Dramas and reflections: an interview with Ryan Howell of Farewell, My Love

Photography by Tarina Doolittle

A few short weeks ago US rock band Farewell, My Love unveiled their debut album Gold Tattoos, a release which proved that the drama and aesthetic look of the band is more than a look. Hailing from Arizona, the inventive quintet has found their first full-length being heartily embraced by fans and given strong attention by the media. Just as eager to get our 15 minutes of attention with the band we had the pleasure to keep vocalist Ryan Howell busy with our questions, finding out about the origins of the band and the recording of the album as well as the neck break recruitment of Ryan himself on the eve of the band’s first tour…

Hi Ryan, welcome to the site and thanks for taking time out to chat with us.

First up can you give us some background to the early days of you all and the impetus to the forming of the band?

The Farewell, My Love you see now was formed through very intense and careful searching, far and wide ha-ha.

Were your previous bands/projects seeded in a similar sound to that of Farewell, My Love?

I believe that all of us share a very similar vision for what we want this band to sound like. None of our prior bands sounded crazy similar to Farewell, My Love but you could definitely tell where it grew from.

How long from the first seeds of an idea to the full emergence of the band was it?

Not too long, we’ve been blessed enough to find an amazing group of musicians that all share a similar vision and drive to push through anything. We are happy to say that through all our struggles that we have really found a strong line-up that is ready to take over.

You came into the band later than the other members, replacing the first vocalist who I believe left on the ‘eve’ of a tour. Tell us how it came about that a guy in South Africa became a part of an Arizona band.

The band’s previous vocalist quit the band just three weeks before their first tour, so they spent the next week or so looking all over the internet for who they believed would be the right guy to join them and they found me. We shared a fair amount of mutual friends in the industry who suggested me to them & it just kind of all fell into place. They flew me out 2 weeks later and we left for our first tour together.

Was it an easy fit so close to going on tour and how difficult was it for him to leave his homeland and family?

Obviously leaving your home and family for an extended period of time is never something that is easy but if you have a dream that you would do anything to chase then it is a sacrifice well made.

The work leading up to the tour must have been rather intensive for you all with such a change so soon before?

Yeah, that it definitely was ha-ha. I had to learn an entire set worth of songs in a matter of weeks. I remember having to polish up on learning all of the lyrics on the plane ride over to the states and it being a very stressful, but exciting process.

Did you find that pressure and issue equally though gave your live performances an extra edge?

Yeah definitely. Pressure sometimes gives you that extra drive to make everything as perfect as you can possibly make it.

You have recently released your debut album Gold Tattoos; the response to it seems rather feverish so far.

Yeah, it has been received very well by our fans for sure and has opened up the door to us gaining a lot more fans as well. Definitely been very flattering to have our album voted into the Alternative Press Readers Charts multiple months in a row after the album’s release along such acts as Black Veil Brides, Pierce The Veil, and Get Scared.

The album brought up thoughts for us of My Chemical Romance at their best at times; what are the inspirations which have had the biggest impact on your songwriting?

Honestly our band has a very diverse array of influences from Frank Sinatra to Aerosmith to My Chemical Romance. We find a lot of pleasure in combining as many sounds as we can to create our sound while still creating something cohesive.

Talking of that how does the songwriting come together within the band?

Röbby comes up with a lot of the skeletons of what the songs are and then from there we all collaborate to give the songs that signature Farewell, My Love sound.

The album suggests you maybe feel a greater affinity with nineties metal than the current state of the genre?

We appreciate bands that started around that time period, along with many others.

As well as offering thumping slices of passion soaked melodic metal, Gold Tattoos is quite a theatrical encounter too, though not an overblown one; has this aspect of your sound emerged organically or is it something you have crafted into your music as say the band’s look?

We definitely spent a lot of time creating what we feel to be the missing piece in the music scene nowadays while still maintaining a vintage vibe. We are always pushing ourselves to be better.

Lyrically the songs are quite emotive, tales looking at relationships and those off-shooting dramas; how personal is the lyrical side of the album to the band or individuals?

