Track 3 - NeonFaith ft. Country

Neonfaith is a three-person band from Queens, NY. The frontman of the band, Akinyele (Lay) is a music producer, audio engineer and self-professed audiophile with years of music collection and music-making experience. Lay describes Neonfaith as "Soul/Electronica with Hip-Hop influences." Lay cited A Tribe Called Quest, Daft Punk, Kanye West, Boards of Canada and Justice as influences on him and his music. "Justice opened a lot of doors for me, they helped me learn to be more open-minded to new music," Lay said about the French Electronic duo.

Lay says he knows "almost nothing" about country music and, being born and raised in Jamaica, Queens meant country music was nowhere near as popular as other genres of music. To introduce Lay to country music I pick two popular country songs.

The first is "Matchbox" performed by Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash & Eric Clapton. "Matchbox" was performed live on "The Johnny Cash Show" in 1969. While completely unfamiliar with Carl Perkins, Lay already knew of Johnny Cash and was familiar with Eric Clapton as he had sampled Clapton's "Probably Me" for his own music projects in the past.

After listening to "Matchbox", Lay seemed to enjoy the music, saying he appreciated the overall quality of the song and the level of guitar expertise displayed by the three men. Lay felt the song had obvious roots in Soul and Blues which he was fond of.

Overall Lay said he liked the song, that he would consider listening to it again and would consider looking up some more music by Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. 

The second song is "What was I Thinking", by popular contemporary country music star Dierks Bentley. Lay has never heard of Bentley or any of his music.

Lay said he was underwhelmed both by the song and the music video, which he found uncreative and sophomoric. He did not see much artistic merit in the song, going so far to say he was sure he would "never listen to him ever again," although he did admit his lack of background in the genre made him feel like he may not know how to properly approach music like this.

Lay felt he wasn't sure the music video was serious, for a period of time he considered the possibility of the song being a comedic parody of stereotypical country songs. After I assured him the song is real and quite popular even though the music video is very tongue-in-cheek, he simply proclaimed the music is "not for him". While Lay is not a fan of Dierks Bentley and maybe contemporary country in general, he found older generation's more soulful and folksy country music is much more approachable.