Alex Carle has been part of the Baltimore music scene since debuting with a progressive rock group called Aristotle’s Paradox, back in 2009. His vocals have been widely tested, having sung in musicals as well as covers of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs. He’s played lots of Baltimore venues, including the now defunct Sonar and the lively Ram’s Head Live. Most recently he has been working on a project called City Line Kids, which is described on their Facebook page as an American alternative rock/indie pop group from Baltimore, MD. A native of Towson, he graduated from Towson High School and now goes to Towson University as an anthropology major. He also has spent a lot of time traveling abroad and often visits the beach in Ocean City, MD. This past week I managed to sit down with him to talk about his project and what he has been up to lately.

What is City Line Kids?

City Line Kids is this music project that I started back in 2014. I wanted to just write a bunch of the songs myself after I put all this work and effort into that old band and then they didn’t want to do it anymore, which is fine.

You guys kind of peeled off?

Yeah, I mean that was in high school, and we were all going to different colleges, or not. And we just had different ideas of what to do with music. I’m not bitter about it, and I wasn’t really then either. It was a bummer that I put all this work into this thing and then something that was entirely out of my control took it away, you know, so I wanted to have more control over my music and my music project, so I decided to start City Line Kids, and make it so this was my group. Whatever it was was coming from my head and that was important. It was important and I feel now that I have more creative power because it's just me writing the songs. And I don’t have that risk of City Line Kids no longer being a thing if somebody else backs out, because the only person who can back out is me and I’m in control of whether or not it ends.

So it's my little music project. I play the ukulele and sing and write the music. Sometimes City Line Kids is just me, and recently City Line Kids was six or seven people when I was just up in New York.

So you had like a whole group of musicians [for that show]?

I had a bunch of guys backing me, it was the house band of the venue. City Line Kids is whoever is on the stage with me at the time. If its just me, then City Line Kids is just me in that moment, but then if ten people come up on stage and play with me, then City Line Kids is a ten or eleven-man group.

It’s a pretty flexible thing? Talk about your trip to New York, you were just up in New York at the Bitter End, right?

Yeah, I was at the Bitter End playing a show hosted by Richie Cannata. A really amazing saxophone player. Played with Billy Joel, the Beach Boys. I went up with just my ukulele and played their show. I didn’t go on stage till one something, didn’t get off till two, and I was really worried. I was like, “Oh shit, all these people are not gonna be here by the time I’m on stage.” You just figure people want to go to sleep, and it was like a Wednesday, too, so I was like there’s no way these people are gonna stay up on a Wednesday to see me play, but I was so surprised that everybody actually did. The audience was really receptive and really focused on what was going on on-stage. It was a really, really great audience, especially for like, one, two in the morning.

Did people know that you were going on, was there advance notice or did you kind of just take the stage?

There wasn’t so much advance notice. I didn’t know when I was going on. They were just kinda like, “alright!” Really quick transitions, which I appreciated.

So they kept it moving?

Yeah, they kept it moving. They switched out some band members for different songs, which was cool.

Cool, so you’d go up there again?

Oh yeah, the Bitter End was cool. A place with a lot of history....Billy Joel played there. Bob Dylan played there.

It's in Greenwich Village, right?

Yeah, it's in Greenwich village, yup. Uh, Bill Cosby played there. I don’t know if that’s one that they’re so eager to include anymore, but is still a fact [laughs].

They would’ve been like, “Bill Cosby was here! But, wait, uh...okay”

“Nevermind, no he wasn’t!” Well, they have this big mural of all the really big people that have played there, that’s what I’m trying to remember.

Oh yeah?

Lady Gaga was there, at some point in time.

You just put out an album. About Time, right?

[laughs] Yeah, fucking About Time man.

I know you’re relieved to be done with it now, but, well not quite done with it, but at least the recording is all finished?

Yeah the recording’s all finished, and I thought that I would feel done with it when that was the case, when the recording was done, I thought that I would feel finished. But then, I wouldn’t feel finished. I decided that I wasn’t gonna feel finished until it was all pressed and fixed and oh, actually I brought this for you. [Hands me a copy of “About Time”, with the CD jacket and the disk inside]. I’ve just been carrying it around. Sorry, I forgot to give that to you first thing when I saw you.

this is a sweet album, album artwork.

Yeah, that’s by a Baltimore artist named Frank Tybush.

