Interview with Qualia Noir's Alex Gomez

Interview With Alex Gomez

On musical journey, changing identity, and more.

Elsa Scott sat down with Alex Gomez, lead singer of London-based rock band Qualia Noir, to talk about his journey as a musician, how his songwriting has evolved, and how he dealt with a changing sense of identity.

This is Part 1 of the interview — Part 2 discusses how his band Qualia Noir came to be, what’s coming next, and what advice he would give to his past self and other aspiring musicians.

ELSA SCOTT: When did you start playing music? 

ALEX GOMEZ: I started playing music as an infant, allegedly. My mom had this kick-and-play piano set up in my crib. I picked up a guitar for the first time when I was seven, but I didn’t really take it seriously until I was around 11. I joined this program called School of Rock, but at the same time I was getting more serious into swimming. Music took the backburner for a while and it wasn’t until I was 15 or 16 that I really got back into it. 

ES: Describe to me the transition to swimming. 

AG: So, I always liked music and I liked playing guitar, but when I was 11, I was really good at swimming and I didn’t have time to do guitar or practice or anything. I swam five to six times a week so I just didn’t have time for music. It wasn’t until I was around 15 that I got back into music, and at that point it was kind of a necessity, because I had really begun to hate where I was with swimming. 

ES: Did you have any musical friends or influences during this time? 

AG: Not really, the biggest one was sort of an accident but turned out to be what got me back into it. I was at a party, and one guy was talking about how he played guitar and the two of us decided to jam right then and there. It made both of us realize, oh, this is cool. We can play guitar together, we can play in a group as opposed to just on our own. 

ES: So what was the process of getting back into music like? 

AG: It started with my friend Trevor and I showing each other songs we had written when we were younger, and then it turned into us writing songs together. We would write a chord progression, and lyrics, then record it in a voice memo and send it over to each other. We did that for months and months and months. We would send each other three to four songs a week, like entire songs! Verse chorus verse chorus bridge verse chorus, about everything. Mostly about girls, but also just about random stories or ideas. I remember we wrote a blues song called “The Boys in Blue”, and it was about policemen. 

ES: So these were more like fictional creations? 

AG: Yeah, because I think we both were first and foremost writers. So we were taking stories and telling them through songwriting. It was very linear, like this is the beginning, middle, and end of the story -- we’re going from point A to point B to point C. It made these songs really easy to crank out. Like, we take one general story, have an overarching theme, figure out a beginning, middle, and end, and boom, you’re done. I could do two of those a night if I was on a roll. We sent songs like that back and forth for about a year and a half. 

ES: So you send these songs to each other for around a year and a half, then what happened? 

AG: We had a falling out over a girl. Then I ended up going to a Berklee College of Music summer camp, which completely changed my whole perspective on songwriting. 

ES: When was this? 

AG: This was 2017, I was going into my senior year of high school. I went to a one-week songwriting camp at first. Then, when I got home, I immediately signed up to go right back for the five-week program. I went there thinking I had good songs, but in reality I was so far from where I thought I was. The program made me want to be so much better and it was the wake-up that I needed. I knew then that I was going to pursue music. Up until that point, I was still entertaining the idea of swimming in college, but the camp was what pushed me to commit fully to music. 

ES: How did that shift, from swimmer to full-time musician, change you? 

AG: It was really hard. I was really trying to figure out who I was. That summer, I went to camp an athlete first, musician second, and came home fully as a musician. That shift was also hard for my friends and family, because everybody still thought of me as an athlete and that the music stuff was just a side thing. I felt very lonely, especially when I compared how I was feeling at home to how I felt at Berklee, where I was understood and accepted. 

ES: Do you think that shift in identity inspired new music? 

AG: It took me awhile to process, I think. I tend to write about things months after they happen, because while they’re happening my brain hasn’t taken the time to fully wrap itself around how I feel. I have to come to terms with whatever happened before I can write about it. 

ES: How do you think your sound changed? You mentioned earlier your songwriting was very linear. How have you developed into the songwriter you are today? 

AG: I think when I started, I was a very acoustic singer-songwriter, just a lot of strumming and self-accompaniment. When I became better at guitar, I was able to further develop my sound because I was expanding what I was capable of playing. Rather than simple chord progressions and rhythms, I was able to change it up and check out new things. I started listening to music differently, analyzing it and trying to understand the different components. Becoming better at the instrument made me better at the craft. 

ES: Who were some of your biggest musical influences? 

AG: Starting out, definitely Dave Matthews. Then I got into more rock music. A big turning point for me was seeing Catfish and the Bottlemen at the 9:30 club in D.C. Following that, I started listening to a lot of John Mayer, Radiohead, the Beatles, so many others -- I wasn’t really raised on music so I had a lot to catch up on. 

ES: What’s the sound you’re going for now? 

AG: I like the high energy of rock music. I like that people can dance to it. I like that people can go into a concert, even if they don’t know the band, and they can dance and sing and scream and yell. Everybody’s emotions are running high and there’s this incredible energy that bonds audiences and performers together. 

ES: What’s been the biggest challenge in your musical career? 

AG: Developing my own confidence. I had so little confidence when I was starting out.

ES: What made you stick with it? 

AG: I think I needed to. It was almost a means for survival. If I hadn’t stuck to it, I don’t know where I would be today. I was heading down a dark path with swimming, and music is what pulled me out of that and saved me from going down that road. I had to stick with it. 

Part 2 is soon to come. Stay tuned.