If you’re looking for a fresh sound which can get you hyper, make you laugh or make you bop your head to the beat, then you’re looking at the right place! The Medic Droid have been around since the end of 2006 and are definitely hear to stay. With their hit Fer Sure, the 3 boys, Chris, Hekti and Johnny, are currently working on their album and hope to tour towards the end of the year. I was lucky enough to get a quick chat with the amazing Hekti 3000, otherwise known as Hector, to tell me a bit about the band, their aims and his biggest fears…
Hello!! Can you please introduce yourself?
Hey! I’m Hector and Chris over here is sleeping…and we’re part of The Medic Droid.
What got you started in the music business?
We’ve always liked music and wanted to be in a band for a long time. We’ve been in other bands before and then Chris came up with the idea of wanting to start The Medic Droid and he had talked to me about it before. He wrote Fer Sure and I was in another band and the singer for that band was a producer and we came and we recorded Fer Sure and from there we just started the whole band.
How did you come up with the name???
The name is actually from Star Wars, the movie.
You guys are Star Wars fans then?
Yeah pretty much!
So how did you pick which genre to sing in??
I don’t know…I guess we just write what we want to hear. We don’t pick a certain style, we just write whatever we think sounds good.
Who plays what in the band?
We all write the songs, Chris sings, I play the keyboard, the guitar and all the programming and Johnny also plays the keyboard and guitar.
Why should people be encouraged to listen to your music?
I don’t know…I guess it’s up to them. We like playing what we like to hear and what sounds good. I guess pretty much our style of music and the fact that we don’t set up boundaries, formulas or certain styles of music. We just do whatever sounds good to us! We like techno, rock, metal, punk, pop, we like a lot of styles so we incorporate whatever sounds good to us! Dance beats with a bit of rock, a bit abstract!
Do you plan to tour soon?
Definitely! Right now we’re finishing our album and it should be finished hopefully by fall. We’re recording 6-7 songs for the CD and once the album is done, we’re going to be touring hopefully all over the world. We’re definitely touring all over the US, Canada, we’d love to tour in Mexico, and our biggest goal would be to tour Europe and Australia too!
What’s the recording process like?
We record ourselves, we do everything. Technically it can be a bit time consuming, like I’ll think of an idea…I mean I have all this in my room, we only use apple computers, we use a lot of different keyboards and programs, so Johnny does a lot of music and I do a lot of music and then we collaborate it together. I’ll show him a beat I get, I’ll burn it, give him the files and he’ll add music to it or the other way around. Once we get ideas going, we all collaborate. To get a solid song, it’s a long process but right now, we’re finishing a lot of songs. We’re currently recording 6-7.
Do you prefer recording or performing live?
They both have their fun parts to them…recording is actually making the song, but playing live is awesome just coz of the energy in the crowd and being able to perform for people but we’ve never played a show as The Medic Droid. We’ve played shows in our other bands but not in this one.
So are you going to start playing shows after the album is released?
Actually we plan on playing shows sooner than that; we just plan on touring once the album drops.
What do you hope to achieve by the end of this year?
Definitely having the album out and hopefully touring out of the country. Our biggest goal is to get the album out and tour. If we can do that, that would be amazing! It was never really meant to be anything big, it was just Chris’ side project. We were all and still are in other bands now. We’re all in another band, Vanity Light. It’s our other band and it’s more of a rock electronica band. We’re actually performing at the Warped Tour with the other band.
Isn’t it hard to share your dedication between 2 bands?
It is but it’s a lot easier because our band is in the other band and we have it set that the priority is what we got to do. We still make time for the other band. The other 2 members in Vanity Light know that our dedication is split. I guess that turned into our side project technically.
What are your inspirations when you work?
Different styles of music, life experiences, we have a lot of bands that we listen to. Johnny used to be in a death metal band and he toured for 6 years. We all listen to everything from classical, to techno, to pop, to punk. There are a million artists we like, even popular ones like Britney Spears. So a bit of everything inspires us.
