Hello magical friends, especially my magical patrons whose support lets me do these interviews! I’m your hostwitch Bess and this month I’m talking to someone who I think is one of my new favorite people.
So let’s get into it! Here’s “Green Eyes” by the Nargleptics.
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That was “Green Eyes” by the Nargleptics, Waylon Wolfsbane with “Whiskey & Wands” [lyrics], and Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls singing “One Last Summer” [lyrics].
“Green Eyes” was requested by my incredible patron Geoff and dedicated to “every single person who contributed to the 2024 wizard rock sampler: thank you for weaving your talent into this incredible tapestry and showing the community what you’ve got!”
Let’s get this party started! Here’s my conversation with Bryce of Neville’s Diary.
Welcome to the show, Bryce of Neville’s Diary! I am so excited to talk with you today!
Bryce: When you asked me I checked out some previous podcasts and it sounds like it’s gonna be a blast, so thank you so much for asking.
I think it’s always a good time.
Well, I’ve been excited for this interview because I know I’ve seen your name around; I think you helped out with, uh, some of the comp clubs.
Bryce: Yeah.
And you’ve got at least a couple wizard rock projects, but you’re still kind of a mystery. Like, I don’t know that I’ve met you at a convention or seen you around the Discord. I don’t know your story at all.
Bryce: Yeah, well, I, I, I think a lot of that is due to, because like, I, I’m a, I’m a teacher, naturally, so like that, that’s my job, that’s, that’s my big thing. So this wizard rock thing, back in 2008 when I started getting it going, we started playing a few things and people started asking me to play and I was like, “oh, great. This is like an extra thing for me.” It wasn’t like something I was actively going out and searching for gigs and that sort of thing. So I think that’s a lot of the reason why is like, I do this thing not to make money, not to, uh, get my name out there. It’s great if it does, but I, I, it’s mostly just fun for me. And if opportunities come, that’s great. Although I do have one passion project that I’m, uh, starting up.
Uh, I’ve got a library program that I started that sends kids on a scavenger hunt through the library, so kids learn how to navigate a library properly. ’cause you know, I don’t think enough kids go actually to a physical library anymore. They don’t know how it’s organized. So, uh, they search for horcruxes throughout the library and they have to bring ’em back to me and got some other things. And then there’s a trivia contest and then there is a Yule Ball where I reward them with house points for dancing and singing along and all that stuff. And I’ve done it a couple times and it’s been a big hit. So I’m trying to shop that around to some libraries, ’cause I think that’ll be a fun way to get me a chance to perform, but also too, just a chance to get, uh, kids in a library.
That is very fun sounding. I imagine a lot of libraries will be interested.
Bryce: I hope so. Yeah.
But how did you first get into wizard rock? You said 2008?
Bryce: Yeah, around, around then, I, uh, it was actually a student of mine came up to me and shared with me Harry and the Potters. They’re like, “oh, you gotta check out this band.” I was like, “wait, there’s a band called Harry and the Potters?” So I checked it out and I listened, I was like, “this is really cool. I wanna try it.” So I talked to my friend Tim, and we’ve done some musical things in the past together, so we formed up, we wrote songs together, I played all the instruments, recorded ’em, and we wrote the lyrics together. And then Tim was our main vocalist, and that’s how the Quaffle Kids was formed. Quaffle Kids, we made a CD, we performed at some conventions like Leakycon. We, uh, did Wrock Chicago, we did that. Um, there was one in Toronto. I can’t remember what that one was.
It was a long, long time ago. But, uh, we did that. And so that’s how we got started in that. I met a whole bunch of people through that sort of convention sort of thing. And while we were doing this, I decided to write a couple songs on my own from Neville’s perspective, ’cause I think Neville Longbottom is, is the best hero, is the greatest character in the Harry Potter series. So I wrote some songs from there. And at the first Wrockstock I decided, “oh, I’m gonna perform a couple songs for someone that was like, oh, I wanna hear more.” So this person named Jen, she asked me to play a couple songs just out on a bench out in the woods. So I did that and some people started crowding around and listened. So I was like, okay, I’ll maybe record some more songs.
