| It was the summer of 2003 and MP3.com's active message board community was heating up as well -- with flame wars.
Along came Chaz Fanaro, looking to cut through the negative noise. He began to interview many of the musical artists who pitched a tent on the popular indie music forum. Others pitched in with questions of their own. July of 2003 could have turned ugly, but thanks to the interviews blanketing the forum, it became a home for insight and mutual respect.
The forums were wiped clean by Vivendi in December, 2003. The interviews live on.
Kim Riemer
Artist description
Instrumental rock and vocal tunes.A cross somewhere between Mellencamp,U2,and Shaun Mullen,With a little SRV thrown in. Please feel free to email me.
Music Style
instrumental/vocal rock
Musical Influences
Vai, Satch, Vanhalen,Clapton,Page,Beck,Jan Hammer,SRV
Similar Artists
Satch, Jan Hammer, Vai,,,and Springsteen,U2,Mellencamp,and Shaun Mullen ,for the vocal stuff.
Artist History
Well i had a band for a while, but the bass player got married, and the drummer went off to collage. And so the saying goes, the rest is history.
Instruments
Ibanez blazer series, Fender stratocaster,Fame hondo bass,Korg wavestation synth,roland mc-50 sequencer,A.R.T. tube mic preamp,Boss me-30 guitar processor,Fender HOT amp,BC rich acoustic guitar,Shure pe-56d mic,Ross 4 channel external mixer,Sony amp and speakers for monitoring,and a cool sony reel to reel.
Press Reviews
Listen.com "haven't had enough remedial guitar virtuosity from saskatchewan? here's another helping." -- Jon P.
Location
Nipawin, Saskatchewan - Canada
Chaz the Spaz
Kim, is Saskatchewan a remote/unpopulated area in Canada? How do you get your equipment?
Kim Riemer
Well Saskatchewan is a Province of Canada. And no it's not remote, nor unpopulated. Approximately half of Saskatchewan is farmland, and the rest, towards the north is trees and lakes. Geographically Saskatchewan is larger than any American State, however, Our population is only about 1 million. So we do have alot of open space up here.
I'm from a small town, Whitefox, population approximately slightly less than 400. I used to drive 10 miles south to the next town to buy my equipment, but that store closed. Now I have to drive 3 hrs south, approx 300 miles to buy my equipment.
d a n i e l
Kim is an innovative guitarist, but what's more, he is also a huge supporter of the indies and a great human being, full of humility. Even better, he's a fellow Canuck!
I salute thee sire!!!
My question is this(two q's in one) :
Do you/have you played cover gigs to pay the rent? I vaguely remember you saying you have a career outside of the arts(like myself). What is it you do to earn a living?
Kim Riemer
Thanks for the cool comments Daniel.
As for the 2 ?'s.
1. Inspite of the fact that I have road experience, and having played in front of a crowds of approx 7 to 8 thousand ppl, I have never earned enough dough to pay the rent. I remember one out door festival I've had the luck to attend as a working musician. We were touring the backstage area with the stage manager as he showed us our dressing room, we(the band) stepped into the room, all of us looking around, grinning and happy we had this small crowded dressing room. To our amazement the stage manager dude turned to us and announced this room is for the drummmer, and proceeded to show us the rest of the rooms....lol we each had our own dressing room. That was as close as I got to the big-time.
2. As for my career outside the arts, If you can call it a career, I'm a maintenance/caretaker for the school in my home town. The job pays surprisingly well for a small town of less than 400. It's my first supervisory position, my first gig as "the boss"
one blue nine
Canada. Canada? That's up by the North Pole, isn't it? How do you keep the sound from freezing before you can get it recorded?
Kim Riemer
Well umm. Oh yeah, I wait till summer.
Rabuck
You are known to own many guitars
I even heard a rumor that you have a "guitar dispenser"
How many guitars do you have?
Kim Riemer
Hello Robbay.
I actually have only 5 guitars, 2 of which are acoustic, 1 steel string the other a nylon string classical guitar. And 1 bass.
Guitar dispenser? Nope, don't got one of those yet, it's on back-order.
Chaz the Spaz
How did you first become interested in music?
Kim Riemer
Good question Chaz.
I can remember when I was a kid, my parents and my brothers would drive a few hours to visit relatives, and the radio would always be playin' the current top 40 tunes of that time, '72 '73 '74. I don't remember the bands or song titles, but every once inna while, I'll hear a tune that I recognise from them road trips.
My Mom had a piano in the house, and I took to pounding on the keys, tinkering away and makin up little melodies. Also my Grandma gave me an old acoustic, it's from WWII era. At 12 yrs, that guitar became the first instrument that I actually learned to play some chords on. I still own that guitar to this day, a gift from my Grandma, a most valued possesion.
From there I started recieving records for my birthday and at Christmas. One day I figuered out how to play along with the record player, been hooked on music ever since.
gray martin
I'm a fan of your music. Besides being a really good guitarist, you are a prolific songwriter and you write a wide variety of music. You never seem to suffer from writer's block...how do you keep your creative juices flowing and continually put out diverse & interesting music?
