Arrow Down Hill Interview
By Jess
Published: December 25, 2009
Updated: December 25, 2009





Phoenix Always Rises: Arrow Down Hill is an interesting name. What made you choose it?

Arrow Down Hill I wanted something that signified our current decline as human beings. I wanted to be able to identify and define the current state of our world in as few words as possible. This was the first thing that came to my head. Seemed like a good way to describe the direction things were going.


Phoenix Always Rises: Who are some of your influences?

Arrow Down Hill I enjoy a strange variety of things, from early blues and folk, to heavy violent noise. I try to keep myself from sounding too much like anyone in particular, but my obvious influences bleed through.
Radiohead always did it for me, and they still deliver. But I also find my muse in some other ones: Ben Harper, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sevendust, things like that. So it ranges really.


Phoenix Always Rises: What are some of the advantages of being a one member band?

Arrow Down Hill Full creative freedom is probably the biggest thing I appreciate. But I also prefer being able to work and record or practice anytime I want. With as many disadvantages that come with being a solo artist, I find it to be a growing process. One in which I am able to hone my craft better from each time I work.


Phoenix Always Rises: What are some of the disadvantages?

Arrow Down Hill Being a one man band! Ha-ha. Sure, I can write and record albums all day. That’s the easy part. The challenges begin to reveal themselves when you start playing gigs. You have to go through so much to perform live. After you find a venue, you gotta find stage musicians who want to play your music. But most musicians don’t want to do that unless they are getting paid out big bucks. But pretending that they are willing to perform, then comes the trouble of teaching the music, separating the loops from the live tracks and preparing the layers for my the backup vocals. You may even have to find a drummer if the drum tracks aren’t sounding right live but that’s a whole different nightmare.

Aside from live shows being ridiculous hard, the next hardest thing to overcome is the lack of publicity. When you make the music, produce it, create the albums, and stress out about performing live, you have little time to go college hopping with flyers telling folks to check out your MySpace. When I go to college it’s because I have to be in class. I work and go to school for Graphic Design full time. Another disadvantage of being a solo artist is that you epitomize the term “Starving Artist”. Because you starve. It’s frustrating trying to make a name for yourself in a world that’s so over-saturated with musicians. We are selling sand on a beach.


Phoenix Always Rises: One of my favorite songs is “Jaded”. What inspired it?

Arrow Down Hill Thanks! If it is one of your favorite songs than you may know what inspired it, but I’ll tell anyways. I am a jaded individual. I feel like it is all too easy to overlook talent because we were too busy watching reality T.V. People make a living now off of being complete failures. We got E-Celebs who had big followings on online social communities getting paid millions to be pretty and dumb. They toss untalented, ungifted people on T.V. and let them make a fool out of themselves for our enjoyment. It’s pathetic on their part, and on ours. Why ours? Because we get off on it. We enjoy watching people do stupid things. Like cavemen grunting at mammoth waste.

Also, as I’ve spent the last years building on Arrow Down Hill through means of online communities such as MySpace, and I have seen how people can be. Many have the ill-conceived notion that those who “add” you to their lists of “friends” do so because you have piqued their interest. This statement is only half true, as most are only interested in you finding out more about them. It turns out; they never had an opinion of your work because they never looked/listened. It’s all a big popularity contest, and I want no part of it. As for the ones I’m talking about, I wrote the chorus line thinking about them. And I still hate them all, and still think that’s what they can do.


Phoenix Always Rises: What inspires your music in general? Is it more the things you see around you, such as the news and local events, or things that happen to you personally?

Arrow Down Hill Recently, it’s been influenced more by my personal misfortunes. But it encompasses everything. I want my work to identify with everyone. I want to represent human nature in all its beauty and ugliness.

I am a very vivid dreamer. I can recollect many dreams of mine dating back to when I was a boy. I remember them down to the finest detail and always want to try to revisit them any way I can. Sometimes my music acts as a doorway of sorts for me to fall through. I have a song called “Seeing things from the Face of the Moon” that was written from one such dream.


Phoenix Always Rises: What are you working on now?

Arrow Down Hill Surviving the holiday! My work comes as it comes. I never have any plans until my impulsive nature kicks in and I decide to compile an album. But I can say I’m always working on it. I have three songs in the works right now.


Phoenix Always Rises: Right now you are unsigned. Would you ever consider signing with a label, or do you prefer being an independent artist?

Arrow Down Hill I like having my own say so. I like having my flexibility. I’ve always been terrible with contractual agreements. But if a label wanted to suit me with a live band or musicians and a budget, I think I could do amazing things for them.


Phoenix Always Rises: There are some really unique sounds at the beginning of the song “Mole of a Man”. How did you make those sounds?

Arrow Down Hill The sound came from a bucket held underwater that had an air pocket in it. I was able to pick that sound up through some experimenting. Caught the sound and turned it into a loop.


Phoenix Always Rises:What tools do you use to create your music?

