This week the SMU Campus Weekly sat down with Drayter, an up and coming group from Dallas. Formed in 2008 by Cole Schwartz, the group recently added Liv Miner as their lead vocalist and plan to release their first album Dec. 18. The two are known for their high-energy shows and fun loving style. Here is what they had to say.
SMU Campus Weekly: You’re both pretty young, what made you want to pursue music as a career at that age?
Liv Miner: Well I’m 22 and I’ve been playing in bands since I was 10 years old. I grew up in a family of musicians so there’s not been anything else that I ever wanted to do with my life, which is a plus and a minus because it’s a really hard industry to make it in but it’s absolutely what I’m passionate about. There’s not really anything that would make me give up, it’s just always what I’ve wanted to do.
Cole Schwartz: I’ll kind of piggyback on that. It’s been the same for me, ever since I first started playing music and taking up guitar as a hobby, I haven’t really thought of anything else that I’d want to do besides playing music.
SMUCW: How has life changed with the emergence of Drayter?
CS: Well it’s pretty cool. I mean I don’t think Liv and I are very egotistical people by nature but it is really cool to meet new people at shows and see more engagement as we play bigger shows and put out new music and stuff, so it’s just really cool to see the progression of our hard work pay off after a certain amount of time. It’s cool to finally start seeing some growth.
SMUCW: Do you have a favorite place to perform?
CS: My favorite place is probably the Granada Theatre in Dallas. I literally have nothing bad to say about the venue, lighting’s good, sound’s good, staff is very, very professional and nice. It’s just a great place to play.
LM: Yeah I have to agree with that. That was probably the most fun show I’ve played with Drayter and with Granada, it’s so fun to play in your hometown and like he said the staff at Granada and with everybody it’s just a really at home vibe and I dig it, it was a great show.
SMUCW: Do you ever get nervous before a performance?
CS: I wouldn’t say I get necessarily nervous, I did when we were first starting out obviously because I was so new to it but I think Liv can agree with me after playing so many shows after such a long period of time it’s not really a nervous feeling it’s just more of excitement. We’re just ready to go on stage, it’s what we love to do and it’s super fun so we just look at it like excitement jitters or getting super pumped up but I wouldn’t really say nervous.
SMUCW: Do you have any good memories from the road?
LM: Well just traveling with Cole is a very interesting experience because you have shows where we have to drive five or six hours to get to the gig and it’s fun. We blast the most outrageous music ever, we have a genre change every hour so we’ll be blasting death metal to rap to techno, it’s really fun but we’ve had some cool moments after the shows. We recently played a festival with Three Days Grace so getting to hang backstage with them after the show was pretty cool.
SMUCW: Do you have a lot of different musical inspirations?
CS: For me personally I would say I do. I kind of draw from bands I like listening to, bands like Death Heaven, Power Trips, like a lot of heavier bands. Obviously we’re not a super heavy band but I think that in everything you can find something cool to take away whether it be a certain way they play a chord or just the emotion of the song.
SMUCW: When did you start playing music?
CS: I think I picked up the guitar in first grade so it’s coming up on 11 years now I would say? There were a couple years obviously throughout elementary school and middle school where I put it down for a while because you know, I was super lazy and, like every kid, they don’t really want to practice so I kind of took a two or three year break and got back into it.
