Check out Carrie’s YouTube page  to hear a few more of Todd’s songs from the show last night.

I’m certain at this point no one finds it hard to believe that I will fly across the country to see Todd Carey perform so I’m sure it’s not surprising that I’m writing a review of his concert last night in Marshfield, Wisconsin. Yes. Wisconsin.

Read Full Post HERE!  Todd Carey w/Jared McCloud – Carrie Loves Concerts.

“Door County is everything for me in music,” says Todd Carey, as he drives through the busy streets of New York City – the Midwest native’s home for the past four years. “I’ve written everything I care about musically there. I learned to play music in Door County! In the summers I would play guitar and sing for my friends all night at a bonfire on the beach.”

Read more HERE!  Pop Artist Todd Carey Performs at his Favorite Venue | Door County | Peninsula Pulse.

Today at 6:30pm

Details HERE!: https://www.facebook.com/events/438691362874285/

]]> http://www.ihearttoddcarey.com/2013/05/today-todd-carey-in-marshfield-wi-vox-concert-series/feed/ 0 http://www.ihearttoddcarey.com/2013/05/today-todd-carey-in-clevelandmentor-oh/ http://www.ihearttoddcarey.com/2013/05/today-todd-carey-in-clevelandmentor-oh/#comments Sat, 11 May 2013 18:34:06 +0000 amanda http://www.ihearttoddcarey.com/?p=3694 Todd Carey in Cleveland/Mentor, OH

Toth’s Place

Time: 10pm

More info HERE! https://www.facebook.com/events/113861965484294/

Winners

Congratulations to Kate and Cloe. Please contact me at amanda at ihearttoddcarey.com with full name and mailing address!

Guys get ready for Part 2 and another give away!! <3

I am excited to announce a special IhrTC giveaway. Answer the question above correctly and be entered into a drawing for an autographed piece of Todd Carey merchandise.

• Enter via Twitter, Facebook, or commenting on the blog.  
• Make sure you include your name and your answer to the question
• Please enter only once
• Contest ends April 4th at 1pm

Not sure what the answer is? You can find it HERE! http://bit.ly/XBQU9p

Hi! My name is Amanda and I manage IheartToddCarey. I had the opportunity to sit down with Todd recently and talk about life – past, present, and future. This is really exciting since Todd has just finished recording his 2nd full album and we’re anxiously awaiting its release. So let’s get to it!

IhrtTC: Where did you grow up?

Todd Carey (TC): It’s so funny ‘cause I never know how to answer that question. Do I say Chicago? Do I say New York? I lived in LA for a long time. Each place to me feels like where I’m from. I grew up outside of Chicago, built my career in Chicago but then I went to school and I honed everything in LA and now I live in New York. But, I grew up just outside Chicago in a suburb called Winnetka.

IhrtTC: You’re a musician now. Growing up did you always want to be a musician?

TC: Yeah…always wanted to do that…always.

IhrtTC: There’s never one point in your entire life where you didn’t want to be…?

TC: It’s so funny…when I was a little, little kid I wanted to be an architect. Which is a funny thing for a little kid to want to be, I think. I was just obsessed with structure and building. I was a little boy and boys wanna build things. But, I just caught the music bug really early…it didn’t necessarily mean that I wanted to do music I just always was super-encompassed with music. It’s all I cared about.

IhrtTC: Is music in your family?

TC: In a way, and I’ve said this in other interviews, I have to say no because, the people I encounter when I’m traveling or on tour are these people whose entire family…like Nathan Angelo, you go to his house and they’re all singing in 8 part harmony and they’ve been singing in the church since he was in utero. Even Tony Lucca, he’ll tell you that – their whole family were musicians so the truth to that is, no.

My mom did study. She went to college for music, but it wasn’t in that same way where it runs deep in the family. You don’t go to the Carey household and everyone’s like, in song. And playing instruments…like my mom, while she studied music, isn’t a super-proficient piano player. My dad is completely tone deaf, can’t even sing, but he’s the one where I feel I got the obsession. I’ve always had the obsession ‘cause he had like every record by everybody ever made essentially. I know that’s a huge statement but when I was a kid he’d put on Elvis and he’d put on Frank Sinatra and he’d play classical music all day and all jazz, I mean, everything. He just got me steeped in western music essentially.

So I guess it’s just, it depends on how you phrase that question, was music in your family? It was in the house big time but I just feel like, just now, at this point, I am becoming a proficient technician as a singer and as a guitar player. I just have felt inferior to a lot of my peers because they grew up singing and playing.

IhrtTC: When did you start playing the guitar? What age?

TC: I bought a guitar with my own money in maybe 5th grade ‘cause my parents wouldn’t. They were like, “No.” Then they’re like, “Fine, you can get an acoustic but you have to buy it with your own money.” So I got it and I remember I had a bunk bed, and it sat on the top bunk for like two years, three years maybe; well, I would pick it up and had no idea what to do with it.

IhrtTC: Do you remember how much it cost you?

