New Music Spotlight: Sean McGrath

One benefit of being submersed in music day and night is finding new, extremely talented, musicians that hardly anyone has heard of. The immediate reaction to that is "I need to tell everyone about them!". Luckily for us, we have a platform to do that... Seattlest! One such performer that we'd like to introduce you to is Sean McGrath. He's been frequenting Conor Byrne's Sunday open mic for a couple months now and we have definitely taken notice. He is playing one of his first big shows in Seattle tonight at Columbia City Theater alongside Kevin Long and Noah Gundersen. As we mentioned yesterday, it's going to be epic so get your butts down to Columbia City. If not, regret will soon follow.

Sean let us pick his brain with a few questions and take a few shots after a recent show at the Skylark Cafe in West Seattle. So without further ado, let's see what he had to say.

Right now you're a virtual unknown in the Seattle music community, tell us about yourself. Where are you from? How did you get the bug to become a musician? Why did you decide to pursue it as more than just a hobby?

I've lived in the Seattle area my entire life. I grew up in a family of artists, but am the only musician I know of in recent family history. I wrote poetry in high school, but didn't have the guts to do spoken word, so I took up the guitar. I started playing open mics when I was 17. Around that time, I recorded an entire 11 track album with Garageband through the pin hole microphone on a school computer and sold it around school for the red cross. I learned how to play the ukulele in Hawaii from a few old natives and brought that back with me. After writing hundreds of songs that will never see the light of day, I decided I needed to record an album, and did so over the span of about two years. Some how, my engineer at the time failed to make backups, and we suffered a major hard drive failure. I lost everything about a month from finishing it. Needless to say, I hid under a rock for about a year until I found a new producer, Bryan Tully. We rerecorded the entire album with the addition of five songs in less than a year. I put the album out on June 24th. With my second wind, I took to playing shows where ever I could. With the advice of a friend, I started going to Conor Byrne, and have since then landed a steady lineup of shows thanks to a tight community built around that venue.

Your music feels like lullabies for adults. Lyrics flowing along effortlessly amidst the rhythmic waves of melody. Where did the inspiration for your music come from? How did you settle on this style?

That's just sort of who I am. I'm a pretty relaxed person. The funny thing is though, that most of my lyrics are either black humor or politically charged. I wrote the music to lull people into listening to my sick jokes and propaganda. My album really consists of me dying in a plane crash, a civil war battle scene, a song about the Apocalypse, etc. The rest is about my childhood. I've got a strange sense of humor. I named the album I recorded in high school "Dracadomiphobia" in the hope that people would search the internet for the meaning behind it. In reality, it was something I heard a crazy man yell in a theater. Kidding aside, I consider myself more of a lyricist than a musician.

You just released your first album, Microscope, on June 24th. How long have you been working on it? Is there a sort of theme amongst the tracks or are the meant as individual works?

From the original studio sessions to the release date, my album, Microscope, took about five years to make (including mishaps and tragedies). It feels amazing to have it done. I've already started producing two other albums. The songs on Microscope follows my life in chronological order, whether they be stories about myself or metaphors to hide stories about myself. The album might feel eclectic, but it makes sense to me.

It's rumored that your album cover consisted entirely of paper cutouts that were then scanned to a digital file for printing. Why did you go to all the trouble? Why that particular design?

Ya, it's true. I did the entire thing with construction paper and a fine tip sharpy. It's based on an old record I found from the 1960's called "How To Be A Success At Life Insurance Selling (I also sampled the record itself on track 8). I love 50's and 60's mod art and was a visual artist long before picking up a guitar, so I had a lot of fun with it. Most album art is done in Photoshop these days, and I think it loses a tangible quality that a lot of my old records seem to have. That, and the album itself has a pretty hand-made, personal feel.

Are most of your songs auto-biographical or are they more metaphorical? Are there stories behind any of the songs? If so, tell us one of them.

All the songs on the album are about my life or something I feel strongly about. Whether that's obvious or not was very intentional. For instance, the song "I Am the Enemy" sounds a lot cooler than what it's really about. I wrote it about my love of political debate. See? That's why I buried it under miles of metaphor. The same goes for the song "Drunken Curb Philosophers." I wrote that about about weird relationship between religion and politics and those who use both when they have no idea what they're talking about. Again, much nerdier than I'd like to broadcast, but I guess I just did.

You're playing with Kevin Long and Noah Gundersen this Saturday at Columbia City Theater. Will this be the biggest audience you've ever played to?

I wouldn't say it's the largest audience I've ever played in front of, but it does mean the most to me. I love that venue and I'm psyched to be opening for Kevin and Noah. I can't wait to play that place. I worked out a ukulele version of the song "Tainted Love" just for the occasion. Don't knock it til you hear it. See you there!

Come check out the show tonight at Columbia City Theater, Sean will show off what he can do. We are definitely looking forward to hearing that "Tainted Love" cover.

Tonight at Columbia City Theater // Doors 9pm // tickets $10