Funeral For a Friend – Transcript

Funeral For a Friend – Transcript

January 28^th, 2009

Funeral For A Friend is Currently touring North America in support of their latest full length album, Memory and Humanity, and when they played the Opera House in Toronto, I got a Chance to sit down with Guitarist Darren Smith and vocalist Matt Davies.

Aaron: How do you have so much energy on stage every night?

Matt: Drugs.

Darren: A Lot Pain Killers. A very very important exercise routine we go through every day.

M: It’s one of those things I’m gonna feel in ten years time.

D: WE always wanted to be a band that was going to perform and put on a show, rather than just stand thee and play our instruments. You might just as well listen to the cd at home if that’s the case. It’s just about putting on a bit of an image kinda wise. A vision of something that’s exciting to watch as well as the music.

M: I think you can simplify it even further and say that the music even does something to you when you’re playing. It affects your attitude, your emotion and you just play you just rock out. I don’t think about what I’m doing on stage. Sometimes I think I’m just standing still. But then some one will say “You were

It depends show to show it’s all different, the mood of the audience everything plays apart in how much energy we put across.

A: You were planning on releasing an EP, but it turned into an album, how did that happen?

D: the writing session went from initially planning four songs, to wrote, quite quickly and ended up with something like seven songs and then we realized that it isn’t much further really to a full album.

M: And then we didn’t want to wait that long, if we did put the EP out then we’d be putting out the album this year instead of last year cause we broke away from Atlantic, then we thought that if we had this seven or eight songs we thought that it made more sense to work on the album.

D: We can tour more places on an album than we can on an EP.

A: What led to the decision to leave Atlantic?

M: It was basically our option was up with Atlantic really. They wanted to go back with us but-

D: They wanted to renegotiate. Because the music industry changed so much, that they wanted to include things in the contract that we weren’t prepared to give up and it meant we sort of came to a stale mate really and we just felt that sort of because of that reason it made much more sense for us to take more control and attempt to put our own label together.

M: I think that one of the deciding factors was the way we felt the label handled our last record. WE were so excited about that record and they seemed really excited about that record, and then after we did the first single everything was like shut down. We were touring the world, and it’s like, no one doing anything to support the record.

D: They weren’t promoting it.

M: and it sucked. It was very disheartening to see something you worked so hard to create and to produce be treated in such away and we really didn’t understand it, and when the option came, with all those factors coming into play, we decided to separate from them and start up our own label and it gave us the time to focus and promote ourselves in the way that we feet we should be promoted and marketed and developed without having to have someone over your shoulder telling you that this is how it should be done. We know how it should be done; we’ve been in the business for a long time.

D: we’ve learned a lot and that was another factor towards not being too afraid to go the own label route. We learned a hell of a lot and learned a lot of things not to do as well. It could just be a waste of money cause I think that major labels are very prone to spending a lot of money on things that are just not going to work and if they actually asked the artist if they think it would work, a good percentage of them would say that that’s just a waste of money, that that’s just not going to work. That was another thing

D: I think, you know, in the uk up until

the album before this one, we had a healthy kind of relationship with Atlantic records, it was only in America that we Rreally felt let down. They just didn’t want to prioritize us at all andk kind of push us hard enough

M: It was like we were just left on their door step

D: especially America and even through Canada no one really gave that much of a shit as far as record labels go.

They weren’t really pushing hard or trying to make us more successful through marketing streams and stuff.

A: Are you going to use Join Us mostly to release your own stuff or are you planning on signing and releasing other bands as well?

D: At the moment, I think that it’s just aimed at just our own and as long as we can make that work, I think then, further down the line we can sort of add other bands and stuff, and

It becomes more complex when you’re working with other bands and artists. You need to get things right for them you need what they want in a contract and stuff like that.

A: How has the music industry changed in Wales, since you’re first release?

M: there’s a lot of bands that given the success of the first wave, I guess we can consider ourselves part of the first wave, it has definitely given a light for loads of other bands to realize that they can go somewhere and get somewhere with their music. There are loads of bands that we are friends with and even bands that we’ve had on tour with us up until recently even are really gaining recognition. We’re all about shining a light on the hot bed of talent there still lying in wait to be exploited by whatever bloody record label chooses to get their grubby mitts on them.

D: A part of Indie bands were ignored for years.

M: It’s a thriving muti-sonic scene really ,so many different kinds of bands I think it’s the healthiest it’s been in a long long time. And I think it’s continuing to develop and grow

D: Not just in Wales, I think across the whole UK it’s a very healthy time for music.

A: What kind of music do you guys listen too?

D: I think we all got varied tastes from one extreme to the other really. From poppy stuff or mellow acoustic stuff to quite brutal death metal. A lot of prog rock kind of stuff and um a lot of thrash movement, like, metal bands.

