Debut album the next step in the evolution of local musician
Recording as Young Pilot, former Wellesley Idol winner’s Old Love features an alternative folk sound
SINCE HE WAS LITTLE, Scott Carere has been on the road to becoming a musician. The St. Clements resident and former Wellesley Idol winner picked up the guitar as a child, and began writing his own music soon after.
Now, the local talent has taken another step by releasing his debut album featuring what he describes as “alternative folk” under the moniker Young Pilot.
“I guess when I decided I wanted to start Young Pilot, I kind of just had this image of a little kid wearing this oversized leather helmet with these oversized, big glass goggles on, and he’s flying this plane around – this little toy plane,” says Carere about the name.
“Because I felt when I started wanting to record my music, I felt like it was like a transitional period, like I was going after something I really wanted since I was a really young kid.”
Like the young kid that graduates from toy planes and fire trucks to the genuine articles, Carere took a proper step towards his musical aspirations. Over the course of the summer, the 21-year-old musician wrote and compiled ten songs that he felt were representative of his work, which he released last week in his first album, Old Love.
“This album is kind of the embodiment of the last four years of my music writing, I guess you can say,” Carere explains.
The album features a blend of sound that takes from some of the lighter elements of contemporary music, with the instrumentation and rhythm of old-school folk. The vocals have a modern edge, but the melody definitely emphasizes the skilled playing and solos prevalent in the music of yesteryear.
“It’s a lot of, I guess I’ll say alternative folk. One of the songs I released already, Simpleton’s Creed, it’s a little bit bluegrass-y almost, old country sounding. And then I have some softer acoustic stuff that would be different then the other stuff. Another song, Good Morning June!,
draws on the acoustic guitar and harmonica with an almost droning vocal work, reminiscent of a Bob Dylan ballad.”
Carere says he started playing guitar at the age of 12, taking after his father whom he recalls singing and playing as far back as he can remember, and credits with inspiring his passion for folk. He took music lessons starting off, and wrote his first song within a year of playing.
“It probably wasn’t any good, but it was a song. And I’ve been writing songs on and off ever since,” he says.
The dream, of course, is to make it big as a musician, but right now Carere is splitting his focus with the more prosaic matters. Carere will be entering his fourth year at the University of Waterloo for his studies in psychology, which is bound to keep him pretty occupied. Still, he’s hoping to further his music career on the side.
“But right at this moment, I just want to start playing a lot of dates over the school year – I just want to play all of the spots in the K-W area,” he say of his plans.
Carere has one gig planned in Kitchener on September 8, and more are hopefully on the way.
He wrote and mixed the album himself, as well as performing vocals and guitar, joined by his friends Ben Cottrill on the keyboard and Ethan Meyers on the drums. Carere is also part of another band, the Caraways, which performs mostly cover songs – his fellows band mates Hannah Boehm and Mariah Martin provided vocals for the song, Simpleton’s Creed.
Right now, you can find his entire album on the music hosting websites Soundcloud and Bandcamp (youngpilot.bandcamp.com).
“And honestly, people can pay as much as they want. I have it up there for free, and then they can do donations for as much as they want. I just want people to listen to my music, I don’t really care about making money right now.”