UA student doubles as local Indie artist

UA Film & Television student and local indie artist Clay Dudash released his new music on SoundCloud and Bandcamp August 31. His new album Thee Demonstration is a mixtape of rap and R&B songs with his own lyrics. The Daily Wildcat was able to ask him a few questions about his music.

The Daily Wildcat: Tell me about your album that just came out.

CD: Sure, it’s called Thee Demonstration, and it’s a mixtape. I’m using all these beats from Jack Steadman from Bombay Bicycle Club, and so I curated the beats from ones that were already made. And then I form songs out of those instead of coming up with new orchestration. Growing up, I would hear mixtapes by rappers in the early 2000s and late 90s, and that’s what they would do all the time, like, take other people’s beats and then make new songs out of it. And so as a listener you wouldn’t know which song came first, and so I was just trying to go after that type of energy.

WC: How long have you been into music?

CD: For a while. I actually have my very first CD to give you for point of reference. I used to make more folk music, so I’ve been doing it pretty seriously since 2012/2013. I had a band for a while, and I helped run an indie label. I took a break for a for a couple of years, and I enrolled here [the University of Arizona] after I graduated from Pima, so during the first year or so that I was here, my band was done and I concentrated on school and tried to figure out how to have fun playing music again.

WC: You’re graduating in December. What are you planning on doing after college, musically?

CD: I’m going to try putting more confidence in voting on myself more. School always felt like a backup plan, but people always assume it’s your main plan. I’m going to try my best to market myself as a songwriter, since I can write varieties of songs, and try to sell those for movies, TV and other people, if they want. I have to prove myself as a songwriter first in order for people to want to buy my product. I’m going to put out an album next year, two more mixtapes and I play in my friend’s band right now called Nocturnal Theory. And then kind of getting my home studio back to where it used to be, because I had to sell a lot of stuff going here to help pay for tuition. So just really, like, focusing on that and maybe moving after. So maybe taking a year to kind of hit the ground running, more so. And then move, I don’t know where.

WC: What do you want your listeners to get from your new mixtape?

CD: That it’s good really, that’s like the main thing. I’d like to think it’s really good. I hope it is. There’s moments on it that I’m trying to be different performers in the same song. There’s a couple songs that are more dance oriented, and they were more inspired by the early 90s dance music. I want people to have a full listening experience in a short amount of time, and I’m trying to purposefully play different roles on it, because I think I could do that as a performer and as a songwriter. But more so, I hope they like it if they listen to it. Really, that’s like my top thing. If you don’t have any really strong opinions about it, that’s fine, and it’s just like, as long if you could think back and think maybe you enjoyed yourself while it was on, either while you were focused on it or in the background, then great. So somewhere in between like hyper-fan activity or like, “oh, that was pretty good.” I don’t mind either one. I want all of it.

WC: Do you have a favorite song off your new mixtape?

CD: I think the last one, which is called “All the Views,” because I’m trying to do more of like a grime song, and not being from the UK, I think that’s pretty fun and it’s like really fast-paced. I think my rapping is probably the best on that one.

WC: If you could perform at any venue in the world, where would you perform?

CD: Glastonbury or Reading or Leeds in the UK. Because when you look up footage of those festivals in particular, their crowds are just super into it in a way that I don’t think, maybe, different festivals are. When people go to Coachella, it’s a mixture of “I want to see music, but I also want to document that my outfit’s tight,” whereas over there, you’re going to have to wear rain boots, and you might fall in the mud, and you don’t care about that. It’s more about the music and the experience.

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