| Little Ruckus Session | |
| Violitionist Sessions |
Session Date: March 16, 2012
Posting Date: December 3, 2012
Artist Hometown: Ames, IA
Links: LittleRuck.us, Facebook, Bandcamp, YouTube Channel
Recorded by: Michael Briggs
3 QUESTIONS
ONE: Where do you find your inspiration?
Dominic Rabalais: Definitely, for the most part, my friends. Just awesome stuff that my friends are doing…pretty much my friends.
MB: What inspires you to create the style of music that you make?
Dominic: When I started performing…the first band I was ever in was just a straight instrumental, like…it was me and my brother, and we just pressed play on tracks, and then my brother played synth and did effects on the tracks and stuff like that, and I just jumped around around and high-five’d people. That was my entire role. And then I learned how to play guitar and be in a rock band, but…I don’t know, it was kind of just like, “All right, this would be fucking rad. Let’s do this.’ and then we were like, ‘All right, now we’re playing a show. What do we do? I guess I’ll high-five people and spray Silly String out of my pants and climb on shit.’
MB: What inspires you to create the style of music that you make?
Dominic: When I started performing…the first band I was ever in was just a straight instrumental, like…it was me and my brother, and we just pressed play on tracks, and then my brother played synth and did effects on the tracks and stuff like that, and I just jumped around around and high-five’d people. That was my entire role. And then I learned how to play guitar and be in a rock band, but…I don’t know, it was kind of just like, “All right, this would be fucking rad. Let’s do this.’ and then we were like, ‘All right, now we’re playing a show. What do we do? I guess I’ll high-five people and spray Silly String out of my pants and climb on shit.’
TWO: How do you come up with your music videos? How imporant do you think videos are for a band?
Dominic: I really like just thinking about like awesome concepts to go…just the relationship between a song and video, you know, visual imagery. Most of the time, when I make a music video, I consider it super important that it’s super short, because this is the Internet age, right? No one has time to watch a five minute music video. But also, I feel like…I don’t know, it’s kind of an awesome way to, you know, you release an album and stuff like that, and especially with the Internet age, it’s like, you release an album, but people don’t really— unless they’re really into you, they’re not going to go to your bandcamp page and stream your album or whatever, so it’s an awesome way to be like, “Hey! We exist as a band, we’re still doing awesome stuff in between tours and recording more albums and stuff!” and it kind of gives people who saw you something like a mid-way point. It takes less emotional attachment to watch a music video than to get real deep on an album, or something like that.
MB: And you make the music videos yourself?
Dominic: Yeah, me and my friends. Yeah, all the costumes and stuff I make, and the concepts and stuff are pretty much mine and my friends.
MB: And you make the music videos yourself?
Dominic: Yeah, me and my friends. Yeah, all the costumes and stuff I make, and the concepts and stuff are pretty much mine and my friends.
THREE: If you could send any message to the leaders of the world, what would you tell them?
Dominic: That no matter how hard they try to fuck up the world, we’re still having an awesome time!
– Interview by Michael Briggs/Transcription by Dale Jones