Seth Beck Talks New Album “Entertainment Center”
Will and Meriah meet with Seth Beck to discuss his upcoming album, Entertainment Center. Below are highlights from the full interview which can be listened to above.
SB: Seth Beck
W: Will McLaughlin
M: Meriah Fearon
W: How did your musical career / endeavor start?
SB: I grew up in a musical family and just family that are fans of music. My dad played guitar. My brother plays guitar. My uncle's a drummer in bands. So, yeah, from an early age I just always really liked classic rock music.
W: You picked up a guitar at a young age or?
SB: Yeah, I started playing for real like about fourteen.
M: Who were some of the artists that got you more inspired to make music?
SB: When I heard Sparklehorse as a teenager. I got really into that because it was so vulnerable but also had a groove to it. So a lot of like, obscure indie music like that.
W: Are you a multi instrumentalist? Like, as far as the music on this upcoming album goes, do you have a band? Or are you the only one in the recording sessions?
SB: Yeah, so there's a band on this record. I hop around on instruments. I play drums on one song, but we got a drummer for the rest of it. It's like a five piece lineup
W: And you record all at once or were you doing kind of one part per and then layering them all together?
SB: Most of it was overdubs. We did a couple songs live. And the acoustic songs on the record are recorded live.
W: Did you record from home or did you go to a studio?
SB: I worked out of a studio called The Stooge, which is ran by Jackie Kalmink, it's in Zeeland Michigan.
W: I have no idea where that is but it sounds cool.
SB: It's literally a shed in a yard, surrounded by trees. So it's really private.
W: When did you start putting out music?
SB: I made an EP when I was like sixteen, and that was maybe 2014 or something like that. Then I've just been writing a lot in 2019. I put out an album that was a lot of home recordings, a lot of demos. So yeah, it's been a long process. But this one sort of feels like the first real go at an album.
W: Those original songs, they were kind of in your room, recording not very professionally?
SB: Not very professionally, just really learning how to do it, yeah.
M: Production wise, I can tell the big shift from the earlier stuff to what you've released now. It sounds really good.
W: Yeah, we were saying production wise, blown away. Like it sounds- I don't know. It's just really well produced.
W: Did you have any songs for this album that didn't make the cut?
SB: Yeah, there's like three or four that got finished that didn't end up on the album.
W: Do you think you'll release those later down the line, try to find a different place for them?
SB: There's one song that will be released in the spring after the album. And then there might be a B-sides release eventually. But no, really just back to the grindstone, keep writing.
M: I think it's always good to release those because sometimes people's favorite songs are the ones that the artist doesn't necessarily think to add.
SB: For sure.
W: Well, especially if it just doesn't go with the tone of the album or necessarily the flow of it. I mean, how much time did you spend on sequencing the album?
SB: A lot of time, yeah. So I was fretting over it for what felt like months.
W: Yeah, I feel like that could play a major part in songs making the cut or not.
SB: It really does. But you know, a bangin B-side is pretty sick.
W: Do you have more inspirations as far as the type of music that you're actually making? What is influencing your sound at this point in time?
SB: I was listening to a lot of The Replacements in the making of this record. I don't know how much you can actually hear it. I really admire Paul Westerberg's lyrics and sort of the abstractions and like the fun that they created with their music. But it wasn't just all fun. There was like a deeper layer to it. The Velvet Underground has always been a really big inspiration. I don't know, I just got into like a lot of lyricists, I think. And then I think the production -it's inspired by the last 50 years of music. I mean, it's hard to put it on one thing.
W: Yeah, that makes sense. How long did you actually spend on this album, specifically, when did work on it start?
SB: Like 2020. And there was a couple iterations of it. But it was really through this last year of 2022. That it was like, recording and sequencing and all the stuff.
W: So like a year or two of actually writing it and getting parts of it to places that you were happy with?
SB: For sure. I mean, yeah, it was a bunch of periods of a lot of writing and a lot of creativity and then levels in between. I moved to Chicago during the pandemic. So there was like a year of adjusting going on then. But yeah, it was about a three year process.
W: What are your favorite kind of artists in the area? Are there any that you would want to…
M: …Give a shout out to. We're a Chicago radio show.
W: We are a Chicago radio show so.
SB: Shout outs to Brady. They're a really cool shoegaze band. I really liked the band Bnny. And then Ulna, is a cool project from Adam in that band. Oh, and Morinda I just saw Morinda open for Rose hotel, and I really liked it.
M: Back to the mixing. How much work did you do on that versus having someone else work on mixing/mastering?
SB: So Jackie was in charge of mixing it. We spent like a weekend where I was there. And just kind of dove in and tried to balance it out as best as possible. And then it was just a lot of sending it back and forth and little notes and fine tuning. And yeah, it was fun because my first record was, like I said, demos, they weren't really officially mixed. They weren't really officially recorded. So it was a cool process, like seeing how a mix can make something feel good and how it can mess things up too.
W: What was the team like on the album? As far as bandmates/people helping produce.
SB: Yeah, so the songs were all like, pretty fleshed out, they had all been demoed. So, a lot of the parts were written by me, but also my brother, Eric, played guitar on the record, and he wrote a lot of parts. My drummer Jim made all the drum parts better. So yeah, it was a lot of collaboration, just like how can we take this the next 15 to 20%? Which is great. Because making a solo record, I found it was just easy to get caught up in the mud, like without having other people to bounce off. So I relied a lot on those people.
W: Do you want to do a personalized plug for your album? Any final thoughts on it, or just things that you're excited about people getting their hands on specifically?
SB: Entertainment center is out on February 24 independently. Look for tour dates coming in the future and I hope you enjoy it.