q&a with Michael Hansen
Drummer & Lyricist of pentimento Were you raised in a musical household? I was! My father has played in bands for as long as I can remember. I was around that quite a bit as a kid. My mom did nothing but expose me to The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen and Janis Joplin. I can’t say I appreciated it at the time but I certainly do now. Is there a specific song or album that really directed you into the style of music that you began to pursue? I’m not sure there was a particular song or album. There’s probably been hundreds of bands and records that influenced me to do what I do. I couldn’t be exact if I wanted to. I know you guys are asked about your writing process a lot, as are most musicians. Most say that they do have goals and expectations when they begin writing but they don’t always stay true to those and instead and musician is the idea of “direction”. I want to be prefer to create the album very naturally. able to make Pentimento have a definitive sound How does the final product of your self ti- and stick to that. tled album compare to what you imagined That is very clear throughout the record as it would be prior to recording it? you can see that the natural direction of it That’s a great question. I don’t really know if we was very organic. How do you stop yourhad a definite vision for what the final product self from becoming that band the seems would end up to be while recording that record. to release the same album over and over? We were still very much trying to find ourselves How do you make sure that as a band that and find our sound. you are constantly growing?
The LP is something I feel like is more of a starting point for us versus this accomplishment that many people might assume would be the case for a band that’s finished a record. It’s something we are all proud of but at the same time, I feel like it helped us figure ourselves out a little more after the fact. Now the focus is much more clear. Whereas before, we were just trying to do anything we could to pull a song together that we felt good about. There was no definition, which may be something enjoyable about the record, but something I’ve fallen in love with as a writer 6 - THEPRELUDEPRESS.COM
The idea of making an organic record just comes from keeping an open mind about what your band and your songs are. Making sure that there’s no “supposed to be” involved. Ya know? I think you make sure that you’re constantly growing by staying hungry to get better, moving forward, and growin as a human and musician. There’s a never ending ocean of knowledge out there and the art of song craft is something that no one in the world has figured out. There are some who are closer than others, but the idea is still there. You just keep staying hungry to grow.