Liam Lynch (musician)
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- This article is about the musician. For the Irish Army General, see Liam Lynch (general).
Liam Lynch (born September 5, 1970) is a musician, puppeteer, and director. He co-created, co-wrote, played the music for, directed, and produced the MTV's Sifl and Olly Show.
Lynch also made the album Fake Songs, released in 2002, produced by his own company, 111 Productions. This album featured the song "United States of Whatever", which charted in the Top 10 in the United Kingdom and Australia. It is one of the shortest songs to get to the Top 10 in both countries.
Liam Lynch is also known for directing music videos. In 2003 he directed a music video for the Foo Fighters single Times Like These, although it was rarely played on TV. His video of the song featured the band playing in front of a bluescreen, but MTV didn't like it enough and even criticized it at one time. Lynch finished shooting the film Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny in July 2005, and he worked with Tenacious D in 2002 on directing the video to the song Tribute, their most popular hit. He directed Sarah Silverman's movie Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic and he wrote the original music used in the MTV animated series Clone High.
Liam has an ongoing podcast available through his website that contains skits, videos he has created, and answering viewer mail.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years
Liam Lynch was born in Akron, Ohio. When Lynch was three years old, he received a toy tape recorder, which he used to make his own shows. Ever since, he has two tape recorders that his childhood friend Richard Boe gave him with him at all times.
At age nine, his family moved to Hudson, Ohio, a 'small, preppy town' where he wound up rebelling against his confining surroundings. Liam was learning to play his first guitar and writing stories. This is also where Liam met his best friend and, later, creative partner Matt Crocco, who had moved to Hudson from New York.
When Liam was in fifth grade, he was tested for a new "gifted" student program. He was enrolled in the program, where three days a week he left school to meet scientists, work at a TV studio, take poetry classes and visit art museums. He was also diagnosed with the following learning disabilities: colorblindness, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder (A.D.D.), sequential order deficiency, and binocularity of the eyes. This led him to describe himself later in life as a "watered-down idiot savant".
In tenth grade, Liam decided to record his own album. Saving money from odd jobs and garage sales, he used a local recording studio. This was a solo effort; he was working in recording studios writing, producing, and playing all the instruments for the solo album made of his own original songs. He produced another album at 17 and used the money acquired from local gigs for starting a scholarship to help creative kids with learning disabilities get past their shortcomings and into art classes.
After high school, Lynch went to Kent State University. Matt Crocco soon followed him. "People were more freakier than myself" at Kent, Lynch explained. He took classes in writing, African history, glassblowing and sculpture. He had his poetry published in a book, lectured at meetings to psychiatrists and teachers of artistic learning-disabled students and came close to changing the entrance requirements of his college. He collaborated with the Dean of Education to allow artistic students, with low grades in other subjects, to prove themselves academically in the areas where they excelled rather than being held back.
While at Kent, his parents moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Liam met Michael Taylor via a mutual friend, and eventually moved to Nashville, Tennessee after meeting composer Phil Copeland, got into studios, and learned about creativity with deadlines. Liam grew tired of Kent and transferred to Belmont University in Nashville, but left Belmont after only three days of classes.
He continued to play music, this time as the frontman in a band called Owen’s Ashes. The music was theatrical, complicated. He acquired studio time and arranged meetings all over Nashville's Music Row for his new band. While at 12th & Porter, Liam was introduced to Brian Hardin, who would record many demos with Owen’s Ashes at 16th Ave Sound, Quad Studios and Sound Barrier. Despite the recordings, Lynch has claimed that his time in the band "was a failure. Playing in crappy bars, going on tour, working as a dishwasher for three years."
[edit] Illness
After the recordings, the band hit the road to tour. While touring Liam began to show signs of illness but still played shows for two years. When he became too sick to take care of himself, his mother took him back to Nashville. He developed a sinus infection so severe he almost died.
With vertigo, abscessed teeth, ulcers, severe sinus pain, and thrush in his throat and mouth, he was bedridden for six weeks with fever of 104. His weight had dropped to 100 lb. Tests indicated severe sinus blockage and infection. Surgeons were put on call, fearing they would need to lance his throat to drain his exhausted glands.
