Angela Allen Talks New Opis Vitae Album With Front Man Banah Winn
Opus Viate is a cool and relaxed band headed only by musician, singer and solo song writer Banah Winn. From the very first note you get pulled into the latest released album, Gramercy. For those not familiar with Opis Vitae, the bands name is of Latin Origin meaning “Life’s Work”, classifying as an Indie-Rock band. Upon first listen, the lyrics and melody resembles that of a union between mainstream bands Modest Mouse and Snow Patrol, adding its own unique flare.
Banah Winn, lead singer and songwriter is from Oregon, where it is usually raining and where the leaves are the greenest you have ever seen and the trees grow taller than a book would usually describe. Winn had an unusual family life, which was a tad bit taxing and is why he made the big move to Los Angeles.There is so much opportunity in L.A. where you are able to be yourself and find your destiny. Opus Vitae released his new album on 09-25-2020. This album is such an inspiration to upcoming solo artists in the sense that Winn, from start to finish, published Gramercy single handedly, not an easy feat.
There are 9 tracks on Gramercy that continues on for 40 minutes. The First song “The Fall” sets a nice reggae-indie rock tone for the album. Each song thereafter has its own story, leaving the listener wondering what Winn has in store next. Following “The Fall”, comes 8 other tracks that make for easy listening, including “Turn Away”, “Rich Man”, “Chasing Ducks”, “Gramercy”, “Get Lost”, “Carry The Weight”, “Nightride” and “End of the Road”. Things get a tad bit more personal with “Chasing Ducks”, which was Winn’s favorite song he wrote on the new album. It was actually written several years ago after he was stranded in LA during a snow storm and was unable to return home for the holidays. Inspired by teenage memories, the good, bad and ugly, it’s truly a song that many can relate to that hits home and one Winn is proud of.
“The End of The Road”, the 9th track, is one everyone can connect with, and great ending to this refreshing album. This track was inspired by Stephen Hawking and is geared toward influencing us to want a better world and future and promoting positive changes, despite everything going on around us currently. Winn confessed to escaping to the beaches and mountains outside of LA with his guitar and finding peace and relaxation. This album leaves a lasting impression which is why you don’t want to forget to download it and add it to your playlist! Check in on Banah and Opus Vitae
I was fortunate to talk with Banah Winn about his new album, life, inspiration and his musical aspirations. Enjoy!
Angela:
Congratulations on your album, Gramercy.
Banah Winn:
Thank you so much.
Angela:
I was blown away by how you composed everything yourself for this record.
Banah Winn:
It’s just overdubbing. Well, I’ll say normally in the past when I’ve written songs, I would write a song on guitar or piano and then write a vocal part over it. And then it would be to get a range. But with this record, it was the first time I essentially had a home studio with a bunch of instruments at my disposal. Really every song, it was like a different instrument or a different sound. And I kind of would just would come up with a part that I really liked, and that single part then I would start putting other parts over it. And then at the end of however many months, I had all these instrumental tracks and there were no vocals to any of them because I would finish one and then I kind of would maybe put a little murmuring or something over it, and then I’d be like, “Eh,” and then I’d move on to another one.
And I just kept pumping out all the instrumental tracks. So the entire bed of all the instruments was all done before the vocals. But to answer your question, yeah, it was really just one at a time. So I would play a part and then you use headphones and then you just play another part over it, play another part over it. I’ve always been the kind of person that I hear the whole arrangement of stuff in my head, so it was pretty easy for me. And I’ve been a multi-instrumentalist for quite a long time, but I think this record was really the first time where I felt like I had honed the skills where I could play everything and record everything on a level that really made it all come together.
Angela:
So you play every single instrument and you combined it together, which is amazing because that’s very difficult. It’s amazing that you’re doing all of that and arranging it all together.
