This Saturday at Druid City Music Hall BoomBox will take the stage with Marvel Years. We caught up with BoomBox founder Zion Godchaux, and he talked music, memories and the future.
Q: Many people have attempted to put labels on the unique sound you’ve captured in BoomBox. How would you describe your music? How far do you see yourself deviating from the current sound of the band in the future?
These songs are all beat and bass driven, designed for the dance floor, heavy on the back beat, heavy on funkiness. That aspect most likely will remain the same. The chords and melodies within the songs grow with time.
Q: Who or what have been your biggest influences in creating BoomBox?
I’d say the the existence of rock and roll and the existence of electronic music left me with the almost OCD like impulse to forge the two styles into one.
Q: What do you think is the most important thing to focus on when you are performing a live show? Would you consider BoomBox a live act or a studio production primarily, and why?
I find the most important thing to focus on during a show is the movement of the crowd. Because it’s the movement of the crowd that dictates how/what we play and when we play it.
Q: What memories do you hold of Alabama, or if you have any, of The University of Alabama?
When I was five, my mom and dad left Northern California and rented a house on the Tennessee river in Muscle Shoals for about six months. It was there that I was introduced to the world of fried okra, Mountain Dew and water skiing. I wouldn’t find myself back in Alabama until years later where the BoomBox story picks up. Oddly enough, I now live pretty close to where I stayed all those years back. So I’ve come full circle back to the river.
Q: Do you see a big difference between DJ’ing (i.e. curating music) and being an original musical artist? How do you incorporate characteristics of both into what BoomBox is?
To DJ is to celebrate work that’s already been done. To produce is to imagine that celebration.
Well for us it starts with the song. And more often than not those songs are born in the studio. But the live setting is where we really get to explore the intricacies of the music. It’s both.
Q: Where do you see BoomBox going in 2017?
2017 is going to be a huge year for BoomBox. We plan on releasing a bunch of tracks and remixes throughout the year. Our goal is to make it overseas.
Q: What’s your favorite moment from a concert/show/festival?
That’s an impossible question to answer. Too many good moments.
Q: What’s unique about a BoomBox show that people won’t be able to find at some other traditional concert?
The party is nonstop, uninterrupted dancing. It’s a rock and roll style funky guitar and vocal over dance beats live.
Q: What’s something you’ve learned about making music or the music industry that you didn’t know before you started BoomBox?
Initially, when BoomBox started, I never expected the States to receive it very well. The assumption was that it would work in Europe and other parts of the world but probably not the states. Obviously since then tastes have changed, and we’ve still never been to Europe.