Each song is a personal journey that we’ve all gone through but told through the use of metaphors and storytelling. There are a lot of bands out there nowadays that are very straight forward with their lyrics, which although is cool, doesn’t really fit with the theatrical vision we have for this band.

The album was produced by Don Debiase (Modern Day Escape, Beneath the Sky, For All Those Sleeping), how did that link up come about and what was the biggest impact he had on the album or you as a band in the studio?

Our relationship with Don Debiase came about because of our label owner, Neil Sheehan. They had been friends for a long time and Neil suggested him to us when it came time to write and record our full length album. I feel like he contributed in the way of always pushing us to our limits ad creating a very positive vibe in the studio.

Did the songs during the recording process emerge exactly as you envisaged going into the studio or did they evolve a lot further?

The songs were pretty close to being finished when we entered the studio to record the album but obviously the more you mould with your art, the more it reveals its true potential.

I can image that a debut album is an exciting unknown which equally can be nerve shredding at times. How did you find the situation?

We were honestly very excited to put the album out because we felt that it really represented what the band sounds like. We knew when we were writing it that it wasn’t going to be for everyone but honestly, no style of music is and we’re perfectly okay with that.

For us the first half of the album was a furnace of excellence compared to a ‘mere’ fire of enjoyment for the second. Obviously personal tastes dictates how successfully songs work for people but what did you use as a gauge or influence when it came to the order you placed the songs on the album?

When it came to the arrangement of the tracks we sat down as a band, listened to all the tracks separately and just felt it out. We wanted it to flow as much as possible while still having an unexpected edge.

Tracks like Afraid Of The Dark and My Perfect Thing thrust the album to the heart of a hungry attention whilst others like Faceless Frames turn up the heat further, but Mirror, Mirror is the biggest prize of them all for us. Can you give some insight into the triumph?

We like to keep our songs as diverse as we possibly can.

Is there a particular track or moment on the album which gives you just that extra tinge of satisfaction inside?

Every single song on the record is something that we are very proud of.

We mentioned My Chemical Romance earlier as a potent comparison to your sound, a band which was the flavoursome pioneers in melodic metal at first for the media and then seemingly within an album the target of ridicule and disdain from the mainstream press. Do you keep that ‘image’ in the back of the mind as you feel the ‘love’ of the media right now?

We keep our influences very close to our hearts but we try to do our own thing and create music that we feel is one of a kind.

What is next for Farewell, My Love? Tours can be expected?

Lots and lots of touring & new music videos. Be sure to keep checking in with us on Facebook, Twitter and all our other social sites for the latest updates!

Thanks once again for chatting with us.

Is there a last thought or quote you would like to leave us all pondering?

Be prepared for the future and remember that we love every single person out there that supports us! We couldn’t do this without our Farewell Family ❤

http://www.facebook.com/farewellmyloveofficial

Read the review of Gold Tattoos @ https://ringmasterreviewintroduces.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/farewell-my-love-gold-tattoos/

Pete RingMaster

The RingMaster Review 23/04/2014

Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright

Listen to the best independent music and artists on The RingMaster Review Radio Show and The Bone Orchard from

http://www.audioburger.com

Turning on the future: an interview with Mike Scalzi of Slough Feg

As numerous impressive releases find them drenched in acclaim already this year, the outstanding Digital Resistance from Slough Feg stands on the frontline as one of the more imaginatively incendiary and virulently contagious adventures. Stretching and pushing their unique blend of Celtic folk and traditional metal with an array of additional potent flavours for  release which triggers a new thirst for the band’s sounds past and present, Slough Feg show themselves to be a force which continues to evolve and impress adding something special to the world of metal. Seizing on the opportunity and pleasure to delve deeper into the band and new album with vocalist/guitarist Mike Scalzi, we explore Digital Resistance, home town prejudices, technology and humanity, Slainé and much more…

Hi Mike and many thanks for sparing time to talk with us.

Before we get to your new album Digital Resistance can we ask about the band name… it comes from the Slainé story strip in UK comic 2000 A.D., a publication I have boxes of around the office I must admit. You are comic geeks or just this one character captured the imagination?