Banah Winn:
Thanks. Yeah, it was really fun. I mean, you just play a part and then you listen on the headphones and then you just play the second part over that. Then you play the third part over that and then the fourth part, and then eventually, sometimes you’ll get rid of the original part and then I’ll turn it into something else and it’s just becomes this kind of a weird journey that maybe sometimes starts with an idea and you don’t really know where you’re going to end up and then you end up with a song and you’re like, “Oh, okay. Yeah, sure.”
Angela:
There it is. I wanted to talk about the album which seems very personal. The Fall, I felt had to do with self-preservation sometimes has to trump empathy. And I thought that was interesting cause I resonated with that.
Banah Winn:
Yeah, that was a song was written from a very specific situation, which I can talk about now. It was in regards to a boss. My boss who was a pretty volatile person. I don’t know how detailed I want to get, but some really crazy shit went down. And the emotional essence of the song very much reflects the fact that he was being pretty toxic.
Angela:
So everything you wrote about was personal to you?
Banah Winn:
Yeah, it was a year for sure.
Angela:
So the Rich Man was a hope for the future?
Banah Winn:
Yeah. So that song, I think that was maybe the last song that I wrote on the record and [inaudible 00:07:36] Okay, so I remember that song originally starting with the idea of… I kind of remember that Bruno Mars song where he talks about someday I’m going to be a millionaire or something, that was his first hit and I was like, “I should write a song like that so I can be one, too.”
Angela:
Lyrically was that “I want to be a millionaire so freaking bad”?
Banah Winn:
Yeah, or something like that. I was like, “Well it worked for him, maybe it’ll work for me.” And so I started writing a song and then the lyrics came out and I was like, “Well, this isn’t what that song is about at all.” And it ended up being more of like a statement on the wealth of these extremely rich in conjunction with having hope for the future. So the song, to me, is kind of a play between the verses, which are very hopeful. And then the chorus comes in and it’s like, “Yeah, but I’m a rich man. I’m just here to take.” I don’t necessarily have those exact views anymore, but that was the essence of the song when I wrote it. But yeah, I definitely think there’s a lot of hope to that song and that’s the part I want to focus on, but there also is an element of there’s a dichotomy and a play between the verse and chorus.
Angela:
What about The Fall? You were talking about self-preservation. So what about that song?
Banah Winn:
Okay, that was the one that was the situation with my boss. So yeah, I just was working a job and my boss was very toxic and volatile and it was a situation essentially where I really wanted to stand up for myself and say something, but I knew doing anything other than being like, “Yes, sir. It’s all good,” basically tucking my tail between my legs and kissing butt when I wanted to tell this guy go fuck himself.
Angela:
I know exactly what that’s like.
Banah Winn:
So I wrote the song about that which, like I was saying before, it’s even crazier then it sounds. It got really weird.
Angela:
No, that’s fine. So what about carry the weight? Because I read a little bit about it, and I was confused by something I read where it seemed like it was about the government at first where you were like, “Why aren’t you mad about this?” But then whenever it was talking about it, I actually felt that it might’ve been about love.
Banah Winn:
Yeah. That was another one where, kind of like Rich Man, I had an idea and a feeling for the essence of the song and then it kind of developed into something more personal. Yeah, so originally, when I wrote that song, I just remember the feeling of, like I described, that I was like, “Why aren’t people mad right now about what’s going on in the world?” And I was like, “I want to write a song that feels like that.” But it turns out probably what I was really mad about was whatever was going on with me personally. So yeah, the song ended up being about love and it was essentially one of those songs where I sort of subconsciously or subtly had something going on and I wasn’t totally aware of.
Banah Winn:
But it came out in a song because often, not often, but sometimes I’ll write and I will just let the lyrics flow and I won’t fully understand what it means. Sometimes I’ll write songs like this, not all the time, but sometimes I won’t understand fully what the song means until later on. Sometimes when I’m writing, it’s sort of the less resisted way of thinking, kind of in the same way that people will try and interpret their dreams.