What’s your process of song writing?
Well Chris writes all the lyrics. Fer sure was actually a joke making fun of Scene Kids but I guess everyone dug the song. But that’s mainly Chris. Me and Johnny deal with the music, although Chris has a lot of ideas for it too. Like what we should do, parts we should change etc. me and Johnny also sing back up vocals, harmony etc…it’s a team effort. Everything is pretty equal.
Is Chris awake then?
Kind of…
So how long have you been singing Chris?
Ever since I was little…I’ve always sung.
Okay back to Hekti who’s awake then! Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Hopefully still involved in the music scene. If I’m not in a band, I’d definitely like to do some producing. We do everything ourselves, produce and record everything ourselves. In 10 years, I’d still be producing bands…maybe I’ll just be a producer. Who knows?
If you could work with anyone/any band, who would it be?
Michael Jackson!! We’re really influenced by him, his style…he is the king of pop!!
Myspace has been your prime promotion technique and a way to get yourselves known. Do you support myspace?
Yeah definitely! A lot of people look at it as a bad thing but the music industry is changing so much, it’s a lot of internet basis. In major labels, the first thing they do is look at their myspace to see views, plays, friends etc…it shows if they’re popular and interested etc. I see it as a good thing definitely.
What are the bad aspects of the music business?
In a lot of companies, the music isn’t as important as the selling. There are still labels that care about the music but other major labels just look at the popularity and as soon as you aren’t popular anymore, they’ll drop you. It’s a risky thing to get involved with.
What makes it all worth it?
The fans! If you can tour and get to meet everyone and perform for them, and make a living off of that…if you can do what you love and get paid for it. Not even making a whole lot of money, just enough to survive and pay the bills. To me that’s worth it.
Do you think that once you get fame and success, you’ll still be the same person?
I think we’d all be the same and we’d all appreciate what we have even more, how hard we’ve worked for it and waited for it and how long we worked for it, dreamed about it and tried.
How can your fans contact you?
Only the band will check the myspace and we try to reply to everything we get. Sometimes it gets hard because we literally get 100’s of messages a day. We just started an AIM name and only the band goes on that and we login and chat. That get’s hard too because we get flooded with IM’s the moment we get online but we try to get back to everyone but even that is impossible sometimes, even when we spend hours on there! we also started our own chat room on our myspace page so if you go there and login, you can chat to people and we go on there too and have giant group chats and answer questions etc!
And now some random questions to get to know you better!!
First of all…word association! Say the first thing that comes to your mind…
Cat
Tiger
Ice cream
Dairy queen!!
Electricity
Light bulb
Cow
Milk
Internet
Myspace
Music
Life!!!
Britney spears
Toxic
Emo
Misunderstood
Scene
The hair!
The medic droid
Me, chris and Johnny…lol
Beach
Water and I’m scared of water….
Biggest fear then?
Water…I like swimming pools but I don’t like deep pools, the ocean, rivers or lakes…I won’t get in them! And I’m pretty picky about the water I drink…I only drink purified water. I guess the deepness and the sense of unknown?
If you had to eat only one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Tacos…
What 3 items can’t you live without?
Hair straightener, lap top and cell phone…
If you were president, what would you do?
Definitely not be at war…
What would you do to make people vote for you?
Try to make everything as equal as possible and just be honest.
Favourites:
Colour- green or white
Soda- I don’t drink soda…oh wait cream soda is good!
Chocolate bar- I don’t really like chocolate…but Hershey’s white chocolate with cookies and cream is amazing!
Ice cream- I’m lactose intolerant…but I love it!
Website- myspace…lol
Magazine- Alternative Press
Vacation Spot- being on tour ?
Season- fall
What’s your best piece of advise?
Be honest in everything you do
Do you have a personal myspace where people can talk to you?
www.myspace.com/hectoriousmaximus
