THIS WEEK’S FEATURED #SPOTLIGHT ARTIST IS SARNIA’S JEREMY LANGILLE – HEARD DAILY AT 11:30AM DURING WEEKDAZE WITH JAY SMITH!
ABOUT JEREMY LANGILLE
Growing up, I vividly remember my dad’s bookcases of records and my older brother’s shelves of CD’s. I was always surrounded by music. I would go to my brother’s room and randomly pick 5 albums to put into his 5 CD player and hit “Play Random”. I would go on to discover Primus, Billie Holiday, Radiohead, Deftones, The Mars Volta, 311, Bob Marley, Pantera, Beastie Boys, and everything in between. I had such a glossary of music at the ready and when that same brother got a drum set it was all I wanted to play, which I often did whenever he wasn’t around. Fast forward to grade 8 and I got my first bass, took a few lessons, and immediately started to write songs. Eventually I bought an acoustic guitar and taught myself chords and how to play but enjoyed not knowing and having to figure it out on my own. It keeps a level of innocent simplicity, either that or it just keeps me ignorantly unskilled.
I spent several years while away at school from ever playing or writing and in 2018 I found myself mentally in a hole, so I started to mess around with GarageBand. I unintentionally found the healing powers of writing. At the time I really hated my voice and didn’t want to touch a guitar or any “band” instruments. So, I bought myself a cheap little Midi keyboard and started to learn my way around Garageband. All the different instruments I had at my fingertips; it blew my mind. I had an entire orchestra at my disposal! It really flicked a lightbulb in my head and at the time I was so into retro-video games and Chillwave music that I started to write some electronic music under the name UNDO. It felt refreshing to not have to sing or write lyrics and my philosophy musically for UNDO was to never undo anything. If I made a mistake recording, I would keep it and tweak the sounds so it came out sounding cool. It’s not like it mattered and music without rules is much more fun. Rules are boring.
Eventually I began playing with my guitar again and learning mic techniques on my own. I wrote the guitar riff for Garden Raider with an acoustic guitar and a microphone using a heavily distorted electric guitar amp sound that gave a ton of feedback. I had no idea what I was doing and it was awesome. I just kept writing and writing and trying new things and always telling myself that it wasn’t going to be good but that that didn’t matter. To keep on writing until it was good, and then write some more. After a while it felt like an illness, I couldn’t stop. I would deprive myself of sleep having a verse on repeat over and over trying to perfect things. I can get pretty obsessed but with how simplistic my stuff is you think I could just make that in a few hours but for the 4 songs I have posted under Best Worst Luck I have hundreds that just didn’t work out and thousands of hours spent trying to perfect them. I love every second of that process. Nothing on earth compares to writing and playing music.
The name Best Worst Luck came from what I would consider a lot of things that happen to me. I do have a lot of luck but it’s that kind of luck where if I buy a scratch ticket, I will never win big but I will always win the money back that I spent. So, yeah, it’s lucky, but it’s the lowest level of luck.
The music that has inspired me the most is probably Radiohead, Deftones, Nirvana, The Beatles, and Mac Demarco. I love how Thom Yorke and Chino sing their melodies, and I love how Mac Demarco did everything by himself. Nirvana and The Beatles were amazing at writing catchy hooks but I also think to myself how even with just my laptop I have so much sophistication at my fingers tips so what is my excuse for not writing amazing music?
I am currently working on a third project that I am calling Castor in Vade. It kind of combines the Best Worst Luck and UNDO sounds together and lyrically is a little more obscure and picturesque. I am hoping to play some shows this summer with a mixture of all of my sounds. I have written so much during the pandemic that I need to get out and see what people think.
Life goals: Record a full-length album, write an OST for a video game, have a full orchestra play something that I wrote, and be able to make a living writing music.