Angela:
Is it like sometimes writing in diary? You’re just putting how you feel on a page. I feel actually your album is very personal and feel like whenever you’re speaking that it was extremely personal to your own life.
Banah Winn:
Yeah. Yes. So, my point is with that song is that it was something that was going on with me, but it hadn’t fully come to fruition yet and I wasn’t totally aware of it. It later on came to full fruition and then I was like, “Oh yeah, I definitely had that going on.”
Angela:
I think the song that I personally connected with the most was Chasing Ducks, about the childhood and there’s always going to be a home. And I mean, it was fragmented, but I really enjoyed that song because my life was similar in that way.
Banah Winn:
Yeah, definitely one of the songs I’m most proud of. That was actually the one song that I wrote sort of outside the sessions. I wrote that a number of years ago, did a little acoustic demo of it. And it was written one of my first years in LA I think, somewhere in there. Anyways, it was written right around Christmas, and my mom’s side of the family lives in Boulder, in Colorado. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, so on that note, that year it did snow a ton and my flight got canceled and I was the only person that didn’t make it. So I was stuck in LA by myself and I ended up writing that song about family. And right at that same time, my parents are divorced, so my step-mom actually compiled this photo album. I don’t know how she did it. They had all these pictures of me when I was a kid growing up and I got that in the mail. So I was stuck by myself in LA with this super nostalgic photo album of pictures of me when I was a kid.
Angela:
That’s beautiful.
Banah Winn:
It was really beautiful, and it was this amazing nostalgic melancholy moment because I’m looking at pictures of me when I’m a kid, but I’m stranded from my family. And it’s also, I probably at that point still hadn’t fully resolved my feelings on my parents’ divorce and what that all really meant. And so I just really went back to what that all felt like, a combination of those really beautiful, innocent playful memories of literally chasing ducks around a pond. And I remember doing that.
Angela:
When it comes to talking to your viewers, what would you like to portray to them? What would you like for them to grasp when they listen to your album? What is it you’re trying to say? Or is it just something you’re putting out there and there it is?
Banah Winn:
I think it’s really about emotional resonance. And that was the biggest sort of general theme of the record, which is that my goal was to take a feeling and put it into the music and then see if I played it back when the song was done if I felt the same thing, and my hope is that it’ll sort of take people on their own emotional journey. So a song like chasing ducks is very personal to me, but I would hope, like you said you connected with it.
Angela:
It was personal to me as well.
Banah Winn:
Yeah, so it resonates with you, and then you start associating to your own memories and you’re able to sort of create your own story out of it and go to your own place. And yeah, I mean, that’s my goal, I guess. I think with any music, it’s like take people away from their normal daily lives and transport them to another place within their own feelings and thoughts and stuff like that.
Angela:
Have you thought about writing more music or planning for another album?
Banah Winn:
I am, yeah. I’m writing a lot. I was for a bit. I live in LA, and when there weren’t fires I was.
Angela:
That’s horrible.
Banah Winn:
Yeah. Mountain songwriting was my thing, so I’d drive up into the woods with my acoustic guitar and I was writing these happy John Denvery folk tunes just to get myself in a better mood during quarantine. But I had to stop for now because the mountains are closed due to the fires, but I was doing that.
Angela:
Opus Vitae is a very unique name for a band. What is meaning behind that?
Banah Winn:
It means “life’s work”
Banah Winn:
So I originally made that the name because when I was starting the project.
Angela:
Which is your life’s work.
Banah Winn:
Yeah. I was like, “This is what I want it to be.” I previously had it a different moniker band name or whatever you want to call it. It was called Caught in Motion, C-A-U-G-H-T, which turned out to be a problem because people thought it was C-O-T in Motion.
Angela:
Well, that has different meanings, doesn’t it?
Banah Winn:
Yeah. So that was an issue, but really the biggest thing for me was that name sort of became synonymous with the feeling of the project, which was that I felt like I was always working really, really hard on it, but I wasn’t getting anywhere.