Kim Riemer
Hi Gray.
Good question. When I was growing up I was exposed to alot of varied music, some of it I liked and some I didn't care for. It didn't matter much about genre, I really didn't understand it then. If a song made me think "I like that song" then thats all that counts for me. To this day I can sit down and enjoy bands like Metallica, to Joe Pass, or Wes Montgomery.
So how do I keep my creative juices flowing and continually put out diverse & interesting music? Alot of times it's as simple as,"I haven't tried anything in that genre yet" So I'll start messing around tryin to convincingly compose something with that particular feel that I'm going for.
Chaz the Spaz
What are your goals and what do you have planned for your music?
Kim Riemer
Hi Chaz.
That's quite the serious question.
My goals are to continue to learn music theory, and learn the art of recording, mixing and mastering. And of course to continue to compose music.
And what do I have planned for my music?
I've been asked about a new cd, and yes I have a new release that i'm currently working on. It's going to be a double cd. The current idea being that one cd will be all vocal and the other cd all instrumental compositions. The new release is as yet untitled, and will be available only from me as I'm going to distribute it myself. It's about half finished now, I'm hoping to get a good chunk of it done during my upcoming holidays.
I'm also in a stage of updating my studio. The goal here is to enable my studio to record at 24 bit, use real drums, and play my keyboard in real time as opposed to sequencing. I also want to improve my monitoring situation, so I can achieve better mixes and hopefully learn the mastering process.
Chaz the Spaz
Practice makes perfect, do you practice?
Kim Riemer
Another cool question Chaz.
When I'm recording I generally don't practice much, I'll go through some scales and various excercises, but usually I get my practice mentally just by learning and reviewing some theory stuff....I seem to find myself doing that alot lately.
As you know recent developments have led to a live gig and these past few days I've been practicing and learning how to play the songs I've recorded, in somewhat of a live manner....but since i'm using backing tracks, basically without my lead guitar, it's not totally live.
Marching Hammers is gonna be tough to pull off live since I'll be singing as well as playing guitar. I plan to leave all my background vox in just to kinda guide me along....It's been years since I've sung a live lead vocal.
Kozey
Hello my fellow Canadian, good stuff, keep it up. This question to you and the readers, because obviously you are very versatile and many of us are as well.
Is it better to stick to one genre? Or go from one to another? Where people don't know who you really are. I am a song writer but I ended up doing an instrumental CD, sort of New Age as my first. My best friend says I should stick to that and do another in the same genre and instrumental, establish a following. But I am a lot more than that and thinking of my next CD as totally different, it will be new following, like starting over. So Kim, Spaz and readers,how do you feel about that? Should we stick to one genre and get our following in that genre? Or do different things, change all the time? Look what happened to Garth Brooks , when he came out with Chris Gaines, I thought it was great but almost ruined his career, country people were turned off, even called him a traitor. Comments?
Evan Paul Kozaris
Chaz the Spaz
Being diverse is more rewarding for an artist, depending, of course, on the artists own taste. My style is electronic, that's what I like to do, I'm sure I could play other styles, but would I be happy? Listen to ONOFFON while reading their INTERVIEW, you'll find that band quite accomplished in diversity.
Kozey
Hey Chas, all I can say is thank you for turning me on to this band. You are dead right these guys are absolutely great, and the best I have heard on this site. Mind you I love jazz, especially fusion, so I'm very partial to this. My fave has always been Chic Corea. And you are also right on they are versatile, it's because they are great musicians.I have a lot of CDs in Jazz Fusion and when I listen to music, although I like every type, this is what I listen to mostly. But some Joe off the street will totally disagree, it would be way above his head. Give him a little tear jerker and he's happy. This is definitely a musician's band. Evan
Chaz the Spaz
You're welcome Evan. I like a lot of different music, jazz fusion moreso than straight forward jazz though. Chic Cores, Al DiMeola, Passport, Soft Machine, Weather Report, Oregon, Shadowfaz, Brand X, and ONOFFON, are just a few in my jazz collection.
Kozey
Good stuff, I wish more people get into this. Wouldn't it be great if this went mainstream? Kinda like the old days with the big band era, there would be such an incredible explosion in creativity. I've been waiting for something like that forever, but here we are 2003 and jazz is still a small minority, sad. I have this theory, that the reason the wheelers and the dealers are promoting mediocraty is because they can make more money. Someone like Onofon, are not going to settle for peanuts, that's why they are doing it on their own, when they finally get a deal, it will be real with a lot of pull, with the following they already have they can balance the scale better. Evan,
PS. my apologies to Kim Riemer for using their thread to express ideas about other artists.
Von from ONOFFON
WOW!!!!
Thanks to all - thanks to Chaz for speaking so complimentary of us - and thanks to Evan for enjoying our music - and thanks to Kim for the use of his interview.
It's posts like these that make me feel it's all worth it.
Thanks again!
P.S.-and thanks again to Chaz for pointing these posts out to me...
Kim Riemer
You are more than welcome to express some views here in this thread.
MORE INTERVIEWS WITH CHAZ
-- Rick Munarriz
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