The Cranberry Merchants
INTRO
Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to one of the hardest working bands I know, and also the nicest two people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting; Steve Moore and Dianne Moore. The Cranberry Merchants are a husband & wife Rock Duo out of Atlanta, GA. As writers of all their own material, they also produce and record all of their releases, as well as their music videos, filming to editing. While their musical style is simplistic, it’s packed with hooks, energy, and touches on some rather unconventional subject matters; everything from history to hypocrisy. Their debut EP “In the Blood” has quickly found its way onto a number of indie radio programs, and is in regular rotation on many college and internet radio stations in the USA, Canada, Europe, Africa, South America, and Australia; topping or placing in the Top 10 of many of the stations’ charts. They are recent silver winners of the prestigious 2019 International Singer Songwriter Awards (ISSA) for Band Single of the Year for the song, “The Black Maria”; and they were nominated for 3 categories of the 2019 Josie Independent Music Awards, including Music Video of the Year for the song “In the Blood.”
PHOTO CREDITS: Bob Strack
Laszlo Zambo
The cover art was by Dianne Moore
ISSA Awards images provided
INTERVIEW
Hi guys. First all, welcome to Fanbase Music Magazine and thank you for doing this interview. Let’s start from the beginning, can you tel us who you are and what each of you do in the band.
Absolutely! It’s just the two of us who play everything on our recordings. Steve plays guitar, bass, and does some of the lead vocals. Dianne plays the drums, synth, and also shares in the lead vocals.
Do you come from a musical background or from a musical family?
We each started playing music as teenagers and met one another while in college at The Art Institute of Atlanta, where we both majored in Music Business Management & Production. Our first band together was called Halcyon, back in the 90’s. While none of our parents were musical, we do have a few members of the extended family who are musicians.
What genre of music would you call your music?
We mostly play straight-up rock music, but by the same token we don’t like to necessarily limit ourselves to any particular boundaries in that respect. Some songs are more pop, while other are just… well… weird. But we write to entertain ourselves first.
Where do you draw your inspiration from?
Inspiration can come from most anywhere, really. Our favourite bands respectively are:
Led Zeppelin for Steve, and Duran Duran for Dianne, which are pretty far apart musically. However, our music tends to somehow kind of meet in the middle of those two as songs with a solid rock edge, but pop-like hooks to them. Lyrically, the inspiration can come from anywhere. In “The Black Maria” it came from watching a documentary on TV, while “Quiescence” came from a painting that used to hang in Dianne’s childhood bedroom. So the sources are really varied.
You are one of the hardest working bands I know and I think anyone who follows your social media will agree with me on that subject, just how important is social media for a band in today’s age?
It’s extremely important, and we think that’s most obvious to bands like us who remember what trying to get publicity was like before social media. Back then, an unsigned band pretty much only had the option of being played on local college radio, which had a very small audience. But now, between social media platforms and the advent of internet radio, any band can have an instant global audience, as long as you’re willing to put the time and effort into really getting your name out there, sending your songs to as many stations as possible, and making your music easily available on every download and streaming platform you can.
I work for SME Fusion Radio and often play your music on my show but you are also playlisted on loads of radio stations around the world. What I like about your band is that you seem to have a good relationship with the stations and DJs that play your music. In my opinion is that important for a band to have that relationship with stations and DJs?
It’s very important! Networking and building relationships is an essential part of marketing in any type of industry, but most especially in entertainment, since you’re really selling yourself. Letting people get to know and like you is how you build a fan base. It’s also important to remember that most of the indie radio stations that play us are just that… independent just like us. So there’s a mutual incentive to promote one another, since when one grows, so does the other. Unfortunately, we see too many really super-talented indie artists fall by the wayside after just 1 or 2 good songs, mainly because they don’t follow up with the stations that started out supporting them.
You are a duo but also husband and wife, can you tell us how it is being a couple and also being a band; are there any challenges you face?