So I put together an album, an LP of just acoustic things. And then after that I was like, “wait, this is fun. What would some of these songs sound like if I did full band?” So then I started recording full band stuff, and then I got asked to play Wockstock a few more times. Did Wrock Chicago as Neville’s Diary and the Quaffle Kids. And then, through all of those other things, my name got out there and I met so many great people. I met people from, of course, the big names I met, like Matt Maggiacomo from Whopping Willows and Lauren Fairweather, that sort of stuff. But I also met people from the Chocolate Frogs and the Blibbering Humdingers, the Nifflers, Tonks and the Aurors, Hawthorn and Holly. And through those, those different things, we, uh, were able to meet up and, like, I would play some instruments as part of their live band when we would play at shows and, vice versa, we would, we would just help each other out come live shows, ’cause lots of us were just making music ourselves in our homes and we didn’t have bands. So anytime we would get together, we’d just ask each other, “hey, can you fill in as my drummer for this band, for this performance?” And that’s how that worked out.
One of the things I’ve learned through these interviews is that drummers in wizard rock are a rare and precious resource that are generally communally shared.
Bryce: Yeah. Actually, almost all of those other groups that I just mentioned, they asked me to play drums on their records. It’s, it’s really, really fun because, uh, I think with drumming especially, I can morph my way through their sound a little bit better than my guitar playing and whatnot. I’m, I’m not a very good guitar player and that sort of thing, but I feel like with drumming I can change things up and match their style. That way, I get exposed to a whole bunch of different styles of music, and hopefully it helps them out too, just come up with, uh, maybe some other things too. Eddie from Hawthorn and Holly, I played drums a different way than he was expecting me to. He is like, “oh, well that changes the song, so we gotta do this.” And so it was really, really neat how he had a idea, my drumming changed that idea just a little bit, and then he created this other thing based on that. Uh, and it was really, really fun. And the fact that we never sat in the same room to make that happen.
The story of Jen and the park bench is a very cool one. Do you have any other neat stories from any of the conventions? Wrockstock, Wrock Chicago?
Bryce: Oh. Oh yeah. It’s stuff that took me by surprise. How much other people were enjoying songs about Neville Longbottom and my singing, ’cause I, and my songwriting, ’cause I don’t think that I’m that great of a singer. And so it was nice that other people were enjoying it. At the third Wrockstock, I think it was, the Quaffle Kids didn’t play at that one, I just went as a concert goer, but what they had is they had a side stage in what they called the Wampum Willow. It was like this teepee sort of structure, and it was for, like, acoustic things. And so I was like, “okay, great.” I signed up to do that and I walked into the room and it was packed and I was just like, “what!?” I, I brought 25 CDs. That was all I had in my, in, in my, in my bag. I was like, “okay…” And play the show. The crowd was really into it. They were so nice and so supportive. They were singing along when I asked for crowd participation. And then by the end of it, I ran out of CDs, and I was just like, “what is going on?” It was not expected that I would have that many people that would like my songs that I wrote about Neville Longbottom. So that’s probably one of my favorite memories about, uh, just a surprise.
It sounds completely magical.
Bryce: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Especially with all the great people you meet at these cons. Oh my gosh, it’s fantastic.
Now, I always like to find out why people choose the band names that they do, because sometimes it’s self-evident, Harry and the Potters ,because they wanted to be, you know, the main character of their story. And sometimes they’re a little more of a, a path to get there, like Creevey Crisis.
Bryce: Yeah. So the way I came up with the name was, first of all, it had to do with Neville, ’cause like I said, Neville is the greatest character. There’s nothing you can tell me to convince me otherwise, that Neville is not the best character in that series. So I wanted to let people know that the songs were gonna be about Neville, but then I was also like, “I wanna add a magical aspect to it.” So the original concept was that Neville’s diary was enchanted and it was able to sing through these very personal thoughts that he was having and they were able to make those vocal. And so Neville contacted me, Bryce Cone, to say, “hey, can you provide music for my diary that wants to sing? “And I was like, “sure!” So that was the concept was the diary is actually the thing that is singing and I’m providing the music for the diary.
Now, as you said, Neville’s Diary is actually the second project, Quaffle Kids came first. How did that one happen with Tim?
Bryce: Oh, <laugh>, the name of Quaffle Kids came about, there’s this band I really, really love that, especially at the time when I was in college, was The Getup Kids. They’re from Lawrence, Kansas. They’re an emo band that was just absolutely fantastic. I went and I saw several shows of theirs, and Tim just liked that name. He liked the “Kids” aspect. He, he just thought that was fun. So he was like, “what if we take something like that?” And, you know, quidditch is a huge part of the wizarding world, so he was like, “what if we incorporate quidditch somehow?” And so that’s where Quaffle Kids came from. And then our first album, he made a suggestion of Bludgers and Broomsticks, so it’s kind of like that old Disney movie that was really similar, but we are able to incorporate the quidditch in that. And then we have a song, of course, about quidditch on the record called “Quidditch Time.”
