Can of Clouds is an electronic/acoustic duo from the PNW comprised of Justine Jeanotte and Chad Channing. Justine comes from a classically trained background on violin and Chad has played in many rock bands most notably as the drummer on Nirvana’s “Bleach” album. They have always enjoyed listening to music of all kinds of genres from classical to electronic and everything in between.
I caught up with Justine & Chad to talk about their early musical experiences, how they started playing music together and the making of their new album “Passing Vistas”.
CMM-What was the first music that really made an impact on the two of you as kids and what artists or bands did you all enjoy the most?
Justine-Music was always playing in my house when I was a kid. My dad was a rockabilly/blues guitar player and what I listened to in my childhood was heavily influenced by that. The records I had in my room were The Ronettes, Richie Valens, Ricky Nelson, The Ventures and Dion, I listened to them over and over and would sing along to everything before I played the violin. Once I started playing the violin, the whole world of classical music opened up for me.
Chad-I grew up listening to all kinds of different music as my dad was a disc jockey. But the stuff that stuck with me the most was all the singer songwriter artists like, Jim Croce, Carol King, Gordon Lightfoot, Carly Simon etc. Also groups like Bread, America, Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, Santana and Chicago. Course later on I got into punk,metal, all kinds of different stuff. Then further down the road I started getting into acts like Tycho and Boards of Canada which both play a part in my electronic influences.
CMM-How did Can Of Clouds get together and start writing songs and developing your own sound?
Chad-Can of Clouds was originally a solo electronic project that I started back in 2009. I had recorded a bunch of material but never did anything with it. I always had the idea of wanting to do an acoustic/electronic music project but, never got it off the ground until I talked with Justine about it. She thought it sounded like a good idea and so we decided to start a duo together which began around March/April of 2024. We started out resurrecting a few of my original songs from my earlier Can of Clouds stuff and reworking the songs adding Justine’s violin and other ideas. Creating new songs has been really fun. Since we come from different musical backgrounds, both our inputs, I feel, have made our songwriting unique.
CMM-The band recently released an album called “Passing Vistas”. What was the writing and recording process like and were there any particular pieces of gear you used to get the sound you were looking for?
Chad-Our writing process begins with usual something we come up with on the synthesizer first and then adding ideas around it. Though starting ideas can come from a bass or guitar line as well, or even violin. We put things together like a puzzle. We record everything as individual tracks/parts one at a time. It’s a slow process but, it’s fun to see it all come together. I use both electronic drums from my Alesis strike pro pad that I’ll often modify, or drum loops that will sometimes go through effects. We also use some effects pedals for live performances like, reverb and loop pedals.
CMM-If the band could do a score for any film director, who would it be and what would the film be about?
Chad-Two directors come to mind, they would be Hirokazu Koreeda and Wes Anderson. It would be a film about traveling around the world. Perhaps looking for triggers to memories long forgotten.
CMM-Anything coming up?
Chad-We are playing Tim’s Tavern in Seattle February 20th. Also in February we are going into the Temple of the Trees studio in Seattle to record a couple of new songs. Really looking forward to that!
