Dawn Chorus: Carefully Crafted

Christian Sudweeks, Will Fait, and Chris Weed discuss the art of creating music, what it means to be a musician, and how Dawn Chorus @dawnchorusslc came to be.

With their first two tracks released in February, Dawn Chorus is now one of Salt Lake’s newest, and most innovative indie bands. The band of three composes, mixes, and records all of their music themselves. The result of their independent artistry is what I can only describe as carefully-crafted music.

Chris Weed

“I have great respect for artists who own a big project and that’s what we try to do as well. We’re entirely self-produced. We’ve built this thing from the ground up so every instrument you hear on our track is what we’ve composed ourselves, recorded by us— in house.”

— Christian

As a band, the three have incredible unity, permitting the songwriting process to flow easily. When it comes to recording the music, Chris leads on vocals, Will is on the guitar, and Christian works the bass and final mixing. Occasionally the band will mix live piano or keyboarding into a track Drums are added electronically.

“One thing I like about working with these guys is that there’s no desire to pigeon hole ourselves into one genre. A willingness to explore other genres and draw influences from other placement. Stylistically our songs vary from track to track.”

— Will

The guys of Dawn Chorus draw inspiration from diverse artists such as The Beatles, Grateful Dead, Radiohead, Talk Talk and Frank Zappa to name a few.

Christian Sudweeks

“We say we’re indie, but we really all have different tastes in music and we bring those flavors to the table.”

— Christian

“I like Jazz music a lot and I like sneaking a jazz cord into a very listenable song so someone who wouldn’t normally listen to jazz doesn’t really know what’s happening to them.”

— Chris

Their roots in music go deep — starting with piano, guitar, and voice lessons from ages as young as nine. But the guys all agree that music lessons did little to teach them the real art of music. Like most great lessons of life, that must be self-taught.

“I feel like a lot of what I learned in lessons had to be unlearned because formal lessons don’t really teach you about the art of making music or the harmony behind it but more about how fast you can play a certain scale. They treat it more like an athletic event or something.”

— Christian

Will Fait

At the end of the day, Dawn Chorus is just a group of three unassuming guys who enjoy making music with the hope that it can inspire emotion and self-reflection from their listeners.

“I think the romance is in creating the songs. We get really excited about creating something original and I feel like that objective’s really pure.”

— Christian

Their next single, 777, will be released March 22.

Listen to Dawn Chorus’ previously released tracks, Rain and Undone.