In the evening that I spent with Big Something, a band from North Carolina, I have come to learn not only about their musical style and history but also about where its vitality comes from. This casual conversational interview sheds light on the unique personalities of each of the six members of the band, each of whom contributes a unique yet decisive element to the band’s distinctive musical style, fusing rock, pop, funk, and electronic music. Scroll through our conversation and feel how music has truly become part of themselves, as Casey Cranford elegantly puts, "an extension of themselves."
This interview has been abridged and edited for clarity.
Band member:
Nick MacDaniels - Guitar, Lead Vocals
Jesse Hensley - Lead Guitar
Casey Cranford - Sax, EWI
Josh Kagel - Keys, Trumpet
Doug Marshall - Bass
Ben Vinograd - Drums
Cameron Grogan - Sound & Lights
Paul Interdonato - Lyricist
VIC: So how did you guys meet?
PEOPLE: Tinder, bumble (laughs).
CASEY: I met most of them through like playing with other bands I was opening up for other bands, and vice versa
BEN: I met Nick through my older sister actually. Nick went to Elon University and my sister and he were in a sorority together. She went on vacation with Nick (laughs) and he was talking about needing a new drummer. I met with Nick consequently, a couple of months later.
Vic: I’ve been listening to your songs non-stop for the last few days and I really dig your latest song Tumbleweed. But also, I really liked Amanda Lynn from your first album, Story in the Middle of Nowhere. Can you tell me more about how you guys started as a band? Also more about you guys’ idea behind your first album?
NICK: Sure! A few of us have been playing for ten years before the band. That was a college band that we started we were a local house band every week at Elon University. Slowly but surely that band morphed into this band. We picked up Casey and Jesse and Ben, but Doug, Josh and I have been playing for a while.
(continued) We released our first album Story from the Middle of Nowhere in 2009. It’s more of a concept album, where there’s a story going throughout the album about a pimp named Pinkie, and his favorite girl, favorite car, going for a heist, ending up getting chased down by Jonny Law, who is like his arch nemesis…There’s a lot of fictional stuff happening in the songs and they are loosely based on these stories and concepts.
VIC: This kind of reminds me of David Bowie’s album, the one with Starman?
CASEY: Ziggy Stardust?
VIC: Yeah it kind of reminds me of that.
People: I’ll take it (laughs)
NICK: We also have a friend who’s not in the band, but he helps with the ideas, concepts and working out new songs. He’s a good buddy of ours who we know since we were little kids, his name is Paul Interdonato.
Paul the Italian
NICK: He’s very Italian.
VIC: So how many albums do you have so far? The two I have listened to is Story from the Middle of Nowhere and Tumbleweed.
NICK: Yes, so after our first album Story from the Middle of Nowhere, we have our self-titled album, and in 2014 we did an album called Truth Serum, and the most recent one that’s about to come out next week is Tumbleweed. So four in total and a few live things that we did here and there but for the most part four studio albums.
VIC: Wow. How many tours have you gone on?
NICK: It’s kind of hard to say when our tour starts and ends because we’re always playing on the road
JOSH: Yeah one really big one (laughs), for three years man.
NICK: We try to frame the tours around album releases, so this is now our tumbleweed tour. We are now further and further away from home, becoming sort of a national tour.
VIC: How would you characterize your music?
CASEY: It’s like an interesting mix of many different things. There’s Southern Rock, but it is mixed with Alternative and even Electronic. It’s things that may not seem to mix together but they actually do. I think our keyboard Josh provides a great soundscape that slightly defines what our sound is like, and that, combined with Southern Rock, Guitar…
VIC: Next one is a tough one. Name one of the most difficult moments for Big Something.
CASEY: The whole thing is difficult. It’s the most fun thing in the world, but it’s also extremely challenging.
JESSE: Normal people go to work from eight to five, nine to five, we don’t really stop, even when we’re at home. It doesn’t stop. Music doesn’t stop playing in your head, you know. You’re constantly writing and playing, you know, doing something productive with music. So I don’t think we have any days off, really. [But] we live in a lifestyle that we love—create music together—that is technically the job but it’s not.
CASEY: The music is the fun part. We’re not exactly getting paid by hours. We’re on the road, 24x7 sometimes, and you drive for 12 hours play for 2, maybe.
It’s the most fun thing in the world, but it’s also extremely challenging.
NICK: Financially it gets difficult. You got to be willing to make sacrifices to make it work.
CASEY: Yeah and we’ve been doing this for a long time, too. So we committed our entire lives to this, basically. It’s a huge commitment.
JESSE: But I don’t wanna do, or know that I could do anything else…this is what we are.
VIC: What is the first song that you guys played (during stage soundcheck)?
NICK: It’s one of the songs from our new album called “UFOs Are Real.” 
CASEY: You really form bonds with your musical friends that you and that’s really something special.
VIC: I’m always amazed by bands that stick together this long.
CASEY: Yeah we’re pretty tight.
JESSE: We’re like family. You become each other’s family. We see each other more than our own family, our girlfriends...We wake up to guys more than we wake up to girls (laughs).
You really form bonds with your musical friends that you and that’s really something special.
WESLEY (A fan sitting next to us): I came straight to downtown from work to see them, because I know they need to set up and do interview…I came here this early because I probably wouldn’t see him for at least two months after tonight. I can attest to that, to the fact that these guys put a lot of work and emotions into this job, into this life.
CASEY: Emotion, that’s a good point. The more you put into this work, the more you’re attached to the music you’re playing and the more emotional that becomes. And in turn the more emotional you put into it, your performance your writing, the more [the music] becomes part of you. It’s fascinating. It really becomes an extension of yourself.
[Music] really becomes an extension of yourself.