You mentioned that, I think every one of the Neville’s Diary songs is the diary communicating? So it starts with a little bit of a, a diary entry.
Bryce: Yep.
Does the song come first? Does the, the journal entry come first? How do you create them? What inspires them? Are they harder than music?
Bryce: <laugh> Oh yeah, I actually think the diary entry is harder than music. That’s a, that’s a fun question to ask. First of all, I don’t like writing lyrics to begin with. I’m an instrumentalist by trade. I, I studied saxophone in college. So instrumental music is my thing. Writing lyrics is way harder because I think it exposes a lot more of yourself. And it, it lets people into who you really, really are. And even though lots of these songs are from Neville’s perspective, let’s be honest, most of these songs are really about me. <laugh> Like the way, I feel like I see a lot of myself in Neville, all the self-doubt, the self-deprecation, all that kind of stuff. I feel that’s why I latched onto him so much is ’cause every, every day, every day I feel some part of that. Like there’s something, “oh shoot, I could have done that better, why am I not better at this?”
And then to see Neville be such a hero and to be like, even though alllll that stuff is going on, he’s able to fight through it, and he’s able to be someone that actually the main trio depend on. I mean, Neville was The Guy in year seven at Hogwarts. There’s no way there anything would’ve happened to the good at Hogwarts if it weren’t for Neville. So when it comes to writing the lyrics, that’s what I see. I see a lot of myself in Neville. So. The lyrics have to come first, though. Uh, the germination is kind of like, if you would, it’s like a, a a diary entry of sorts. Like that’s the idea. But I don’t write the diary entry until the song is completely over. I wanna make sure that the lyrics are the most important part of the words that are happening. And the diary entry is just an intro saying, hey, this is what’s going to happen. This is where Neville came from when he decided to write these lyrics down and to have the diary sing ’em.
It’s a very cool, unusual concept for sure. Was it at all inspired by like the Whomping Willows and the idea of the music coming from the magical world but through you rather than like a direct character one-to-one?
Bryce: That’s awesome that you made that connection ’cause yes, 100%. One hundo p. That is correct. Yeah. I, uh, ’cause that was, that was of course one of the first bands that I listened to when I was figuring out this wizard rock thing. And so I saw that concept and I was like, “that is really cool.” It’s not like Neville himself is singing, ’cause I don’t think Neville would ever get in front of a microphone and sing himself. So how would he communicate these feelings that he has? He would probably have to go through some like intermediary. What if it was his diary? What if his diary was the thing that created all this stuff? Because the words are already there. They have all of Neville’s most, you know, inner thoughts going on. And so what if, uh, what if the diary was the singer?
For your performances, did you ever consider a diary costume a la Ludo Bagman?
Bryce: <laugh> No, but now I do <laugh>. I kind of wanna make that happen. That would be great. No, but I, I didn’t ever think of a diary costume. But what I do have is, uh, at a show, uh, someone who’s been a, a friend of mine for a long time, she made a diary for me that was like, oh, here’s a diary entry that Neville made on this and it’s about going to see like a Neville’s show, a Neville’s Diary show. And I was like, wait a minute, this is fantastic. So I took that same notebook and now, at every single show, I put it out on a table, I write a little diary entry about it, like the date where the show is at, who asked me to play, what I’m excited about for it. And then during the show I say, “hey, I wanna meet you guys, I wanna meet the crowd. So I’m gonna be over there and if you could write your name down into the diary and what house you belong to. That way I can remember all the great people that I met at this show.”
And it was really, really cool. I just, I just looked at it, uh, at our last show and I saw some people from like three or four years ago that I was like, “oh my gosh, I can’t believe *they* were at the show.” And then actually at that same show, I saw that same person there. So they came to two shows and I was like, “oh, that’s really cool.” That means a whole lot to be able to make those connections through this music. ‘Cause that was the thing I loved about the wizard rock community was just, you got to meet so many just awesome, awesome people. And I’m still friends with a lot of those people that I met at those cons in 2008. What is that, 16 years ago? So I still talk to some of those people. It’s great.
I was, uh, delighted going through your pre-interview notes, because you mentioned that you are a band teacher and I was a band kid. And then you went on and said that although Quaffle Kids is formed with a friend of yours, Neville’s Diary’s band is, I think you said, former students.