A nice cocktail of Acid Pro7 mixed in with a not so amazing stage microphone. It gets the job done to my liking, so I’m ok with that. I record my work from my apartment. Though I live on my own, I still have to be weary of my neighbors. The conditions to which I record are generally terrible. But I’m able to find ways around that most of the time.


Phoenix Always Rises: When did you fall in love with music? Was there a specific moment, or did you always know that you wanted to be a musician?

Arrow Down Hill I used to wait at the bus stop before school and daydream of singing Led Zeppelin songs in front of thousands of people. The music would exhilarate me to the point where I found said activities to become a rather distracting habit. I think I really opened up to it around 12 or so. I never thought I would accomplish so much with it.

But, being someone who is self-taught I feel confident that I’ve made progress. I used to sing in several local bands with good friends. The band I played in before was called “Duchovony” and we fucking rocked! It consisted of me and four of my best friends whom I still see to this day. A MySpace page was made in commemoration to that band. Has the only studio recorded tracks we made before we split. Check it out if you visit my page. The music was much different than anything you would hear from me with ADH, but I think it was a doorway for me to walk through. I discovered a great deal about what I wanted to sound like. It also connected me to a lot of genres of music I initially had no taste for. Music, to me, is more than sound. It is emotion and moments of living and dying. It can make your hair stand on end with energy. It can identify with you and show you a light when all is dark. It has the power to change you, to make you stronger, and wiser.

I mean, I think it is weird truthfully. Isn’t it? That energy transmits itself to us and we hear what we hear. Like the sounds from the rings of Saturn. They were picked up sounding like radio white noise, but once the frequency was brought down to the range of human hearing, it sounded like a symphony. It was the most beautiful thing I think I’ve ever heard. And it came from deep space yeah to me; music has always been more than music. It was a calling.


Phoenix Always Rises: You give away the majority of your music away for free. Would you ever consider putting up for sale on a site like I-tunes or Amazon.com?

Arrow Down Hill I’ve tried actually. Things got mixed up, emails got lost, and work got stressful. It sort of just fizzled out. I haven’t made any effort since.

I give my music away because I need people to listen. Many assume we all want to be on MTV and drive sports cars and show mansions off on cribs. Being famous nowadays seems to have lost its luster. I want people to know I’m not here to win a popularity contest or become the new trend. Its music, if it relates, or if it touches you, than I know I’m doing something right.

My music is posted throughout the web. You can find it on a number of sites for download or purchase. www.amiestreet.com has both of my albums there. But revenue from this project trickles in twenty or thirty bucks every 6-7 months so I never really had my hopes up on making any cash.


Phoenix Always Rises: Are you planning to tour anytime in the foreseeable future?

Arrow Down Hill In my current state of life and living through it I can say I am not planning on touring at all. I really do want to as soon as I can but you must understand my plight. As I mentioned, preparing a tour would be a tremendous endeavor for me that would cost lots of time and money. Both of which I don’t have. I live in financial crisis and my work does not provide me healthcare. Being a diabetic, this too adds to my disposition, with outrageous medical bills and insulin costs. But I suppose if I had the resources to tour, I would not have my muse to write with. So they sort of negate each other. But I promise, sometime as soon as humanly possible I will go as far as I can. I LOVE playing live!


Phoenix Always Rises: What does 2010 hold for Arrow Down Hill?

Arrow Down Hill More music I’m sure, then more after that. You may learn of my small achievements and failures. I’m sure I will release one possibly two more albums. But mainly, I want to continue to hone my skills, and reach whoever I can with this. Not because I want them to feel like they are not alone, but so that I can feel like I am not alone.


Phoenix Always Rises: If you could sum up your music in any word or phrase, what would you choose and why?

Arrow Down Hill I may be breaking a rule here, but these two sentences are my creed:

“This is where it begins. This is where it ends.”

I say this because life is a hill. Existence is a hill. At birth, everything started at the bottom. Slowly and with great sacrifice and determination everything rose up, we all climbed, higher and higher and higher. Finally it all reaches the summit and stays for however long it stays. But in the end, the swelling crescendo fades, the tide recedes, and everything begins its slow and steady decline back down to the bottom.


Phoenix Always Rises: Any final words for your fans?

Arrow Down Hill I can’t imagine anyone being fanatical about my work other than myself. But if there are a few rebels out there true to the cause, I guess I leave you with this infinite wisdom:

Don’t eat the yellow snow. It’s terrible for you in so many ways, and I don’t think it’s something that the ladies approve. Other than that, please help me out by spreading me out to your masses. Plug me at parties and tell your friends how foolish they are when/if they say they don’t like my work. Tell them you are only joking and then punch them in the face. Add my MySpace. You could even donate if you have the change. But most of all, just listen to my music. It means so much.



Be sure to check out Arrow Down Hill! You can check him out at http://www.myspace.com/arrowdownhill1