Q&A and Video from Ivan & Alyosha + Oliberté Mozaqa
PROMOTIONAL
Our friends at Oliberté are connecting bands with Mozaqa, the shoe company’s project that aims to educate consumers about the difference between trade and aid in struggling communities of Africa. With this year’s release of their first full-length album All the Times We Had, Seattle natives Ivan & Aloysha had a lot to talk about. In the middle of an extensively West Coast-heavy tour, guitarist and vocalist Tim Kim was able to sit down and chat with Oliberté Mozaqa’s Nick Rice (@iamNickRice) and Elisabeth Burks.
Tell us about Ivan & Alyosha in 300 characters or less (we’re way more generous than Twitter).
Tim Kim: The idea for the band emerged when Tim Wilson and Ryan Carbary met back in 2007 in Seattle while they were both separately involved in musical projects. Tim’s earlier demos piqued Ryan’s interest in partnering up and fleshing out the songs into something of a Beatle’s influenced folk pop. When they began to perform the songs live, they asked me—I was a friend and at the time and a roommate of Tim Wilson’s-to play guitar. At that point, I was also involved with another band with Tim Wilson’s brother, Pete. It wasn’t much longer before that band dissolved and Pete and I were added to the roster. It was a very organic transition because of our long history as friends and roommates. From there, we realized that we shared a fondness for similar music. The 60s-pop vibe came naturally through our musical influences but I think that’s sort of evolved now to a more balanced mixture of vintage-pop/indie/folk.
Your album, All the Times We Had, is amazing, just really standout and has made a lot of waves. What was it like working on this first album? How did you handle building together toward something that was so important to all of you?
Kim: Thanks! The recording process for this album was a little hectic to be completely honest. We reserved about two weeks at a local studio and hired Chad Copelin to engineer the record. We felt a bit of pressure because of time restraints, however, we’re very proud of the end result and couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who had their hand in its completion. Considering that this was our first full-length album, we obviously wanted it to make a very good impression. Iin a lot of ways, this was a big leap for all of us and really solidified our friendship with each other as well as our ambition for this band.
Shameless plug here, but as you know Oliberté is all about building a sustainable economy in Africa—one job builds a life, a family, a community, a continent. Why did you feel it was important to get involved with Oliberté Mozaqa and get behind this cause?
Kim: Personally, I’m a huge advocate for organizations that focus on helping those in need just in general but I have to say, I really love supporting the ones that set up sustainable ways for those same people to get involved with helping their own communities. It’s not easy to find organizations that you can feel 100-percent right about supporting, but when you find one that takes a very comprehensive look at how it can effectively solve problems and has potential to change the momentum of poverty, we’ll definitely get behind that.
What do you hope your fans take away from your involvement with Oliberté?