Everything you need to know about Seaway’s new album of b-sides and alternate versions of fan favourites, ‘Fresh Produce’, by guitarist Andrew Eichinger.
1. The whole inception of ‘Fresh Produce’ stemmed from us sitting on a couple of unreleased songs that we liked. ‘Blur’ is a B side from ‘Vacation’ that for one reason or another just didn’t make the record, so we decided to save it for something in the future. The other new song, ‘Pleasures’, was written and recorded over a couple of days in LA well after ‘Vacation’ was released. We felt this song was a step in a cool direction and wanted to release it right away but again decided to save it for later days. Originally, we were going to throw these new tracks in with a collection of acoustic versions of some old songs and call it a day with a nice little EP.
2. Once we got into the studio with our good friend and OG Seaway producer, Anton Delost, we started messing around with new tempos, synths, different tunings and then it turned into something entirely different. So instead of just doing simple acoustic versions, we decided to have some fun and put a new spin on each one. Love it or hate it, it was gratifying to step a little bit outside of the box and just have some fun experimenting with our songs to come up with something new and fresh for everybody.
3. For ‘Lula’ we wanted to see if we could turn it into one of those folk/pop songs that are all over the radio these days, so we channelled our inner Mumford and Sons, put in some tambourine, a bad sounding kick drum, some “Hey’s” and there you have it! My favourite part is when we switch to the minor halfway through the bridge and let it ride for the rest of the song. This completely changes the mood of the song for the better, and it’s something I almost wish we had thought of for the original.
4. The original version of ’40 Over’ is slow, dark and heavy, so we thought, why not turn it into an up-tempo synth-pop song? Then we did the exact opposite with ‘Slam/Shy Guys’, tuning our guitars to an open tuning and turning two fun, pop punk songs into one strange, emo mashup. Pretty sick if you ask me. Something wonderful was slowed down a lot but somehow turned out more poppy than the original. We had a lot of fun messing around with new guitar parts, vocoder and massive bass synths on that one.
5. After all of this, we were sitting on a ton of material. We decided to make a full LP and include all the covers we’d done over the years cause they had never been released physically, as well as the ‘All In My Head’ EP, which is out of print. In the end, we’re left with an eclectic grouping of songs that span back to almost the beginning of this band to the present day, and I think it’s a great representation of how we’ve grown and who we are as a band.
Taken from the May issue of Upset. Seaway’s album ‘Fresh Produce’ is out now.