Bryce: Yeah. For the records that I made, the, the first two LPs and the first two EPs, I was playing all the instruments. ‘Cause I mean, gosh, back in the day when I started this stuff, I was cranking out a record every single year, ’cause I was like, “oh, the next con’s coming up. I gotta have new material. The next con’s coming up, I gotta have material.” So I made all of the records myself, played all the instruments. And then I would just either play an acoustic show or, like I mentioned earlier, I would just find out who else was playing at this con and be like, “hey, can you play for me at this con?” But as I stopped going to as many cons and started getting more gigs like locally, uh, I was like, “I’d love to play with a full band. I need people to help fill in my band.”
So it started with a drummer, Alex Lawrence, who was our center snare for <laugh> for a couple years in marching band. And he had just turned 18. And I was like, “hey, I need someone to play drums for me. I just got asked to do this mini tour with Steph Anderson of Tonks and the Aurors and I’d really love to have someone just providing percussion for me. Can you join me?” And he was like, “yeah, sure.” So that’s how it started. Just Alex playing a Cajon while I played a guitar and we did a three city tour with, with Tonks and the Aurors. And then I was like, “okay, cool. So I got a drummer, what about if I add a bass player?” So I asked one of our former drum majors who happens to also have been a friend of Alex’s. So Brian Jones became the bass player for Neville’s Diary.
And then we added a guitar player. And this guy happened to play trumpet and baritone for us when we were in school. And they were all friends already. They actually participated in a battle of bands that I put on when those students were in high school. I put on a battle of bands for the school. So I was like, “okay, they already know how to rock ’cause they’ve done the stuff. What if they came and joined me?” So we had a band and then we kept adding, uh, changing the, the uh, lineup a little bit here and there based on who could play. But yeah, so now, the Neville’s Diary live band is made up of nothing but former students of mine. And it’s really cool, ’cause I knew every single one of them when they were 11 years old, they first came into my classroom and they were so tiny and so just, not different from who they have become, but it was great to see who they became later on in life. And now I get to hang out with them, I get to travel with them, I get to joke around with them. Our, our rehearsals are ridiculously fun <laugh> ’cause we’re just goofing around and it’s so fun to see them in that environment as now almost 30-year-old individuals. It’s, it’s really, really, really fun. And it, it’s honestly probably one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me, to get to know them as adults.
In my previous interview, Daniel Kelly was saying that his kids are like, “music’s not cool,” ’cause it’s cool to the adults in their life. So what was that conversation like with your band when you were like, “come join Harry Potter band?” Were they immediately like, “this is the coolest thing ever?” Or were they like, “I don’t know. No, I’m, I’m too cool for, for fantasy books.”
Bryce: <laugh> Uh, well luckily, um, Alex and Tyler are already Harry Potter fans. Like, Tyler was actually at some Neville’s Diary shows in the crowd, dressed up in his robes. And so I was like, “oh, we need another guitar player. What about Tyler? He likes Harry Potter.” So that was, that was great. And like I said, they performed in a battle of bands at our school and uh, what would I do at the battle of the bands is, a teacher band would actually open the show. So they’d seen me playing rock and roll already. So it was a very easy thing. Now, some of my students now, who haven’t seen me in that role, the younger students, yeah, they’re, they’re like, “what’s going on?” So that’s really, really cool to see that sort of thing.
This looks like the perfect place to put “Anything” by QuickSpell, along with a few other songs.
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You just heard “Anything” from QuickSpell [lyrics], the Misbehavin’ Maidens and “Slytherins are Misunderstood” [lyrics], along with “Aim for the Head” by Tonks & the Aurors.
And now you’re going to hear more from Bryce!
I am now a little bit thrown off on Neville’s Diary’s timeline. ‘Cause I checked your Bandcamp and there’s two albums there.
Bryce: Mhm.
And one is from 2008 and one is from 2020.
Bryce: Mhm.
So I had assumed that there was like a decade long break in there.
Bryce: There is.
But it sounds–
Bryce: Yeah
–like you’ve been doing a lot in that time. It wasn’t just, you went off and did other things.