Angela:
In a loop.
Banah Winn:
Yeah. So it was all work and no fun and I wasn’t seeing the results that I wanted to. I made two albums under that name. And so I was like, “It’s just time to start fresh.” And so I thought of the idea Opus Vitae. And I was like, “Why don’t I name this what I want it to be?” But I will say the idea of life’s work has sort of transitioned for me. When I originally wrote it I thought “life’s work” as like a body of work, a body of artwork. But in the last few years, I’ve realized that the actual life’s work is really just doing whatever makes you happy. And I still think that the name is very much reflective of that.
Angela:
I’ve gone to a couple real van Gogh’s and just different museums lately and I feel the same thing, but seeing their life, music is different, but art is art. So when you see the art displayed, when you see music displayed, it’s all the same. And it’s amazing to see the process of their work.
Banah Winn:
It is. Yeah. You really get sort of a personal window into other people’s psyche and lives. And then you get to see a part of yourself in it, too.
Angela:
What were your parents like growing up?
Banah Winn:
So my parents met and lived on a commune for about 20 years and it was a pretty well-known commune. It was actually in rural Tennessee. It was called the farm. Actually, my mom was on the cover of National Geographic back in the seventies wearing, what do you call it, one of those flower crowns and dancing like a total hippie. Yeah, my parents are pretty wild. So they lived there for 20 years. Honestly, their stories are amazing. Just the cool and crazy stuff they’ve done in their life. But I actually never lived there.
Banah Winn:
Right around the eighties, it sort of started to not fully dissolve, but it became less of a commune and was going through a transitional phase, but my parents were still hippies and they were sort of figuring out how to reacquaint themselves with the normal world, I guess you would call it. So they moved to Austin. There was a community there. I was born there, and then my dad decided to become a lawyer, funny enough. And he got into Lewis and Clark in Portland, so we moved to Portland. Yeah, that’s where I grew up and it was a pretty suburban, very white and pretty boring place. But even though Portland is known for being very liberal and radical, I think back when I was growing up, it wasn’t quite fully there yet. So I always felt like I was kind of the weird outsider person in school because everyone else was a bit more, I guess mainstream, I don’t really know how to put that, but I definitely was the only person in my school with hippie parents.
Angela:
I grew up in Colorado and where we lived, I had this tiny radio. I would go in my room, I would turn it on, and I got Simon and Garfunkel. That’s pretty much all that played. And I thought that’s the only thing that existed until we moved to Florida and I was like, “Oh, there’s more music than just this. What?”
Banah Winn:
That’s a good place to start.
Angela:
It’s a very good place to start. I appreciate a lot of older music.
Banah Winn:
Oh yeah. I totally can relate to that because it was the same thing for television with me, because I was only allowed to watch public television. So it was only Sesame Street and stuff like that.
Angela:
I know you had moved to California. So what was the huge reason for the move, and are you happy there? Do you feel like it’s home?
Banah Winn:
Good question. Man, that could potentially be a very loaded question. So I moved here. I’ll just tell you the full story. So I grew up in Portland and then instead of going to college right away, I ended up traveling Europe, and then I moved back to Portland and I just was not feeling it. And I ended up taking this road trip down to Santa Barbara when I was like 19. And that was back when UCSB people would just party like crazy. I guess they probably still do that. And I got a little experience of that and I was like, “Yeah, this is definitely where I want to be.” So I ended up living in Santa Barbara for four years, and two of those years just partying my ass off from like 19 to 21. And then when I was 21, I was going to college.
I was 21, my parents were like, “Well, if you want to keep going, you should take out loans.” And I was like, “I don’t want to be in debt because I know I’m going to be a musician.” So I dropped out of college and I was living in a house downtown and I recorded my first record there. And then after that, for some reason I decided to go back to Portland. And so I lived in Portland for like a year and that was like this really, really cold, rainy, dark, snowy, winter. And I was back living in my mom’s house and I got super depressed. And I was like, “I need to get the F out of here.”