I was never really that into comic books—- except when I was pretty young and into Marvel stuff. The Slainé comics I just came across kind of by mistake and liked the “Warp-spasm” idea a lot, and thought it would be cool to write heavy metal songs about that. They came out with a 2000 AD hard-cover book recently featuring all the old cover art from the original Slainé comics and allowed me to write some of the liner notes—– really great. I was really happy about that.

As mentioned you have just released your new album, Digital Resistance, a release which marks a new strength of adventure in the band’s sound?

This is more of a statement than a question. But, here’s what I think:

We’ve done concept albums and albums that were taken to be concept albums that were not. This one I would have to say, is a concept album in the sense that the Beatles Sgt. Pepper is a concept album— it has somewhat of a consistent lyrical theme that runs through several of the songs, but not every song— it is not a concept album in the sense that our Traveller album is. I used to like technology, and still do in a poetic/literary sense, but the reality of it is becoming quite frightening. This theme then expanded to the role of technology in human evolution, etc. I am a teacher, and I watch students’ mindsets changing on a yearly basis—let’s just say I can’t say they are becoming noticeably smarter, with the advent of all this technology at their fingertips.

Did you musically have any clear intention with the direction of Digital Resistance or has it been primarily an organic emergence of ideas?

It’s just whatever we felt like writing at the time, no real preconceived ideas. Whatever inspires us at the moment is what we write. I tried to accomplish some different types of sounds on this album— some organ, some more rock songs, some more traditional, simple songs as well.

Your sound seems to be tagged as a merger of Celtic folk and traditional metal, something the new release certainly supports but there is plenty more flavours working away from within suggesting that if not inspirations your own personal tastes in music are potently wide and varied. How would you describe Digital Resistance to newcomers to really nail its presence?

I don’t know if I can. When someone asks me what the band sounds like, that is someone who has never heard it before, I say it sounds like Maiden, but older, with more traditional music influences, even stuff from Broadway musicals. I just write songs, and listen to different types of music, not just metal. In fact I don’t listen to too much metal these days— more traditional songs, like Frank Sinatra, and older rock stuff like the Beatles and Yes and even the Police, lately. These influences find their way into the music.

At times the album sparked up thoughts of bands such as Horslips as well as Thin Lizzy, Helldorado, and Hammers of Misfortune as additional loud whispers in an overall unique sound and adventure. Are there specific inspirations which have actually flavoured your invention over the years would you say?

Well, the stuff I mentioned above. Horslips was an influence at one point for sure; we covered Dergid Doom from their Tain album on Hardworlder. But that’s the only Horslips album I’m familiar with.

As you referred to earlier lyrically Digital Resistance looks at technology and how it impacts on all aspects of life, can you expand on its theme and how personally you have seen that ‘invasion’ coming into your lives?

Some of the songs are interconnected just because they have the same theme—resisting technology, or at least what it’s doing to the human mind— making it lazy and ‘flabby’. Some of the songs though are not about this— they are just about growing up and becoming middle-aged in a world you do not understand. Very simple—- many people go through this— especially today when musicians in particular don’t want to grow up— they want things to stay the way they were when they were younger— when you get older  you tend to think the world is getting older, or dying with you. It’s hard to accept the changing world. I am no exception. I don’t understand what’s going on in the mind of most Americans, it scares me. SO I write songs about it, like Warrior’s Dusk and Magic Hooligan.

Society is leaning on and allowing technology to infiltrate their daily lives more and more, how long do you see it before cyber implants and upgrades become as common place as tattoos and breast enlargements?

No long at all. That’s some of what the record is about. It’s not going to be long before the cell-phones are not outside of our bodies anymore— now people’s eyes are glued to them. Soon they won’t have to stare at them; they’ll already be in their brains!!

..and until the species becomes ‘stupid’ as machines make our decisions for us?

It’s already happening.

Back to the album, how have you approached Digital Resistance in its creation and recording which was different from previous releases?

Not really any different. It’s the same basic songwriting and recording process.

How does the songwriting play out generally within Slough Feg?

