The Artist Spotlight With Manic Drive
By: Rhema 99.7
Canadian artists, Manic Drive, made up of brothers Shawn and Michael Cavallo chatted a bit about how COVID has impacted them and their new single, Thank God I’m Alive.
Can you share the impact COVID has had on you personally and also professionally?
Shawn: Obviously on our music, as a career. It’s impacted that severely with live shows. With that being rescheduled until who knows when. We get the opportunity to kind of step back. I’m a new dad, so I’m trying to appreciate that. I think it’s important for us to kind of slow down sometimes. Definitely an impact. And I’m kind of an optimist with this whole thing.
Michael: Me too, I think that in the near future, hopefully we’ll be back on the road and performing music again and see people we haven’t even seen for some time now. So hopefully we’ll be able to connect with them soon.
A lot of touring musicians have had a chance to step back and ponder what might look different, moving forward. Have you both been on that journey as well?
Shawn: We’ve been busy writing music and starting a family and just trying to be transparent with music. We haven’t really over thought anything too much.
Michael: I think, as we’re sort of relating to the church and stuff, people are wanting to kind of grow and take on a new sort of challenge or obstacles, which I think in a good light has actually brought some people together. I think we’re learning to appreciate things in our communities, whether it’s in church communities, within our own families. So with Shawn and I, this year has been just a year of reflection. Maybe Shawn is in accord with me. It was a year that didn’t start out too well with us, with the passing of our mother and then going through that. And then obviously when the COVID was started in March. We were going down through a bit of a dark chapter, perhaps. But the beauty in that darkness, I became a dad. And COVID, just bringing up a new light. Well, a new life, essentially. A renaissance, if you will. In this sort of, whatever age of shadow you want to put it out.
And so we have learnt to really build ourselves up and we’re even trying to encourage others through our music. That’s sort of what this theme of the current single Thank God I’m Alive, is about building people up. We are all journeying through this together and just sharing those experiences and being as organic and transparent as we can be and hopefully encouraging people along the way.
Can you tell us about your new single Thank God I’m Alive?
Shawn: Yeah. No Manic Drive, like you mentioned, has always had a fairly wide spectrum of styles of music. I think our more popular stuff has been the upbeat stuff, but we’ve never been shy to release stuff that’s a little bit more in depth. But for some reason, our fans have really connected with the upbeat stuff, which is totally cool. This is kind of the first time we’ve highlighted that more vulnerable side of us. But that polarity has always been kind of there with Manic Drive. But yeah, putting our foot out there and just saying what we feel, I think it’s super important for us as Christians and Christian music. I think a lot of times in our faith or even in church, sometimes people are scared to say how they feel because, you know, they might be looked at as weak. And I think there’s a lot of strength to just saying, “Hey, right now is tough. And I don’t know all the answers right now”. And that’s what we want to say in the song cause that’s how we felt. And I think a lot of people resonate with that.
Article supplied with thanks to Rhema 99.7.
Feature image: Manic Drive | Source: Manic Drive Website