The upside to it, particularly when writing, is that you have someone who is already on the same page with you, knows how you think, and already has a chemistry with you. For us, that musical chemistry is what sparked the more personal relationship that led to our marriage. Music has never really been something we argue about. I guess presently though, our main challenge in being just a duo has been translating our music to the live stage, since we each generally play multiple parts on our recordings. We would have to hire on extra musicians to play them live, and other life obligations outside of the band make it difficult to make the commitments necessary to rehearse and gig with others
Do you do this full time, or do you have other jobs?
The band is a part-time project at the moment, though we would LOVE for it to be our full-time career someday. Like most indie musicians, we have a mortgage and other bills that require day jobs to keep a roof over our heads; not to mention the financing and the production of recording and making music videos on our own. Steve works in a warehouse that ships medical supplies, and Dianne works part-time rendering social media ads and videos for an HVAC technician’s school.
Can you describe a typical band practice in the Cranberry Merchants camp?
The living room of our house is strewn with gear and cables everywhere most of the time these days, so that it’s easy to just start jamming when an idea hits us or we need to rehearse. I guess our 2 cats have gotten used to the loud music, because they’re usually hanging with us the whole time, and Smokey even likes to sit at my feet under the drum kit! We have a lot of fun jamming though, and are pretty patient with each other about learning or refining our parts. Keeping a good sense of humour through it all really helps!
I would like to talk about our writing process, I am always interested to know how a band completes a song, can you talk us through your writing process from the time a song is thought of and written to when it is recorded?
I wouldn’t say we’re the most disciplined when it comes to completing a song from start-to-finish in one shot. Often when writing one song, one of us comes up with a totally unrelated beat, riff, or melody that the other finds interesting, and it side-tracks us into another song idea. We tend to like running with an idea while the inspiration is there and as a result, we find ourselves working on multiple tracks at a time. The only time we really buckle down and focus on the one song is when we’re recording.
You have an EP out called “In the Blood” which is also the name of one of your tracks, can you tell us more about the EP, how many songs are on it?
In the Blood is our debut EP as The Cranberry Merchants, and is made up of 5 songs: “The Black Maria,” “Going Nowhere,” “In the Blood,” “The Beat,” and a little-known track called, “Worker & Parasite” which is more of a concept piece of music, rather than a proper song. “The Black Maria” was the first single, released in late November of 2018, and we released the full EP on New Years’ Day of 2019. We’ve been really pleasantly surprised as to the great response it’s generated on internet radio.
I would just like to say one of my favourite tracks off the EP, is “The Black Maria”| and “In the Blood”; what is the story behind those two songs?
Well, first of all, thank you! We’re so glad you enjoy them. The Black Maria was the name of the world’s first movie studio, which was built at Thomas Edison’s lab complex in West Orange, New Jersey in the early 1890’s. Motion pictures were a new & experimental thing at the time, so he would invite entertainers of the day to perform there so that he could do film tests with a type of camera called the kinetograph. It was a very strange and eclectic mix of performers from the Vaudeville Era, so this song is about the history of those very early days of movie making and the first stars to ever be filmed.
“In the Blood” is the closest thing we have to anything political. Though the lyrics were written over 20 years ago, they seem to ring more true today. It’s basically about the struggle to adhere to your own personal morals and beliefs in a world that is constantly trying to make you think what they want you to for their own selfish reasons. It just seems to be a part of human nature to want everyone else to think the way we do… it’s a trait that’s “in our blood.”
You have also got some instrumental tracks which I think is cool; it’s almost like a cool jam session within the band, is that a conscious decision to make a song an instrumental or is it just how it pans out when you’re jamming?
The two instrumental tracks on our EP, “Going Nowhere” and “The Beat” are songs that were actually originally written with lyrics. When we recorded the demos though, we weren’t real happy with the way the vocals turned out, but thought that both pieces of music stood up pretty well on their own as instrumentals. So in these cases, no, they were not originally conscious decisions to do so, but both songs have been received well for play on radio. However, because they’ve done so well, it’s sort of given us the confidence to move forward with another piece in the works that is intentionally being developed as an instrumental track. It’s very different from the previous 2 songs though, and is more of a dramatic soundtrack type of piece.
One of my favourite sons of yours is a new track called Quiescence, can you tell us what the song is about?
