Striving to create memories out of melodies, electro-indie band Wild Cub is emerging in the Tampa music scene. Lead singer Keegan DeWitt shared his feelings on youth and the music industry today in lieu of the band’s upcoming performance at Coral Skies Music Festival on Oct. 25.
Minaret: Do you guys have any expectations for the Coral Skies music festival coming up in October?
WildCub: Well it’s kind of the very beginning for us after about a full month on tour. It’s a nice place to start, first of all, and it’s a really amazing lineup. A lot of the time these festivals are really nice in that they get you excited about making music again. You spend so much time traveling around playing the same 15 songs every night. It’s nice to be in such a beautiful spot with so many different bands and you get to kind of watch the bands that you enjoy and get excited again about going out on the road and doing it differently.
Minaret: The music videos for “Color” and “Thunder Clatter” capture grungy, young, high school love so beautifully. Why did you choose to depict young love in that specific way?
Wild Cub: It’s the same thing with small moments. It’s the idea that when you’re a little bit younger you’re open and available to a lot more in terms of the relationships you have with people, both the good and bad. The world’s a big, dark, strange place, right? And so much about what drove me is the idea that you just keep striking out in the darkness to try and find something, to try and link up with someone. Whether it’s a best friend that you can be super close with or, in my case my wife who I met and then we recorded the record we got married to. I was just never excited about the moment that’s the kiss in the story, I was more excited about the moment of what it means to just sit next to someone and not really be able to talk about what’s happening. Both of the music videos are kind of about that searching. Trying to weave through the darkness, the disappointments, and the exhilarations of meeting new people.
Minaret: In some commentary you gave on “Streetlight,” you mentioned that specific song as one that best reflected your personality on the album. I was wondering how that process goes for you; how do you formulate a song you’re really wanting to express?
Wild Cub: A lot of that record we were kind of recording and writing at the same time. I was coming from a place where before I had been a singer-songwriter and I wrote every song on an acoustic guitar for myself to sing. That was a very specific way of writing music, but with Wild Cub I was really excited about the idea of starting with just words or a guitar or maybe even a drum beat or a baseline. Maybe we could start with something more rhythmic and less literal. It allowed us to build a lot more interesting songs in terms of being able to build from maybe rhythm first or mood first and then being able to fill in the songs in those spaces.
Minaret:. You’ve remixed Bleachers’ “I Wanna Get Better” and covered CHVURCHES’ “The Mother we Share.” Is there anyone else you’ll be remixing or collabing with in the future?
Wild Cub: I don’t know, we do love the covers because it’s important to be able to stay on people’s radars. The way that people consume music now is so wasteful. It sounds like a severe word but it’s true. People just burn through music and don’t really stop to think it through. We kind of try to put those little lures out there to grab people and hopefully pull them back into reinvesting in the record. You know the record’s 15 songs long, and at a time where people are constantly like “what’s next what’s next what’s next,” we’re trying to find little ways to essentially trick people into reinvesting and going back and listening further in the record. We feel like there’s a reward in really investing in all 15 songs of the record rather than just a single.
Minaret: One theme that’s easily picked up upon is the joy of, ironically, youth. Would you say there’s a specific age or demographic you’re reaching out to?
Wild Cub: One thing that I would hate for people to misunderstand and the kind of more one dimensional interpretation of the record name is that it’s just about nostalgia. That it’s just about ‘Aww, youth. Isn’t it amazing.’ When really for me I was writing it when I was at a point where I was transitioning from being in my early 20s to being in my late 20s. I feel like there’s a refinement in aging. There’s a refinement in getting older.
Selene San Felice can be reached at Selene.sanfelice@theminaretonline.com