Usually I write guitar or now organ parts at home, and then bring them down to the band to see if they sound good with everyone playing their own parts. I let the other guys do whatever they want to do over my riffs– unless it doesn’t sound right and then we all throw in our 2 cents. Generally we agree on what sounds good. Songwriting is really mostly editing. Coming up with the parts and melodies is not the hard part—- ask any songwriter– it’s putting it all together that is challenging— making it all sound like a song.

Having numerous albums under your belts, does each new adventure become easier to immerse within and bring to fruition or are there always new questions and obstacles to engage in which each journey into the studio?

Usually the latter… It is actually becoming very difficult trying to find a new way to do things, so that things continue to sound ‘fresh”. I always worry about putting something out that sounds just like the last thing we did— bands should be more concerned with this, because how many albums have you heard that sound just like the last one the same band put out? Bands need to try to break new ground, but they are often scared to do this because they may lose their audience. But I think they run a higher risk of losing their audience by doing the same thing over and over again.

How has that processed change most dramatically for you over the years?

It was not different than any other album, other than the fact that I used some organ on this one, but really it was just the same.  The songs were written with the band in the rehearsal space just like our other albums- etc. And the singing took forever because my voice is getting old and decrepit, and was never really suited for metal in the first place. I have a crooners voice, or if I’d worked at it a little maybe a choir voice, but not a high pitched metal voice– but I love metal, so I try to sing like Freddy Mercury and fail- and end up sounding like Neil Diamond on steroids. What can I say?

Pretty much the process remains the same—and I’m not actually that happy about it—I write guitar riffs, or now sometimes piano parts, and then bring them to the band and we work out arrangements, transitions, etc. But honestly, after a while that gets a little old, I’d like to do it a little different in the future— maybe if we had more money we could go into the studio and write a lot of the stuff in there and get a more spontaneous feeling for the record— we did some of that on Twilight of the Idols and some really interesting songs came out of that approach. But that takes a lot of time, which means money that we don’t really have right now.

I have noticed in previous interviews you are a band which looks back at your older releases and are quite honest in what worked and just as openly did not work. How soon after a release does hindsight lead you to these observations, when does the cold light of day sink in?

It usually happens in waves. I get pretty critical of the album right after we’re done with it, and then later on after listening to it a bunch I start to like it. But then I start to get critical again in a few months and after a few months I decide I don’t like the record. Then later after a year or so I start to like it again!!!!! It drives me insane!!!

Digital Resistance is released through Metal Blade Records, how did that union come about?

They asked us to do an album with them and we said ‘yes’, that simple. We negotiated a contract and went with it. What do we have to lose?

Mike you are a philosophy teacher, and I was wondering is there a comparison or similarity between that profession and music itself for you, in its content and presentation especially?

Yes. It’s almost exactly the same lecturing in front of kids and performing music in front of them. You have to use gimmicks to keep them interested, and you have to write out content that is interesting and valuable. Doing a philosophy lecture is just like playing a metal show. It has to have peaks and valleys, heavy parts and light parts, a good intro and outro—– you have to keep them engaged just the same!!!

Slough Feg and its sound is not a typical San Francisco band I suspect, how have you fitted in your hometown’s scene over the years?

They hated us for the first 10 years. Hated us, in fact I think we stayed together just to spite everyone here. This was during the 90’s when everyone hated metal, and they hated us a lot. It wasn’t until the late 90’s and early 2000’s that people started to appreciate us. We don’t fit in here, never have. But now we have fans here and it’s cool, but I think we do better in a lot of other places.

What is next and across 2014 from Slough Feg?

A European tour in late May/early June, a couple of local shows and then in July shows in the Midwest– Chicago!! We did a movie soundtrack recently, and a few other projects. Just the same stuff——writing music, recording and playing rock and roll!!!!!!!

Thank you again for sharing time with us.

Thanks!!

https://www.facebook.com/sloughfegofficial

https://twitter.com/slough_feg

Read the review of Digital Resistance @ https://ringmasterreviewintroduces.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/slough-feg-digital-resistance/

Pete RingMaster

The RingMaster Review 05/03/2014

 Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright

Listen to the best independent music and artists on The RingMaster Review Radio Show and The Bone Orchard from

http://www.audioburger.com