Sean’s Night Out: Memory Tapes at Chop Suey

By Sean De Tore
The Mixtape

The Chop Suey was packed with folks eager to see what Memory Tapes had to bring to the stage and seeing that it was a Tuesday night, that’s definately saying something about Dayve Hawk, the man behind the band.

Memory Tapes has been slowly building momentum over the past couple of years having released his debut LP Seek Magic in 2009 followed by a barrage of remixes and a handful of new tracks before the release of his latest LP, Player Piano.

Dayve kept the performance simple playing the guitar himself, having live drums and bass and an occasional backing track to accompany some of the more lush sounding songs from the records.

I was just as in love, engaged and impressed with the songs live as I am when I listen to the records at home. Memory Tapes played a good mix of songs from both Seek Magic and Player Piano with minimal chatter from the band between songs so as to give the audience as much music and dancey times as possible.

After the show I took it upon myself to go backstage to see if I could score a chat with Dayve but that did not happen. I did see him though and I told him it was a great set but he just brushed right by me saying nary a word except something about having to leave the backstage because he had to chat with someone about something, blah, blah. I did talk with the drummer for a brief moment but I forgot to have my recorder rolling. Thanks to my friend Carolyn I did get to chat briefly with Daniel, the touring bassist for the band because she promised him a shot of whiskey. Thanks alcohol for being an awesome thing to use as a bribe.

I asked Daniel what it was like trying to translate the sound of the music from the album to the stage…

‘It’s a challenge for Dayve to try to figure out, like, how to get the records to translate live…it’s quite a process of…alright let’s try to make it close to the record, alright that doesn’t work so let’s try to make it like completely different and then that doesn’t really work, so let’s find a happy medium.’

I also asked him if he ever listens to Memory Tapes records for enjoyment…

‘I have to listen fairly obsessively at points just to learn and remember things and then I get kinda burned out on it.’

Thank you Memory Tapes for a wonderful evening.