We sat down with one of our many favorite bands on Songtradr, Magic Wands, to talk about how they got started, their latest album and what they have hiding up their sleeves for the future.
Kyle Warner: How did you get together and meet?
Dexy: We met online after Chris found a song I’d posted and we kept in touch until I eventually left LA and moved to where he was in Nashville so we could record music.
Chris: It was like a bright flash of flowers and rainbows.
KW: I have to ask, where’d you come up with the name Magic Wands? Harry Potter fans?
Dexy: Chris mailed me a Magic Wand as a gift before we met. Six months after we started playing, we were on tour in the UK and ended up in Edinburgh at this castle where Harry Potter was written. I’ve only seen the first one.
Chris: I’ve never seen Harry Potter but there is a rumor that someone from the movie is a fan of ours.
KW: Your sound is dope, trippy, ethereal, but also driving and powerful. You describe it as “lovewave” what does that mean and how did that sound manifest?
Dexy: I can’t think of anything better than love and the sound of big crashing waves. That’s what sound music feels like to me.
Chris: Yes it’s like a big crashing wave of love coming down. We also tune our music to a different pitch than most bands.
KW: I saw that you played at Desert Stars Festival recently? What’s it like playing to such a huge festival crowd? Does it raise your performance to another level?
Dexy: Playing under the stars to a large crowd of people dancing is always a good time. Any big stage pushes you to take it up a notch and each time we do, it raises the bar for us. It just keeps getting better and better.
Chris: Yeah and Desert Stars was a great festival because it was a festival of good music with actual fans of good music. It was a lot of fun.
KW: You’ve had great success with licensing, having your music appear in Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Grey’s Anatomy just to name a few. Do you feel like you’ve found a recipe to getting your music licensed?
Dexy: Not really a recipe, we just write songs and do our own thing. People find our music and want to put it in their shows because they are fans or just discovered us and end up becoming fans.
Chris: Definitely, there’s no licensing recipe, you never know who or what will think your song would work great for their thing.
KW: What’s the feeling like seeing your music on such a big, mainstream stage like that?
Dexy: We aim high so in looking at that, we see we’re on point and what we do is working. We don’t make what we consider to be mainstream music so getting our songs in mainstream television and commercials is an accomplishment.
Chris: Hearing our songs anywhere is always kind of trippy. Or even when one of our friends is like, “I heard two of your songs while I was out shopping.” It’s like, really? Which two songs?
KW: Do you feel like these appearances on major TV shows have elevated you as a band?
Dexy: Yeah on some levels for sure. Exposure is always a good thing because we make a lot of new fans that way.
Chris: Definitely in a lot of ways. Even more with being in video games, actually.
KW: You just dropped “Jupiter”, which is awesome, what was your vision for that album?
Dexy: The vision was to make a live record so we expanded from an electronic duo to a four piece and got a bassist and drummer. Our first record Aloha Moon was very 80’s influenced with synths and drum machines. Jupiter is more 90’s with lots of layered guitars.
Chris: It was to be live and bigger sounding than the previous record.
KW: What’s next for the Magic Wands? More shows coming up?
Dexy. We’re working on our third album and have some LA shows coming up. We just got asked to tour the UK in the spring, so that’s a possibility. Also, we have a new record coming out in late May 2017! Stay tuned!
Chris: We’d like to do a box set. We’ve got about three albums of songs we’ve recorded that we never released. But our focus is on this new record, the new songs are kind of a mix of our first and second record.
