Famous Strangers Talk New Music, Vinyl and the Business of Rock

Hi there. Thank you for answering some questions for us. Please tell us a bit about yourself.

Hello! Thank you for asking questions, it’s an honor to answer them for you. A little bit about ourselves: we are Famous Strangers. We’re from Sherwood Park, Alberta. We are a heavy rock band with a little bit of grit and also softness to us. We are kind of all over the place. We started about three years ago, but all of us have been playing music and in bands for many years.

Tell us about your new album or single.

Our new album is going to be a seven-song record. It’s going to come out on vinyl and we’re really excited about it. It definitely takes you on a journey through heavy, but also soft, with really cool, interesting lyrics that go from seductive to silly to serious and vulnerable, to even some alien invasion. We’ve got some uplifting lyrics in there too. Instrumentally, it gives you all the different kinds of sounds and riffs that we really enjoy. We love the diversity.

We will be dropping a single before we release the whole album. It is Famous Strangers’ very first full-length album, so we are really excited to show you our art, and very excited for you guys to see the artwork that Art Szabo put together for the vinyl. It’s pretty sick.

Which song would you say sums up your sound the best?

I feel like it’s all over the place, but I guess I’ll go with Deep Star just because we are definitely in the realm of eighties rock, and Deep Star is that in-between where it’s heavy and soft rock and roll. We’re mostly heavy rock and roll, so Deep Star definitely is more our sound. But as we go on, we keep finding more of our sound and it keeps showing up in different ways. It’s really neat, actually.

How did you get into music?

I feel like all of us were blessed at a young age to just be surrounded by musicians, whether it was our parents or friends. We all started playing music at a very young age, a lot of us just being inspired by our peers, looking up to them and watching them do their thing. And then of course, it just creates a chain reaction where you get your first acoustic guitar or drum kit and you start playing around.

You start listening to the kind of music that built your foundation for everything, whether it be The Beatles or jazz. Beej was winning awards at a young age for his jazz drumming, which is really neat. I think both Jeff and I learned “Day Tripper” on the acoustic guitar as one of the first songs we learned. Not together, but in separate households, which just goes to show how bands like The Beatles have a huge impact on people’s lives.

What does a typical writing and recording day look like?

With writing, we’ve been blessed to have... those three boys had a lot of songs in the vault that had been written for years, so it’s been kind of neat to watch it grow from all the way back then up until now. I’ve definitely had a lot of material to write to with the new stuff.

Usually Jeff will show us a riff and we kind of freestyle it. We record all our jam sessions. So we freestyle the song and it just kind of flows. Some days it doesn’t... last night I was at jam and nothing was coming to me. But usually we freestyle stuff and go with the flow and see what fits, see what feels really good.

If I’m having a really good creative day, I’ll write down a whole bunch of stuff. Sometimes I’ll write a song in five minutes. Sometimes it takes way longer than that. I usually take the riff home and try to, first off, listen to the tones and the keys and see what emotion it brings out in me. I’ll write down the feeling on paper, and then I try to match an experience I’ve had with the feeling. We jam it lots, we freestyle it lots, and then usually it just kind of comes together nice. Everybody gets their parts all good and ready and it turns into a song

Sometimes, even if the instrumental part is ready, we’ll play it live. I’ll just ask the audience if they have a topic I should sing about, and I’ll freestyle the song on the stage. Maybe something comes out of that.

Recording is definitely awesome. We are very blessed to have our band space at Jeff’s house, and we do our pre-production and some of the recording with Jeff Kittlitz. He records our stuff. We usually take the drums to a proper studio for tracking because we learned our lesson the hard way the first time and realized our ceilings are too low for tracking drums and the sound is weird that way. We’ve been working with people like Phil Anderson, Maor Appelbaum, and Joel Wanasek, so we’re really blessed to have a solid team that helps our sound get to the point it needs to be.

How did you get your band name?

The band name is the story of Jeff driving, and he was listening to “Perfect Strangers” by Deep Purple, and he looked up and saw a Famous Donair sign. He kind of just put that together... Famous Strangers. We’re all kind of famous in our own way within the community, in the metal scene for sure, after decades of playing. But then we’re also strangers to one another coming together as a new band. So that’s how that was put together. It is kind of neat, like the universe showed him the way.

What has been the hardest thing about your music journey so far?