[Frank Tybush directed the music video for Pitiful Criminals (All You Wanted) by City Line Kids]

Its been a real pleasure working with Frank actually on this album. He’s been doing everything that’s sort of on the visual side of music. So like the music video he directed, the photos...inside are photos and he took all those, and he designed the album artwork. And he’s like a really cool dude to work with, too. Now, what I’m really busy with is just distribution, and trying to get it out there, trying to get it heard. I think a general rule at this point is if a shop sells marijuana paraphernalia in Ocean City or in Towson it probably is carrying my sampler [laughs].

You gotta hit it where the market is

Yeah, I mean, I think we have the same clientele for the most part. Maybe not.

Yeah, it is inspired by the beach, would you say?

Umm…

It's a ukulele

It's a ukulele, so it brings you to the beach, and I think that’s one cool thing about the instrumentation. The music is more influenced, not by a beachy-scene, more of just my experiences in this suburban and urban area. But we take those experiences and then put them with instruments that they usually aren’t paired with, such as the ukulele, and it creates this sort of beach scene. So it’s sort of taking the city to the beach and the beach to the city at the same time.

So, going with the ukulele, what would you say inspired you to start playing the ukulele?

Well, I played the guitar for a little bit, and I went through this really, I started exploring the ukulele more starting with artists like Never Shout Never—Christopher Drew. What he does was, I think, was probably the first artist where I was like, “yeah, I could definitely go with that sound. I could explore that sound.” It was funny cause once I noticed the ukulele there, or once I started playing the ukulele, I noticed it in like a ton of songs. I didn’t realize how many songs actually use the ukulele. So I got more interested in it listening to those songs.

That was probably when I was like 18—around 18.

So right around the time you graduated high school?

Graduated high school, yeah. And I picked it up, and it was a good transition from guitar. And I also used the ukulele a lot more because during that time in my life, when I was like 18 and 19, I was doing a lot more traveling. And so the ukulele is a lot more accommodating for long plane rides, bus rides, what have you, so I think that I was kind of stuck with the ukulele rather than the guitar. And because that was the case, I played that more, and maybe just because I was used to playing the guitar at home and playing the ukulele when I was away at other places in the world, maybe my mind just associated more excitement and happiness with the ukulele.

It's a worldly instrument?

Yeah, and it's good, man, it's always good to have a ukulele around. Especially when I was living in different youth hostels in Australia, and when I was living on that research boat in Peru. I brought the ukulele there and, you know, everybody can sing along to something.

Did that kind of inspire you to start writing your own songs more?

I think I started writing my own songs… I definitely had some of them written in high school, at least in lyrics.

its been a long process

Yeah, I mean some of them started as guitar songs. A few of the tracks, like “Deadbeats Club” and “No Problems” are probably the first written songs on the album. I probably wrote those when I was seventeen.

Okay, so while you were still with your first band, Aristotle’s Paradox?

Or, briefly afterward. Or, right afterward, yeah. So some of these songs have been in the works for a really long time. I say that the whole album took two years. That’s what I would say officially. I know I’m saying that I started writing them in 2013, finishing in like 2016. I guess you could say it was a three-year process, but for me, taking the songs seriously and actually like learning them and getting them down, pursuing the writing on the album, I would say that the whole writing process started two years before the album was finished. Whereas the music, the recording and all that, took just a little over a year, within that two years.

you did that while you were in school and while you were working?

Yeah, I did that throughout my first semesters of college. That was cool doing. I liked it a lot, I liked going to the recording studio a lot after class. Because if I just needed to get off campus, I had a reason to. It was relaxing in that sense. I really enjoyed the whole recording process—even a year into it, when we were going into mixing and mastering and stuff like that, I never really lost interest. Well, I never really lost any interest, to be honest. I always enjoyed going to the studio.

So it wasn’t like, “Oh my gosh, this has to be done!”

Yeah, it never felt like, “Oh God, I gotta go to the studio again!” It was always a really fun experience. I look forward to the next time I record something. I think its gonna be another fun experience.

Nice, well that’s great. Well, I guess we should wrap this up, best of luck with this album.

Thanks, man.

band website: http://www.citylinekidsmusic.com/

CD Baby: http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/CityLineKids

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/citylinekids

Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/artist/1gcq8vbr11yQeRYDhH...

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/city-line-kids/...

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/citylinekidsband/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/city_line_kids

Instagram: @citylinekids ---- http://www.pictaram.com/user/citylinekids/2537843769

and their music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UMT-iyuOHY