‘Hello London’ greets the world

By Benjamin Joe

James Froese stands in Delaware Park. Photograph by Benjamin Joe

The new track from Scarling-lyric inspired artist, Hello London, is like the final gasps of a man still working. Though the war is done. The children raised. The cow milked and there really is no need for him left. It’s a dirge of a dirge and like all of James Froese’s prior works, it is every bit relevant and important as the sonic clothing it takes on.

A statement like that, of course, is a bit heavy handed, but take a listen to “Breathing In” and say that Froese has run out of things to say.

Froese is a working man’s working man. Currently employed at GM, married and settling into another shift of exploring the realm of introspection and relationships in music, Froese took his time with this song. He said it takes “balance” to keep coming up with tunes and still function in the day-to-day.

“It’s always a balance trying to balance music and working an actual full time job. It’s like, ‘how much you want to push?’,” he said.

Froese has been in a lot of bands over the years, but the most recent one, The Traditional, was the one when the multi-instrumentally talented Froese was called into work.

“I went to work at GM and they went on tour,” he said. “They got a different drummer and it just wouldn’t have worked … It was kind of upsetting.”

Still, even as Froese worked, he still felt called to make music. He went solo. He put out Past Futures in 2022 and “Breathing In” in June of 2023 and there’s no planned ending of this chapter in life and art.

The main facet of all of Froese’s work is his lyrics. He said his many years of being in the background as the drummer, he got to watch — almost like an outsider looking in, but in a special capacity — how the frontman made the room feel the music he put out and to him it was always the lyrics that fueled that reaction.

Froese tells as it is during an interview by the History Museum. Photograph by Benjamin Joe

“I think lyrics are the most important part … they can affect you without even you noticing,” he said. “Obviously not instrumental music, which I love too, but the lyrics are the thing that kind of stay in your subconscious. They’re there even if you don’t realize they are or aren’t.

“I think sometimes people hear something that’s catchy and the melody is like catchy, but I think sometimes what’s really sticking with them is the lyrics, because they’re relatable.”

Froese said there are “life struggles” in his work. Point in fact, “The Brink” first track of Past Futures, is about positivity and balance, whereas “Breathing In” is a response to the world situation, the pandemic, the economy, things he notices or can’t stop noticing that have affected everyone’s lives.

And maybe he is not far wrong. 

Froese described that all too familiar action of “going into a rabbit hole on the Internet” and finding more and more information and also more and more people who feel the same way about it.

“Cosmic thinking, all of that. There’s a balance between realities. How much do you need to stay positive and how much do you deal with of what’s actually going on? Like mentally?” he asked. “I think ‘Breathing In’ is about dealing with life, here, and some things that just ‘sit.’ Like how did we get to the point where everyone’s wearing a mask and people keep getting hammered down?

“It’s a knee jerk reaction to the positive mindset thing. What works? What works in life? Staying positive or asserting your will?”

The imagery in “Breathing In” is like a “storm,” Froese said. He noted that after he wrote the song, about breathing the air and fires spinning dust into the air, the wildfires in Ontario began and he felt his song coming to life.

But the big thing is the idea of the little guy being “hammered down.” Of one punch after another taking the champ to the mat. It’s a hard thing to watch, Froese said.

As an artist, a lyricist, Froese said his process comes in waves with one line coming into his head. From there, he comes up with a melody and puts chords to that tune. His response to the idea of some lyrics being aetherically inspired said a lot about what makes this 35 year-old musician tick. 

“I definitely believe in that stuff,” he said. “You have to be in the right mindset and, I feel, to write something good and you really have to be able to slow down and get into that zone of enjoying it, and in that way, a lot of times songs just hit me.”

A natural, humming a tune in a shower, Froese broke down his own discography as song ideas that “come in” consistently every day. At that point its just which ones he writes down. He speculated that he was always into reading as a kid, and maybe that helped with songwriting.

“You have to feel like you’re supposed to do it and I think that’s a block to people. They feel they’re not supposed to do it and they’re not creative,” he said. “But if you’re encouraged to do that from a young age, I think it helps a lot when you get older. Feeling comfortable to do that. To write songs.”

Froese’s work can be found at https://hellolondon.bandcamp.com/music.

A Work in Progress: David Lewis’s split music personality

by Benjamin Joe

Photo Credit Benjamin Joe. David Lewis in Starpine Studios.

In the outskirts of the suburbs, an unassuming house stands next to other unassuming houses. There’s a driveway. Yard. Garage.

And inside of this home is another room filled with different odds and ends. A slow compilation that will eventually become a full recording venue. It’s called Starpine Studio , and like its owner, it’s a work in progress.

David Lewis, aka Dov Leon, and founder of two very different projects started his career in shortly after learning four chords on the guitar.

“I picked them up, I tried them and I was like, y’know, I’m in love with this!” he said.

And the rest is history.

Lewis put the act into high gear while in college at University at Buffalo. He put together a duo called Seven Sails and he and Cristian Trochez started playing together. It was an indie band that got some help along the way from the producer of their first EP, Land of Lions, Lewis said.

“The producer we were working with, he had a drum kit and he was also a very talented guitar player. So, we go in with our acoustic song and he said, ‘I think I hear bass, I think I hear drums,’ so he helped us out because he was talented on all of them,” Lewis said.

The band was a place for that indie sound, Lewis said. Later, Trochez moved to Florida. They still stay in touch and Trochez will occasionally send a recording of a riff or progression and the two will work out the song remotely.

But there were some tracks that weren’t quite for Seven Sails.

Lewis took his more hardcore and electronic, and even hip-hop based projects to his second identity, Dov Leon.

“I also loved post-hardcore, like We Came as Romans … I loved both styles so much I was starting to fuse them,” he said. “That’s when I realized that maybe I should stick Seven Sails to that acoustic, indie stuff because that’s what people came originally came on for. My first fans were there because they liked that style and I was going too far the other way, and that’s when I made the split.”

Contributed Image. David Lewis.

Lewis started collaborating with other names for that “gritty” vocals — screaming vocals — to keep his own Seven Sails vocals clean. Rob Davies from the UK was featured on one of the songs.

“This is the one thing in my life that’s been consistent, writing music because of the joy it can bring going through the process,” Lewis said.

Over the years Lewis has worked to perfect both of his projects. He’s reached out to people to play different parts and honed the sound on each track that he’d record and produce from Starpine Studios. Parts of Seven Sails discography include violins and parts of Dov Leon’s tracks hold “chunky” electric guitar highlights courtesy of Lewis’s uncle.

Lewis talks a lot about why he does what he does. It isn’t for the money and it’s not for the fame. His audience is a small one, but the way he figures it, if a song can touch one person or help somebody come to something for themselves? Then that’s what he’s in it for.

“I’d say my audience is why I write the music now,” Lewis said. “When you start writing music, there’s multiple drivers for it. There’s the passion. There’s wanting to inspire people. And there is that little piece of, ‘Can I get this up to a million or 100,000 streams?’ There’s just that little … — I don’t know — temptation to fame instead of focusing on the real beauty of what you’re doing. It’s almost selling out if all you’re concerned about is the stream counts.”

Interested parties can catch Lewis’s act as Dov Leon at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdaIutrCFSs for a feel of “Virtual Vices.”

Seven Sails is also still hanging out on streaming sites. Linked here is “Rewind”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FSqCckF1kY.