Brother and sister Satchel and Shaine make up a Little Loud. With a unique sound and a friendly vibe, this duo has been interested in making music since a young age. They write and produce all their own music, perform locally and in other cities occasionally. Here’s a recent Q and A about their musical path with guest contributor Madison Castagnola.
Q: Your name is so unique, how did you come up with it?
A: Satchel: “It’s funny, our name actually came accidentally from our mom. My friend and I were jamming downstairs in the basement of our house, even before Shaine joined the group, and my mom yelled ‘hey, it’s a little loud!’ and we immediately knew that HAD to be our name.”
Q: Did you have a background in music before starting?
A: Satchel: “It’s weird, pretty much no one in our family is musical but both of us are super into it. With production, you realize that a lot of it needs to be self taught, and you have to really love it to put in the time that it takes to really get better. Sometimes it can get difficult, even now, in the process of making a song, especially because we try to hold ourselves to the highest standards, but it’s all worth it when the final draft sounds perfect.”
Shaine: “We had some amazing people to consult, but the processes of songwriting, recording, mastering etc were all things we familiarized ourselves with.”
Satchel: “We are both math majors/computer science minors, and we work in tech. It’s awesome how music and music production overlap with that field, especially nowadays. And of course it’s super fun to make awesome songs!”
Q: How do you come up with your songs and lyrics?
A: Satchel: “It usually starts with a certain feeling that provides inspiration as to what the vibe of a song will be, then playing around with the guitar and keyboard until something sounds good, then putting it in Ableton and adding more chords and modifying/building it up from there. Sometimes I’ll go through that whole process and decide ‘oh man this song just isn’t good enough’ and start over from the beginning. You have to be very excited about a song for it to have any chance of making a release. Then I’ll send it over to Shaine and get her feedback and continue from there, just repeating the process until we have something great about which we are both really excited.”
Q: What do you love most about performing?
A: Satchel: “Honestly, we love the entire process, from songwriting and the moment when a melody finally comes together to production to taking it live and just seeing the audience have fun.”
Q: Does it get difficult being brother and sister in a band together?
A: Shaine: “We’re both math majors and comp sci minors, so we took many classes together and worked on projects together, and I think we have a solid team chemistry. Being in a music group together as well is definitely interesting, but good interesting. Coincidentally we’re both perfectionists too so that I think helps us, even if we don’t always agree on everything.”
Each sibling does some multitasking. Shaine plays piano while singing and Satchel is the DJ while also singing.
Q: What has been your favorite memory so far as A Little Loud?
A: Shaine: “One time I tried to get my brother to learn some choreography to one of our songs for our live shows. It was mostly just walking, but somehow walking and singing at the same time became impossible, and then the walking sparked an hour long debate about whether forwards and backwards was better than left to right, and that led to an intense introspection about whether his hips looked weird when he walked. We eventually decided to rain check the walking. I get a headache whenever I think about it, but I still plan on making us do choreography at one of our shows.”
Satchel: “That’s a tough question haha there’s so many, probably the first time people started really dancing and having fun to our music, it was at our second ever live show and both of us couldn’t stop smiling as we performed because it was just pure euphoria almost like ‘ok we’re actually doing something right yesssss’.”
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: Satchel: “Our next show is at the Holland May 26th with Ryan Cassata, so that’s going to be super fun, and we have an awesome new project coming in the next month, so around the same timeline. Additionally, in our aforementioned upcoming releases, we are featuring an awesome new vocalist, Hailey Wilson, she goes by Hailey Dawn. She’s incredibly talented and we can’t wait for these new songs to be out there.”