Seth Biskind – Xperience Monthly Interview by Seth Casale

They call him Seth, an interview with Seth Biskind.    By Seth Casale

It is not every day that I can sit down with a fellow Seth, but I was able to catch up with this talented multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter to talk about some of his influences, and his new album with Yort set to drop on October 27th. The album was recorded/engineered by Tim Lynch at the recording Company, and mastered by Sam Torres at Polymouth, It’s called “We Make it Here!”

RRX: Ok Let’s jump right in. What are some of your early musical influences, and how have they shaped your songwriting and style today?

SB: I grew up in a very musical family, my dad is a great guitar player, and my siblings all play, my mom plays piano. For a long time, I didn’t really play, I enjoyed music, and I liked singing along to things. I didn’t really feel I had the skill to write or record. One of the artists that really got me going into songwriting and stuff was The Mountain Goats, I was listening to some of his earlier material just recorded on a boombox and it was just a sense of “I can just write words, I can find things to say”. Hearing more from him later and knowing he would just write the song and record it, and when he had enough material recorded that was an album. So the immediacy of that, just write, record and it’s done was a big influence on me.

RRX: What are some other influences you have had as far as songwriting?

SB: I’d say some guys like Tom Waits and Nick Cave are a couple of my favorites. Lyrically a lot of stuff I pull from comes from stuff I’m reading. I definitely like songs that have a real narrative to them.

RRX: I think I read that you really got into music only about 3 years ago, what was the impetus?

SB: I had been recording for about a decade, but outside of very few open mics hadn’t really played out and was just kind of on my own doing my own thing. It wasn’t till I moved back to NY from North Carolina right before the pandemic hit the US that I was like “I really want to get into music” so as those things began to open back up went out into shows. I went to Superdark Collective shows at Desperate Annie’s in Saratoga, connecting with those people meeting people and talking about music. I had my very first gig as Headless Relatives, which is my solo project just at the beginning of 2022, so just last year.

RRX: When was it that you met up with Yort?

SB: I met them when I was going to the Superdark shows in Saratoga, they had a singer at that time they were working with but he was unable to play that show, so they played the songs instrumentally. At that point, it was just a 3 piece, just Steve, Joe, and Jared and I really enjoyed them, I had taken some photos and videos, so we sort of connected through that. At that point, they were looking for a singer and asked if I would be interested in doing it. Initially, I hesitated some only because at that point I was living in Glens Falls, and driving to Troy once or twice a week was a lot. Our first show as a 5 piece was the evening before that first Porchfest where we met you and Native Souls.

RRX: For the album, how many songs did you end up with?

SB: We went into the studio with 11 songs we felt really good about and we ended up with 10 on the album, and after mastering the 11th didn’t quite fit. Almost all the songs except the first single, all the songs were already written when Connor and I joined. So all of these songs they had pretty well down.

RRX: Never having seen the band without you and Connor, it is hard to imagine, do you feel like your additions kind of “finished” the band?

SB: The 5 of us clicked pretty quickly, I can’t say enough about all of them, but hearing everything from the early demos as a 3 piece and hearing what Connor adds is amazing. Connor plays some really amazing parts; he always has great input on how to tweak parts or arrangements. Hearing everything nicely balanced and so clear on this album is just so great.

RRX: How did you determine what to release as the first single?

SB: We had 2 songs we had been particularly happy with live and on the recording, so we knew pretty quickly what we wanted the singles to be and we wanted them to be pretty different because the album covered a lot of ground as our set does. So we wanted the first release to have a harder edge, and the next goes in sort of a different direction.

RRX: As for Headless Relatives, what is the origin of that band name?

SB: The reason I like it is it sounds very dark and strange, but it’s actually a linguistics term. I was an English major with a linguistics minor and I came across the term headless relatives a linguistics term that doesn’t even exist in English. It’s a relative clause without the head, and in English, the head is how you know it’s a relative clause, so it would not work in English but some languages just work differently. So it’s this very technical linguistics term but it sounds so macabre and weird

RRX: Headless Relatives started as your solo project, in terms of songwriting are you writing the songs and bringing them to the other members?

SB: So far it’s all been my songs, all of the stuff in the set has been stuff I had already recorded as a solo. It’s still kind of like I come in with the songs but it’s sort of bare bones. I come in with lyrics and a basic structure, and then everyone adds their own parts.

RRX: I want to thank you for sitting down with me tonight, I’ll now open it up for you to tell me about how to find your projects and see their life and anything you’d like to plug

SB: Headless Relatives has a website, as does Odd Duck Collective. Yort has an Instagram @enjoyyort and a Facebook page, Steve does a good job with that. I have my stuff on Bandcamp and Instagram. As for upcoming gigs, Headless Relatives has a Superdark Monday show at Desperate Annie’s on October 16. A couple of big things for Yort at the end of the month, the day after the album release, October 28th we will be playing at a Halloween show at Whitman Brewing in Saratoga, and on Halloween Yort will be doing a live stream and recording at the Jive hive.