5 Questions: My Boy Rascal

Vinyl Records, the student label which has been hard at work establishing its presence since its inception last school year, is preparing for the debut release from its fourth artist. My Boy Rascal, the folk-pop vehicle of UNC senior Colby Ramsay, will celebrate the release of The Study of Animal Magicality EP with a party Friday at 8 p.m. in the Student Union's Cabaret. Diversions Editor Jordan Lawrence sat down with Colby Ramsay for five quick questions looking forward to the release.

Diversions: Music has always been a big part of your life. What's the first instance you can remember in which music made an impression on you?

Colby Ramsay: When I was maybe five or so, we had a friend who played piano. We were over at their house, and I got a chance to try it out. And after that I was really wanting to get one. So we went to this old piano dealership, and he had all these old pianos in the room, and the guy who was selling them could just play like anything. From that moment I just wanted to do what he did. It was really hard at first because neither of my parents knew how to play. They were like, "We can get you this piano, but we won't be able to teach you." But it was really neat as a little kid just figuring things out and just figuring out the instrument.

Dive: Your MySpace says that your music explores "the trials and tribulations of love and life's absurdity." How do you think your music lives up to that declaration?

CR: I think it's with the themes that the lyrics explore. A lot of the lyrics are relationship-based, and I think there are themes there that everyone can relate to. But there's also some other songs that maybe go a little bit further. There's one song, the song called "Bricks," the last song on the album. I wrote that one when I was in Ethiopia for a couple months. When I was over there, I had a lot of time to think about life and about what was important to me and just the differences between what life was like over there compared to over here in the Western World. A lot of things that seemed important over here were kind of trivial when I really thought about them, so I try to explore that with the lyrics of some of the songs.

Dive: Musically, where would you say that your influences come from? What are you drawing from when you make music?

CR: I listen to a lot of different genres as I'm sure a lot of people do. Early on I listened to a lot of Jack-Johnson kind of stuff. He was a big influence when I was first starting. Not so much now. He got me interested in learning how to play the guitar. Another artist, Damien Rice has been pretty influential in how my guitar playing style has developed. But lately I've been influenced by a lot of female singer/songwriters like Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles. But I don't just listen to singer/songwriter kind of stuff, even though that's what I'm creating. I listen to a lot of Canadian indie music, like the whole Arts & Crafts label, a lot of the artist on there have been really influential. Broken Social Scene and Feist and Stars, just the way they craft their songs, the very musical elements that go into those productions.

Dive: The Study of Animal Magicality is a very interesting title. Why did you choose it? What does it have to do with the songs on the record?

CR: The title is something I had kicking around in my brain for a long time. Now I don't really even know when I first started thinking about that phrase. But as we were thinking about the album and what it should be called, it was a very natural title for a few different reasons. The way we were approaching the production of the album, we wanted to approach it in a simpler kind of way. Like we didn't really do a lot of things by the book. We weren't really technical about a lot of the recordings we were doing. We were just kind of figuring things out and seeing how it worked. And how that relates to the title, I think that as humans we tend to get caught up with a lot of the sort of trivial things. We have all these day-to-day complications or troubles that we think could be world-ending to us. I think we could take a lesson by looking at the way that animals live in a more simple manner. And that by doing that, the things that are really important to us, that are really meaningful to us, we'd be able to focus on them a little bit more. That was kind of the idea behind the title, and I think it fits in with some of the themes of the songs as well as the way the album was produced and the way that we approached recording the album.

Dive: You've got the CD release party in the Cabaret. Having a celebration in the Cabaret as opposed to going out to a local music venue, like your label mate Lake Inferior did with its party at Local 506, what do you think about this more student-centered event compared to having a more local-music-community-centered event?

CR: I think it had to do with the musical nature of the album. It's very different musically from the stuff that Lake Inferior is doing. I think that it's a more generally student friendly album, and I think that it made sense for us to do it at the place where most of the people would be coming from to listen to it. Another reason, if it was out at some place like Local 506, it's a little louder environment, a little more boisterous environment than the Cabaret. I think that the way the show is going to unfold, it's going to be more a more relaxing, chill, maybe even some people will sit down, that kind of mood. If it was at some place like the Local 506, it would be overlooked, and the music would become a little more secondary because the Local 506 is also a bar. People are also going to be drinking and socializing. It can be a more focused event at the Cabaret where people can sit there and really listen to the music and hopefully feel something.