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Full Name: Macky Bowman
Occupation: Musician/drummer
Nationality: American
Current Release: Bellevue on Ipecac
Recommendations: "Love Was All I Had" by Phyllis Dillon / The Bayeux Tapestry

If you enjoyed this interview with Bobby Lees drummer Macky Bowman, visit the website www.thebobbylees.com to buy music and find out about shows.

When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

As to whether or not there was some deeper subliminal calling to music from day 1, I really can't say. The conscious reason I started playing music when I was younger was because I wanted to be like my dad. I've always taken to sound as the thing that makes the most sense to me on a cognitive level, but watching my dad play drums was what drove me to want to make it. The other people that cemented drums in my mind as the best, coolest, and most awesome instrument are Lionel Hampton, Buddy Rich, and Elvin Jones.

Some people experience intense emotion when listening to music, others see colours or shapes. What is your own listening experience like and how does it influence your approach to music?

To discuss the intangible nature of subconscious interpretation of and reaction to art is a hard thing to do. Even so, it's a waiver I've signed and hence a discourse I've entered many times with friends and strangers alike. Vexatious, pseudo-intellectual waffling is genuinely one of my favorite pastimes, in some cases I think it can even lead to exciting personal revelations on whatever ethereal topic you may be haranguing your conversation partner with. That being said, what's great about music, is it's visceral effect on the listener, and to try to define that with something as contrived and unnatural as language would in some way be doing it a disservice. I think words are wonderful for analyzing music and understanding it, but that untouchable, ephemeral emotion that comes from the experience of music is something I'm too afraid to examine too closely.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

There's a really great book by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called Dharma Art that talks about this sort of thing. I don't think I agree with everything he says (or rather maybe my artistic sensibilities don't quite line up with his, I dunno), but there's a section early on about the process of art creation that I think about often. To paraphrase, he talks about the misconception that art is born of an expelling of emotion in this great gust of inspiration. Like shitting your pants. We've all seen that stereotype in some form or another, an artist pushed to their breaking point by a break up, a death in the family, personal injury, losing their favorite pair of socks, what have you, and then bam! magnum opus! Trungpa says that counter to this art created purely and honestly is the result of total calm. Of mastery over oneself to wholly channel everything you have into whatever it is you're doing, all without hemorrhaging. Therefore something pure can be created by a master or total beginner alike. The skill of artistry is honing the ability to go to that place, in this way craftsmanship is a mere byproduct and/or stepping stone towards mastery of the self. I go back and forth on my personal stance on this, though I can't deny it's stuck with me in the years since I first read it. Even personally, in my hungriest quests for technical precision, this point is something I always come back to and try to integrate into how I view the world.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

Sense of identity? A little broad dontcha think? I'm not entirely sure how to answer this... As someone who's still relatively young, I think trying to define my identity is really difficult, not for lack of information or thought but rather an overabundance of it. What I try to do when I start to become overwhelmed and spiral, however, is find one thing that I can confidently say about my outlook on the world. What I find myself coming back to most often is my love for music and art in general, that its creation and further presentation to others is the most exciting thing to me. After I perform, that's what I always come back to, it feels like my natural place in the world. I guess that that viewpoint translates somewhat into my listening/consumption habits in the form of my love for the esoteric. Not all the time but on occasion in finding something new (especially with obscure things), I'm more thrilled by the thought of someone making this piece of art than the text of the art itself. Entirely healthy way of experiencing the world? Probably not!

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

I can't speak for the other people in the band but for me, more so than anything else, I just want to be honest. I never want to seem like I'm phoning in what I'm doing. Beyond that I don't really care what the specific emotion that's on display actually is.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Neither. Again for me, emotional honesty is paramount. Whatever thoughts anyone else may have on it are theirs, which  - to be clear -  I think is great! That's the exciting thing about art creation, someone else's potentially completely different interpretation doesn't cancel out yours as either the author or just another viewer. That being said, I don't think I could make a definitive statement on relevance if I wanted to. I will say that as a bystander, I always prefer stuff that's honest in its pretension rather than pretentious in its honesty. Great and worthwhile art is, I think, in and of itself timeless by default, so if (“music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”) that's your chief concern when making something, you're probably going to end up with something totally ostentatious or worse-- abhorrently bland.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I just hit drums. Over the years I've tried to get better at doing that. Other than that, as a group I think our greatest tool is our teamwork. At this point it sounds almost trite to say but that's our greatest asset I think. Other than interpersonal growth and fluidity in adapting to new situations, in performance our intrapersonal skills are what gives the show its chutzpah. What matters most of all in its application is mutual respect between all of us as different but equal parts of the group. Love those guys!

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

On tour or not on tour? At home I wake up - exercise for 10 minutes - shower - warm up my hands on a practice pad for an hour - cook breakfast - make/drink coffee - walk 2 miles - paint for a few hours - walk 2 miles back home - practice drums for a few hours - shower again - do some work on the computer (usually either chipping away at a personal art project, or writing responses to a lovely email questionnaire) - eat dinner - then either read or draw some more or practice guitar - watch movie or play a video game - sleep. Sometimes I do more stuff and sometimes less. Pretty exciting stuff, I know!

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

Calling it a creative process would be kind of generous, not for lack of trying though. Every time I've tried to assign some sort of process or what have you to how I make stuff it's turned out catastrophically. Maybe that's why I'm not very technically proficient, either way I've always just tried to make things that I wanted to see or hear, the specifics of that series of events changes every time. It's the same thing with the band as a whole, whenever we all sit down to try and write a song together it's chaos. One of us will probably bring in a semi-fleshed-out idea, and then it's just open season all of us trying our different weird concepts in conjunction with that first one. The only thing that's really changed since we started, other than how much of each of our ideas get used, is how we work together. We've all gotten much better about being constructive about each other's ideas. That's the process, it's like a big game of intellectual wall ball where we are the walls and our ideas are the balls. The big hairy balls.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

Solitary listening is like reading whereas communal listening is like writing. In one creativity is borne from pondering and interpretations of what you’ve found resonant, whereas the other influences creativity from interpretations of what your peers might’ve found resonant. Both exciting and useful tools! Though I think at the end of the day, making things that appeal to your own sensibilities is the most important thing.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

We are musicians, we play music. In our society people like music.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I don't know how to answer this in any more profound way than you do. Everyone has to deal with emotions, the fact that art exists at all is enough of a monument to human's desire for self expression for me.

There seems to be increasing interest in a functional, “rational” and scientific approach to music. How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

Source? As far as I can tell scientific interest in music has remained at a pretty comparatively similar level since always. If you're referring to a mathematical understanding of all of music's different concepts all I can say is musicians have always been dorks. If you're referring to an overlap between different scientific fields and music all I can say is my high school didn't offer me a physics, psychology, or biology class and I got a B- in chemistry.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Nothing. While I may get something out of performing I can't from making a great cup of coffee, that's not to say the inverse isn't true for someone else. I think the question isn't about creativity vs mundanity, but rather how and why we choose to classify those things as we do in the first place. Real creativity comes from being able to find beauty in things that most would consider superfluous to their everyday lives.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

Nope, but it does. That's all that matters.