Bryce: Right. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, on Bandcamp, I’ll admit, I am the worst with self-promoting <laugh>. I, I hate the sitting down behind a desk and doing that sort of stuff. I, I would much rather get out there and get my hands dirty. Like I, I tell students especially, “hey, give me any job. Gimme the filthiest job.” I will gladly clean a toilet more so than sit behind a desk and do work. I cannot stand that. So, when it comes to this sort of thing in self-promoting, honestly I have not put a lot on Bandcamp, but I released four records right in a row, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, four records all in a row. And then I did take a decade. It wasn’t until 2020 then again that I released the Floo Fighters EP, which came about in a fun and natural sort of way with, uh, my live band.
They were all fans of Foo Fighters. And so what I decided to do while we’re rehearsing, “oh, why don’t we just write a quick little parody of one of the Foo Fighter songs?” And we changed it up every single show, we would do a d-different parody, and it would be like a verse in and a chorus of a Foo Fighter song. And so after a while we had this collection of Foo Fighters parodies, and I just thought, “what if I just wrote a couple more verses and we recorded the entire song?” So that’s how that came to be. We already had the material essentially, and I decided to just write a few more things. And it was really cool, ’cause this was the first time that the live band was actually on the record. Uh, it wasn’t me playing the drums in my pitiful way. It was Alex Lawrence who could play “Everlong” in an amazing way that there’s no way that I could ever play Everlong to be like Dave Grohl or to be like Taylor Hawkins. I can’t play like that, but Alex can. And so that was really, really cool to be able to see that sort of thing happen.
So I’m going through your Bandcamp and the ‘Pedia Archive and you said there were four albums.
Bryce: Mhm.
Where are the other two?
Bryce: Yeah, I gotta get on my, I gotta get on that. I gotta do something with that. Which ones do you see?
So on Neville’s Diaries Bandcamp, there’s Things Will Get Better, and of course Floo Fighters.
Bryce: Yep. First and last record so far. It’s a, it’s a bookend. So you’re missing all the pages in between, huh?
And then, uh, Least Expected is in the Archive.
Bryce: Oh, great. Okay. Cool, yeah.
So, you said you released those albums; where did they go? Were they just on MySpace? Is this lost Neville’s Diary?
Bryce: There you go, sister. Yeah, they’re on MySpace. Like I said, I’m not, I’m not one for self-promoting and whatnot, so I have not updated that stuff. ‘Cause especially to like, I loved the actual like con circuit and whatnot, meeting individuals and that shows, I would say, “hey, when you buy this record, you are signing a contract with me that you’re gonna give this record to someone else and they’re gonna give it to someone else.” Like I said, I have a day job. I love my day job. I make enough money doing that day – well, I’m a public school teacher, I don’t make a lot of money, but I make money that I can live. I don’t need this money to sell these, from these records. So, you’re supposed to share it. So back in the day, that was the thing, like people sharing CDs, oh my gosh, that doesn’t happen anymore.
Like, getting excited, be like, “hey, I heard this new band. Here’s a record,” womp, hand over a CD. Now it’s like, “oh, here’s this individual song,” or “here’s this thing that you can, this one thing that you can stream that I heard on this mix” sort of thing. I, I am definitely one for, here’s a full record from beginning to end. It tells a story. Like one of my records is a concept album called Teachers Can Rock Too. And it is, it’s about me just writing songs that I hear that I was like, “oh, that’s a kind of a neat thing” that I wrote that thing. But then there’s another concept album that is.. fanfiction? Uh, I was like, “okay, Neville became a teacher, he became the Herbology teacher. So he would still be writing diary entries, right? What would those songs be about?”
So I released a, a record called The Awkward Kid. It was an ep and actually it was, I combined two eps together, the Awkward Kid EP and Spread the Rumor EP onto one thing. So it was like full LP, it’s a 10 song thing. But that concept record was just, what would Neville be like if he was a teacher? What would he write about? And that one was probably, actually no, that one was the most autobiographical sort of thing that I’ve written, because I literally took things that I experienced in my every single day teaching career, and I put it into a song. Like one of ’em was this, a kid came up to me and said he could do a great impression of a Sasquatch and then he proceeded to do a, a Sasquatch impression. I mentioned that in my song. It’s like that those are the things I’m gonna remember, you know, not like, not like a kid who didn’t do really well or something like that. I’m gonna remember those kids that were really weird, super awkward and just were made my life really, really fun in that moment and in just enjoying the fact that I get to meet all these great people.
Well that sounds amazing and I would love to hear it.
Bryce: Alright, so that’s what I’m gonna do. That’s my homework.
