Cure For Caska’s Matthew Hayes
knew from the start that he wanted a different sound to his supplement his
acoustic guitar and heartfelt lyrics. His choice of cello is almost uncanny in
its ability to compliment both the guitar and his voice. Having grown to
include violin, upright bass, and drums, Cure For Caska adds a unique twist to
- Cure for Caska plays Florida Music Festival on May 16 at 6:30 p.m. at AKA Lounge in downtown Orlando
For starters, what’s a Caska?
Matthew Hayes: Caska is from an
anime story. I don’t particularly love anime, but the story’s amazing. It’s
called “Berserk,” and there’s a character in it named Caska who suffers a
traumatic event and doesn’t really remember anything – her boyfriend being one
of those. So he devotes his life to finding a cure for her.
How does that tie into your music, if at all?
I just fell in love with that
story. I said if I ever was in a band, again, that’s what I would name it. I
don’t think it’s indicative or a metaphor for anything I do. The second to that
was “The Shower Scene,” and it was a distant second, so I decided on Cure For
Caska.
You’ve mentioned making your songwriting more diverse. Where has it
been and where are you trying to take it now?
I can’t speak for other
songwriters, but for me it’s a lot easier to focus on negativity because it has
so many different synonyms. You know, happiness is something that… not very
many synonyms to “happy,” you know what I mean? A lot of clichés surrounding
being happy, being content. My wife, she said I’ve written so many songs for
people who just do not matter to me any more, and I still really have not
written a really great love song, and she was like “Well, don’t you think it’s
about time? We’ve been together for five years.” I said “When I can write
something that hasn’t been said ten gazillion times before, believe me, I’m
going to do that.” And I think I did that, so that’s going to be coming out on
our new record. It’s the best song I’ve ever written. I hope to write about
different things, because life is wonderful, friends are great. Now, if I want
to go into detail about how some girl that now means nothing to me really hurt
my feelings I could come up with a lot more than “My friends are amazing, I’m
lucky to have them.” You’d have a fifteen second song.
How important is honesty, and being willing to beat yourself up a
little, in your songwriting?
Oh, that’s happened. I think
it’s very important. There’s always that temptation to always make yourself the
victim and always make yourself like “Oh I was the good guy, I was the cool guy
in the situation. I didn’t call ten, fifteen times that night… while I was
drunk.” Again, it’s another reminder of how lame I have been and hopefully how
I will not be as time goes on. So it’s incredibly important to me. I’m honest
with myself.
A cello is not something you usually see in a “rock band,” so how and
why did you choose it?
I think a cello is the most
beautiful string instrument. It’s just got a very full, a very rich, deep tone
to it. Sometimes with the violin or everything else you’ll… I think it’s a
little bit thin. I think cello can hold up on its own. And this band is a
cello-based band. We play orchestral rock. We’ve got violin, we’ve got cello,
we’ve got upright bass; our band is different. These days you can hope to take
the music that you love to do and put your own little unique spin on it, and
honestly I think that we’re doing that without being too obvious an homage to
any bands that we actually, truly love. Cello’s one of the things that sets us
apart from other bands.
Was that a conscious decision to put a cello in?
Originally all I wanted to do
was play coffee shops, and at first I just wanted a cello player and me. ‘Cuz
I’m not that great of a guitarist and I needed something else going on to kind
of beef it up a little bit.
Add a comment