Q & A with Campus Artists: Mackin Carroll and the band Felix

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mackin Carroll, a sophomore majoring in popular music with an emphasis in songwriting and bass at the Thornton School of Music. We talked about his personal musical ventures and Felix, a new band he formed with fellow students Jack DeMeo, Cooper Bell, Carter Couron and Larry Scanniello.  Combined with Carroll’s introspective songwriting and the rest of the group’s devotion to music, their band is sure to be a hit.

Q: What kind of projects are you working on in this coming year?

We’re called Felix right now but we’re looking to change our name.  We have an EP coming out that we’re mixing right now. It’s five songs recorded here on campus, and then partially off campus as well. We’ll be playing around campus and hopefully Hollywood. I’m also recording a five song EP of my own — like acoustic kind of folk stuff. One of the EPs is with the band, which is very collaborative. And then solo stuff. I’m playing bass –– you know there’s a cool music scene here at USC.  A lot of people collaborate and help each other out. I’m [alsp] playing bass in my friend Andrew Stogel’s band called LOVEYOU. It’s his music –– I’m just playing the bass guitar.

Q: As a musician, what are some of your dreams and aspirations?

A: I really just want to make records. If I can build a lifestyle that allows me to make albums and just do creative stuff. I want to make a comfortable living from my creative efforts — that would be awesome. Anything on that would be gravy.

Q: Are you more into writing music then?

A: Yeah, I love performing as well, but I love writing. I would like to have a career where I have a hand in what’s being played. Because I love playing and stuff like that, but I love playing stuff that I’ve had a hand in shaping. There’s an emotional risk performing your own material that happens. It’s frightening but there’s also this wonderful emotional reward if you perform it successfully and connect with people.

Q: What’s been your favorite venue to perform at?

A: For me, personally, there’s this place called Room 5 in La Brea and it’s really nice because the people that are there are really there to listen. Because it’s upstairs at this Italian restaurant and so its all wooden.  A lot of times you’re playing at a place where people don’t really want to hear music.  As for the band we are hoping to play at some cool clubs and stuff after the release of the EP.

Q: When did you start your band Felix?

A: In January, actually. We hit the ground running. We were all waiting to meet like-minded people and so there was no waste in time when we got started.

Q: What are the names of your band members?

A: I’m Mackin Carroll, bassist. My friend, Jack DeMeo, plays guitar and sings. There’s Cooper Bell, who plays keyboards and shaker and tambourine and sings — one of those miscellaneous guys. There’s Carter Couron, he plays the drums; and then there’s Larry Scanniello, he plays the lead guitar.

Q: How did you get the name Felix?

A: There’s Felix, the car dealership up on Figueroa and that was close to where we rehearsed.  Every time we would come out of rehearsal it would just be there and it seemed appropriate and a nice artifact that tied everything together.

Q: Do you have a favorite genre of music?

A: I really like sad-guitar music. Like Elliott Smith. I definitely have a pretty eclectic taste in music.  Sometimes I listen to Hank Williams and sometimes Kendrick Lamar and Jelly Roll Morton and Ben Folds Five. The undercurrent is people being themselves in a cool way.

Q: What kind of themes do you write about in your songs?

A: A lot of it is just whatever I’m going through at the time when I write. I try not to think about it before hand — like “I’m going to write a song about fear.”  That feels backwards to me. Not everything is a fact about my life but I try to connect to the things that I write so I can sing them with some sort of conviction. The new EP is about coming to terms with your own insecurities. I have a song called Everything is Temporary that is about things being transient. I guess my themes are existential, coming-of-age, average-white-20-year-old-bullsh*t.

Q: Have you learned anything that you’ve been able to apply to your music?

A: In high school, I would be taking geometry class and I’d be like, okay I understand how this is training a certain part of my brain and indirectly connecting it to whatever I want to do.  At the Thornton School of Music, I’m taking all things that are directly honing the skills that I’m using.  Private lessons are good for me to pay specific attention to what I’m doing. I’ll learn something in the morning in my music theory class about chord structure and then go write a song later using one of those concepts and maybe play it the next week.

Q: Who is the person that you look up to the most and who you want to be in the future?

A: I really look up to Ben Folds, just because he seems to have a reverence for informal music and popular traditions and rock and folk traditions but he also has such an appreciation for classical and formal music. He tends to integrate the informal and the formal. Ben Folds doesn’t see the divisions as much and integrates and learns from other’s music forms and combines things. It’s more celebratory and looking at the commonalities of things.

He just wrote a concerto for his last album for the piano and he did a song with a chamber orchestra.  But he also did a spoken word collaboration with William Shatner, and also the Ben Folds Five is this awesome rock group that does a cover of B*tches ain’t Sh*t but Hoes and Tricks by Dr. Dre.  He has a wonderful sincere appreciation for all facets of music.  He’s open minded and not afraid to be that way. I would like to get [a few] close-minded rock and roll kids to listen to Chopin and [a few] close minded classical kids to go to a punk show.

Q: Do you have a favorite song by him?

A: That’s a good question –– there’[re] so many. The second Ben Folds album is called Whatever Whatever Amen and I like albums a lot from start to finish. I like the songs Philosophy and Cigarette (it’s this sentence that he read in an article that he sets to music in the most beautiful way possible). The song Underground does a really great job of integration.

Q: What do you think of the direction popular music is heading?

A: I feel like people are always writing great songs but it’s just a little bit harder to find them.  You hear people complaining, “Man, why is everything so fake now.” No, it’s not — you’re just lazy. With Spotify and the Internet, things are a little bit more niche oriented and hidden in their own little spheres. Tame Impala is doing things that are clearly informed from the past and also innovating and adding a new thing to it that’s so cohesive and interesting. Now we’re getting into streaming and it’s just really weird as someone who is putting out music. Should I print CD’s or just put it on the Internet? We don’t know how to distribute music now.

The pubescent era of digital music is maturing. People are always going to find a way to make art — that’s not going to stop. It’s ambitious to say that you think something is great before everyone else has said so.  It infuriates me when people say that music is dead. People aren’t going to stop writing.

To learn more about Felix, you can follow the band @felixordie. You can follow Mackin through facebook.com/felixordie, mackincarroll.com and on twitter @notcubagoodingjr.