Again, thank you. “Quiescence” was inspired by a print of a painting that used to hang in Dianne’s bedroom as a child, entitled “Heilige Schutzengel” …or “Guardian Angel.” Her parents were very religious and put it there as a means of making her feel safe against the little things that small children are afraid of, such as the dark or strange noises in the night. Both of her parents have since passed away, as have Steve’s, but that instilled belief in angels as protectors in a more adult sense has remained, especially since she feels that all of their parents are now their guardian angels. The word quiescence has several meanings, but in this instance, it refers to the serenity of having Heavenly protectors.
The Cranberry Merchants- Quiescence music video is this week’s music video of the week for Fanbase Music Mag
The song has both a cool video and a lyric video which can be fond online. For the main video of the song, I am told you do your own filming and editing of the videos, which is amazing. What is the process like to do something like that?
As an indie band with a very limited budget, we have to get creative in finding ways to create a professional look without the professional cost. Because it’s very expensive to rent proper sound stage space, all of the performance footage for “Quiescence” (as well as the performance clips in “The Black Maria” and “In the Blood”) were actually filmed in a small alcove of our living room that we simply cordoned off with black or white bed sheets to make a neutral background. Much of the coloured lighting is just Christmas lights we bought on clearance, and a Halloween strobe light. We’ve done some outdoor location shooting as well, such as in the Edison National Historic Park in NJ for “The Black Maria” or the many states and tourist attractions we visited while filming our 3000+ mile road trip for “Going Nowhere.” It’s fortunate that we live in an age of having quality HD digital filming capabilities in our pockets these days, as we actually use our iPhones to shoot all of the footage. It’s amazing what you can do with a simple selfie stick too! Then all of the editing is done on our home desktop computer using software called Power Director 17. We actually have a couple of “making of” type videos on our YouTube page that show more details of our production process, for those who would like to check it out.
Have you collaborated with anyone or would you consider doing that in the future?
We haven’t officially collaborated outside of the band as of yet, since we really tend to work best with just one another. However, we have been talking with a couple of our indie friends about jumping in on a song we wrote a while back, that could benefit from their specialized talents on parts that are a little outside of our regular wheelhouse. We hope that this project will come to fruition later this year.
What equipment and brand names do you use?
Steve mostly plays a Memphis guitar, which is a strat-like model, and an old Charvel bass that he’s had for ages, but is very comfortable with. He’s got a variety of pedals, but tends to use a Zoom 505 the most. Dianne mostly uses 2 different Alesis electronic drum kits, both for the wide variety of sound patches, as well as the ease of plug & play recording. Her acoustic drum kit is a Gibraltar. She has a pretty big collection of small handheld percussion instruments as well. The synth on “Quiescence” was played on a Yamaha keyboard. Most of our mics are ElectroVoice. We record with a DAW software called Samplitude, using a Zoom R8 as an input. Just like with our videos, all of our audio recordings are produced in our home as well.
What do you enjoy the most about being a musician and in a band, and what do you hate the most?
The best thing would probably be just having a creative outlet that we can do together. With all of the other stresses of daily life, music is the ultimate healer. The part we hate the most is that we’re not yet in a position to do it full time, though we have to say despite that, we are enjoying the journey.
What is the biggest problem you have had to overcome so far?
Time! Steve works very long hours at his day job, and even more so now because of the Covid-19 crisis these days. It’s a constant challenge for us to find substantial-enough spans of time where both of us are available to sit down to write, rehearse, and record.
If you were given the chance to change anything in the industry, what would that be?
Probably the ability to get paid for what a musician’s intellectual property is really worth in the digital market. When you consider all of the money a musician spends on gear, advertising, and distribution… not to mention the massive amount of time invested into writing, recording, social media promotion & networking… as well as simply for coming up with creative original music that entertains people around the world… what musicians actually earn from this doesn’t even recover their own costs most of the time. Big changes need to be made on a legislative level to online streaming and download services to create a fairer monetary return that an artist can actually profit from. We know such things are in the works, but don’t seem to be happening quickly enough.
In today’s music industry, things have changed a lot with technology. Bands don’t really make money from album sales and most money is now made on downloads or streams, how does this effect you as a band?