<laugh>
Bryce: You just gave me my homework, teacher. I’m gonna have to do that. I got Labor Day Weekend coming up here, so maybe that’s what I’m gonna put on my to-do list. Get, get those things up on BandCamp.
I was gonna say, “no, you’re a public teacher, you have enough to do already,” but–
Bryce: <laugh>
–that does sound really good for me. So we’ll let it, we’ll let it ride.
Bryce: Okay. Will I get extra credit for doing it so quickly if I do it this weekend?
Absolutely.
Bryce: Fantastic. Always up for extra credit.
Do your band mates contribute with the, the writing? Because you said you’re an instrumentalist, so do they, do any of the lyrics, do they write their own musical pieces?
Bryce: Uh, no. Like for the most part it’s me workshopping a song on my own. I create all the different parts and then I just say, “Hey, here’s the product, let’s do this.” Uh, what we usually, typically do though is during a rehearsal there might be something that all of a sudden changes. Like maybe our drummer plays something in a different way that I didn’t expect. And it’s like, “oh, we’re gonna change up this arrangement and we’re gonna make it like this.” Or, I mean, at live shows I love to do as much stuff to get the crowd involved. So there’s lots of stuff that we do that we create in rehearsal space where we’re like, “okay, how can we make this person want to jump up and down? How are we gonna make this person shout back at us? What are we gonna do with that?”
So they really help me out a lot with that. Changing the arrangements of the tunes and helping getting crowd interaction because live music is obviously so much different than me sitting in my own basement by myself being the only contributor. So those sorts of things are really, really great with that. Now with Floo Fighters, we did have a little bit more contribution, but in that one the music was pretty much locked in. Like the Foo Fighters made those records already. They already wrote the song. So we just had to change up some of the lyrics so they would gimme some ideas for like what a song could be about. And actually I think one of ’em gave me the idea for the Floo Fighters for that Floo Fighters ep, that name. So I thought that was fun.
That is fun. I imagine being both a teacher and having been in wizard rock for so long, you probably have some really solid advice for new wizard rockers.
Bryce: The thing I’ve come to find about wizard rock, the thing that especially allured me way back when I was much younger, uh, was how helpful everyone was. I’d go to a con and there would be some people that saw me play at the last one and they would just come up and be so excited to see me and be like, “oh my gosh, that, that last show was just fantastic.” One time someone came to Notre Dame, I lived near South Bend, Indiana where Notre Dame University is. And so one of the Harry Potter clubs got some wizard rockers come and they asked me to join them. And after the show they’re like, “I wish you would’ve played more songs.” That is the thing that I found I love the most about the wizard rock community. Just how absolutely loving they were and how much they didn’t mind dumping love on you.
So the thing for a young person trying to get into wizard rock, I would say just talk to people, like ask people for help. ’cause there’s years of people doing this and there’s people that might have better knowledge of how to do stuff, just ask and they’re going to be helpful. Uh, I’m one of the most introverted people in the world, so that’s scary for me to do myself. But seriously, it is, it really is good advice because if someone came up to me and started asking me, I would happily dump my knowledge on them. Or like, I got a, an email out of the blue from, uh, Bisexual Harry, and they were like, “Hey, will you play drums for me on this song?” I was like, “Yes! I will.” ’cause I wanna help out. Like, that’s, that’s what was so great about the wizard rock community. So yeah, just talk to people, ask for help. You’ll get the help. I’ve never been turned away or been told I was being ridiculous or dumb for asking for help. It’s been the exact opposite experience for me.
So are we giving out your email at the end of this?
Bryce: <laugh> How about this? I’ll start checking my, uh, Facebook Neville’s Diary page a little bit more if that notification goes straight to my phone. Let’s do that.
<laugh> Deal. Listeners know, I like to get really concrete advice. Something about, you know, a warmup exercise or how to pick a good rhyming word or something about editing. Do you have anything like that?
Bryce: Uh, something, uh, well, lyrics take me forever. And I would say that maybe just don’t be afraid if it takes a long time. I’d like to, to come up with maybe a four line verse. I, I could stare at my page for an hour because I want to craft the best thing. And so don’t be afraid of it taking some time and take and taking a while. Uh, with editing experiment. Gosh, my first Quaffle Kids record that I made, I thought it was awesome. Let me tell you, I thought I had crafted and engineered–
And it was, let’s be clear.