VIC: Now that you are promoting the latest album Tumbleweed, do you notice any stylistic changes to your music? What are some of the developments in terms of creativity and production?
JESSE: We’re a lot tighter than we used to be. That comes naturally when you put down the time together, spending so much time together.
We never really tried to write songs any differently; we just write what comes out when it comes out. It’s the most organic way of writing.
It’s the most organic way of writing.
CASEY: Sometimes Nick will say this is a different type of song and we should try it, so yes, within our own sounds, we’ve explored different styles a little bit more in the past few years.
DOUG: And we all adapt really well to different styles. I’ve personally played for so long and in a few other bands before. Sometimes you just take on something differently, personalities, music, it all weaves in together. I think everyone in the band is really good at doing different genres and sometimes we switch it up seamlessly so we’ll be like “Oh! We can do this too!” It’s pretty awesome.
VIC: So Nick was talking about the first album, and there’s a conceptual dimension to it, what about Tumbleweed?
NICK: Yeah but it’s more abstract. It’s not like a full-on conceptual album with a storyline but there are themes that are common in the album. It’s like a post-apocalypse desert wasteland setting in the song Tumbleweed itself, and there’s also a song called In the Middle, which is actually a remake of a song from our first album. It’s also about being in the middle of nowhere (Big Something’s first title is titled Stories from the Middle of Nowhere), which ties nicely into our theme.
“Oh! We can do this too!”
There’s an ongoing theme, and there’re things like zombies and aliens. We’re big into Sci-Fi…
VIC: What’s your favorite Sci-Fi movies?
JESSE: Sharknado (2)!
CASEY: I like Star Trek, I’m currently watching the Original Series and TNG (The Next Generation), but Rick and Morty is another favorite of ours
CASEY: I’m reading some Isaac Asimov right now, The Gods Themselves, and there’s some weird threesome alien sex in it. It’s bizarre.
NICK: I like Prometheus too, I heard they’re making another one.
JESSE: I like stuff about time travel.
CASEY: Yeah. Star Wars is pretty cool too.
VIC: Okay so there’s Sci-Fi. Are there any other major sources of influence on your music? Maybe your experiences?
CASEY: Experiences definitely, our relationships with our families, the books we read, the music we listen to, and where we come from (North Carolina)…
NICK: I’d say we make our songs more relatable to everyday life too. So the ups and downs in life as well.
VIC: How did North Carolina influence your musical style?
JESSE: Lots of space to think.
BEN: People spend more time there to think than people up here.
CASEY: In Greensville, where I came from, I meet new musicians all the time because frankly, there isn’t really much else to do. For whatever reason, people just like to pick up instruments and start playing (Me: That is so cool). Everyone plays there.
VIC: Next one. Do you guys share any favorite bands or you have different ones?
JOSH: We all started liking different things, [but] now that we see so much music that we all watch together, we all start liking the same things that we discover at the same time.
NICK: We do so many interviews (with this question) and every time everyone answers something different that they like, but I love all the songs that everyone else listens to. I think we all like the same music but we come from different backgrounds or we have different influences.
JESSE: At the end of the day, good music is good music. And there’s a good example of that in every type of music, there’s good and bad.
At the end of the day, good music is good music.
CASEY: Bands in particular that has influenced us, let’s name a few. Personally, I’m hugely influenced by 2wo because they were my first obsessions as a kid. I saw them when I was 16, and it was insane.
PEOPLE: Was there anyone that influenced you to play the sax?
CASEY: Lisa Simpson, actually (laughs). It makes sense actually, because when you listen to [the saxophone] it’s badass.
VIC: Never paid attention to that.
CASEY: Yeah I guess when I was a kid and I asked myself, do you wanna do art? No, I’m terrible at art. Do you wanna pick up an instrument in a band? I was like yeah, I guess I’ll do band, and what instrument…saxophone’s pretty cool, Lisa Simpson! I like those Simpsons, and there you go.
JESSE: I learned so much from the show Becker, it had the best blues and guitars when the scene changes, so I watch TV and wait for the scene changes and try to copy it with my guitar.
CASEY: Not just Lisa Simpson I realized, Bleeding Gums Murphy too. And King of the Hills. And what other bands…Sly & the Family Stone was big for me, too. They were one of the first multiracial bands to come into popularity. Males and Females in the same band too. Very uplifting music. Some pretty heavy metal music, Rush, for example.
Lisa Simpson! I like those Simpsons, and there you go.
NICK: Ben and I come from the alternative rock world, sort of speak. We all like Radiohead.
DOUG: If you listen to the songs that we end up doing, you can see some traces of influences there. Talking Heads, Michael Bolton…
VIC: What did you guys study in college?
CASEY: I studied music, Josh studied music
NICK: Some of us went to college, some of us didn’t. I got a media/film degree. I studied communications and philosophy.
VIC: Say you can say something to yourself when you’re 18. What would you tell him?
JESSE: Pull your pants up (more laughs).
CASEY: Go play more music with more people. That’s what I’d say. Spend more time with your family, you’re young, spend more time with them and stay in touch with them. It’s easy to lose sight of that.
JESSE: To enjoy every note of music you get to play.
BEN: I honestly wouldn’t say anything back to myself. I like the way it went.
VIC: How many states have you been to? On tour?
NICK: (After counting for a while) 25. Half the states.
CAMERON: This year we will play Texas, California, Idaho, Louisiana, so yeah.
VIC: How do you think the tour has, in some ways, changed you?
NICK: I would look at it more as growth. We’ve grown together as people, as friends, as a musician, as a band, (Casey: as lovers, no just kidding) and I think we’ve learned a lot about how to do this the right way and the wrong way.
