The Writing South (singer/songwriter Brendan Cavanaugh) is an Indie Rock project out of Pennsylvania. With heavy influences stemming from 70’s rock, 90’s grunge rock, and early 2000’s post-punk genres, The Writing South carries a gritty, sometimes aggressive sound, paired with thoughtful and authentic lyrics.

In this interview spotlight, I chat with Brendan about his music (Embark now available), challenges, technology and more.

Full Q&A along with links and music below.

Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)

I’m originally from Pittsburgh PA but I live in Harrisburg PA.  I play Post-Punk / Indie Rock music.

What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?

Allegedly when I was a baby, music was the only thing that would calm me down, so my mother would always leave me by the radio.  So you could say I’ve always had a connection with music.  As I grew, I realized that music started helping me find language for things I wasn’t able to articulate. So I dove in deeper and deeper.  And now that I play and write music, that is what I hope to pass on; hopefully giving language to help people articulate themselves.

How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?

My latest release, ‘Embark‘, was a reimagining of some of the songs that sparked my first release, ‘WAR’.  I always liked hearing musicians and bands doing stripped-down versions or reimagining of their songs or albums.  Enough that I thought I might try it.  So it became a cool way to challenge myself by writing differently than how I was comfortable.  I also played most of the instruments on this release, which wasn’t true for the last one. 

Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this over saturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?

You know I don’t think I mind the over saturation. There is so much beauty and creativity that I feel more challenged than intimidated.  I think some find it easy to bash the industry of whatever over something like that, but I’d rather be inspired than bitter.  And I absolutely love how easy technology has made it to create and release something.  That’s also one of the coolest things for me to see once I started releasing music was the ability to see in which cities and countries my songs had been played. The level of accessibility is so cool now with technology.  

As far as challenges go, I’d say a big personal challenge for me is that a lot of the writing is done by myself. Lyrics, arrangements, instruments, etc.  And I sometimes AGONIZE over it and internalize a lot of that pressure.  I feel like I need to learn to not be so hard on myself.

What was the last song you listened to?

Outside of the songs I’m working on, or whacky songs my kids want to hear, probably 42.26 by Childish Gambino.  I really like the vibe of that whole album.

Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?

Probably MP3s because I just can’t beat the convenience of having MP3’s on my phone. Whether I’m listening to new music or working on new songs and demos having it all there really helps. I also only recently started getting into vinyl so that’s been a pretty cool experience looking for all my favorite records again.

How about this one… Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?  

Probably Spotify.  I really like the discover playlists Spotify offers because I feel like there’s more variety than Apple.  Their playlists feel more intuitive and more prone to suggest someone I haven’t heard of.

Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?

You can get at me a most social media avenues and I’d be pretty quick to respond but I’m CONSTANTLY teasing what things I have coming up and working via Instagram.  Plus it’s a pretty authentic look into my life.

Anything else before we sign off?

I’m ridiculously thankful to everyone checking out my music… also Carole Baskin is 1000% guilty.