COLIN SHORE, Overview Effect

“Overview Effect is still a pretty experimental prog rock album” - Colin Shore

Text: Menno von Brucken Fock, edited by Peter Willemsen

Squeaky Feat is an American band that blends progressive rock, jazz fusion, and dance grooves. The band was founded in 2019 at Berklee College and consists of five music alumni:  Greg King (guitar), Colin Shore (guitar, vocals), Jimmy Finnegan (bass, vocals), Kevin D’Angelo (drums), and Brian Keller (keyboards, horns, vocals). In 2023 they released their debut album called Cause For Alarm, and recently their second album Overview Effect. I asked Colin Shore to give some background information about the band.

According to your website you met at Berklee College of Music. Did you know each other before you attended Berklee College?

“Some of us met at Berklee over a decade ago, and we met Brian and Jimmy here in Colorado. None of us knew each other before school.”

What kind of background do the individual band members have, and what made you decide to form a band in 2019?

“Greg, Kevin and I had played a good amount of music together prior to forming the band while attending Berklee and living in Boston. The band all shares a lot of common background in jazz and progressive music studying and gigging. While Greg and I conceptualized the band, Jimmy was also a founding member. We consider the current lineup to be all founding members in a way, as we solidified our lineup very early on, before ever touring or recording music.”

Did you play in a band before your time at Berklee College? What kind of education in music did you all have before entering the College?

“I had never really done much band playing before attending Berklee. However, I had taken a lot of music lessons before starting. My background was mainly in classic rock, shred and blues before attending the school, expanding into jazz, fusion and progressive rock while there.”

Your music is quite complex and demonstrates very impressive individual technical skills. How many hours of rehearsals does it take to be able to perform your music live?

“Initially, getting our songs worked out in a rehearsal room can take a lot of time. We’re pretty involved and exacting with how we approach our compositions and performances of the songs, so spending extra time looking at the music under a microscope can pay off well. However, our live performances are also extremely heavy on improvisation, so in many ways our live shows are unrehearsed and very raw.”

During the introduction, many band members mention a lot of great names in jazz and related genres, but not so much from prog rock. However, if I listen to your music, I hear influences from Rush, Dream Theater, Steve Vai and Spock’s Beard as well. What kind of music and which artists did you listen to in your teens?

“Good call on Steve Vai. I was very influenced by Vai in my younger years, and I consider him one of my biggest inspirations on the guitar. I think my solo in the title track has a very Vai vibe to it. We also as a band have a lot of influences from prog rock, including Rush and Dream Theater, as well as bands like Porcupine Tree and King Crimson. I also take a lot of influences from Frank Zappa as a composer. My journey with that music didn’t really take hold until adulthood. In my teenage years, I was much more influenced by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and stuff like Van Halen.”

I presume all band members participate in arranging all the music, but are all the compositions the result of a collective effort, for example from

 jamming, or does someone have an idea or demo which ‘grows’ by contributions and input from other band members?

“Currently, Greg King, Kevin D’Angelo and I all bring songs to the table. Often we’ll bring a song with most parts already envisioned and recorded to a demo, but things become a lot more collaborative once everyone gets their hands on the music. I write most of the lyrics for the band, including all the lyrics on Overview Effect.”

On the internet there are many live videos. Do you really perform live that often?

“We do perform a lot of live shows and consider ourselves a live band first in many ways. Our live shows are hugely different from the way we present ourselves in the studio, due to how improvisational our shows are. A five-minute song on our albums can, and likely will stretch out to twenty or thirty minutes or longer live. Our improvisation covers a much wider range of styles, switching from psychedelic rock, jazz fusion, drum and bass, ambient and more.”

Are these gigs providing an income or do you have jobs in or outside the music business as well?

“A few of us teach music as another job, but we treat our band as our main careers.”

You don’t live ‘next door’ to each other. How often do you get together? Does any of you have a home-studio where you can rehearse and record?

“Actually, three of us live together in Denver at the moment. We don’t get to rehearse as often as we’d like outside of the stage, as we all have busy lives outside of touring. We have a rehearsal space together in our basement. It’s a little dingy and a little cramped, but it works!”

Overall Overview Effect is a bit more accessible than your debut? Was that a deliberate choice?

“Yes, I’d consider it to be a deliberate choice to make this album slightly more accessible. Make no mistake, Overview Effect is still a pretty experimental prog rock album. On our debut, we had mostly ten-minute-long songs that were primarily instrumental with lyrics scattered around, and a few shorter and more focused songs. This album is sort of the reverse. You still have your big prog epics like Common Ground and the title track, but songs like Irish Goodbye, Caveat Emptor and Birds Of Prey are more succinct.”

Was conceiving and recording Overview Effect much different from Cause For Alarm?

“Yes, the process was a little different. Our first album was primarily driven by a need to release our music in the studio, as we only had live recordings to that point. For this album, the music was conceived with the full album in mind, and I think the album is a bit more cohesive as a result. There’s more of a unified sound and message to this one.”

Especially the title track of the current album is a particularly challenging and brilliant composition, which seems to be compiled from several pieces. Can you say a few words about how the nine pieces of this album were developed?

“Most of this album was written over a one-year long period. By this time, we’d had a few years to really develop and understand our own sound, and I think that drove the composing of this album. The angular and intense compositions and the contemplative and moody lyrics of this album are sort of a distilled version of the direction our music has been heading since our inception.”

Do you use help or expertise from outside the band to conceive an album?

“I wouldn’t say we had much outside influence in the conception of this album. However, our mixing engineer and co-producer Andreas Landeck had some input in a few arrangement-based decisions as things went along.”

Did anyone of you had an education or training in recording and producing?

“Most band members have little experience with recording or production, but Kevin has some experience in that realm.”

Is it still profitable these days to record an album, or is it merely a vehicle to draw fans to concerts?

“Probably not! You don’t make too much money on the actual sales of the album, but we think it was a very important part of bringing in new fans.”

What kind of media do you sell the most?

“I’m not entirely sure what media we sell most of, but we do get a good number of CD sales outside of the USA that proves they are still somewhat relevant, and our main way of expanding our reach outside of our country.”

How is the current tour in the US going? How many fans attend your show on average?

“We tend to have a couple hundred attendees at our headlining shows. We draw fans from the jam band world and progressive rock fanbase here. Tour is difficult but rewarding, and playing live shows is our biggest passion musically.”

Do you have any plans to cross the Atlantic and play in Europe at some point?

“I hope so! With expenses, travel and other logistics, playing overseas is tricky to pin down. We all really want to make it happen, so hopefully things line up soon in a way where we can get out there and meet some of our European listeners!”