Shelbyville native Casey Powell, who started the band Powell with his brothers Connor and Taylor, is pulling a Timberlake and going solo. He sings and plays all the instruments on “Moirai,” the new single from an EP he plans to release in August called AUXYGEN. The 21-year-old describes “Moirai” as indie rock with a pop aspect, and delivers a jam that consists of a pop-rock guitar chord progression, hard-hitting yet playfully organized drums and a voice that wants to have fun and be serious at once. Two minutes in, the song begins to come to an end with a refrain that leads into a fantastically experimental sequence, the pop-rock guitar evolving into psychedelia. Synths and bass provide harmony and add to the groove as the tight-knit organization of the first half unfolds into an exciting instrumental.
“The EP is six tracks exactly. Moirai is the only one that’s not going to be funk-fusion,” Powell says.
When did you first get into music?
"When I was in kindergarten, I guess. That’s when I started playing drums. I then played piano because I wanted to start writing music, and started playing guitar at 15 because I didn’t like playing piano all that much. I didn’t actually have a band until I was in eighth grade. We were called 'Fart Box Meow Meow.' We were trying to be 70s rock but ended up being mainly really shitty garage-band music."
In terms of your solo work, what made you want to play every instrument?
"I grew up playing one instrument, and I kept on switching, and after a while I realized I could write stuff for all of them. I actually wrote for all instruments for a while, but I would never present it to the band because I didn’t want to be the dude that’s writing everyone’s parts in the band. If I was playing guitar, I would just write a guitar lick and let everyone write their parts."
Photo by Destiny Robb
What’s the story behind “Moirai”?
“'Moirai' is a pretty old song. I wrote it about two years ago for Destiny, my girlfriend. She was going to move to Chicago, so I wrote her a song before she moved there. And I after I wrote that song she moved back, so I think it was the song that did it. So, after about six months of living in Louisville, I recorded it with Michael Sanders who’s the producer on the song. I’ve had it finished since last March, so I decided I’d release it while I finished all my other songs for the EP ... It’s actually the name for the Fates of Greek mythology. I literally looked up on thesaurus.com a synonym for destiny, my girlfriend’s name. Moirai was the coolest looking one."
What thoughts were going through your head while you were writing it?
"I thought about Destiny a lot. There was one time while we were walking through a big field, and I have this memory of the sunset right there and her right there, and I thought about that a lot while writing it. Musically, I have a hard time describing how I write things. One idea changes to the next so quickly that I forget what the original idea was. I just try to make stuff that sounds cool."
Find Casey Powell on Facebook.
Photos by Destiny Robb
