INTERVIEW BY VIVIAN HUA.

This month’s guest commentators, Facing New York, (FNY) are just a couple of guys from the San Francisco Bay Area who are trying to overcome their poverty by touring around the country playing phat rock jams.

FNY consists of five members who don’t seem to take much seriously. From left to right, we have guitarist Matt Fazzi, keyboardist Rene Carranza, vocalist and guitarist Eric Fredrick, bassist Brandon Canchola, and drummer Omar Cuellar.

Because their sound is so hard to pinpoint, we can only use their own description. “We’re influenced by the Dismemberment Plan, Led Zeppelin, and the Police. I think we’re like some weird child of those three bands,” says Matt Fazzi.

Why are you guys so poor?
Omar: Because we don’t play screamo.
All: Ohhhh!
Rene: Because we play reggae.
All: Ohhhh!
Omar: Because we’re not handsome and cute. Wait, yeah we are. Sorry guys.
Eric: We can’t hold day jobs because we tour too much. That’s really what it comes down to.
Omar: We don’t play screamo. That really kind of sums it up.
Matt: We’re not successful. That sums it up.

Is this your first time in Seattle?
Omar: Believe it or not, we’ve played it a few times.
Matt: And we draw like a mothafucka!
Omar: Out of two sold-out shows – that’s a thousand people – we drew one.
Matt: We sell a ton of merch…
Omar: But people don’t come back for us because we’re not good-looking and we don’t scream. I think we need to start wearing girl pants.
Matt: Fuck girl pants, dude. It’ll constrict my stuff.

What are you guys planning to do for your record release?
Matt: We’re promoting like crazy and calling everyone in the Bay Area, like our family and everyone we’ve never even talked to, to go out and buy our record. We got a distributor to help us sell some stuff.
Omar: We’re getting crazy on the MySpace tip too. We try to send out as many friend requests and messages as possible without being lame. We’re not aimlessly sending out friend requests.
Matt: We all personalize it in our own way. I like to tell people that I’m going to buy them ice cream. If even five of those people ever came up to me and said, “Where’s my ice cream?” I’ll go broke.

Have you guys been getting a pretty good reaction from touring?
Omar: This tour actually proved to be pretty successful up til the whole van schpiel. We played a big show in Omaha with Criterion, the new SaddleCreek band.
Matt: Salt Lake City. It’s our home away from home.
Eric: We had a show in Minneapolis.
Matt: Yeah, Minneapolis ruled.

Did getting signed on withFive One Inc. offer you guys any good advice?
Matt: We signed on a little while ago, but we’ve been working with the label for a while. We’re friends with the guy who owns the label, Kenji, and we’ve known him for a long time.
Rene: He came with a lot of great perspective. The label is run by one amazing dude named Kenji Kawaguchi and he has all kinds of insight.
Matt: He almost never says we play well. Puts us right in our places.
Omar: Slow and steady wins the race, dude. I was thinking about this the whole time. There’s this dude who wants to start a band, right? And he’s like… “I want you to blow me up and get me all kinds of shit.” Oh, right, screamo. Wearing tight pants, cool hair, hair in my face, and junk all tight in my pants. He starts this band and gets all kinds of shit and all kinds of money, and then he’s done. But we’re slow and steady. We’re going to be around a lot longer than the average haircut.

So when you’re forty, you guys will be successful?
Brandon: Yeah, we’ll be bald and successful.
Omar: With mustaches.
Rene: And overalls.
Omar: But still not screaming. And tight pants, but not girls’ pants.
Brandon: Tight pants. We’re going to be huge.
Omar: But seriously, screamo is like done.
Brandon: Most flash-in-the-pan genre of music ever.
Omar: You remember pop punk? That was like two weeks ago. Screamo? Three weeks. It’s done.
Brandon: Those kids trade in substance for tight jeans and then they’ll trade it in for something else down the line. Who knows what it’ll be. Do you? I don’t.
Matt: Spandex.
Omar: Slow and steady. They’re the turtle; we’re the hare.

What’s your songwriting process like?
Omar: I write it all.
Brandon: We all start whistling.
Matt: In a different key. And when it meets in the middle, a song is born.
Omar: No, Eric writes everything. He’s going to get all of the money, and the four of us are still going to be poor.
Eric: No… Rene and I will often start with ideas that we’ll work on in private time, and we’ll bring them forth to the band. From there, it’s a long process of trying different things -- rearranging, flipping stuff around, playing backwards, forwards, until we all feel happy about it. It’s a very, very inclusive process. It’s very slow.
Rene: We don’t actually write our songs. They’re all covers. I thought you knew.
Brandon: It’s actually a screamo band that nobody knows about who writes all of our songs.
Rene: They’re post-hardcore, dude.

Do you ever play shows with screamo bands?
Matt: All the time.
Brandon: And if there are any screamo bands who read this, we love you guys.
Omar: Please hook us up with big fat shows, ha ha ha! Because without you, we’re nothing! Without you and your haircuts and your pants, we’re just a tortoise.
Brandon: We’re not bitter, really.

Who writes the lyrics? Eric? For example, what is the “Jesus dressed in drag” line in “Javelina” about?
Eric: That line specifically is about what you know and flipping what you know to rethink everything you think you know about yourself and your views. It takes a really common, strong day-to-day image and flips it.

Do you guys have expectations for this album?
Matt: No, we have wishes. We’d wish it’d reach a bunch of people and do something that allows us to not have day jobs.
Omar: Basically, if this album doesn’t blow up, I’m going to down 40 shots of vodka.
Rene: And choke on your own vomit?
Eric: We’re hoping to get the record into the hands of musicians that we look up to, and maybe if we’re lucky enough, get taken out on tour, or even get feedback from great players.
Omar: I just want to eat everyday – like a normal meal. I want to go home and not have my girlfriend on my ass about bills. That’s all I want.
Matt: I think she might read this.
Omar: I hope she does.
Rene: Musically, it’s important that people listen to it and it resonates with them. We’ve tried our hardest to make something that we’re passionate about, and now we’re sending it out and waiting to hear back about it.
Matt: That was from the heart man. I like that.Rene: Actually, I read that somewhere.
Omar: That was actually from Story of the Year.
Brandon: We like our record. We hope people like it.
Omar: That’s pretty much the bottom line. We wrote a record that we like. We hope people like it, and if not, we still like it.

What bands are you guys sending them to?
Eric: Cave In… No Knife, Eastern Youths -- a really great Japanese punk band.
Rene: A band called Gruvis Malt.
Eric: A bunch of people in the Saddlecreek family, cause we’re all big fans of them.
Matt: I want Dave Grohl to get a hold of it. I’ve said this a bunch of times.
Omar: We want Bjork to hear it.
Brandon: We’d fight to the death for Bjork.
Omar: Yeah, that’d be the end of Facing New York.
Matt: Her aura would just shine too bright.
Brandon: We wanted to call it Facing New Bjork.
Omar: Or Facing Thom Yorke… get it? Radiohead?

For people who don’t know who you guys are, how would you describe yourselves? And don’t say screamo.
Omar: You have to put that in as part of the question.
Matt: We like to think that we’re influenced by the Dismemberment Plan, Led Zeppelin, and the Police… I think we’re like some weird child of those three bands.
Eric: We take a lot of influence from older prog rock.
Matt: Oh, Yes.
Eric: Some of that. We also keep up with some forward-thinking indie rock and some electronic music even. There are elements of that in our music as well.


Keep on a lookout throughout the issue for comments from Facing New York, who address everything from gas prices to scary bus stories! Check them out online at http://www.facingnewyork.com (their website is awesome).