In 1994, he refused to continue all the medication. He had wisdom teeth removed and that stopped vertigo by lessening pressure. He had major surgery to repair a deviated septum that allowed his sinuses to drain properly. He slowly regained physical and mental momentum. While in convalescence he quit his band. The album Eel was written as he recorded it one track at a time, playing all instruments.
[edit] The 1990s
A close friend found a story in Rolling Stone magazine that Sir Paul McCartney was going to open a unique performing arts school, LIPA (Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts), and gave Lynch information on how to apply. Lynch, then 26, was one of 40 musicians chosen from around the world. He was also one in five students handpicked by McCartney to study guitar on a one-on-one basis. Lynch worked in various recording studios with Beatles producer George Martin and befriended ex-Roxy Music synth player/famed producer Brian Eno after several of his lectures.
During this time, he created the concept of what was to become the Sifl and Olly Show. Lynch wanted to make something using the recordings he and Matt Crocco did a few years ago as a Christmas present for Matt. He originally wanted to do stop-action photography, but Liam didn't have the money or the equipment for it. It was 3 A.M. and the only materials he could come up with were socks. He once said, "It could have easily been buckets." Making puppets out of his own socks and borrowing a video camera from a friend, Sifl & Olly was born.
Lynch sent a few tapes to MTV Europe in 1996, leaving them to become "idents," or short buffer clips played in between videos. Europe caught on immediately and a year later, these "idents" were half-hour shows. In 1997, he returned from Liverpool to Nashville, Tennessee to work with his old friends Matt Crocco and Michael Taylor on the Sifl and Olly Show pilot, briefly returing to Liverpool to finish his studies. MTV in America began airing Sifl & Olly in July 1998, but the show only lasted two seasons. A third season was slated to air online but never did, despite a cultlike following of the show's fans.
The song "United States of Whatever" was featured during Season 2 in an episode of MTV's Sifl & Olly. When the “Sifl & Olly Show” was canceled, Lynch put the song on a sampler CD. To Lynch's surprise, "United States of Whatever” topped the British charts. Lynch promptly licensed the song November 18 2002 as a single in the UK on the Global Warming label. It was released on a 3-track CD single. Its popularity spread to America, and Lynch earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the shortest song to be in the top charts in both the UK and America. The song was used in a commercial for Tony Hawk's Underground. Tony Hawk had actually made a guest appearance in recordings intended for the third season of Sifl & Olly before it was cancelled.
[edit] The 2000s
Between the first and second seasons of the Sifl & Olly Show Liam recorded a solo album called Fake Songs. Lynch released the Fake Songs CD on EMI in the U.S. April 9, 2003 (released in the UK in June 2003). The “Fake Movies” DVD that comes with the “Fake Songs” CD contains puppetry, computer animated shorts, skits, music videos, home movies and behind-the-scenes footage.
While working on the album Liam also directed a music video for the Foo Fighters (UK version of "Times Like These"), worked on DVDs for No Doubt, Tenacious D, and Eagles Of Death Metal, and finished composing music for the MTV animated series, Clone High.
Lynch released his album How To Be A Satellite in 2006. The movie he directed, Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny, debuted in late 2006.
[edit] Podcast
Liam Lynch now does a very popular podcast called LynchLand, featuring video animations, songs from his albums, and special guests. He frequently features his cats and other animals around his home. His video podcast has over 90,000 viewers, making it a featured subscription on iTunes. Instead of charging individuals for the podcast, he sells t-shirts, albums and other items on his website to offset the cost.
[edit] Discography
- Eel
- Fake Songs
- History of America? (with Matt Crocco)
- Camp Sunny Side Up (with Matt Crocco)
- We're All Nighters
- How to Be a Satellite
[edit] Trivia
Alex Albrecht, formerly of G4TechTV's The Screen Savers and current co-host of Revision3's Diggnation podcast, made a cameo appearance in a musical number on an early podcast, #6. Albrecht is a personal friend of Liam's.