Bryce: Well, thank you very much. But like from an engineering standpoint, I was like, “oh my gosh, this’s so great.” And now I listen to it, “I’m like, wow, I had no clue what I was doing.” So experiment. The only way you’re gonna get better at it is to do it and then share that stuff with people. I don’t think I’ve ever released a single song that I hadn’t sent to my friend Matt Greco of the Chocolate Frogs. I don’t think I’ve ever released one that he hadn’t heard first. So that, share it with people, let let them know and don’t, and don’t be afraid to, uh, to have people listen to your stuff.
What do you use to, to edit? Or is it called something else for music? Mix?
Bryce: No, <laugh> medit. Yeah, medit because it begin with letter M and it’s music. Mix. Uh, I start off while on just a TASCAM Portastudio, it’s a, it’s an eight track recorder. I bought it in 2004. That was like the first big boy thing I bought for myself as an adult. I was like, “all right, I’m out of college. I have a steady paycheck, I’m gonna buy myself this thing.” And that’s still what I actually record straight to. I record straight to that and then I go into a computer afterwards, I dump all those tracks onto a computer afterwards and I actually mix in video editing software. Uh, I mix in, um, Video Vegas. It’s not actual music editing software. So that’s the other thing I would say is, don’t worry about if you’re doing it the right way ’cause I’m definitely not. Especially later in my years as I’ve recorded a few more things, I’m like, I’m happy with how it’s turned out. So I think, I think some of the stuff is pretty soft. The Floo Fighter’s ep, I am over the moon with how well it turned out as far as the mixing and and editing and whatnot. So I’m really happy with that one.
Do you think it’ll be a decade before we get the next Neville’s Diary album? Or, uh, are you working on something now?
Bryce: Well, I hope it’s not gonna be a decade. The thing is now that I’ve done it for a while, my own personal expectations have gone up for a record. And so it’s like, I, I wish I could just be the kind of guy that’s just like, “you know what? I’ve got this thing in my head, I wanna put it on a record. Boom, it’s done.” But the way more I learn about the songwriting process, the more I learn about mixing, the more I learn about that sort of thing, I I want to be better. Like, I got two concepts in my head right now. I have two records that I could make if I just sat down and and did it. And, uh, one of ’em, I I don’t mind sharing with you guys. It’s another sort of fan fiction thing. What would’ve happened if Voldemort would’ve thought that Neville was the one in the prophecy?
How would everything around Hogwarts have changed? So like, would Neville have been held up to such a high level as Harry was? And if that was the case, how would that have changed? Would he have been more confident when he went to Hogwarts? Or would he still have been kind of introspective and scared because I mean, his parents still, no matter what, they would’ve still be in St. Mungo’s. So would he be… I wrote a song that he was very proud of his parents and whatnot, but you know, he didn’t let other people at Hogwarts know that his parents were there in St. Mungo’s. So it’s like, would that still be the thing? Would that still be something that kind of like haunts him and, and makes him not sure of himself? So it, it’s, it’s, it’s a really cool concept that I would love to explore more. I just gotta s– you know, get off my butt and make it happen. ’cause once I get going on projects like that, I love it. I, it’s, it’s so fun, but it’s, that’s daunting to start something like that. So I hope I can get that one going. ’cause that, that one I’m really excited about the, the concept of.
If, uh, re-releasing the other albums is your homework, maybe that’ll be like a term project.
Bryce: A term project <laugh>, there you go. I’ll do that during my summer term. You know, like they always talk in the Harry Potter books about how they had some reading to do or something over the summer. That’ll be, that’ll be my summer reading.
Uh, what about the Quaffle Kids? Are we likely to see any more of them?
Bryce: If people ask, yeah! We got asked to contribute to a compilation album through Wizrocklopedia, uh, and it was kind of like, “Hey, let’s bring back some people from a long time ago. Let’s see how they’re doing.” So we did a, like a sea shanty sort of song that we released in. We had a lot of fun.
Do Quaffle Kids have a unifying theme the way Neville’s Diary does?
Bryce: No, no. We just, we’re just a, a grab bag sort of thing when we were writing. But two things I think stuck that the audience really latched onto. So if we were to do something like that again, we would, we would kind of go for that. We did, uh, like a Irish punk sort of thing, like Flogging Molly/Dropkick Murphys. We did a song about the Common Welsh Green and like being the kindest dragon you have and you can have a pint with the Common Welsh Green. Audiences love that. I actually still perform that song with Neville’s Diary. I either bust out my flute or I have one of my other former students bust out his tin whistle and we do a good old Irish jig during that. And the other one was “Magical Me” where Tim really got to show his acting prowess by being Gilderoy Lockhart and just talking about how amazing Gilderoy Lockhart is. We stole a little bit of that for one of the verses for our song that we released with Wizrocklopedia. I was like, “Hey, you should do it like you did for, for Magical Me because the audience loved that sort of thing.” And so no unifying theme, but if we did do another record, we’d probably go along those sorts of lines again. Make sure we have one or two kind of like that.
