Farewell Interview
WORDS: YASMIN BEGUM (Youth Editorial Group)
Farewell, the North Carolina based band are a mixture of sounds with their soaring harmonies, perfect pop sound and pop-punk guitars that are very reminiscent of bands such as The Descendents and Bad Religion. This band have been subject to critical acclaim here in the UK from music press such as the NME and Kerrang! with their infectious debut album Isn't This Suppose To Be Fun? When theSprout got in touch to see if I would like to interview them I immediately said yes. I felt thrilled to be interviewing lead singer Marshall Davis from a band who were signed onto one of my favourite record labels, Epitaph, and who were so diverse and talented in their sound.
1. How did you meet as a band?
Well, I hadn't really been in a band but I really wanted to be in one. I had just started art college upstate in North Carolina and I started hanging out with these guys. At the time they had another vocalist and they were pressing a record. They didn't have enough money to finish it, so I ended up loaning them around five hundred bucks and becoming their keyboard player. A few things went sour with the lead singer, so I took over the role.
2. How did you come about also being the band's artist?
A lot of the bands around the area and scene all had pretty similiar artwork so I thought that if I did the drawings and t-shirt designs and what not, we would stand out a bit from the other bands. I've always enjoyed drawing, if you look at my town, (Greensboro), it's technically not on the map, that's how small it is; it was a way for me to relieve boredom. It wasn't a concious decision so to speak, it started off small things and grew. I was going through art college when I decided to take up the role and we had feedback from people who really liked our mechandise so I went along with it. It's pretty cool though; I've now got a few embers in the fire.
3. A lot of bands in North Carolina are very hardcore and screamo based, almost metal. What compelled you to be different?
As kids growing up, we didn't really listen to much metal music but our peers did. We didn't set out to be purposely different or whatever, we just decided to make music inspired by the bands we listened to, I suppose we were different in that way. We listened to punk, we didn't really listen to metal. We wanted our music to reflect that.
4. What bands and artists inspire you as musicians?
Ha ha, there's loads. Speaking for myself, I really love the old punk rock and early DC emo stuff. Bands like Fugazi, Sunny Dale Real Estate. I know the other band members really loved bands like Bad Religion, that whole Californian punk scene. I remember that my first gig in my hometown in North Carolina was Fugazi, I grew up going to punk rock shows. I love Fugazi. There were so many metal gigs around it was crazy. I also really like bands like Weezer and Green Day, I saw Green Day play right after their album Insomniac. I suppose the band that defined everything for me was Alkaline Trio, their lead singer Matt Skiba writes the lyrics. I think he's the biggest influence on me as far lyrics are concerned, as a kid growing up it felt like every song could have been written about me. To outsiders who aren't into punk, I suppose we come across as just a scene band... but if you look beneath the surface, you'll see all of those influences in us, as well as bands such as the Beach Boys. A lot of our fans missed out on being punk fans I think because of their age, I suppose it's different now to what it was. Punk was big when I was growing up. Not too much of it comes through in our music, but our roots are in punk rock and they're definitely there.
5. What was it like recording your debut album?
It was a really long process, we had a bit of a label bidding war going on. We were shopping around to see which label would be the best for us, but we were a bit weary because they weren't indie labels like we wanted to be signed on; they were all major labels. Most of the lyrics were written around 2004, give or take a few. It took around two and a half years to finish the album, we had recorded around three quarters of it when we had to stop because if various issues. I mean, if you listen to it, it sounds alright, but to me it sounds really disjointed and fragmented. I'm really looking forward to recording our new album though, it's going to be cool to be able to have access to a studio for a long period of time and be able to record it all at once. It bugs me that we took so long with our first record.
6. What's your favourite song off your MySpace page?
I really like 88, I use to like First on the Blog but it got so pushed heavily that I'm beginning to dislike it. It was really pushed as a radio hit and I didn't like that at all. I really like the song Time To Time that's going to be on our new record. I can't wait to play that live.
7. How did you feel when you got signed to Epitaph, as it's such an influential label?
I was literally floored when I found out that Brett Gurewi (the lead singer from Bad Religion, a very influential punk band from America and also the owner of the label) was interested in the band. I was gobsmacked. He was introducing himself to me over the phone and it felt so surreal. I spent my youth listening to bands that were signed onto Epitaph, bands like The Offspring, obviously Bad Religion and Weezer. We were relieved though and immediatly said yes. I felt really flattered that he asked us to sign to his label, for some labels we could be written off because of our 'fashionable' look and our sound, but as I said earlier, if you've listened to early punk, you can hear a bit of it in our records. He picked up on that. I think that's one of the reasons we were asked to sign. I'm glad we're signed with them though.
8. Do you have any singles coming up that will be released here in the UK?
Yeah, the single 88 is going to be released this autumn, around the same time as we're touring Britain. It's going to be released sometime around October, I'm not too sure of the exact date though. There's a link to it on our MySpace page and you can watch the video on the Epitaph website.
9. How do you think your British fans will be like compared to your American ones?
Well, we've played Japan and we were taken well by the crowds there. I've spoken to bands and they've said that Europe is similiar to playing Japan, I'm not sure how though. To be honest with you I've heard mixed things from different bands. Some say that it's amazing because it's a smaller country so the scene there is more compact, but others have said that American bands aren't received well in the UK. I'm not too sure about that, I think that you must have to have a lot of shows in that one country to write off a place like that. I'm really excited about playing in the UK, I just hope that our gigs go well and we're received well by our British fans.
10. What would be your advice for aspiring musicians?
Stick it out as much as you can. It has to be your first priority, you can't go out and not be one hundred per cent about it. It's not going to be an easy ride either, touring is a really hard thing to do. You can't be iffy about it, you have to realise that as a small band you have to give everything up in hopes of getting somewhere. You can't go out there half-heartedly unless you will get knocked down. It helps if you have a strong work ethic. When we got signed to Epitaph, we realised that we had to do a heap of work and work harder because we're on contract. We can't just choose not to do a tour or something. Stick it out and pour your heart and soul into your music, and I'm sure you will get somewhere - I know I did.
Farewell have a set of tourdates in the UK for when they tour this autumn and will be rocking the Solus on Tue 28 Oct supporting YouMeAtSix with Houston Calls. They'll be releasing single 88's to coincide with this tour. For more information, have a look at their MySpace and Epitaph pages.