Referring back to our answer to the previous question, it makes it very difficult at times to continue producing quality music at a reasonable pace. It’s really just the love of making music that we think keeps most artists like us motivated. If not for that, digital royalties alone would not be enough to make it worth it.
Lets talks about some of the awards you have won, you are recent silver winners of the prestigious 2019 International Singer Songwriter Awards (ISSA) for Band Single of the Year for the song, “The Black Maria” and you were nominated in 3 categories of the 2019 Josie Independent Music Awards including Music Video of the year for the song “In the Blood”; van you tell me first of all, what those events and awards are and how does it feel to have accomplished all that?
The International Singer Songwriters Association is fairly new, less than 2 years in existence now, but has grown quickly to over 12,000 members in that time. Their primary function is to give guidance to indie artists on the business side of music, as well as give them a promotional platform. Their first awards show this past August was rather exciting for us, as it was our first experience with even attending an awards show, much less winning anything. The nominations began in January of last year, then fans and fellow artists could vote to elect the finalists in each category. Once those were announced, a panel of music industry professionals chose the winners. We were really surprised and honoured to win something on our very first try, and loved meeting so many great people besides! The Josie Music Awards, also just for independent artists, have been around for about 5 years, and as far as we know, are strictly an awards show hosted by Josie Passatino’s radio program. While we didn’t win at the Josies, we had a great time attending the show and again, getting to meet fellow indie artists from around the world. The nominations alone were a real confidence-booster too. For both awards shows, it helped us to feel like we were creating music that was truly entertaining, musically credible, and commercially viable.
You were also awarded a World Songwriting Award for your Music Video “Going Nowhere” in the Fall of 2019 and Social Stars Duo Group of the Year for 2019, please tell us more about that.
The World Songwriting Awards are a series of quarterly song contests in multiple genres of music that allow both signed and unsigned artists to compete for recognition, based solely on the quality of the writing, or in this case the production quality of the video, rather than popularity, the size of fan base, or sales. Like the awards mentioned above, they are a means of lending artists some credibility in the music market. The Social Stars Awards on the other hand are all about rallying an artist’s social media followers to vote for their favourite acts through an online poll. Both of these awards were a really big honour to receive for entirely different reasons, so we were very grateful to have had success with both. All of these different awards, along with ones we’ve received from individual radio stations have helped us to build a more solid resume in a short amount of time.
You are bringing out a new track on 1st April (today), can you tell us what the song is called and what it is about?
Our latest single is called “Disturbing the Peace” and it’s really just a fun, punchy kind of rock track about defiantly annoying your neighbours with loud music. While we’re actually more considerate towards our real-life neighbours when playing at home, this is just kind of a teenage take on the subject for the sake of laughing at it. Because of the light-hearted nature of this track, this will also be our first attempt at using stop-motion animation for the music video. Anyone who follows us on social media knows how much we love Lego, and about all of the little characters we’ve created to represent our indie music friends, as well as many of the DJs, such as yourself. So we’re putting all of these little characters, along with our massive Lego collection to work for us to create a funny story for the song. So we hope that people will not only enjoy rocking out to the song itself, but get a good laugh out of it too!
If the good people want to get in touch and hear/see more of your music, where should they go?
We are all over social media and love hearing from our fans, whom we always answer personally. Here’s a list of links where you can find both us and our music:
www.cranberrymerchants.com
Thank you so much for doing this interview, is there anyone you would like to thanks, and do you have any messages for your fans and our readers?
First, we’d like to thank you, Duzzy for this opportunity to tell your readers of Fanbase Magazine about our music, as well as for the regular airplay you give us. We’re so grateful to online stations like SME Fusion who provide a virtual stage for indie artists to get their music out to a global audience. We’d also like to thank our fans and social media followers for all of the wonderful support they continually give us by purchasing our music, watching our videos, and giving their feedback. When we started back into the music business almost 2 years ago, we never imagined we would get such a warm and enthusiastic response as we have, so we feel truly blessed for that. We hope to continue doing this for as long as there are ears to listen!