It’s time for our last music break, so here are Pansy and the Gossip Queens with “Gossip Queen .”
~*~
That was Pansy and the Gossip Queens with “Gossip Queen,” “Time to Fight” from Eyes Like Mine [lyrics], and Potterwatch’s “’Til We Go off the Air” [lyrics].
And we’re back to the interview.
Thank you so much for talking with me today. I’m sure that there’s so much we didn’t even cover, so hopefully, uh, we’ll get to do it again.
Bryce: Yeah, thank you for asking me. Seriously. I am, I was so excited that someone wanted to talk to me. ’cause like I said, the biggest thing I loved about the cons was meeting people. And this is my first time I got to meet you and I’ve had a blast.
Hopefully we’ll see you around at some of them.
Bryce: Yep. I agree. I agree. I see all these pictures. Like the last official LeakyCon just happened. I was like, <sigh> “I wish I could have gone.” I wish I could have gone. But you know, adult life, <laugh>,
You should come to WZRDFest. It’s only in the middle of the school year. It’s fine.
Bryce: Oh, it’s that all <laugh> Actually, amazing you say that. Neville’s Diary got asked to play a thing in Arkansas in the middle of the school year, but it happened to be a great weekend that it was like I could take off one day and drive all the way down to Arkansas to play at a haunted hotel for a yule ball sort of thing. Yes, I will do that.
That is so cool.
Bryce: Yeah, it was, it was a blast. ’cause that was the first time that, uh, my live band, my former students got to experience an actual wizard rock sort of festival slash con sort of thing. And so they had an absolute blast. They met so many cool people. It was great.
Uh, which one was that? Did it have like a name?
Bryce: Yeah, it was put on by Wizard Way of the Ozarks.
Oh yeah!
Bryce: And uh, yeah, and Roland Bell and Stacy Bell. Roland is a, by the way, also a teacher, so we hit it off. He’s a special ed teacher, so that was really great talking about wizard rock and teaching along with him and, and it was part of, uh, they, they put on a festival. I, uh, a con themselves, but it always happened at the worst time for me during one of my band competition’s time. So I was like, I cannot miss a band competition, put it on another weekend where I have nothing going on. I will be there.
Well, when you’re not driving to other states and hosting battles of the band, where can WZRD listeners find you online?
Bryce: I got a couple records on BandCamp and thanks to my teacher giving me some homework, you’ll probably hear my other records on there. Uh, but also you can check out some other bands that I’ve, I’ve played with, if you wanna check those out. Uh, Blibbering Humdingers, I played drums for them, Chocolate Frogs, the Nifflers, Tonks and the Aurors. I actually played some horns, uh, as well for her or some saxophone, trumpet and trombone parts for her. Hawthorn and Holly, I’ve played some drums, and Bisexual Harry “Ginny Hit Me” was the right track I played on. So, uh, you can check out those sorts of things. YouTube, search me up my name Bryce Cone on YouTube. I’ve got some performances on there, but my favorite thing is just talk to some people that might have my record and say, “Hey, can I bum that record off you?” And then just start sharing it, spread it around. Don’t worry about, uh, giving me any money for that record that you’re passing around. I like my job. I’ll keep making music and you guys just keep sharing it.
And of course there’s the Facebook page that you promised to check more frequently.
Bryce: Yes, Facebook. And if you can, if you wanna get MySpace started back up again, feel free.
And here is Neville’s Diary!
Bryce: All right, so I’m gonna play a song called “You Can’t Stop The DA.” I’m a big fan of punk rock, but I do not have a voice that can handle punk rock. So I decided to write a punk rock song in the guise of a catchy pop tune. So this song is about how Order of the Phoenix sort of stuff, where as long as everyone’s together, as long as you believe in yourself and the people that you’re with, you can put an end to an injustice you see in the world. There can be a way that you can speak up and you can do something about it. It’s great if you want to sing along in the, uh, there’s a little call and response thing that I can’t do solo, but if you know the song, feel free to sing along to it.
WZRD Radio Podcast 