So some of my friends are living in the Bay area and I went down and lived with them. Some point around there I was booking tours myself. So I did a bunch of West coast tours. And I don’t remember when, but at some point I got the idea to book this huge national tour where I think it was like, I don’t know, 46 shows in 48 days or something like that. And we basically did a loop around the whole country, down the West coast, across the South. I think the only place we didn’t go was Florida. Sorry.
Banah Winn:
So I did this huge tour, and then after that I ended up living in the Bay area for a while. And that was a really cool experience, I got to live with the trumpet player from No Doubt. I lived with him for two years.
Angela:
That’s amazing.
Banah Winn:
And he honestly is the best musician in the band, super accomplished musician and just a total character and was a really great sort of hands-off mentor to live around. And yeah, so then I got to the point where he needed to get rid of his house and I had to find somewhere new to live. And I was like, “Well, maybe I should take the opportunity to move to LA.” Because I’m like, “I really want to do this music thing and I think that LA is like a really great place to do it.”
Banah Winn:
I just always kind of had really bad experiences with LA whenever I had toured here, but I just kind of left it at the chance. And I was like, “Well, wherever I find a place to live, I’ll go live there. And if it makes sense…” I was either going to go to Seattle, I was going to stay in the Bay, or move to LA. And I was like, “I can’t do Seattle because I can’t do the rain again.” And so I came down to visit LA and I found a place to live and I had a job lined up pretty much right away. So I was like, “Fuck it.” Made it happen, moved here, and I’ve been here for seven years and it is definitely been the most contrasting dramatic seven years of my life.
Angela:
Contrasting?
Banah Winn:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a nice way of saying, “Really, really good and really, really fucked up.” So I’m getting to the place now where I really do love and appreciate LA. And it has so much to offer and I’m becoming a believer. It really is more about what you make of the place than the place itself.
Banah Winn:
Yeah. So I can’t say LA is good or bad. It’s been both, but the weather is incredible and everything is at your fingertips here, yet you can still live in a house and have your own private space. I mean, you got Malibu, the beaches here, you got the mountains when they’re not on fire.
I feel like it feels like a home base more than a home. I really am, especially since we’ve been in quarantine, I’m really itching to travel again. And I did go to New York. I went to New York in June and I’ve always wanted to live in New York City. I just only want to do it during the spring, summer, fall, because I just don’t want to do winters there. But I just love the vibe and the feeling of New York City, I just think it’s like nowhere else. So I’m definitely itching to spend more time there. But LA right now, for me, is feeling really easy, which is, I can’t complain about that.
Angela:
When you share your soul through your lyrics, is it healing for you?
Banah Winn:
Yes, it is. It’s healing in the way where it’s like a true acknowledgement of where you’re at.
Banah Winn:
But I will say this, it wouldn’t be beneficial for me to, and this would also just be really weird and insane to sit there and listen to the record over and over again, and just feel those feelings forever.
Angela:
Some people do that, but that’s not why you create a record. I’ve been there before where I listened to a song over and over and over again.
Banah Winn:
Right. Yeah, I mean, I have to. I think the point is that it is incredibly soothing and beneficial and helpful. If I kind of look at it like quote that Sting song, Message In A Bottle, you’re kind of taking that feeling and putting it in a bottle and corking it up and then throwing in the ocean. And it’s not mine anymore, and it’s not me anymore. And it’s sort of like a snapshot of a moment in time. And I really appreciate that. And it also makes me appreciate even more some of the more challenging things I’ve been through in my life because I know really great art has come out of it, and stuff that I can be really proud of and that I don’t have to identify with anymore.
Angela:
And your work is beautiful. All right. Well, I’m glad to talk to you and I really hope you have a good night and it was very nice to meet you.
Banah Winn:
You too. Thank you so much.
Angela:
Thank you.