[vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”5/6″ offset=”vc_col-lg-offset-1 vc_col-md-offset-1″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1523015034289{padding-top: 25px !important;}”]
Ben Walsh from Tigers Jaw
Teenage Kicks playlist
When you load up Spotify, a great big chunk of the time you can’t think what to play, right? Overwhelmed by pretty much all the music ever, you default back to your old favourites, those albums and songs you played on repeat when you first discovered you could make them yours. This isn’t about guilty pleasures; it’s about those songs you’ll still be listening to when you’re old and in your rocking chair. So, enter Teenage Kicks – a playlist series that sees bands running through the music they listened to in their formative years.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”5/6″ offset=”vc_col-lg-offset-1 vc_col-md-offset-1″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1523015364902{padding-top: 25px !important;}”]Much of my musical interest came from various family members. I remember really liking Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty songs I heard on the radio during family road trips, and that’s my earliest memory of paying attention to music. Growing up, my family didn’t have a desktop computer until pretty late, so my first wave of discovering music came from going to my cousin’s house and burning CDs there.
It’s funny to reminisce about now-defunct ways of discovering bands. One of my cousins was dating a guy in a band, and I remember thinking he was super cool. I looked at his AIM profile and saw all these bands listed: Saves The Day, Alkaline Trio, New Found Glory, MxPx, Blink-182 etc. That was my gateway to punk music.
My cousin Matt played in an amazing Scranton power-pop indie band called The Sw!ms, and I became obsessed with them and their label mates, Okay Paddy. Getting to know them and listening to their wide array of influences led me to Weezer and Of Montreal and MC5 and the Elephant 6 Collective. Those two Scranton bands made me want to make music, and I probably wouldn’t have started a band without seeing them play.
I got a job at a thrift store when I was 15 with the ultimate goal of buying an electric guitar. Some of the (few) perks of the job involved getting to sort through all the CDs people donated. I used to take ones I thought looked interesting. One particular haul led me to Pavement, Archers of Loaf, and Built to Spill. I talked about some of these bands with my cousin Jake during a family vacation, and a few weeks later he mailed me some CDs of stuff he thought I’d like – the shins, spoon, Sloan.
In the early days of Tigers Jaw, myself and bandmate Adam [McIlwee] would trade CDs and get excited and inspired by all types of music. He introduced me to some weirder indie music, such as The Microphones, Islands, and Broken Social Scene. Most of the music I’ve mentioned is still stuff I listen to, and all of it helped formulate my influences for songwriting in Tigers Jaw.