TC: I can’t remember, not very much. It was cheap. I still have it though. I play it in Door
County, Wisconsin where I write everything. I take that on the beach still and play
with all my friends. It’s a really good little size guitar, it just feels right when I play it.
But yeah, I didn’t even know how to tune it, so I would just mess around and I remember I would try and back then I was already trying to produce and record. I would have a tape recorder of Paul McCartney and I would have my guitar, which was out of tune, and I would play the tape recorder and play and sing along and record it into another tape recorder.

That’s why I really consider myself a producer slash entertainer because before I could do anything I was already doing that. That was around 6th grade and then I finally, around 6th grade, probably started taking lessons and that’s when I started seriously.

IhrtTC: What other instruments can you play?

TC: I play piano because I studied that when I was a music major in school. I played sax.

IhrtTC: Yes I didn’t know that.

TC: Yeah, I played sax. I couldn’t play it now. I mean maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t played it since like 6th grade. Again, that was in grade school, around the same time. So yeah. I wouldn’t even really count it. But, I play piano. Obviously when you play guitar you can play bass, but that doesn’t mean you’re a great bass player. I consider myself to be a pretty good bass player. And then, what I consider to be the new musical instrument, that you’re gonna see a lot more – that’s why rock and roll is slipping away – is the computer, which is now a musical instrument. It’s like producers in the studio when you’re using ProTools Logic …it’s basically everybody’s behind-the-scenes instrument. I play, I program, I produce; that’s my second instrument to the guitar.

For example, the new album? Most of the songs I have done what they call pre-
production. I have recorded the templates for the songs at home. So that’s my other instrument. It’s like programming drums and producing songs. It’s in the DNA because half the time in the album we would use the stuff I did and then other times we wouldn’t. It’s inside of the songs. I would create the template, like Nintendo has a kick drum; I created that and we ended up using that feel.

IhrtTC: Who is your strongest influence? Who keeps you grounded?

TC: Definitely my family. My sister and my mom and my dad because they’re not
impressed. At all. They’re fairly critical, but in a good way. At the end of the day
they’re proud. but I think that’s true with most people’s family. And it’s good.

IhrtTC: What artist/musician did you want to be growing up?

TC: Paul McCartney. And then I also wanted to be in the musical CATS. I had a
dream at night where the cats would come down the street singing Magical Mr. Mistoffelees and take me away with them. So weird.

IhrtTC: That was when you were little?

TC: Yeah. I was into musicals because my family was really into musicals. But I was always into rock and roll, so, while my family was into musical theatre, I liked that stuff, but I wanted to be The Beatles. Before Paul I wanted to be Elvis. I had a fake guitar and I would stand in the mirror and just, you know, rock and roll.

IhrtTC: Do you remember the first song you wrote?

TC: I do. I think like a lot of artists, it was a complete rip off of another song. The first song was when I was in either 8th grade or freshman year of highschool and I got a four-track
recorder, which was a tape recorder that you could record separate tracks. In other words, much like a computer now or a modern recording studio where you can lay down a guitar and then a vocal and add another guitar and another bass or whatever and then you could bounce all the tracks to one. Meaning, you could distill them down and add three more. It was a really crude way, but Sergeant Pepper’s by the Beatles, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was recorded on a four-track. In a major studio. So I had my little home version of that and I got that in 7th or 8th grade and it’s so weird, I’m realizing now that songs for me came with recording from the beginning.

So I wrote this song in like 7th or 8th grade and it was a rip off of a song by this really cheesy alternative band called Candlebox and the song was called “Cover Me”. If I tell you the title, it’s a cool title called “Can I Trust Myself?”. I recorded it and I played it for a friend at school and he was like, “Oh, that sounds like Candlebox ‘Cover Me’”. So it was fairly obvious and I was like oh man. I need to go back to the drawing board.

IhrtTC: So what happened?

TC: I was discouraged, but then I started doing more, on that same four-track, and writing more, and I played them for my next door neighbor who was like two years older than me. He was like a cool kid, and he was like, “Wow. Dude, that was pretty awesome, you need to keep doing that.” He really encouraged me and I started to build the confidence to play for more people and right around that time my friend on my block had a party in her basement and everyone was there and I was a super shy kid and really nerdy. I was a late bloomer. I didn’t have any presence so as soon as I played at this party people were like, wow, and then they started to bug me to play for them, so that’s when I caught the bug. So that was the first one and then very quickly I wrote a group of songs that became my first four-track tape that I still have.

Celine would like to know the best advice anyone has ever given you?

TC: When I was making my first album, Watching Waiting, Matt Nathanson was making his album, Some Mad Hope, at the same time, and I remember he sent me a message, like “Hey you’re great, you know, just keep at it.” With a grain of salt, but just keep at it, because he was just trying to kick my ass a little bit. And we’re not close. We don’t really talk or anything but that was a really cool nod of approval, a keep working vibe, and I’ve never forgotten that.

(Part 2 Coming Soon….) 

Special thanks to Carrie Medders.