M: You just like everything. Darren’s music collection is really something to behold.

He has a lot of records

D: like 5000 cd’s. I always have found music fascinating and interesting as far as how it’s created and the way people do it so differently, and I continue to be excited by it. And some people sometime, especially within the music industry so to speak, it can kind of disillusion you or turn you kind of against music a little bit.

M: Yeah I don’t listen to it a lot as I used to. As I get older I find myself listening to it less and less. I’ve grown quite picky about what I choose to listen to. I used to be whatever I could get my hands on and devour, but now there’s so much other things that inspire me to create, that influence my writing particularly not necessarily music, so for me, the last thing I listened to was the new Bruce Springsteen record, which came out quite recently. Which is awesome. It’s a really really good record.

D: As far as that, influencing our music goes, I think pretty much anything can influence our music cause we listen to anything. I pretty much give anything a go and give it a listen.

M: he’s quite open minded Darrin IS. He bases his opinion on what he should not what the perception is before hand.

D: I’ll give anybody a chance to have a listen to what they got going on.

A: What was the best live show you’ve seen recently?

M: I don’t go to many shows at all any more so it’s quite hard for me to say. The last one I did see that I thought was pretty wicked was Springsteen again. My wife took e to see him, cause she was quite adamant that I see him, and it was awesome for three and a half hours to behold a man of his age running around that stage, knocking out tune after tune it was just amazing to watch

D:Mine would either have to be Journey, I saw journey back in Wales, in Cardiff, this new singer that Neal Shawn found. I love classic rock and America melodic rock. And so that was awesome, this guy they found on you tube or whatever, is so spot on, his voice, sounding just like their original singer Steve Perry. It was just like close your eyes and it could have been Steve Perry up there. And I saw White Snake a Def Leopard together which was awesome. Big shows old school over the top shows.

A: How has the internet and modern technology affected your music, or all music in general?

M: It hasn’t changed the way we make music, it think it’s changed and shaped the way we look at the interactivity between the band and the fans and we do a lot of blogs, and we run our own myspace, and we update that and we make little video blogs. I think it’s important to us and to the fans to feel like there’s something more. I think that it sounds quite sad really but the emphasis is less on the music in a way, but more on what else you can give them to keep their attention span. Music has become so instant. For me when I bought a record I used to invest so much time in it, I would listen to it non stop for weeks on end, and devour the booklet and now kids will have two songs from an album, not even named or credited, and they’ll think that’s fair enough. And that’s fine, that’s the way it’s going but for us we like to try and keep a balance between the two and keep visually and interactive with all the kind of things on the internet and try to get them to come to the show, and put a focus on the show, on the actual cd on the actual product, because we put a lot of time into the product cause we’re such big fans of the product as well. We grew up with vinyl and with the first generation of cd’s.

D: There’s nothing quite like holding the disc in your hand and seeing the artwork.

M: And it’s a part of it, it’s not just packaging, it’s an extension of it, it’s our artistic input in the whole bundle, so we want our audience to appreciate that more these days. We try to do a lot of things like those interviews and updates, where we are in the world. They can just come and see what we’re up to.

D: the way that things are now, you have to do that to be in people’s minds and to keep some sort of interest in you as a band, you have to go online and kind of get those things across

M: This morning we did a live web chat. All five of us sat around in the front and we were there for an hour talking to fans.

D: For want of a better word, it was kind of a Clusterfuck.

M: it was. It was supposed to be question answer, but there was so many question.

D: there was no shape to it. There was just people throwing comments in there. But it was quite fun.

A: What does the set-list look like on this tour?

M: I think it’s a bit of everything. Always we’re playing stuff of the new record cause that’s why we’re here, so we’re playing a bunch of songs of that. But we’re also trying to incorporate a wide selection of music from out older records for the benefit of those people who may not be that familiar with us and even those people who have been with us since first record but have never had the chance to hear us play so we want to play a wide variety of songs, as well as showcase where we are right now as a band, cause you can’t keep living in the past. No matter how many people may want you to do that, you’ve got to progress and move forward. I think with each record you pick up a new fan base and you do convert older fans to the direction you’re going in anyways, and it’s nice to have a set that fits together so nicely the new songs really go hand in hand with the older stuff quite neatly.

D: We’re proud of everything we’ve done. We’re not one of those bands like some are that might have a hit song that they detest playing it. I know some bands that omit songs from their set just out of spite, because they don’t like it whether their fans want to hear it or not. It’s just stupid I think, as well as kind of conceited. Even though with every record we’ve changed and developed and progressed with our sound, we don’t ignore what we’ve done before. We just want to try different things and make it as interesting as possible for ourselves as well as the listener.

Check out FFAF’s Memory and Humanity, and if you get the chance, for God sake, see them live.