I studied flute. When I moved away for university at 18 I started listening to progressive rock music and getting really into the indie rock and post rock scenes that were just starting to get big at the time (early 2000s).
Is there someone you looked up as a hero?
It feels a bit weird to talk about heroes when you’re in your 40s, but I find a lot of inspiration in the careers of Neal Morse and Ninja Sex Party (Dan Avidan and Brian Wecht). Both Neal and NSP didn’t find much success in their early careers but kept at it, kept improving, kept writing and releasing music, and finally broke through and built really amazing careers starting in their mid-30s.
If you weren’t a musician, would you be doing today?’
Well, I’m a lawyer by day and Jesse (Versa’s drummer) is an electrician. Hollas is a full time musician – a composer of contemporary music, a violin teacher, and a performer of classical music – and it’s hard to imagine him doing anything else!
What advice do you have for our fans out there that want to create
music?
Be open to input from your bandmates and friends, be patient, and don’t get stuck on the first idea that comes into your head. Sometimes you get a great chorus melody on the first try, for example, and sometimes you have to re-write a tune a few times before it’s as good as it can be.
