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Sure, the weather outside these days is typically just shy of miserable, that late-fall mixture of dampness and cold that seems to put everyone in a bad mood. But if you're looking for something to brighten up your days, Fiction 20 Down is here to help.
The Maryland-based quartet is taking its reggae-influenced rock on the road in support of its latest album, this year's groovy and sunny "Comfortable Fools," and the band will be making its New Jersey debut on Thursday (Nov. 5) with a show with BuzzUniverse and the Juicy Grapes at the Saint in Asbury Park.
Speaking recently with Metromix Jersey Shore, F20D frontman Jordan Lally said he's especially eager for the band to have its Garden State premiere.
"I went to a small college called Mount Saint Mary's (University in Emmitsburg, Md.) and I was outnumbered by Jersey-folk and Jersey beach-folk by a ridiculous amount," Lally said. "And so I'm personally really looking forward to it, because I have a bunch of friends that live on the Jersey Shore and stuff that are coming up; and, we're looking forward to playing the Saint, it's obviously a renowned venue."
Lally recently spoke with Metromix about the Baltimore area reggae-rock scene, "Comfortable Fools" and how an unfortunate incident with a Snapple bottle recently landed one band member in the E.R.
Can you tell me a bit about the scene that you guys come out of? I'm not sure if our readers in Jersey know about the reggae-rock scene in Baltimore.
Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty big deal around here. Some big national bands, like some of your readers might be familiar with a band called Ballyhoo!, they tour nationally and Can't Hang, both of them have been around for like 10 years and I guess they really started the scene around here, the reggae-rock scene; it's big on the west coast, obviously, but they started it out here and so now there's probably like between six and 10 probably touring, maybe not national, but touring bands from the Baltimore area that all sort of affiliate themselves with reggae-rock.
There are a lot of different styles in there, some are sort of like a dub throwback to Bob Marley, we're more of like an alternative rock with like a lot of reggae thrown in kind of thing, but yeah, that's what's up.
You guys have only been together for two years now but you've already released three albums. How did you guys get that productive that quickly?
The main reason is because I own and operate a studio (Reveler Recording Studio) down here in Maryland. So, we don't have the costs that most bands have to put out there. I mean, that's really the main reason. I guess you can call us prolific songwriters, we already have enough material probably for another new album but we're going to try to contain ourselves and focus on the touring for a while. We practice in my studio, so we can have a mike set up and it's really easy for us to record.
Having put out so much material so quickly, how is it making set lists for your shows when you're touring now? Does it make no two shows alike since you have so much out now?
Yeah, it really does. From the earlier albums, we probably play like two or three songs off the first record (2007's "Down n' Out + Up n' Rising"), about the same amount from the second one (2008's "Welcome to the Grassroots"). We play a lot of the newer material because lately as we've been touring we've been writing more for a live sort of energetic show.
A lot of the stuff off the first record was more, I don't want to say melancholy, but it was sort of laid-back acoustic stuff which doesn't work the best in like a club environment (where) people are trying to drink and dance and do their thing.
So we definitely mix up the sets every time, every now and again we'll throw a crazy cover out there for people; we do a cover, I don't know if you're familiar with Biz Markie's "Just a Friend," it's an old hip-hop song and like "Regulate" (by Warren G.), so we do like some old hip-hop stuff we'll throw in but yeah, every night we'll usually hit the same I guess quote-unquote singles but we always mix it up so it does make it a little bit easier for us since we have more to choose from.
Can you tell me a bit about your behind the scenes role in the band doing the recording, the mixing, the producing? What kind of sound were you going for with this latest record?
Raw, because I found like especially with the first record, I spent too much time in the studio; I think it was because we hadn't played out (before releasing the first album), we hadn't done much, I focused too much on getting a studio sound and (this time) I was really more trying to capture, I don't think I did as good of a job as I could have, but I was trying to capture more of our raw, live, sort of energetic vibe which I think is definitely there more than compared to the first two records but I still think we needed a lot more of that.
We're definitely a different live band than we are a studio band, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing, we have different goals when we put out a record than when we're doing a live show. So that was the main goal, just to keep it sort of raw, I mean still have a polished production but keep that sort of raw, not take 100 takes, just really keep it down to two or three takes and role with it.
One of the standout tracks for me on the new record is "Top n' Tails." Can you tell me a bit about that one?
That is probably the one we hear the most about and probably the one we're already sick of playing, but no, lyrically it's just about sort of just keeping after something, you know what I mean? For us, I mean, obviously it applies to I guess any band trying to do their thing and put their music out there; any original band doesn't always get a great response from the beginning because most people want to hear a cover or some stuff like that, so lyrically it's just about staying positive because the next best thing can be right around the corner so keep your head up, so it's a real positive vibe and musically that's probably our straightest reggae song on the record.
I saw on your Twitter page that you would up in a spot of trouble this month at a show in Delaware than ended up with one of you guys in the E.R.
Oh yeah.
So what happened there?
Actually on that song "Top n' Tails," our drummer (Benjamin Potok), who's a phenomenal drummer, he's like, I don't know if the word's classically trained or whatever, but he graduated with a degree in music from college or whatever. But, he likes to experiment with a ton of different sounds and one of them he did for the song "Top n' Tails" was he attached a Snapple bottle to his drum kit and he uses it for some percussive sound or whatever. So, it had fallen off in the travel up to the Delaware show and he was trying to put it back on and it like exploded in his hand and just sliced the tendon all the way through on his finger.
So he had to be, and this is like 10 minutes before we were going on, so he had to be rushed to the E.R., so we did our set without a drummer and then the next night he played with one arm and we actually have some video we're going to post, he just did a phenomenal job, it's actually pretty wild. Most people didn't even notice until I said something in the middle of the set that he was playing with one arm. So it was interesting, but he's actually got to wear a brace for like six weeks until the tendon heals. It was interesting.
Hey, do you like free music? Of course you do! To check out and download three tracks by Fiction 20 Down for FREE, visit the promo page on the band's Web site and enter the promo code Asbury09.