I know for me... oh my goodness, I should have been learning about the business side for a really long time, but I didn’t. I definitely had the pleasure of just playing in bands where I really had to show up and sing, which is honestly so lucky and so blessed and so thankful

.

I made sure for this band that I really wanted to get involved and really wanted to learn about the business side, but it is definitely kicking my ass right now. I honestly cannot believe... like I do believe what it takes to get to the top. I get it. But just all the things that come together to make this all happen, especially in a professional way that all the big guys are doing, it’s no wonder you need to have a solid team of people that know what they’re doing. And nowadays with bands managing themselves, it is a challenge.

I will say I have been getting overwhelmed a lot lately, but I’m really thankful to have my band by my side to help me through it, and our awesome team that we have. Our team keeps building and getting bigger and growing stronger. So it’s definitely nice to have a team that you trust and that are awesome.

But yes, all the business side... it’s definitely so much fun to jam and write and play music and be on that stage. But there’s so much more to it than that. I’ve always known that, but now that I’m right there doing all the other stuff, it’s definitely overwhelming. Props to the people that this is your job, and to all those bands where sometimes there’s just one person doing all the work, doing all the business stuff. I don’t know how they do it because it’s a lot.

What’s been the easiest?

Oh my goodness, just going to jam and having a couple beers and just writing music. Of course, challenges do come, but it’s so nice when you’re playing music and it just all kind of falls together really easily.

I’ve said before that I swear there are times where we black out and we wake up and there’s a song and it appears out of nowhere. I almost feel like it’s not good enough. Like, the song is great and all, and it’s amazing, but my doubt creeps in with, “Well, I didn’t spend enough time on this song. I wrote it in five minutes.” It’s almost like I believe that you have to put in a lot of time and a lot of work, which you do... practice and being passionate and putting in the effort. But some songs just come together way too fast.

I hear a lot of people reassure me that it’s okay, that some songs are going to come together really fast. And it’s just so much fun to jam and to play. Playing the stage is so much fun. That’s what makes it all worth it. But once again, even though it’s easy to sometimes write and to play music on the stage and have shows, there are challenges that come with all of it.

What would you be doing if you weren’t making music?

Like I say every time, I would be wondering what was missing in my life, that’s for sure. But I think I would be doing something like... because I’m taking herbology classes anyway, so I think I’d be very much doing what I do on my days off. Just very nature things.

I’m not sure about the boys. I think they have said before that they would be doing something to do with music, because Jeff and Beej both work with FM systems, so they’re definitely involved with stage building and case building and doing sound for shows and stuff. And Braden is a teacher and I feel like he would still be a teacher. But I honestly could not see Braden not playing music. I think he would feel the same way I do, like, “What’s missing in my life?”

What is the best advice you’ve been given?

I haven’t... I have yet to, or hope never to, experience anything like this, but I toured with Vicious Rumors one time, and on that tour someone said, “Don’t sign a fucking thing.” So I totally get that. Especially when you’re getting bigger and there’s lots of people that want a piece of the pie. You just need to be careful and make sure that when you get bigger, or even just... make sure you have a lawyer and you know what you’re doing and what’s happening.

I feel like I get advice all the time. I’ve been blessed for twenty years to get advice from so many people around me. But lately I’ve been watching so many live shows from the nineties... like Chris Cornell or Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, Billy Idol. I think all the things these musicians have in common... like, I watched a documentary of Amy Winehouse and I think in there, she says she doesn’t sing her songs, she is her songs. And I think it’s really been inspiring me lately. Of course I feel my music and stuff, but sometimes when you’re on stage, you’re overthinking and your mind is going a hundred miles a minute, which is weird because my brain does turn off when I’m on that stage. But you want to sound good and you want to perform well, so sometimes you overthink and you’re not in the moment. I feel like I would really like to get better at being right in the moment and being present, and not just singing my songs but feeling them and really getting the emotion out. Because that’s the point, right?

What’s next?

What’s next is our album that we’re releasing this year on vinyl. We’re going to be playing Decimate Metalfest here in June. We also have a couple shows lined up and definitely an album release in August. We are hoping for obviously more shows to come about. You never know what happens, so we’re excited for any experience that is going to happen. We’re gonna have some more singles come out with music videos, and who knows what else. We’re excited to see where this is going and what else comes our way.

www.famousstrangersband.com